By Paul Sonn, Director, NELP Action
After an election where Republicans made substantial gains with working-class voters, Democratic leaders are debating what went wrong and how to win back their support. But in a puzzling turn of events, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Colorado’s Jared Polis, both rising stars in the party, are siding with corporations in high-profile fights and blocking long-overdue protections for workers. At a time when working-class voters are questioning whether Democrats care about them, state leaders should be promoting populist economic policies that help workers thrive—not the opposite.
Take the case of Polis in Colorado. His state still has on the books an anti-union “right to work” law—a vestige of early 20th-century wars that the coal industry waged against unions in that state. The Colorado law prevents a union that has won an election at a company from representing the whole workforce unless it also wins a second election by a 75 percent super-majority. Colorado unions and the state legislature are pushing for the state to stand with workers by repealing this anti-union artifact. Five former U.S. secretaries of labor joined them, releasing a public letter urging Polis and the legislature to repeal the law and its “unnecessary and unjust barriers to forming strong unions.” But Polis has called repeal of the law a “nonstarter”—siding with billionaires and corporations that benefit from our broken labor law system.
In Michigan, the debate is over whether to guarantee workers paid sick leave and raise the minimum wage for tipped workers—both key issues that disproportionately affect working women. Paid leave has been a top policy issue for centrist and progressive candidates in recent years—voters overwhelmingly back it even in red states like Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska. And the tipped worker minimum wage is a key worker justice issue for restaurant workers who are overwhelmingly women, and many of whom are people of color. These workers have more than double the poverty rate of the workforce as a whole—in large part because the federal tipped worker minimum wage has been frozen at a shocking $2.13 an hour for more than 30 years.
To address both issues, Michigan worker groups put a voter initiative on the ballot to guarantee paid sick leave and a $15 minimum wage, including for tipped workers. Outrageously, the former Republican-controlled legislature used a sleazy maneuver to block it from going to the voters. Worker groups sued, and fortunately, the Michigan Supreme Court declared the legislature’s action unconstitutional and reinstated the paid sick leave and minimum wage increases, effective this month
One would have thought Democratic leaders would celebrate the court’s decision. But in a head-spinning turn of events, the Democrat-led state senate joined with the Republican-controlled house to roll it back. Opponents claim that raising the tipped wage will somehow hurt tipped workers, and that the higher minimum wage and paid leave requirements would not be manageable for businesses. That’s nonsense. The states that already guarantee tipped workers the full minimum wage have enjoyed both better pay for wait staff and strong restaurant job growth. There are also many states where small businesses have thrived for years under similar paid leave requirements.
Nonetheless, the Michigan legislature blocked the tipped minimum wage increase and watered down the paid leave protections. Even worse, Whitmer signed the legislation, and attempted to spin the roll-back as a win for workers.
At a time when the Trump administration is promoting phony proposals, like “no tax on tips,” that will do little to help most workers, a long-overdue raise in the tipped minimum wage is the most important thing leaders like Whitmer can do to combat the affordability crisis facing restaurant workers. The fact that Whitmer, a possible future national standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, sided with big restaurant corporations and the Chamber of Commerce to sign the wage and sick leave roll-back is shocking. Similar tipped wage roll-back legislation has also been introduced in Colorado and labor groups are concerned that Polis may support it. This is no way to begin rebuilding the confidence of working-class voters.
President Donald Trump is currently dismantling the federal agencies that protect workers and consumers, even though 70 percent of the U.S. public supports unions. Rather than siding with corporations as Polis and Whitmer are doing, elected leaders need to be showing working-class voters that they have solutions for the affordability crisis and will help them achieve a secure future. Making it easier for them to get family-supporting union jobs and boosting the meager paychecks of waiters and waitresses are exactly what these leaders should be standing for.
Read at Newsweek.com
