Home care workers push Walz to address ‘crisis of care’ with higher wages

January 25, 2019 by

Home care workers and their clients plan to rally at the Capitol Thursday, Jan. 31, at 11 a.m.

Home care workers in Minnesota are fighting for a $15 wage floor in ongoing contract negotiations with the state, and fighting alongside them are the clients and families they serve.

The connection is obvious to Lauren Thompson, a Minnesotan with cerebral palsy, who receives in-home care thanks to state and federal subsidies.

“Think about how you’d want to be cared for and the people you want taking care of you,” Thompson said. “A minimum wage of at least $15 an hour would start to create a stronger workforce. It would mean that good PCAs would be able to keep working.”

Thompson is part of a unique team bargaining on behalf of nearly 30,000 home care workers statewide. It not only includes members of the workers’ union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, but also the seniors, people with disabilities and families who rely on personal care to remain in their homes.

The united front reflects growing concern over a shortage of home care workers – there are currently 8,000 unfilled positions statewide, according to the union – at a time when the state’s population is aging.

The nonprofit research initiative Minnesota Compass projects the number of Minnesotans 65 and older will exceed those ages 5 to 17 for the first time ever “around 2020,” and nearly a third of people 65 and older have a disability.

The confluence of workforce and demographic trends amounts to a crisis, home care workers and clients warn. And addressing it starts with raising wages in the industry.

That’s the message they will deliver to lawmakers during a rally planned next Thursday, Jan. 31, at 11 a.m. in the Capitol. [Click here to RSVP on Facebook.]

“We have a huge shortage of care workers in south central Minnesota where I live,” said Dalene Annen, a home care worker from Winnebago. “If we can win at least a $15 minimum wage in our new contract, it will give good people an incentive to be home care workers instead of choosing to work at the grocery store or fast food because they pay more.”

Annen and other workers hope one lawmaker, in particular, is paying attention next Thursday.

On the campaign trail, Gov. Tim Walz backed a $15 minimum wage for all workers. His administration’s contract negotiations with home care workers offer an early opportunity to back up talk with action.

In addition, home care workers say getting to $15 now would ensure their pay remains in step with rising minimum-wage rates in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where thousands of them work.

The current wage floor for home care workers in Minnesota is $12, and it’s risen steadily since workers formed a union with SEIU in 2014. The union also has won paid time off, holiday pay and increased training opportunities since organizing.

Yet in spite of those gains, too many Minnesotans still are not getting the care they need to stay in their homes. Patsy Gibson, a home care worker from Bloomington, hopes this is the year things change. 

“We are losing valuable people in such an important profession,” Gibson said. “I really hope our government is aware of what is happening… When we say we can only afford to pay poverty wages it means people’s lives are at stake. We need our governor and elected officials to help us get to a decent living wage.”

SEIU anticipates reaching a tentative agreement with the state’s Department of Management and Budget on a new two-year contract in the coming weeks, so that it can be included in Walz’s first two-year budget proposal, expected early next month.

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Wage hike shows what’s possible when workers join together, think big

December 19, 2018 by

Working people celebrated at City Hall as Mayor Melvin Carter signed St. Paul’s new $15 minimum wage ordinance Nov. 14.

Six years ago, when fast food workers in New York and, later, cities across the country began striking and rallying in the streets for a $15 minimum wage, the idea was dismissed as too radical.

Today, it’s written into the City of St. Paul’s legislative code.

Members of the City Council voted unanimously Nov. 14 to phase in $15 for all workers – indexed to inflation – over the next nine years. Within minutes of the vote, Mayor Melvin Carter, who made $15 a rallying cry in his bid for office one year ago, had put his signature on the ordinance.

That set off a celebration like few others at City Hall, where many of the working people who led the fight for $15 had gathered to witness the historic moment.

Shalantra Taylor, who works at a McDonald’s in St. Paul and is looking for a second job to make ends meet, was among them. She thanked Carter and council members for “listening to workers, for standing with us.”

“I am homeless, and I’m not the only one,” Taylor said. “Many working people have to work multiple jobs and are still living paycheck to paycheck… This minimum wage law is going to lift up working people and address racial inequalities in our city.”

During a signing ceremony at City Hall, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter showed off the city’s new $15 minimum wage ordinance, which drew unanimous backing from members of the City Council.

Making history

Taylor and other workers never wavered in their demands, and they resisted efforts to divide them along the lines of age, experience or industry.

