For the past several weeks, I (and many others) have been helping out the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign, a broad coalition of groups working to place two initiative questions on the November 2014 state ballot.
- The first would raise the state’s minimum wage from the current $8 per hour, where it’s been since 2008, to $9.25 in 2015, $10.50 in 2016, and pegged annually to inflation going forward.
- The second would require Massachusetts employers to provide their workers with earned sick leave. Workers would accrue one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to a maximum of 40 hours per calendar year. For employees of businesses with 11 or more employees, the sick leave would be paid. For employees of businesses with 10 or fewer employees, it would be unpaid but the employee would be protected against termination for using the sick leave.
Please support each of these initiatives in any way you can. These policy changes have broad public support and are sorely needed, but Raise Up Massachusetts has a daunting task in placing the questions on next year’s ballot.
Minimum Wage
Barring legislative action in the interim, by the time the initiative would go to the voters the current minimum wage of $8 per hour will have been in place for over six years, during which time its purchasing power has been significantly eroded. A full-time worker making minimum wage in Massachusetts earns about $16,000 a year before taxes and other deductions, barely at the poverty line even for a family of one. Getting by on that salary is a real challenge, but for many workers it’s their daily reality. Gone are the days when most minimum wage workers were teenagers hoping to make a little pocket money. Since the 2008 crash, when many good jobs were lost, an increasing number of workers are in minimum wage jobs. Now nearly half of minimum wage workers are adults, many with children to support. About one in five Massachusetts workers – those making minimum wage and those making just above it – would be affected by the proposed increase.
The arguments against the hike – that it will cause inflation as costs are passed on to customers, or that employers will eliminate jobs – are the same that have been used for a century. They have never been borne out. To the contrary, raising the minimum wage – in addition to alleviating the struggles of many Massachusetts households and beginning to address the major income inequality problem we have in Massachusetts – will address the major cause of our economy’s sluggishness, the continued lack of adequate consumer demand.
Earned Sick Leave
The arguments in favor of the earned sick leave initiative implicate economic justice, public health, and economics as well.
Sick leave, at present, is at the employer’s discretion. About one million Massachusetts workers have no sick leave provision at all. They are overwhelmingly lower-wage workers. If they get sick, they have little choice but to go to work anyway. Otherwise they risk losing their jobs and they don’t get paid, making it even harder to pay their bills. If their child gets sick, they must scramble to find suitable child care while they go off to work. As Matt Murphy of State House News Service reported:
Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, testified in support of the legislation, telling the committees stories of his own child patients whose conditions have worsened because a parent could not miss work and delayed taking a child to the clinic.
It is clear that the absence of sick leave is a hardship for these workers and their families. It is equally clear that sick people traveling to work instead of staying home can infect fellow commuters, coworkers, and members of the general public. Workers without sick leave are disproportionately in retail and food service jobs, where they are likely to spread germs to a wider group of people.
Which brings us to the economic ramifications. Last week business owner Jasiel Correia of Fall River told the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development chaired by Sen. Dan Wolf and Rep. Thomas Conroy that he’s seen better morale and improved productivity since offering his employees sick leave. A vast body of research shows the same result: businesses that offer sick leave have less turnover and happier workers.
Also rarely considered is this question: “How many people, working in jobs that DO offer sick leave, call out sick because they contracted an illness through contact with a sick person who didn’t have the option of calling out sick?” In other words, if the goal of opponents is to maximize production by keeping workers at work, isn’t denying some employees sick leave counterproductive? Aren’t the businesses that don’t offer sick leave passing on costs to those that do?
The proposed sick leave law, modest in its scope, is a reasonable solution to these problems.
The Initiative Campaign
Bills addressing each of these subjects have been introduced in the legislature, but have not yet passed. On June 11, I attended an extensive hearing at the State House on the minimum wage bill sponsored by Sen. Marc Pacheco and Rep. Antonio Cabral. That week, the Globe ran a front-page story stating that “passage of the bill is likely, in one form or another.” Since then action in the Legislature has stalled.
Likewise, a hearing was held on September 24 on an earned sick leave bill sponsored by Sen. Wolf and Rep. Kay Khan. State House News Service reports that Treasurer Steve Grossman was the first witness, telling the Joint Committee the story of a longtime Grossman Marketing employee whose salary the company paid for six months while he underwent treatment for throat cancer. Despite testimony heavily tilted in favor of the bill, its legislative prospects are murky.
Tired of waiting for the legislature to act, the organizations that form Raise Up Massachusetts are taking the case to the people. Senator Warren was the first signatory on the minimum wage petition, and Senator Markey the first signatory on the earned sick leave petition. State and local elected officials, labor leaders, and activists of all kinds also signed on. The two ballot initiatives were approved by the Attorney General on September 4, and petitions have been in the field since September 13.
