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The Minneapolis City Council has set up a series of hearings and meetings this month that will end with a May 27 vote on whether to adopt a mandatory paid leave ordinance for private and nonprofit employees who work in Minneapolis.

But during a staff briefing on the proposed ordinance Thursday, council members left little doubt of the outcome. Minneapolis is poised to become the first city in the state to require paid sick leave.

“The level of details of the questions we’re asking today I think indicates the high level of consensus that we have on the big directions of this policy,” said Council Member Lisa Bender, who credited the work of the city’s Workplace Partnership Group, a 15-member committee that met from December through March to study the issue.

A public hearing on the proposal has been set for May 18 at 3 p.m. in council chambers. That will be followed by a meeting at noon on May 26 to consider, amend and vote on an ordinance. The regular council will consider final passage on May 27 at 9:30 a.m.

How it would work

The proposed ordinance, sponsored by Council President Barbara Johnson, mostly reflects the recommendation of the workplace group, which included appointees from business, labor, employer groups and workers.… Continue reading »

With a work group in Minneapolis just completing its examination of paid leave — and a similar effort in St. Paul just getting underway — it appears both cities could adopt mandatory leave policies for local businessess this year.

But as the state’s two largest cities — home to an estimated labor force of 485,000 — move toward requiring employers to provide paid leave, a bigger question is emerging for those who employ people in both cities: will the rules be similar enough to make the administration of the law easier, if not exactly easy? After all, business owners who employ workers in and outside the city of Minneapolis have already complained about the potential headaches of having some employees accruing sick leave under the law while others don’t.

There is also an even more complicated possibility. Employers who have workers in Minneapolis, in St. Paul, and elsewhere in the metro could essentially have three categories of workers — those accruing leave under a policy in Minneapolis, those accruing leave under different rules in St. Paul, and those not accruing at all.

A tale of two cities’ policies

Enacting identical rules might seem like the logical solution, but it may be easier said than done.… Continue reading »

Over the past three months, the Workplace Regulations Partnership Group (WPG), which was tasked with recommending an earned sick time ordinance for the City of Minneapolis, has brought a diverse group of stakeholders to the table. Fifteen individuals, each with a unique perspective, came together to study the impact of policies related to earned sick time and paid time off. Our work together culminated in a final proposal presented to the Minneapolis City Council earlier this month.

The City Council established the WPG last year and appointed members to include representation from a range of stakeholder groups including employees, low-wage employees, organized labor, large employers, small employers, immigrant-owned businesses and representatives of business groups and associations. The WPG held eleven productive meetings to exchange ideas and draft language.

The group engaged the community to hear as many Minneapolis voices on the issue as possible. Through listening sessions and comment cards, we heard from more than 550 of the individuals most likely to be affected by this law, from across the city and from different economic, cultural and racial backgrounds.

The WPG worked to strike a compromise that allows enough sick time to be meaningful to employees and less burdensome for employers to implement.… Continue reading »

The city of Minneapolis is one step closer to implementing the most sweeping paid sick leave policy in the state.

The proposal, which advanced Wednesday out of a city council committee, would require employers to provide 48 hours a year paid sick leave to almost all employees working in the city.

The only employers who would be exempt would be those with three or fewer employees. But not everyone is on board.

Supporters of paid sick leave spoke with reporters before Wednesday’s meeting. Chris Pennock did not have paid sick time when he worked as a carpet cleaner.

“If you had, you know, a temperature … if you had the flu, it didn’t matter what it was,” Pennock said. “They would take out $100 or more our of your paycheck every day you called in sick.”

The proposal would mandate that employees who did not use their sick leave would be able to bank or carry over up to 80 hours into the next calendar year.

Read the rest of the article and watch the video here. … Continue reading »

A proposal that would require all businesses with at least four employees working in Minneapolis to provide paid sick leave is now in the hands of the Minneapolis City Council.

The issue has been under discussion at City Hall for nearly a year, and focused most recently through a 19-member group of workers, business owners and representatives of business and labor organizations. After three months of work — including 14 public listening sessions — that group presented its recommendation in a council committee meeting Wednesday.

Council members will now spend time studying the details of the plan, which would cover employees who work at least 80 hours in the city each year. Workers would earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked, with a maximum of 48 hours per year. Time could be carried over from year to year, allowing workers to “bank” up to 80 hours of sick leave.