When the restaurant lobby pushed a subminimum wage for tipped workers, a coalition of worker, faith and community organizations pushed back – both in the streets and in formal meetings with elected officials. As a result, the so-called “tip adjustment” never even came up for a vote before the council, and it is not included in the new ordinance.

By the time the ordinance was introduced this fall, the 15 Now Coalition had gained the influence necessary to go toe-to-toe with powerful lobbying interests like the Minnesota Restaurant Association and big-box retailers. And it did so by fusing the energy of community members fighting entrenched poverty and racial disparities with the power of organized labor.

When those groups share a bold, progressive policy vision, labor historian Peter Rachleff said, it’s a recipe for making history.

“I think the fight for $15 nationally looks more like the fight for the eight-hour day and the fight against child labor than it looks like anything else in American history,” Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library, said.

All three movements were initially derided as too ambitious.

“People said it’s too much too fast, but it’s that kind of evocative vision” that inspired the fight for child labor laws and the eight-hour day, Rachleff said. And it’s a similarly bold vision inspiring workers to fight for $15 today.

“We’re not talking about 2 percent a year or a $2 raise,” Rachleff said. “By putting $15 up the flagpole, people felt it was worth fighting for. People could imagine their lives being changed by making that kind of money.”

In 2017, fast food workers went on a Labor Day strike to launch the campaign for $15 in St. Paul.

Labor support ‘essential’

From the earliest stages of the Fight for $15, unions in the Twin Cities have recognized the importance of fighting alongside workers, whether union or non-union, pushing for a higher minimum wage.

Union members marched alongside striking fast food workers in the early days of the campaign, and many labor organizations, including the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, helped make $15 a litmus test for candidates running for mayor in 2017.

“Raising the minimum wage, without a tip adjustment, was a fight our affiliate unions and delegates realized was essential to who we are,” St. Paul RLF President Bobby Kasper said. “The labor movement won’t remain relevant unless we’re fighting for all working people.”

After Carter announced plans to take on the issue in his first year in office, the St. Paul RLF began hosting weekly meetings with activists and organizers from the 15 Now coalition. Several union members sat on the study group whose recommendations formed the basis of the minimum wage ordinance.

Now that the ordinance has passed, the 15 Now coalition will focus on education and enforcement in St. Paul, with an eye on taking the movement statewide.

“It’s a really ambitious idea,” Rachleff said. “But the beauty of it is it will force people to do the kind of metro-outstate organizing we need so desperately, not just in Minnesota but also in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest.

“Those conversations don’t happen if there isn’t a focal point.”

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fight for $15’s next target: MSP Airport

November 26, 2018 by

MSP Airport workers and supporters march for $15 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Emboldened by minimum wage victories in St. Paul and Minneapolis, workers seeking a raise at MSP Airport used the busiest travel day of the year to inject new energy into their fight for $15 and union rights.

The rally outside Terminal 1 last Wednesday brought together the people who make MSP work: unionized janitors, servers, cooks, cart drivers, bag runners and other frontline staff. They marched outside the ticketing area, carrying signs and joining chants calling on the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to raise the minimum wage to $15 for all airport workers.

Glen Brown, a wheelchair assistant and member of Service Employees International Union Local 26, earns just $10.65 per hour working for airline contractor G2. At the rally, the St. Paul resident recalled watching his city council and mayor pass a minimum wage ordinance earlier this month – and resolving to fight for the same at MSP.

“We deserve the same pay and respect as workers in cities that border the airport,” Brown said, noting that U.S. airlines raked in $15.5 billion in profits last year – profits that “our work helped make possible.”

“There are thousands of us making around what I make, while Delta CEO Ed Bastian makes $6,300 per hour,” Brown added. “A $15 wage floor at MSP would mean stability and security for so many families.”

 

Although workers like Brown are pushing the MAC to follow Minneapolis and St. Paul on the path to $15, it was initially Minneapolis and St. Paul that followed the MAC’s lead in setting higher labor standards than the state requires.

In June 2015, airport commissioners approved a measure raising the minimum wage to $10 for most workers at MSP, which does not fall under the legal jurisdiction of either Minneapolis or St. Paul. That raise came on the heels of a measure passed in December 2014 requiring airport employers to offer earned sick and safe time benefits.

