Labor groups applaud St. Paul’s move to allow administrative fines

February 6, 2025 by

New civil fines will allow the City of St. Paul to enforce labor standards more effectively. That includes the city’s $15 minimum wage, which workers fought to pass in 2018.

In a move praised by worker advocates, St. Paul City Council members voted unanimously Jan. 22 to allow the city to issue administrative citations.

The vote to amend the city charter, supporters said, will allow St. Paul to enforce its labor standards and other ordinances more effectively and equitably by issuing civil fines, rather than getting entangled in costly, sometimes lengthy legal battles.

It’s a tool other large cities in Minnesota have at their disposal – and for good reason, St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson told council members during a public hearing on the amendment Jan. 15.

“It would allow the city to avoid burdening people with criminal convictions, and it would absolutely make a difference for low wage workers who are not being paid fairly in our city,” Peterson said. “The City of St. Paul should add it to their toolkit.”

In recent years the city has passed an ordinance establishing its own minimum wage, as well as wage-theft and sick-time ordinances, with enforcement falling on the Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO).

But until now, the only enforcement option available to HREEO staff who identified a violation was criminal charges.

With administrative citations, the process will play out without going to court.

“The current system rewards people who are wealthy and can afford to fight the city and drag things out,” SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa’s Rick Varco told council members.

That creates an incentive, SEIU member Tavona Johnson added, for “wealthy corporations to break the law and force low-wage workers to do something about it.”

“Under the current system, employers can threaten to clog the courts and run out the clock,” Johnson, who lives in St. Paul, added. “I have lived paycheck to paycheck, and these delays and lost wages hurt.”

“If you’re a low-wage worker, any delay in getting the wages that you’ve earned can be devastating,” UNITE HERE Local 17 Secretary-Treasurer Sheigh Freeberg said.

St. Paul renters, small business owners and community members joined labor activists at the public hearing, where the overwhelming majority of speakers voiced support for administrative citations.

The fines could also make it easier for the city to enforce its housing codes and compel owners of vacant or blighted properties to make improvements. Tonette Clardy, a homeowner in Ward 4, complained to council members about a vacant building in her neighborhood that was recently condemned.

“As a Black homeowner, I’m afraid this building will bring down my property values, which hurts my ability to build wealth for my family,” Clardy said. “I want to make sure the building owner is held accountable, and at the same time, I don’t think they should go to jail.”

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St. Paul’s minimum wage will increase July 1. Here’s how one local restaurant is adapting

May 3, 2021 by

Kyatchi restaurant in St. Paul’s Lowertown district has embraced the city’s new minimum-wage ordinance.

By Alicia Thoj, guest columnist

As I settled into a comfortable spot in Kyatchi’s dining room, I remembered all the previous times I had been to this restaurant to enjoy the ramen and hot dog with yakisoba noodles. It was a nostalgic feeling because it had been a couple of years since I had gone inside and ordered from the menu.

Before I placed my order, I met with Kyatchi manager Trevor Garcia to hear about the benefits of him receiving a livable wage while working in the restaurant industry and why he loves working at Kyatchi.

“I fell in love with the Kyatchi culture because it is very different from other bars and restaurants,” Garcia said. “I take pride in the food and service. We have time to teach people about our menu and give them an experience.”

Not only is the customer service great, but even on a slow night the staff is guaranteed pay. That’s because Kyatchi owner Sam Peterson decided years ago, when the City of Minneapolis began discussions about increasing the citywide minimum wage, to sit down and look at his numbers. He knew he would make it work and came up with a dollar amount to increase revenue for the Kyatchi Minneapolis location. He started paying the staff $15.00 per hour at that time and had zero pushback from the staff or his customers.

“As a business owner I can make this (minimum-wage increase) work,” Peterson said of his response at the time. “This can be done. You can have a successful business and pay your people well and still make a profit.”

The profit increase was the reason Kyatchi was able to open its St. Paul location four years ago, creating opportunities for more customers to be able to enjoy their food.

As I pondered Peterson’s words, I thought of the many businesses that have been in a bind during the pandemic and have survived, barely survived or are now shut down. The City of St. Paul’s first annual minimum-wage increase is around the corner on July 1, 2021, and I acknowledge the challenges and difficulties this can create for employers within the city.

Yet I also think about how families have fared during this time, how we are all in this together and how no one has been exempted from COVID-19. Employers need to earn a profit, and employees need to earn livable wages to sustain their families.

