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Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an ordinance that would increase the minimum wage for many workers in the third-largest U.S. city to $15 an hour.

The ordinance calls for corporations with more than $50 million in annual sales to increase worker pay to at least $15 an hour with a year of the law's effective date. Smaller businesses would be allowed more than five years to raise pay. Twenty-one of the council's 50 members have signed on as cosponsors, Crain's Chicago Business reports.

The current minimum wage in Chicago is $8.25 an hour, a dollar more than the federal minimum wage.

Several aldermen joined low-wage workers at a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday, before the meeting where the ordinance was filed. Home care worker Darlene Pruitt, a 55-year-old mother of three and grandmother of 22, said she earns $10.65 an hour after five annual raises of a dime an hour working for the Help at Home agency. It's not enough, the West Side resident told The Huffington Post.

Pruitt said she has sometimes turned to a food pantry to make sure her family has enough to eat. "It's hard out there," Pruitt said. "The cost to live in Chicago and meet your basic needs -- rent, utilities, food, medication, clothes -- is high."

Pruitt said she is not afraid of retribution from her employer from speaking out because she is optimistic her efforts will help other workers like her who are in a similar position. If she earned more money, much of it would go right back into her community, she said.

The Center for Popular Democracy, in partnership with Raise Chicago, an advocacy group pushing for the higher wage, released a study Wednesday claiming the higher wage would decrease worker turnover and stimulate the local economy.

The study said the higher minimum wage would be responsible for $616 million in new economic activity and would help create 5,350 new jobs in its first phase. The higher wage also would add $45 million in sales tax revenues, but would raise consumer prices about 2 percent, according to the study.

Voters overwhelmingly backed the $15 minimum wage in a non-binding ballot question on about 5 percent of the city's ballots in the March primary election.

Business groups, however, have yet to be swayed.

Doug Whitley of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce told DNAinfo Chicago the proposed ordinance is "a ridiculously excessive reach on the part of a local government to try to instruct private-sector employers how to manage their businesses." The chamber said in a previous statement with other business groups that employers "cannot afford another minimum-wage increase" of any amount.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced his support of a higher minimum wage, but for less than $15 an hour. Emanuel last week trumpeted the creation of a minimum wage "working group" tasked with creating a plan for increasing worker wages in the city and previously said he backed President Barack Obama's push for a $10.10 federal minimum wage.

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San Francisco — San Francisco, the country’s premier laboratory for new Internet services, is also used to innovating in municipal regulation.

But in its latest experiment, it’s starting to find that legislating good corporate behavior isn’t as easy as pressing a button on your smartphone.

In July, the city started implementing a first-in-the-nation law aimed at curtailing the trend toward “just-in-time” scheduling, where managers call in employees to work on short notice. The new measure requires large-chain retailers — such as Safeway and Walgreens — to publish schedules at least two weeks in advance and to compensate employees with “predictability pay” if they make changes less than a week ahead of time. It also mandates that additional hours be offered to existing employees first before new hires are made, and that part-time workers be paid at the same rate as people who work full-time.

So far, it’s been easier to publish schedules than live up to the spirit of the law.

“The two-week notice seemed to be instituted right away, but the other stuff is lagging,” said Gordon Mar, director of San Francisco Jobs With Justice, a labor-backed group that pushed for the “Retail Workers Bill of Rights” and has been monitoring its implementation. 

The sluggish response may be because fines don’t kick in until Oct. 3; the city is still hashing out the rules. But the spotty compliance so far highlights the difficulty of attempts to mandate worker-friendly practices — especially the kind that touch the most fundamental aspects of business operations, rather than those that simply require higher pay and better benefits.

San Francisco employers fought the new ordinance, but couldn’t prevent its passage. Now, they complain it’s affecting service.

“We’re hearing from members in San Francisco that it really is not working well at all,” said Ronald Fong, president of the California Grocers Association. Stores can’t always predict surges in foot traffic, which might be brought on by a sunny day, leaving managers without the option to bring in more staff. That was a problem during the heat wave that swept over San Francisco this summer.

“Supplies weren’t able to get out to the shelves,” Fong said. “It just kind of snowballed, and our customers have a bad experience, or the stores lose sales.”

Some businesses don’t mind the rules in principle, but object to the red tape. “Everybody pretty much operates on a predictive schedule,” said Bill Dombrowski, president of the California Retailers Association. “But the process of implementing this, with offering the employees hours in writing and waiting three days for a response, it’s a lot of government intrusion into very minute detail.”

Also, not all industries schedule their workers in the same way. Milton Moritz is president of the National Association of Theatre Owners’ California and Nevada chapter, and said the theater business is by nature unpredictable, making the new law particularly difficult to comply with.

“We might not know until the Monday before the Friday a film shows, and even then we’re hiring, firing, scheduling people based on the business that film’s going to do,” Moritz said. “This ordinance flies in the face of all that. It really complicates the issue tremendously.”

The San Francisco ordinance hasn’t just been irritating for big companies. Some workers grumble the law discourages employers from offering extra shifts on short notice, because they would have to pay the last-minute schedule change penalty — even if workers would be happy for the chance to pick up more hours.

Rachel Deutsch, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy who has been helping local jurisdictions across the country craft fair-scheduling legislation, said that’s something that might change in future iterations.

“I think that’s the thing with any policy where it’s the first attempt to solve a complicated economic problem,” Deutsch said. “It’s been a learning process.” 