But historic $15 minimum wage ordinances on the books in neighboring St. Paul and Minneapolis are poised to erode airport workers’ minimum-wage advantage. That could lead to under-staffing, workers at the rally warned.

Advocates say nearly 3,000 workers would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 at the airport, a boost of close to $13 million into the Twin Cities economy for the people and families who need it most.

Feben Ghilagaber, a UNITE HERE Local 17 member who has worked in food service at MSP for 13 years, said she supports a $15 minimum wage because one job at the airport should be enough for workers to support themselves.

“When I see my co-workers working 16-hour days, I always wonder who’s watching their families?” Ghilagaber said. “Who’s raising their kids?”

Other unions that supported the rally included Teamsters Local 120 and the Machinists, which is supporting Delta Air Lines ramp workers organizing for a voice on the job at MSP and airports around the U.S.

“Delta Workers helped to start the movement for $15 here at the airport four years ago,” ramp worker Marty Knaeble said. “We will be there at the finish.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

St. Paul workers, families keep pressure on as council takes up $15

October 19, 2018 by

Mayor Melvin Carter snaps a selfie with advocates for a $15 minimum wage outside City Hall.

It felt like a victory celebration as working people and their families rallied with elected officials outside City Hall Wednesday, just minutes before council members formally introduced an ordinance that would put St. Paul on track to a $15 minimum wage.

The finish line may be in sight, but Mayor Melvin Carter had a warning for supporters.

“We’re not done yet,” he said, listing the procedural hurdles and public hearings the ordinance faces before it can receive a vote. “But I’ve committed myself and our city to passing this into law by the end of the year, and I remain committed. And I want to say thank you to all of you for being engaged.”

Carter was speaking to union members, tipped workers and other low-wage workers who have been pushing for action in St. Paul since Minneapolis adopted its ordinance over a year ago. At the rally, they stood together in support of the proposed ordinance, unveiled a week earlier by Mayor Carter.

Co-authored by five of the council’s seven members (Amy Brendmoen, Mitra Jalali Nelson, Rebecca Noecker, Dai Thao and Chris Tolbert), the ordinance closely mirrors recommendations of a task force that spent more than three months studying the potential effects of a wage hike and listening to workers, business owners and others who would be impacted by the ordinance.

“We have been listening, talking, debating and voting for almost a year now,” said SEIU Healthcare Minnesota Political Director Rick Varco, who co-chaired the task force. “Now is the time to act.”

Action by the council would raise wages for an estimated 56,000 people – nearly a third of the city’s workforce – who earn less than $15 an hour.

Rosalio Vences, a janitor at a Target store in St. Paul, is among them. The cleaning contractor he works for has raised his pay just once – from $11 to $11.25 per hour – in the nearly three years Vences has been on the job. Lately, he said, the boss has been cutting hours off his scheduled shifts, too.

“But they always give us a raise in workload,” Vences said. “We always have more work to do, faster and faster.”

With the extra money he’d be earning with a $15 minimum wage, Vences could afford to move out of the room he rents in someone else’s home and get his own place. “With our current wages, we can’t afford to pay our rent and our bills,” he said.

Erin Lynch, a server at a full-service restaurant in St. Paul, speaks at a press conference staged by supporters of a $15 minimum wage with no tip adjustment.

Servers like Erin Lynch also praised the proposed ordinance, which would not carve out a lower wage for workers who earn tips. The question of whether to include a so-called “tip adjustment” has been a focus of debate, but Lynch said earning a livable wage makes servers more likely to stand up to harassment from customers and managers who “wave the prospect of a tip over your head.”

Restaurant workers experience sexual harassment on the job more frequently than workers in any other industry. A 2014 report by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United found 9 of 10 women working in the industry had experienced sexual harassment on the job, and so had 7 of 10 men. Sexual harassment is more prevalent, the report found, in states that allow servers and bartenders to be paid less than minimum wage.

“It’s really demoralizing that me and my coworkers have to put up with this stuff every day, to varying amounts,” Lynch said. “A $15 an hour minimum wage would alleviate this and would lessen my dependence on tips. It puts me in a better position to stand up for my dignity.”

The ordinance, as currently drafted, would take effect in 2020, and would affect employers differently based on their size.

Large businesses – those with more than 100 workers – would be required to pay $15 per hour by July 1, 2023. Workers at small businesses would reach $15 by July 1, 2026. Microbusinesses – those with five or fewer employees – would have two more years to phase in the full minimum wage, which would adjust annually for inflation.

