After successful petition drive, Minneapolis workers call for vote on $15 minimum wage

June 28, 2016 by
15Now Minnesota supporters rally outside the Hilton in Minneapolis during the DNC's meetings.

15Now Minnesota supporters rallied in Minneapolis last year.

Activists will deliver a petition to City Hall tomorrow with signatures from about 20,000 registered voters who support amending the city’s charter to guarantee workers a $15 minimum wage.

The move, organizers with 15 Now Minnesota said, puts the amendment on track to appear on the Nov. 8 ballot. If approved, Minneapolis would join more than 30 cities nationwide with strong minimum-wage ordinances, including Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

“If they get it, why can’t we get it?” McDonald’s worker Steven Suffridge, a member of the low-wage worker center CTUL, said during a conference call with reporters yesterday. The outpouring of support for the petition drive, he added, shows “people are coming to the realization that yes, we are worth $15 an hour.”

Indeed, 15 Now volunteers collected nearly three times the number of signatures required to compel a vote. Several unions supported the petition drive, including the Communications Workers, the Machinists, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59, the Minnesota Nurses Association, the Letter Carriers and Teamsters Local 320.

[15 Now supporters, led by fast-food workers who are organizing with CTUL, plan a rally tomorrow at the McDonald’s at 210 E. Lake St., before marching to City Hall to deliver the petitions.]

Anticipating pushback from corporations and other special interests, 15 Now Minnesota released a legal memo yesterday detailing the legal basis for their ballot initiative.

Laura Huizar, an attorney with the National Employment Law Project who analyzed the legal landscape in Minneapolis, said a minimum-wage ordinance would fall under the city’s “broad powers to address the health, safety and well being of its citizens,” similar to ordinances regulating liquor sales or the number of hours workers can log at a job in one day.

Karen Marty, a former city attorney in Minneapolis, said the city is required to put a proposed charter amendment on the ballot as long as it meets the signature threshold and does not include language in conflict with state or local law.

“The charter doesn’t limit what citizens can offer as amendments,” Marty said. “Minneapolis can adopt a law or a charter provision on any topic that’s not prohibited, which would include a $15 minimum wage.”

When courts around the country have considered whether a city can enact a local minimum wage, the attorneys added, most have upheld those local laws – as long as they don’t conflict with state law. Minnesota law does not currently preclude a local minimum wage, although Republican lawmakers are plotting ways to roll back local control over employment standards.

“We determined that the city has the power to enact a local wage, and we also concluded that this can, in fact, be done by a charter amendment proposed by voters on the November ballot,” Huizar said.

For the city’s low-wage workers, who include a disproportionate number of women and people of color, the pay raise can’t come too soon. It’s estimated 38 percent of people who work in Minneapolis would see their wages increase with a $15 minimum wage, and supporters say it would mark a big step forward in efforts to address racial inequities in the Twin Cities that are among the worst in the U.S.

“Currently, more and more people have to work ridiculous hours at multiple jobs which in many cases leaves no guarantee they will even have enough to get by,” said Marcellina Reis, a restaurant server and member of the community group Neighborhoods Organizing for Change. “It also doesn’t allow them time to function like human beings. Having little to no time to build family, community and find happiness creates physical and mental health damage and brings our society down, not only affecting those struggling to live but everyone in Minneapolis.”

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Striking workers revive campaign for Working Families Agenda

November 10, 2015 by
Striking workers and their supporters rally outside a McDonald's and Super America in Northeast Minneapolis.

Striking workers and their supporters rally outside a McDonald’s and Super America in Northeast Minneapolis.

 

Fast-food workers and retail janitors from 70 Twin Cities stores joined a nationwide strike today, rallying early this morning with other low-wage workers in support of a $15 minimum wage, paid sick days and other policies in the stalled Working Families Agenda.

Workers in 270 cities planned to join the strike, which mostly targeted fast-food employers. Organizers said it was the largest strike of the Fight for $15 campaign to date – a sign of growing support for workers’ demands of $15 and union rights.

Locally, striking workers also included retail janitors, who, like fast-food workers, are organizing with the Twin Cities-based worker center CTUL, a Spanish acronym for Center for Workers United in the Struggle. Home care workers, bank workers, childcare providers, temp workers and Black Lives Matter activists bolstered their ranks on early-morning picket lines outside McDonald’s and Macy’s in Minneapolis.

Steven Suffrage, who works at a fast-food restaurant in Minneapolis, fires up the crowd.

Steven Suffrige, who works at a fast-food restaurant in Minneapolis, fires up the crowd.