So far, fair scheduling laws aren’t spreading as quickly as minimum wage and paid sick leave laws. A statewide bill in California failed a couple weeks ago, and no other local ordinances have passed besides San Francisco’s, though there are active campaigns in several cities including Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, several companies have acted on their own to curb some of the practices that workers have found most disruptive, like on-call shifts, where workers have to be available even if they aren’t ultimately asked to work. But in some cases — like that of Starbucks, which committed to eliminating many of those practices — those voluntary changes haven’t been any more effective than government mandates.

Erin Hurley worked at Bath & Body Works and campaigned for an end to on-call shifts. After she left the job, parent company L Brands said it would stop the practice at Bath & Body Works as well as another of its chains, Victoria’s Secret. But Hurley said she’s heard from current workers that managers are still doing effectively the same thing, by asking employees to stay a little longer.

“On-call shifts were replaced with shift extensions,” said Hurley. “Basically what L Brands did was change the name of the practice.” Keeping people on-call is very convenient for employers, and letting it go can be easier said than done. L Brands did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, advocates in San Francisco think the Retail Workers Bill of Rights has already done some good, and will be more effective when the city’s enforcement kicks into high gear — just like overtime rules did, when companies got used to obeying them.

Take Michelle Flores, 21, who has worked part time at Safeway for two years to support herself while in going to college. Unpredictable schedules made that difficult: She would only know her shifts a few days beforehand, which sometimes didn’t leave her enough time to hit the books.

“I would study from midnight until 5, 6 a.m., sleep for two or three hours, and then go to the exam,” said Flores, 21, who attends San Francisco State. This year, she expects that to change. “If I know that I have a shift scheduled, I’ll just study another day,” Flores said.

Also, the law came with some funding for community organizations to make employees aware of what workers are entitled to. That has ancillary effects — like getting people interested in joining a union, which can be better equipped to make sure companies are following the rules.

“It just creates an opportunity to talk to more workers about their rights under the law, and that leads to conversations about other issues in the workplace,” said Gordon Mar, of Jobs with Justice. “And that could lead to getting organized.”

Source: Valley News

Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on less than $15 an hour, our economy’s tilt toward low-paying jobs has become a top economic issue this year.  

Now, as GOP leaders fret that Donald Trump may drag down Republican incumbents, turning more U.S. Senate races into toss-ups, the Republican majority’s stonewalling of any action to raise the federal minimum wage could cost the party control of Congress.

New polling shows that close to 70 percent of voters in key swing states want an increase in the federal minimum wage—and that 60 percent or more support a $15 minimum wage in six of the seven states polled.

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Even more, the polling shows that candidates’ positions on raising pay could play a pivotal role in this year’s electoral battles for control of the U.S. Senate. The results show that the incumbent Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose critical support—and even their seats—over opposition to raising wages for working people.

In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Democratic challengers Katie McGinty, Russ Feingold and Governor Maggie Hassan strengthened their leads over incumbent Republican Senators Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson and Kelly Ayotte when voters were made aware of the senators’ opposition to raising the minimum wage.  

And in Arizona, Missouri and North Carolina, Democratic challengers Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, Jason Kander and Deborah Ross pulled ahead of Senators John McCain, Roy Blunt and Richard Burr, flipping those contests on their heads, when voters learned of the senators’ track records opposing raises.  

For example, in Arizona—where John McCain has just emerged from his toughest re-election primary ever—a 43-43 tie turns into a 44-38 lead for Kirkpatrick once voters hear about McCain’s opposition to raising pay.

The polling comes as the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Working Families Organization and other grassroots groups in seven states begin to mobilize voters.

The coalition plans to engage in canvassing, hold candidate forums and wage debate protests, among other actions, to educate and energize voters around candidates’ positions on the raising the minimum wage.

While Donald Trump, who has been all over the map on the minimum wage, has announced he now supports an increase to $10, most Republicans in Congress remain opposed.

Leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s firm LuntzGlobal has warned minimum wage opponents, “If you’re fighting against the minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are OK with raising the minimum wage.”

Farm workers pick vegetables on a farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on August 31. Paul Sonn writes that Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose their seats over opposition to raising wages.

While Congress has refused to act, over the past three and a half years, more than 50 states, cities and counties, as well as individual companies, have stepped forward to approve minimum wage increases, delivering raises to 17 million workers.  

And 10 million of those workers are in states or cities that have approved phased-in $15 minimum wages, raising pay for more than one in three workers in California and New York and beginning to reverse decades of growing pay inequality.

Historically, raising the minimum wage enjoyed the same bipartisan backing in Congress that it does with voters. But over the past 20 years, increasing polarization in Washington and the growing role of money in politics have led many Republicans to abandon their support.

As a result, the federal minimum wage today remains frozen at just $7.25 an hour. And taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab, as low-wage workers in the seven states just polled must rely on $150 billion per year in public assistance to make up for their inadequate paychecks.

Candidates’ positions on the minimum wage have made a difference in close U.S. senate races before. Ten years ago, in Missouri and Montana, Democrats Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester successfully used their support for a higher minimum wage to highlight the difference between them and their opponents, Republican Senators Jim Talent and Conrad Burns, who both opposed raising the wage.  

McCaskill and Tester rode the issue to an Election Day victory, helping to break a logjam in Congress and delivering the first federal minimum wage increase in 10 years in 2007.

With the public demanding action to boost pay, the Republican majority and individual candidates this fall face a clear choice: stop standing in the way of a long overdue federal minimum wage increase—or risk their political future.

By Paul K. Sonn

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The Women’s March is also organizing a nonviolent civil disobedience in partnership with Center for Popular Democracy and CASA in Action event for Thursday, June 28, in Washington, DC. The organization is asking women if they’re ready to risk arrest — and will provide training to those willing to participate.

Read the full article here.