The ordinance also would put the city’s own employees on track to earn $15 by July 1, 2022.

The Met Council’s most recent analysis of census data shows 40.8 percent of St. Paul residents live in poverty, a higher rate than any other metro-area community.

“We’re so grateful to the mayor for having listened to our words to help bring change with our employers,” Vences, a member of the Twin Cities worker center CTUL, said. “For so long we’ve been lifting our voices to say we need a raise to $15 an hour.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Fight for $15 moves to city hall

September 12, 2018 by

Supporters of a $15 minimum wage ordinance display more than 2,000 petitions signed by supporters at a press conference outside city hall.

After months of neighborhood organizing that sometimes spilled over into the streets, St. Paul workers who want a higher minimum wage are bringing their fight to city hall.

“We have waited over a year as the city has discussed this issue,” said Pastor James Erlandson of Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in St. Paul. “The time for debate is over. It’s time to pass the ordinance.”

Erlandson and other supporters of a $15 minimum wage staged a press conference today in advance of the City Council’s public hearing on the issue tonight.

The hearing will follow a presentation by the Citizens League on the findings of a committee charged with studying the issue over the summer. The 21 business owners, low-wage workers, nonprofit executives and other stakeholders did not issue a stand-alone recommendation to the council. Rather, they forwarded three “scenarios for consideration,” all of which would put St. Paul on the path to a $15 minimum wage, with annual inflationary increases.

That’s a big win for low-wage workers in St. Paul and the organizations – unions included – fighting to raise the wage. It’s a win, too, for the city’s voters, who elected Mayor Melvin Carter to a landslide victory last fall on a platform that included full-throated support for $15.

Tou Vang, an organizer with Hmong Americans for Justice, praised the committee for recognizing the “crisis of poverty” in St. Paul. It’s estimated that one of every four St. Paul workers earns less than $15 per hour, and 40.8 percent of St. Paul residents live in poverty, a higher rate than any other metro-area community.

“In addition to the committee’s research and discussion, it’s clear the outcomes of the process were influenced by years of workers rallying, striking and organizing for living wages and dignity,” Vang added.

(Citizens League)

Carve outs still at issue

While the study committee’s three scenarios all embrace $15, they do provide exemptions for city-approved youth training programs and employers who hire workers with disabilities. The scenarios also differ in how long employers would have to phase in the full $15 minimum wage ­(between four and seven years, depending on the size of the employer).

One scenario includes a subminimum wage for tipped workers in “full service restaurants,” which unions and many restaurant workers oppose. In fact, the study committee included a scenario with the “tip credit,” as its known to supporters, even though it failed to receive support from a majority of committee members.

The issue has been a point of contention at two public input sessions hosted by the city so far. (Two more sessions are scheduled later this month.)

Servers and bartenders in many states with a subminimum “tipped wage” rely almost entirely on their customers’ goodwill for their incomes, a dynamic that, as several studies show, puts workers at a greater risk of experiencing sexual harassment and wage theft.

Erin Lynch, a tipped worker in St. Paul, said she already experiences sexual harassment on the job, even though Minnesota is one of seven “equal treatment states,” with no tip credit on the books.

“I’m forced to weigh my dignity in these situations against my income in the form of tips,” Lynch said. “A tip penalty forces workers like me to rely more on tips in situations like these, and to put up with inappropriate behavior to supplement my income.”

A push to be bold

As council members begin the work of crafting an ordinance, two recently released reports provide fodder for advocates pushing strong, progressive action.

Last week researchers at the University of California Berkely issued an analysis of trends in the first six major U.S. cities to raise the minimum wage higher than $10. The team of economists found significant pay increases and, critically, no significant employment reductions in the six cities.

“When these minimum wage policies were being considered, some predicted that they would lead to significant job losses,” co-author Carl Nadler said. “We did not find such job losses. We did find that these cities’ minimum wage policies increased the earnings of low-wage workers, just as intended.”

Earlier this year Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, surveyed more than 500 people working in St. Paul, and their responses, analyzed in a report issued last month, shed more light on the city’s crisis of poverty.

Nearly half of workers reported earning $10 per hour or less, with 90 percent earning less than $15. Half of those surveyed said their income provides support for someone else – a loved one or family member – as well as themselves.

What would $15 mean for workers surveyed? Paying down debt or paying bills on time was the most frequent response. Others included improved housing options, less anxiety and more time with family.