How did Kyatchi rise to the challenge when they reopened for indoor dining? Kyatchi’s owner decided to increase food prices by 19% and added a no-tipping policy for indoor dining, so the restaurant could maintain its ability to pay employees a livable wage.

The new approach “prevents a high employee-turnover rate and gives them passion for the job,” Garcia said. “It also decreases anxiety because a steady paycheck really helps people to live their lives and have money management.”

You can review the hourly minimum wage increase on the City of St. Paul’s website, which displays the four business sizes: Macro, Large, Small, and Micro. The Minimum Wage Ordinance rolled out in early 2020, and will bring the first wage increase this July. The wage increases will continue over the next three to seven years, depending on the business size, in order to reach the full $15.00 per hour.

The Minimum Wage Ordinance also includes youth employees, 14-17 years of age, who must be paid not less than eighty-five percent of the city minimum wage for small employers, and after more than ninety days after the date of hire, employees should be paid the applicable city minimum wage.

– Alicia Thoj is a labor standards investigator with the City of Saint Paul’s Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity department. 

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

From the Eight-Hour Day to the $15 Minimum Wage: A conversation between past and present

March 24, 2021 by

By Peter Rachleff and Kristi Wright, East Side Freedom Library

The study of labor history, while rooted in the past, has everything to do with how we envision the future – and how we chart a path to get there. At the East Side Freedom Library, we think that placing the movement for the eight-hour day in conversation with the movement for a $15 minimum wage can help us learn how to shape our future.

Take a trip into labor history with us. At the time of the American Revolution, one journeyman shoemaker out of every two could expect to become a self-employed master shoemaker. Decades of a division of labor and the invention of machines brought a very different world of work into being. By the Civil War, only one journeyman out of twelve became a self-employed master shoemaker. His 11 peers looked forward to a lifetime of wage labor. Facing that future, hours of work and days off altogether became serious issues for individual workers and the unions they organized.

As artisan work structures evolved into structures of permanent wage labor, unions not only bargained over the length of the working day, but also participated in social and political movements seeking to pass laws regulating hours and schedules. The more that individual employers insisted that granting “their” workers shorter hours would leave them at a competitive disadvantage, the more that unions sought city, state and even federal legislation.

The call for “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will” became the rallying cry for the American labor movement after the Civil War, even as most workers put in 10-, 11- and 12-hour days. Skilled building trades workers, railroad workers, miners and factory workers came together with one vision and one voice. In 1886, the country’s two major labor organizations, the Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions joined together to call for a nationwide general strike. Their members pledged to walk out on May 1 and not to return to work until every worker was offered a standard eight-hour day.

At the center of the movement was the McCormick Harvester Works in Chicago, the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce that included unskilled as well as skilled workers, and immigrants and workers of color alongside native-born whites. When police broke up a rally at the factory gates on May 4, there was violence and bloodshed. Strike leaders were arrested; some would be tried for murder and executed. The movement came to a halt for a generation, but workers and their unions revived the movement for an eight-hour day, and, after yet more years of organizing and protesting, finally received it with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

It had taken three generations to make the eight-hour day a reality. Many of you might well be thinking how elusive that reality has remained, from Amazon warehouse workers assigned mandatory overtime, to fast food workers assigned “clopen” shifts, closing at night and opening the next morning. But the struggle, especially in the extended periods when it had traction as a movement, enabled the labor movement to reach beyond the boundaries of formal unions and the procedures of collective bargaining, connect workplaces with communities, unite experienced union members with women and men new to labor organization, and bring workers of color and immigrants into conversations, relationships and solidarity with white men. It was also a fertile ground for workers to make art and music, and dream of a better way of life.

Fast food strikers and supporters rallied during a one-day strike in Minneapolis in 2015. (UA file photo)

It is frustrating that a parliamentary maneuver allowed Congress to avoid dealing head-on with the issue of a $15 minimum wage. But that it had to consider raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 suggests the power that this movement – and its core ideas – now manifest. The Fight for $15 began in 2012 when two hundred fast-food workers walked off the job to demand $15 an hour and union rights in New York City. Today, it is a global movement of fast-food workers, home health aides, childcare teachers, airport workers, adjunct professors, retail employees and other underpaid workers in over 300 cities on six continents. Unions are among this movement’s most important supporters and resources, but it also includes workers without union affiliations, members of worker centers, teenagers, seniors and immigrants with and without documentation, encompassing a diverse group of whites and people of color with men, women and individuals across the spectrums of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In its inclusive membership, its vision of broad and sweeping change, and its insistence that all workers should share in the wealth that they produce, we can recognize this movement’s kinship with the movement for the eight-hour day. Organizers of the Fight for $15 proclaim on their website:

“When we first took the streets, the skeptics called us dreamers. They said a $15 wage was ‘unwinnable.’ We didn’t listen. We organized and we fought for what we knew was right. We didn’t win these increases because we elected supportive politicians to office. We won because we made them support us…

“We’ve already won raises for 22 million people across the country – including 10 million who are on their way to $15 – all because workers came together and acted like a union.”