Guillermo Lindsey, who works at a McDonald’s in Roseville, said he and other strikers are among “thousands of low-wage workers in  Minneapolis and in the nation who have taken bold action for change in their communities.”

The strikers seized on the nationwide events as an opportunity to renew pressure on the Minneapolis City Council to pass the Working Families Agenda – a $15 minimum wage, paid sick time, fair scheduling and increased enforcement of wage theft.

Mayor Betsy Hodges and a majority of council members recently backed away from their support of sick time and scheduling ordinances. Workers planned to march from a picket line outside Macy’s on Nicollet Mall to City Hall to serve notice that the fight was far from over.

“Seattle is getting $15. New York is getting $15,” 16-year fast-food veteran Steven Suffrige said. “Why can’t we get $15?”

Recent polling indicates the public is on Suffrige and other low-wage workers’ side. Among likely voters in Minneapolis, according to a poll conducted by Minnesotans for a Fair Economy, 82 percent support raising the minimum wage to $15 now or over time, and 91 percent support fair scheduling and paid time off for illnesses or family emergencies.

By delaying action on the Working Families Agenda, strikers said, city officials are further denying justice to low-wage workers, many of whom are women and minorities.

“I work seven days a week,” said striking worker Michaela Hudson, who cleans the Macy’s in Ridgedale Mall. “I don’t get a day off; I don’t get any benefits.”

DSC_0217 (2)Lena Gardner, a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Minneapolis, said the average worker of color in Minneapolis earns $28,000 annually, compared to $74,000 for the average white worker. “They want our bodies to control for their profits, but they don’t want our lives to matter,” Gardner said.

In addition to targeting fast-food restaurants and retail cleaning contractors, the strike took aim at Super America. The Minnesota-based chain of gas stations has come under fire from workers in St. Cloud, organizing with Working America and the Greater Minnesota Worker Center, for its hiring practices.

Workers have been asking the company for a meeting about the issue for months, said Makaida Garrett, a mother of five who has worked at a Super America in St. Cloud for about a year. Meanwhile, she continues to earn just $9.50 per hour and was recently passed over for a management-track position.

“There are many women and people of color who work at this company but are not properly represented in management,” Garrett said. “We are no longer asking for that meeting; we are demanding that they meet with us.”

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Faith leaders on earned sick time: ‘Something’s got to happen’

October 22, 2015 by
Rev. Laurie Eaton of Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, calls for a policy guaranteeing workers access to earned sick time at a press conference outside Minneapolis City Hall.

Rev. Laurie Eaton calls for a policy guaranteeing workers access to earned sick time at a press conference outside Minneapolis City Hall.

 

Faith leaders from Minneapolis today called on elected officials to begin addressing Minnesota’s alarming racial disparities by guaranteeing all workers access to earned sick and safe time.

“This is exactly what systemic racism looks like: reasonable people who say, ‘Our hands are tied … because it’s just too costly to change our system,’” Rev. Laurie Eaton of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church said. “Minneapolis, we are better than that.”

The Twin Cities and Minnesota as a whole have ranked poorly in terms of the economic gaps between whites and minorities, with a recent study naming Minneapolis the third-worst place to live for African Americans.

Similar disparities play out in the numbers regarding who enjoys earned sick time. More than half of the estimated 245,000 Minneapolis workers without access to the benefit are non-white, including 62 percent of Latino workers and 51 percent of black workers in the city.

“People are suffering, trying to decide whether to buy medicine or buy groceries,” Rev. Billy G. Russel of Greater Friendship Baptist Church said. “Something’s got to happen.”

Earned sick time remains a plank in the embattled Working Families Agenda that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and several allies on the City Council still support. But corporations are stepping up the pressure on officials to back off, and the state’s largest newspaper recently dismissed the measure as “anti-business” and “naïve.”

Rabbi Michael Latz of Shir Tikvah Synagogue called on elected officials, editorial writers and business leaders – “people who shower before work, not after,” he said – to “exercise your moral courage” on earned sick time, which he called “a great moral issue of our generation.”

web.SickTime-scene“Sickness and disease are not reasons to … withhold pay from anyone,” Bishop Richard D. Howell Jr. of Shiloh Temple added. “It is a person’s right to seek good health.”

Rev. Paul Slack, pastor at New Creation Church and president of the faith-based social justice organization ISAIAH, urged city council members to listen to the concerns of their constituents, not just corporations.

“We have protected companies, corporations by giving them community benefits,” Slack said. “Now let’s give a benefit to people who work in those jobs. Let’s protect our low-wage earners. Let’s protect their children and their families.”

The clergy members spoke at a press conference on the steps of Minneapolis City Hall before visiting council members individually to urge action on the issue.

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