That’s the case for Marfa Malcolm, who shuttles between three different jobs as a caregiver, and her 16-year-old daughter, who works in food service on weekends to help support their family.

“There are days when I work the overnight shift and I come in by 8 o’clock, and she’s gone to school,” Malcolm said outside city hall today. “When I go home and she’s home, I have to be doing my other part-time job. I can’t get to spend time with her, and she really needs me.

“So if you value family, I think you should pass $15 now.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mitra Jalali Nelson: Labor endorsed in St. Paul’s Ward 4

August 6, 2018 by

Mitra Jalali Nelson thanks delegates to the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation for their support.

Renters outnumber homeowners in St. Paul, but there are no renters on the city council. That’s something Mitra Jalali Nelson is out to change.

Nelson, the labor-endorsed candidate in a special election Aug. 14 to fill St. Paul’s Ward 4 seat, has drawn on her experience as a renter to craft a “blueprint” of policy proposals aimed at making housing in St. Paul more affordable, like zoning rules that allow development of more rental stock and programs that support aspiring homeowners.

Nelson is thinking big. And as a former union organizer and current aide to U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, she has firsthand experience turning big ideas into reality.

The self-described “organizer at heart” knows it takes teamwork to make meaningful change.

“I look forward to working hand-in-hand with workers, unions and partners citywide to address income inequality head-on, and achieve citywide progress that brings all of us with it,” Nelson said.

‘The rent won’t wait’

Nelson has positioned herself as a champion of affordable housing from the start of her bid for City Hall. She won labor’s backing, meanwhile, by connecting the dots between her top issue and the things St. Paul unions fight for every day – good jobs, quality public services and strong public schools.

Affordable housing, Nelson said, is “key to ending income inequality” and, in St. Paul, a “crisis” that demands urgent attention.

Recent data from the Census Bureau backs up her claim. It shows 51 percent of renters are in “cost-burdened” situations, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Too often, Nelson said, the amount is closer to half.

“When people spend most of their income on housing, they’re forced to buy fewer groceries, skip a doctor’s appointment, forego school supplies and spend less in St. Paul businesses,” she said. “Foregoing action on this issue is holding our city back.”

A leading contributor to St. Paul’s affordable housing crisis? Rents are going up faster than working people’s wages. Over the last 25 years, median rents have increased by 9 percent, when adjusted for inflation, while median household incomes have fallen by 3 percent.

Backers of a $15 minimum wage ordinance in St. Paul have printed shirts with their rallying cry: “15 Now because the rent won’t wait.” Nelson said she supports $15 “without any exemptions.”

“I support passing one fair wage for our city and will work with community partners toward a $15 minimum wage citywide without any exemptions,” she said. “As the costs of living rise, our wages have been stagnant, and we need to take significant action locally to address this.”

But the city can also do more to make rental housing more affordable, she said.

“We need to act on our affordable housing crisis, using tools at the city level like inclusionary zoning and upzoning to help create more affordable units throughout the Ward and our city,” Nelson said. “We also need help from the county and state, and I will advocate for and seek additional resources to support the construction of more affordable housing, including public housing.

“As a renter, I am running to organize a coalition of renters and homeowners alike to achieve progress on this issue.”

Unions impressed

Barb Herrington-Hall, who retired this summer after 33 years as an educator, participated in the St. Paul Federation of Teachers’ screening process in Ward 4. She came away impressed with Nelson’s vision, energy and grasp of the issues facing St. Paul.

Nelson’s passion for affordable housing struck a chord with Herrington-Hall, whose job involved making house calls to families in the district to screen children for special education services.

“I’ve been in apartments that the number of people living there, the quality of the housing, it would break your heart,” Herrington-Hall, a Ward 4 resident, said. “And it’s parents who have to work multiple jobs just to pay the rent.

“As educators, we know these parents aren’t able to come to meetings at conference time or help their child with homework. So I see the difference it would make if parents only had to work one full-time job.”

Herrington-Hall also knows Nelson does more than talk about supporting union members.

“The first time I met her she was participating in a rally in front of the school board building to support our bargaining team,” Herrington-Hall said. “Mitra was there in the crowd before she was ever endorsed, standing out in the cold with the rest of us.”

On the web

• Learn more about Nelson’s campaign at www.mitranelson.com.