To get the questions on the ballot, we must collect almost 69,000 valid signatures for each initiative, with no more than 25% of the signatures coming from any one county. Because many signatures don’t pass muster with the election officials (not legible, not registered at that address, etc.), the campaign has set a goal of over 100,000 signatures for each question.
To date we’re doing pretty well. Over 47,000 signatures (combined) have been reported to the Raise Up MA headquarters (and surely more collected but not reported). Earned sick leave signatures have been lagging behind minimum wage signatures (about 22,000 vs. 26,000). But we need your help to – at a minimum – get these questions on the November 2014 ballot, and – preferably – send a message that will spur the legislature into action before then.
What You Can Do
First, sign the petitions yourself if you haven’t already.
Second, help us collect signatures if you haven’t already (and do it again if you have). There are people fanning out all over the place to collect signatures near train stations, stores, town centers, libraries, fairs and festivals.
If you don’t want to do that, please consider taking some signature sheets to get your friends and neighbors to sign. You might also be attending events with many people who’d be willing to sign. For example:
- A meeting of your local Democratic committee, union, or other group
- A candidate event
- A church or temple event
- A party, picnic, happy hour
- Whatever you can think of.
Remember that all the signatures on a particular sheet must be voters registered in the same town. People from a different town must sign on a separate sheet. If you live outside Middlesex and Suffolk Counties, or in a town that doesn’t have a huge base of volunteers, your help is even more important.
You can contact Raise Up Massachusetts to get involved at this link, or take a look at the events already scheduled.
Thanks for all you do and let’s get this passed!
I’m told that a representative from Raise Up may soon visit the church I regularly attend, the UU Church of Haverhill, to speak to the church’s social justice committee (which I’m just starting to integrate myself in). I hope that’s the case, and I look forward to doing some leg work (or whatever else) to support this.
A number of UU churches have been a big help so far. Haverhill is an area where a lot of people can benefit.
For the last 3 years, my daughter has been working for a major franchise named after a popular pastry that sells that pastry, assorted other breakfast treats, and coffee. Perhaps you run on it?
Three years ago, she started at $8 dollars an hour; today she still makes $8 dollars an hour. She’s a valued employee who once or twice a week, she goes to work for 4:30 AM. Short of becoming a manager or assistant manager, which she can’t do because she goes to community college full-time, she can’t get a raise. Nothing for longevity. Nothing for good work. We help her with her costs, but I’m getting annoyed with her employer.
I was paid $3.35 an hour at my first job, and I received raise. In terms of percentage, that 10 cents an hour, it was something. That would be a what, 25 cents an hour, in at today’s minimum wage?
supermarket workers who, even after a couple of years on the job and being promoted to “management,” make $10 an hour. There is no up from there without moving into one of the relatively few top spots in the store. It’s ridiculous.
than it be prepared by someone with a cold or the flu every once in a while. Paid sick leave, especially for those in the service industry, is an obvious public health good.
Would either proposed law cover temp and part time workers? Are there any exceptions or loopholes? Would the leg be able to overturn either?
All workers would be covered by both. The only exceptions of which I know:
-under the state constitution, the sick leave provisions would apply to municipal employees only if adopted by the voters of the municpality or by appropriation
-workers would begin to accrue sick time immediately upon employment, but could not take any until they’d been 90 days at that job. That might effectively preclude sick leave for true summer or Christmas season employees
-workers who receive more than $20 in tips per month (who now are paid only $2.63 per hour cash compensation) would not get the full minimum wage, but would get a substantial bump, to $4.15 in 2015, $6.30 in 2016, and pegged annually to inflation each September thereafter.
The official petition language is here for sick leave and here for minimum wage.
The legislature could overturn either by legislation signed by the governor, I suppose.
The leg also gets a few months to pass legislation on the issues between certification of the signatures and the point of no return for a ballot question (I believe sometime in July 2014). If the legislature acts, it’s an issue of whether it has substantially addressed the substance of the ballot questions. If it raises the minimum wage to, say, only $8.50 an hour, the campaign can go forward with the ballot question.
After that date-of-no-return, the question goes to the voters no matter what (as happened with right to repair), but of course the leg still can act at any time.
Let’s get every nominee for Gov in both parties to promise to veto any attempts to overturn. This could be a progressive equivalent of a no tax pledge we force our candidates to sign, with the key difference that this policy is morally just and economically necessary.
I will say right now I will refuse to back any Dem who doesn’t sign such a pledge.
And yes, the ‘r’ is not silent.
My sense is that most, if not all, the Democratic candidates would be on board. Wolf (if he’s in) has sponsored the bill. Grossman repeatedly has called these items the two biggest priorities for Massachusetts. Berwick’s on board. I imagine Coakley and Kayyem would be too. Avellone (who I don’t see going anywhere at the convention) is the only maybe.
Of course, let’s get it on the ballot first. We’ll look silly if we don’t get the signatures.