Lawmakers mixed on $15 wage floor
A legislative committee at the Massachusetts State House voted in favor of a $15 wage floor, even though lawmakers still have mixed feelings.
Although a bill that would single out big box retailers and fast food establishment workers for higher wages cleared a legislative committee in November, lawmakers are still mixed on moving the measure forward.
The bill passed the committee with a vote of 4-2 on Nov. 10, 2015. How each member voted was kept secret by the panel after the fact, the News Service has determined how the vote broke down and received feedback from committee members who did not vote that day.
The four votes in favor of the legislation came from four of the committee's 13 Democrats and the votes in opposition were from two of the committee's three Republicans. The vote occurred at a meeting of the committee, which has 16 members.
While several other Democrats on the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development said they support the bill, others said they would have or did "reserve their right," essentially declining to take a position.
One Democrat who said she voted by proxy in favor of the bill, Rep. Danielle Gregoire of Marlborough, expressed reservations about whether it should become law without additional input from lawmakers.
Gregoire, who said she was one of the four votes in favor of the bill clearing committee, said the proposal needs "more consideration," noting there are "a lot of economic factors at play here."
The bill, filed by the Senate Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair, Dan Wolf of Harwich, would ramp up the minimum hourly wage for major big-box and fast-food retailers to $15 by Jan. 1, 2018.
Wolf and Rep. John Scibak, a South Hadley Democrat and the committee's House chair, voted in favor of the bill along with Rep. Mary Keefe, of Worcester, according to those lawmakers and their staff.
Reps. Keiko Orrall, of Lakeville, and Joseph McKenna, of Webster, voted against the legislation, they said.
Had the Nov. 10 vote been a roll call, the committee's own rules - as well as the rules that govern the joint committees - would have required the committee to make available a record of how each member voted. On the day of the 4-2 vote, a House committee aide said it was the committee's policy to release the committee vote without identifying how individual committee members voted.
A committee staffer on the House side said last week that the vote was not a roll call but rather a voice vote that was recorded by the committee, a position backed up by Wolf, who also told the News Service he and his co-chair agreed members should be allowed to vote electronically, after the voice vote was taken, "given the importance of this vote."
Moments after the vote, Wolf joined hundreds of minimum wage workers and union organizers outside the State House to rally in support of a $15-an-hour minimum wage and draw attention to wage inequality across the country. Wolf generated howls of applause at the rally when he told them the panel had approved the bill and said he would work hard to get the bill to Gov. Charlie Baker's desk this session.
"This is a national movement and it will rearrange our economy and make it a fair economy that shares prosperity for all, that grows an economy from minimum wage up, from the middle class out and from fair taxation down," Wolf said at the rally, where organizers introduced him as their "champion."
For a worker putting in 40 hours 52 weeks per year, the bill's proposed minimum wage would work out to $31,200 before taxes, a little less than three times the 2015 individual federal poverty level and just under half the state's average annual pay in 2014, according to federal statistics.
In 2014, lawmakers increased the minimum wage for nearly all workers to reach $11 per hour by Jan. 1, 2017. The Bay State minimum wage rose on Jan. 1, 2016 to a nation-leading $10 an hour.
Paul Craney, executive director of the conservative non-profit Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, has bemoaned the dearth of roll calls taken in the Legislature this session. The group also targets Democrats with voter education mailers, often drawing information from recorded votes to reflect positions taken by elected officials.
"We'd definitely use committee votes, if they were available to the public. The real work of the legislature is done in committee. Almost without exception, floor votes follow committee votes," Craney said in an email to the News Service. "The legislature and its leaders could do more to make their process more transparent, starting with making public all their committee roll call votes. Until then, the real work of the legislature will continue to be done in the dark."
The Joint Rules that the House and Senate's joint committees operate under - a holdover from last session as the branches have been unable to agree on new rules for 2015-2016 - state that committee roll call votes "shall be available for public inspection upon reasonable notice and during regular office hours."
While it would need approval in both branches to become law, the bill would seem to have better chances in the Senate, which has demonstrated a more liberal bent and where Wolf is also chairman of the Steering and Policy Committee. That panel is supposed to advise the Senate on which major bills to prioritize.
"If I understand the bill correctly, I think it would set a very dangerous precedent," said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican and member of the labor committee who did not vote. Tarr said, "I think it's horribly unfair and unjustifiably divisive," questioning the constitutionality of imposing one pay standard for the subset of employers identified in the bill.
During the debate that led to passage of the $11-per-hour minimum wage bill, Senate Republicans supported a more modest increase, bringing the minimum wage up to $9.50.
An aide to Sen. Jason Lewis, a Winchester Democrat, said in an email the senator is a co-sponsor.
"The bill will require big retail and quick service fast food corporations, applying only to large corporations with over 200 employees, to pay their employees at least $15 an hour by 2018," Mathew Helman wrote. "This will provide greater economic security to low-wage employees at big box retail and quick service fast food chains, many of whom are parents, allowing them to meet basic needs and alleviate the struggles between work and family."
"I think we need more social justice, and the way to start is giving a fair salary to the workers," Rep. Marcos Devers, a Lawrence Democrat who did not attend the vote, told the News Service. Devers supports the bill.
According to the members themselves or their staff, supporters of the bill who were not recorded on the vote include: Reps. Daniel Donahue of Worcester; Dan Ryan of Charlestown; Sens. Lewis, Michael Barrett of Lexington, and Michael Moore of Millbury, all Democrats.
According to the members themselves or their staff those who would have reserved their rights include: Reps. John Rogers of Norwood; Jeffrey Roy of Franklin; and Sen. Eileen Donoghue of Lowell, all Democrats.
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