• View a list of labor-endorsed candidates on the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation’s website.

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Kip Hedges: Labor has a big stake in St. Paul’s fight for $15

August 1, 2018 by

Former Delta baggage handler Kip Hedges was fired for speaking up in favor of $15 for all workers.

There’s no question, the labor movement is under severe attack. The Janus decision is only the latest example of damage inflicted on workers by the billionaire class of the United States and their political allies.

How can we rebuild? How can we, as a union movement, be relevant to millions of workers who know little of unions? Because of nearly four decades of defeats, retreats and attacks on labor, many of these workers have never been in a union and don’t have family members or friends who have been in unions.

The fight for a $15 minimum wage must be part of any fightback strategy. Why? First, because using 15 as part of a union organizing strategy can pay real dividends. At MSP airport the demand for $15 was a key part of the Service Employees International Union’s ability to bring 700 aircraft cleaners and cart drivers into the union. Like many positions that had once been career jobs, outsourcing had turned these into minimum-wage jobs. When SEIU Local 26 became a champion of $15 for all airport workers, aircraft cleaners started to pay real attention to the union.

Another string of impressive organizing victories came when United Food and Commercial Workers Local 653 used the demand for $15 to win union representation for hundreds of grocery workers at Minneapolis food co-op stores.

Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL), a Twin Cities worker center, has been at the forefront of the Fight for 15. It has effectively organized to bring hundreds of mostly immigrant workers into the labor movement. This is, in no small part, because workers saw CTUL fighting alongside them for higher wages and dignity even before they were in a union.

The second reason why 15 must be part of rebuilding the union movement is because we must break out of our isolation. The labor movement was at its strongest when we took on fights that benefited the entire working class, like the 8-hour day, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, social security and an end to child labor. By leading these fights, unions brought many unorganized workers into the labor movement.

Too often we have moved away from the philosophy of solidarity, the idea of social movement unionism. Instead of fighting for Medicare for All, the fight becomes for better health insurance for just our members. Instead of fighting for real increases in Social Security, we fight just for our pensions or an increase in company contributions to our 401(k).

We know from years of experience how this ends up. Our employers are able to isolate us from other workers and then pick us off. If the working class as a whole is drowning, it’s only a matter of time before the rising waves wash union workers away as well, no matter how skilled we are or how secure we feel.

If we are able to attract and become relevant to young workers, workers of color, immigrant workers and workers on the low end of the pay scale, then unions actually have a bright future. The fight for 15 is a key part of that future.

Here in St. Paul we expect that the City Council will be voting on an ordinance to raise the minimum wage by late November. We still face a fight over carve-outs like a lower minimum wage for tipped workers (often called a tip penalty), an expanded youth training wage and a lower minimum wage for personal care attendants and other workers. We are demanding One Fair Wage for all St. Paul workers, no carve-outs or exemptions.

Unions and union retirees have been at the center of the Fight for 15 in St. Paul. Union members always show up strong at 15 rallies and turn out for public listening sessions. There will be another opportunity to have an impact on Saturday, Aug. 4, during the next minimum wage listening session sponsored by the city. It’s scheduled from 9 to 11:15 a.m. at the Metropolitan State University Student Center, 690 East Seventh Street.

Please come to support One Fair Wage of $15 for St. Paul!

– A former baggage handler fired by Delta for his support of 15 for all airport workers, Hedges remains active in local organizing campaigns, including the 15 Now campaign and the union drive at Delta Air Lines.

Filed Under: Labor Voices Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Women workers take on MN restaurant lobby over tip penalty

June 28, 2018 by

St. Paul barista Evann Zuckerman joins a march on the Minnesota Restaurant Association’s offices in St. Paul.

Women workers delivered a message to the state’s powerful restaurant lobby yesterday that an attack on tipped workers’ wages is an attack on women.

Tipped workers joined union members and other supporters in a march on the Minnesota Restaurant Association’s offices in St. Paul, where the women staged a rally and delivered a letter demanding the organization end its campaign to carve out a subminimum “tipped wage” in St. Paul.

“I want to keep one fair wage in my industry,” St. Paul barista Evann Zuckerman told other activists at the rally. “I want the MRA out of the way, and to stop putting profits over people.”

Mayor Melvin Carter, who made a $15 citywide minimum wage the centerpiece of his 2017 election campaign, wants an ordinance on the books by the end of the year. Among the biggest questions he and City Council members face in drafting the ordinance is whether to include a tipped wage.