The workers rallying outside the McCormick Harvester Works on May 1, 1886, would have understood them perfectly. As we try to rebuild the U.S. labor movement in the third decade of the 21st century, in the wake of the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd, it is important that we hear this message, too.

– Peter Rachleff is the co-executive director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul. Kristi Wright works with ESFL on developing the library’s relationships with the labor movement. Learn more at eastsidefreedomlibrary.org. 

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Victory at MSP, as workers win $15 after long campaign

October 19, 2020 by

MSP Airport workers march outside Terminal 1 during a 2018 demonstration in support of a $15 airport-wide minimum wage.

The working people who keep Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport running, who keep it clean and who have made it safe for travelers during the COVID-19 crisis are about to get a well-deserved raise.

Members of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) voted unanimously today to put the airport on track to a $15 minimum wage. The wage increase will start on Jan. 1, 2021, and be phased in over the next two years.

Airport workers, including members of UNITE HERE Local 17, Teamsters Local 120 and SEIU Local 26, have been pushing for a wage increase for years. Many currently make just $11 per hour, the current airport minimum wage.

The wage hike will put the workforce, predominantly immigrants and people of color, on equal footing with workers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where $15 minimum wage ordinances are on the books.

In a virtual press conference earlier this month, after commissioners signaled support for the measure, Local 120 member Michael Bardenpratt, who has worked at Swissport Fueling for 22 years, gave credit to workers who had the courage to tell their stories at MAC meetings and public demonstrations, putting a public face on poverty wages at the airport.

“Anybody that works 40 hours a week should not have to live in poverty,” Bardenpratt said. “This increase could help working people get off of government assistance, lower their dependence on food shelves, reduce the stress of wondering whether or not they’re going to have enough money for rent, food, a vehicle. It’s going to give families better lives.”

Other workers, while relieved to see $15 move forward, pledged to continue fighting for more.

Glen Brown, a wheelchair attendant at MSP for the last five years and member of Local 26, said he found it hard to celebrate the wage increase in light of the risks he and other airport workers continue to face during the pandemic.

“I’m glad this is finally happening; I’m proud of everyone who’s been fighting for this change for so long,” Brown said.

“But when this ordinance passes and we get a higher wage, it still doesn’t match the risk. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic. To overlook that, it just isn’t fair.”

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

Union solidarity drives fight for $15 at MSP Airport

January 22, 2020 by

Ahmed Abdul Aziz, a member of Teamsters Local 120 who works for a rental-car agency, speaks before the Metropolitan Airports Commission in favor of a $15 minimum wage.

They may work different jobs or carry different union cards, but workers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are fighting together to raise MSP’s minimum wage to $15.

And their solidarity is paying off.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission, which oversees operations at MSP Airport, is advancing an ordinance that would raise the minimum wage in three increments, reaching $15 per hour by July 1, 2022. That’s the same date ordinances in St. Paul and Minneapolis tick up to $15 for large employers.

At a final public hearing on the draft ordinance yesterday, commissioners listened to testimony from airport workers who stand to benefit, including members of the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters Local 120 and UNITE HERE Local 17.

Obang Okelo, a Local 17 member who works for airline caterer LSG Sky Chefs, told commissioners the raise would help him finally afford health insurance. For Michael Schofield, who works in an airport bookstore, the raise would mean more time to spend with his family.

“I work full time for Delaware North, but I have to have a second job because, like many, I have a family to support,” Schofield said, adding that he sees his co-workers at the bookstore clock out after an eight-hour shift, only to clock back in for work at another airport job. “They’re essentially working 16-hour days,” he said.

Obang Okelo tells commissioners raising the minimum wage would help him afford health insurance.

SEIU Local 26 member Glen Brown, a wheelchair attendant at MSP, said it’s not right that airport workers get poverty wages while corporations making money off the airport earn record profits. For most of the five years he’s worked at MSP, Brown told commissioners, his hourly pay has been under $11.