Earned leave could be used when employees or their family members are ill, or as “safe leave” — time off to deal with abuse, stalking or other issues. Employers at all businesses would be prohibited from retaliating against employees who take earned sick time. The ordinance would apply to businesses based in Minneapolis and outside of the city, if they have workers in Minneapolis.… Continue reading »

The work group trying to write a paid sick leave ordinance for the Minneapolis City Council had spent nearly two hours discussing the policy Monday morning when they became distracted by something completely different.

What if, rather than haggle over the details, a program similar to workers compensation was created as a way to pay for private employers to offer sick leave in Minneapolis? (Workers compensation pays for health care and time loss for injured workers through a payroll tax and deduction.)

The idea, presented as one of four ways to overlay a mandatory sick leave law with employers’ existing sick leave policies, could be “administered by the city through a payroll tax into a fund that pays for sick days for all workers in Minneapolis.”

What could have been considered an academic exercise instead received serious consideration during the meeting, even after the group’s facilitator, Luke Weisberg, concluded that the option was “potentially aspirational, but probably not gonna be appropriate for this moment.”

“This was raised by some of the small employers — for the same reasons — in terms of, ‘How do we make this more universal across the city,’” said Liz Doyle. She is the chair of the work group as well as the associate director of TakeAction Minnesota, a statewide organization with membership from labor unions and progressive groups.… Continue reading »

When St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker got a call on Monday that her son was sick at day care, she had to worry about missing meetings and postponing calls — but she didn’t have to think about going a day without pay.

“The fact of the matter is, I’m white and I’m middle class, so I’m really, really lucky,” Noecker said at a news conference Wednesday. Many of the city’s residents who most need paid sick time cannot get it, she said.

That may change next year.

The St. Paul City Council voted Wednesday to have a task force study sick- and safe-leave requirements for businesses citywide. Safe leave is offered to people who need to take time off work because of domestic violence or sexual assault. Minneapolis is also looking into such regulations.

The council’s vote comes shortly after a study found that 42 percent of workers in the city — about 72,200 people — do not get paid sick time.

Low-income and part-time employees are less likely to get paid leave, according to a report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the advocacy group TakeAction Minnesota. And employees who are people of color, particularly Latino and black workers, were less likely than white workers to get sick leave.… Continue reading »

A new report shows 42 percent of working St. Paul residents lack access to paid sick time — a key benefit being debated by local government on both sides of the river.

The study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found 72,000 workers from St. Paul do not earn paid hours off to cover illness. The report found large disparities by race, occupation and employment status, with blacks and Latinos, part-timers and low-wage service sector workers the least likely to have paid sick days.

The lack of sick benefits was especially evident among child care and food service workers.

“Since those workers earn less, they’re also less likely to be able to afford going a day without pay,” said study director Jessica Milli, in a conference call with reporters. “And that poses a public health risk.”

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced last week that the city is assembling a task force to study a possible earned sick and safe time mandate that would extend to public and private sector employers throughout the city.

The city’s full-time employees already earn sick time, and the benefit will be expanded by Jan. 1, 2017 to include 1,700 part-time, seasonal employees and Right Track summer interns, at an estimated annual cost of $100,000.… Continue reading »

Sonia Cortez works 40 hours a week cleaning offices, restaurants and recycling plants for St. Paul-based Marsden Building Maintenance at just below $15 an hour. But it’s still not enough to pay for her monthly bills while helping to put her daughter through college, she said. “You cannot live with this money,” she said. “Believe me.”

Cortez is one of roughly 4,000 contract janitors unionized under Service Employees International Union Local 26 (SEIU) whose three-year contract with metro employers expired on Dec. 31.  Currently SEIU janitors make $14.62 an hour, but union officials said they hope to raise the wages of their members to $15 an hour.

The wage increase wouldn’t just be a symbolic win, said SEIU executive board member James Matias; it would mean an additional $12.5 million for the janitors each year, money that would make a small dent in the income gap for Minnesota’s people of color.

“Most janitors are folks of color,” Matias said. “To bring that [extra income] into communities of color? That is huge.”

The union also hopes to make some strides on increasing the amount of paid earned sick days their members get, Matias said. Currently, SEIU janitors get three paid sick days a year, and many have families who need the time to be able to stay home to take care of sick children who aren’t able to attend school during the day.… Continue reading »