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House Republicans reignited a debate over the minimum wage Monday with a move to exempt some servers, bartenders and other tipped workers from future hikes — a likely non-starter for the Democrats in control of the Senate and governor’s office.

Restaurant owners, servers and union officials alike turned out in force to rehash some familiar arguments from last year’s law that bumped the state’s minimum wage up to $9.50 hourly by 2016. Now, Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo has a bill that would allow employers to pay tipped staff $8 hourly if tips bring their pay above $12 an hour.

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That gives the parade of waiters, waitresses and union representatives who objected to Garofalo’s bill a strong ally. Along with some House DFL lawmakers, they portrayed the proposal as an attack on last year’s much-needed wage boost.

“This bill is an attack on the dignity of working people, and you have a chance to stand with workers or to hurt them” Cliff Martin of Take Action Minnesota said.

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It can be an impossible choice. Going to work, or caring for a sick child, but without pay. Or going to work sick, so you don’t miss out on wages.

A group of concerned citizens from all walks of life have joined together to launch the campaign, “Minnesota Benefits.” They held their kickoff event at the Depot on Tuesday.

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A coalition of labor, faith and community groups is hoping to make Minnesota the fourth state in the country to guarantee paid sick time off for workers.

“For those of us who have had paid time off, we often take it for granted,” said Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minesota, one of the groups backing a bill introduced by DFL lawmakers this week. “But there are a million working people in our state who don’t have that option.”

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Despite the recent success in raising Minnesota’s minimum wage, a new report paints a bleak outlook for the state’s lowest paid workers. The worker rights groups, Working America and Take Action Minnesota, say a lot more is still needed to lift 622,000 Minnesotans out of poverty.

Their report titled, “The Future of Work in Minnesota,” cites unpaid sick time, erratic scheduling and out-sourcing as three of the major hurdles employees face in getting ahead.

But the groups are also celebrating a recent breakthrough for some of the workers they represent.

That breakthrough involves Target Corporation’s Responsible Contractor Policy.

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On a crisp autumn day in 2012, I joined a group of pastors and community leaders from the Illinois-Indiana Regional Organizing Network (IIRON) at a church on the south side of Chicago. We talked about the way corporations and the wealthy systematically hoarded political power over the last forty years to make our country work for them—instead of people like us. They built elite think tanks, bought the media, and took over universities. They fought back against the wave of pro-equality reforms that had been achieved in the 1950s and 1960s, and turned the tide in their favor.

That corporate-conservative movement transformed our political and economic landscape over the last 40 years, and the resulting shift has left us with growing economic and racial inequality, a broken democracy, and a planet on the verge of catastrophic climate change.

Together, that day we recognized that the solutions our elected leaders had proposed were wholly inadequate to the scale of the crises we faced: We’d seen massive bailouts for banks, while thousands of homeowners in our neighborhoods faced foreclosure and were getting little help staying afloat; We faced a massive jobs crisis without a proposal for the kind of public jobs program we needed.… Continue reading »

s the Minnesota elections near a group is taking to the streets in a grassroots effort to try provide information to voters about candidates they believe will fight for issues like paid sick leave and paid maternity leave and other family matters.

Member, Rachel Chafee said, “I have learned how important it is spending time with the little one and so to be able to have paid maternity leave or parental leave, so that you don’t have to make a decision about whether you get to spend time with your kid or whether you pay your bills.”

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