“I make this amount despite seeing the news stories about airlines making billions in profits,” Brown said. “I make this much despite seeing news stories about MSP Airport being one of the best in the country since 2016. I make this despite seeing airline CEO’s like Ed Bastian at Delta making $6,300 an hour.

“That just doesn’t sound fair to me.”

Several community supporters at the hearing agreed.

“It’s not right that we have a world-class airport … and depend on poverty wages in order to provide that service,” House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, a DFLer from Golden Valley, said.

Mary Sansom, a retired member of Machinists Local Lodge 1833, urged commissioners to put themselves in airport workers’ shoes.

“These are not easy jobs, and minimum wage is not sufficient,” said Sansom, who worked at MSP for 47 years. “And if anyone in this room believes that surviving on minimum wage is OK, then I challenge you to do it.”

Fortunately, the MAC appears to be taking workers’ concerns seriously.

Last August, the MAC unveiled an initial draft of the wage ordinance. It included language workers oppose, including a lower wage floor for tipped workers, known as the “tip penalty,” and exemptions for employers with collective bargaining agreements.

Misrak Anbese (R), an SEIU Local 26 member and longtime airport employee, appears before the MAC with Local 26 Presdident Iris Altamirano.

A month later, airport unions turned out hundreds of members and supporters to a public hearing on the proposal. Over 50 testified, and all spoke in support of a $15 minimum wage for all MSP workers, with no carve-outs or exemptions.

That’s exactly what they got just two weeks later, when the MAC revised its draft ordinance. Now, union organizers anticipate a vote in February or March.

Airport workers got more good news earlier this month, when the MAC released results from a survey of airport employers. Over 80% of those who responded anticipated the wage hike would not affect their ability to do business at MSP, and nearly 90% said the change would not impact the number of workers or total hours on their payrolls.

At the public hearing Tuesday, a handful of airport concessionaires disputed the survey results. They echoed now-familiar warnings about job cuts and business closings heard during debates over the minimum wage in Minneapolis and St. Paul in recent years.

But Wade Luneberg, Local 17’s recording secretary, said airport employers will lose experienced workers to neighboring cities if their wages fail to keep pace. And the airport, which has been showered with awards for its efficiency and service in recent years, has an interest making sure that doesn’t happen.

“These workers are the first and last impression for the flying public, and literally care for the public,” Luneberg told commissioners. “They work in a secure environment that isn’t easy to get to – or into. They keep challenging schedules, balancing multiple jobs and family commitments. They’ve made a commitment to this facility, and they’ve made a life here at MSP.

“Airport workers deserve $15.”

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

To assess care crisis, Walz ‘walks a day’ in PCA’s shoes

November 22, 2019 by

Gov. Tim Walz applies deodorant to St. Paul resident Jay Spika, who has multiple sclerosis.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz walked in a home health care worker’s shoes today in St. Paul.

The governor helped 41-year-old Jay Spika, who has primary progressive multiple sclerosis, bathe, dress and depart his St. Paul home. Walz worked alongside one of Spika’s home health aides, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota member Deb Howze.

The “walk-a-day” event offered Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who participated in a similar event in Minneapolis, a unique perspective on the state’s home health industry.

Federal and state subsidies allow thousands of Minnesota seniors and people with disabilities to stay in their homes, saving taxpayers the cost of providing institutional care.

But workers and clients warn of a labor shortage in their field, caused by low wages and lack of benefits. As the state’s population ages, they fear the crisis will only worsen.

As they worked together to get Spika’s socks and shoes on, Howze told Walz it’s difficult to retain good workers in such a demanding job at $13.25 per hour, the minimum wage in SEIU’s most recent union contract with the state.

“This job is exhausting,” she said. “We have so much turnover. I feel the pay is not enough. You should be able to get a PCA job and be able to live on it without working two extra jobs.”

Earlier this year, Walz and other lawmakers approved raising the minimum wage by 10.4% as part of a two-year union contract covering 25,000 home care workers statewide.

That’s “a starting point,” the governor acknowledged, to addressing the industry’s labor shortage. Walz noted the state has a backlog of thousands of qualified individuals and families who want a home care attendant but can’t get one.

“That means spouses leaving their work, giving up their careers to make sure the care is there,” he said.

Later in the event, Walz turned to Spika and asked what elected officials can do better from his standpoint.

“I think we need to invest in the PCA program,” he said. “It’s not a matter of if you’re going to need these services; it’s a matter of when… And you need a professional.”

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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.”

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