MRA is lobbying hard for a carve-out, as the organization does any time elected officials consider raising the minimum wage. (The MRA also supports a statewide law stripping cities like St. Paul of the power to raise labor standards in their communities.)

Minnesota is one of seven states without a “tip penalty,” which allows restaurants and bars to pay workers a lower wage as long as they make up the difference in tips. Not only is the arrangement highly susceptible to wage theft, but it also puts servers and bartenders – 70 percent of whom are women – at a greater risk of experiencing sexual harassment and abusive behavior.

Zuckerman, who has five years of experience in the industry, said she’s been hit on by customers and harassed by managers.

“Skewed power dynamics,” she said, are a big part of restaurant culture. The more reliant workers are on tips, the less likely they are to push back.

“Men who are already feel entitled treat female workers even worse knowing that they hold so much over us, as the minimum wage now is not enough and we need tips to survive,” she said. “The Minnesota Restaurant Association knows that making us rely on tips means workers are disempowered, and they just don’t care.”

A restaurant owner from Seattle, where the minimum wage is on track to reach $15, also spoke at the rally. Shirley Henderson urged St. Paul servers not to buy into the MRA’s warnings that service jobs will disappear or customers will stop tipping if servers’ wages increase.

“In Seattle, groups like the MRA use the same fear-mongering about $15,” Henderson said. “The sky is not falling in Seattle. Small business is thriving.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Restaurant industry pushes tip penalty; unions and tipped workers push back

April 25, 2018 by

You might not have noticed the sky falling in Minnesota’s restaurant industry – unless, that is, you’ve been hanging out in meetings of the House Committee on Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance.

The Republican-controlled committee has tucked a measure into its Omnibus Jobs and Energy Bill that would allow restaurants to pay servers and bartenders less than minimum wage. In hearings last month, industry lobbyists claimed the concession is necessary to shield establishments from annual, inflationary increases to the state’s minimum wage.

Minnesota is one of just seven states where employers may not pay a lower, sub-minimum wage to workers on the basis that their income includes tips. Lawmakers removed the “tipped tier” from Minnesota’s minimum-wage rules three decades ago.

But time hasn’t exactly softened the restaurant industry’s opposition.

The state’s minimum wage has increased from $7.25 to $9.65 for large employers over the last four years, and restaurant owners – and some workers – claim the increased labor costs have upended their industry, forcing layoffs, increasing automation and threatening the vibrancy of the local dining scene.

“The goal of this is to keep jobs intact and to keep our businesses open,” Minneapolis bartender Adam Borgen told committee members April 16.

But employment data collected by the state doesn’t back up the industry’s claims. An analysis by the JOBS NOW Coalition found that job openings in Minnesota’s restaurant industry have increased by 200 percent since 2014, when the minimum wage began to climb.

“Restaurants literally can’t get anyone to fill these jobs in the first place,” JOBS NOW’s Kevin Ristau said. “But they say that by raising the minimum wage, you’re going to hurt the very people you’re trying to help, that those opportunities for workers will no longer exist. Well, we raised the minimum wage, and there are more ‘opportunities’ than ever.”

Minnesota’s restaurant scene, meanwhile, remains hot. Ten local chefs and two restaurants were named semifinalists for the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards earlier this year.

So if a political push to make it legal for restaurants to pay workers less than minimum wage sounds like a solution in search of a problem, that’s because it is, UNITE HERE Local 17 Political Director Wade Luneberg said.

“My industry’s obsession with removing income from employees’ pockets has always stumped me,” Luneberg, a former server and longtime officer in the Twin Cities hospitality union, told committee members.

“This is not an industry in crisis,” he added. “Instead, it keeps expanding and diversifying to find more ways of doing business.”

Although most people who testified for or against the measure last month were from the Twin Cities, the bill’s chief author, Rep. Joe McDonald (R-Delano), stressed it was not his intention to preempt local minimum-wage rules.

Minneapolis did not carve out a sub-minimum wage for tipped workers in its $15 ordinance last year, meaning even if McDonald’s bill were to become law, Minneapolis restaurants would have to raise servers’ wages annually in accordance with the ordinance.

Still, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Bobby Kasper warned the tip penalty is just one piece of a broader corporate agenda Republicans are pushing at the Capitol. Another piece of the agenda: preempting local control.

