Skip to main content

This Just In: Minneapolis City Council Meeting Over $15/Hour Minimum Wage Rate Gets Heated


Earlier today, a Minneapolis City Council's Committee of the Whole hearing got a bit contentious as the Council discussed whether to put a minimum wage proposal on the November ballot to raise the minimum wage rate to $15/hour by 2022.  A group in support of the ballot initiative had collected signatures on a petition over recent months, in support of a $15/hour minimum wage rate.  

As the Committee discussed the issue, supporters of the $15/hour minimum wage rate that had packed into the Council's chambers started booing Committee members that spoke against a vote and subsequently started chanting "Let the people vote."  Throughout the session, these minimum wage advocates continually disrupted the proceedings with boos and chants, and at one point forced the Committee to adjourn briefly because of the disruptions.  The preliminary vote was 10 - 2 in support of keeping the minimum wage proposal off the November ballot.  While the Committee did not decide the issue today beyond the preliminary vote, a final decision is set for this coming Friday.

Note, that the Minneapolis City Attorney recommended late last month that the $15/hour minimum wage amendment should be left off the ballot.  In essence, the City Attorney, Susan Segal, wrote an advisory legal opinion and stated that the minimum wage increase proposal does not meet the requisite legal requirements and ultimately was an ordinance disguised as a charter amendment.  As a result, Segal stipulated that the minimum wage measure should not be on the November ballot.

Interesting to see how this plays out.  This is one of the more heated discussions that has resulted in recent memory when it comes to the minimum wage fight.  With that being said, it would not surprise me if the City Council relied upon Segal's opinion and held that the minimum wage increase proposal should not be on the November ballot.  The 10 - 2 vote today by the Committee certainly seems to indicate which way this might go.  With that being said, we'll see come Friday what the Council decides to do...



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more