“We’re going to fight any effort to put a tip penalty into St. Paul’s minimum wage ordinance because workers in the hospitality industry deserve one fair wage,” Kasper said. “But we can’t ignore what’s happening at the Capitol. These politicians are only listening to their corporate donors, and they could wipe out everything we’ve been working for.”

That’s exactly the feeling Desiree King had when she heard tip penalty legislation was alive in the House. A longtime server who now waits tables in St. Paul, King testified in favor of scrapping the lower minimum wage for tipped workers 30 years ago, and she never imagined she’d have to come back, King told lawmakers last month.

“To say that we, as a group of people because we earn tips, are not valuable enough to make the minimum wage is insulting,” King said. “We are worth more than that.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

As momentum for $15 builds in St. Paul, so does concern over corporate interference

March 23, 2018 by

Earlier this month Kiara Ivy stepped outside the hardware store in St. Paul where she works as a cashier, and found an organizer waiting for her with a clipboard and a question.

Would she support raising St. Paul’s minimum wage to $15?

Ivy, who earns $9.65 an hour, didn’t hesitate to say yes.

“I had heard a lot of talk about raising the minimum wage, but didn’t know it was happening here,” she said. “I tend not to get my hopes up a lot, but it sounds so nice.”

Ivy was one of 539 low-wage workers who signed up to support a $15 minimum wage during a five-day organizing blitz earlier this month. It’s given the 15 Now campaign a jolt of momentum – and an even deeper well of public support – as the issue moves up the city’s agenda.

Working America’s Alisa Tennessen, who coordinated the blitz, said it also provided a glimpse of who is working for poverty wages in the capital city, as many supporters filled out surveys on what $15 would mean for themselves and their families.

“The answers are heartbreaking,” Tennessen said, noting “an astonishingly high number of people who talked about food – healthier food, more food, more food for their families.”

Ivy, in fact, met with a reporter on her way home from the food shelf. The 18-year-old shares a one-bedroom apartment in St. Paul with her mom and a roommate, chipping in $100 a month for rent and $50 each week for food, despite working only 25 hours per week.

Raising the wage to $15 in St. Paul, she said, would “mean I could finally move out on my own and still be able to help my mom out.”

Local elected officials in St. Paul, including Mayor Melvin Carter, have signaled support for giving workers like Ivy a raise. City Council President Amy Brendmoen said in February the plan is to “have an ordinance in front of us by fall.”

By that time, however, St. Paul may no longer have the authority to pass its own minimum-wage law.

As they did last year, corporate special interests and Republicans in the Legislature are trying to pull the rug out from under Ivy and other workers fighting for $15, pushing a bill that would bar local governments from raising employment standards in their communities – and strip newly won earned sick and safe time benefits from 150,000 working people in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed the local preemption measure last year, but Republican majorities in the House and Senate have quietly brought it back to life this legislative session.

Brad Lehto, chief of staff for the Minnesota AFL-CIO, said one of Republicans’ first moves after the 2018 session began was to send the preemption bill (House File 600) back into conference committee.

“Whenever they see fit, they will convene the committee and pass it back to the House and Senate, where it already passed once,” he said. “Will they do that? I would think so. When? I think late in the session.”

Lehto and other Capitol observers anticipate the GOP will try to use preemption as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the governor.

Earlier this month, as 15 Now activists fanned out across the city during the organizing blitz, union groups like the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation began holding phone banks, connecting union members statewide with Gov. Dayton to urge him to stand firm on protecting local control again this year. [Click here to find a phone bank near you.]

Unions aren’t alone in the fight, either. Lehto said nearly 80 Minnesota cities have passed resolutions supporting local control.

“We’ve told (lawmakers) over and over, if you would pass a higher minimum wage, if you would pass paid family leave, if you would pass earned sick and safe time, then we wouldn’t have to do this on the local level,” he added.

As debate over the minimum wage and local control plays out this spring, Ivy will begin work at a second job as a personal-care attendant, earning about $12 per hour. (Roughly a quarter of St. Paul workers surveyed by 15 Now work two jobs to make ends meet.)

For Ivy, it means more money to help pay the bills, but less time to pursue her long-term goals – a car of her own, a college degree and a life in New York.

“I want to be in New York, and I want to be a psychiatrist,” she said. “I dream about it, but I haven’t started anything yet.” Earning $15, she added, “would help me to save more to get there.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Next Page»