Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images.
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Minnesota restaurant workers do well for the Midwest; Amazon workers stage walk out for raises; Minneapolis mayor vetoes Labor Standards Board proposal; Minneapolis teachers union group moves event with controversial speaker; and attorney general settles with food company over employment notices.
Minnesota restaurant workers do comparatively well
Minnesota restaurant workers earn $20.44 per hour in wages and tips on average, higher than the nation as a whole and the highest in the Midwest, according to data released this month from the payment processing company Square.
Lower wage workers such as those in service industries have seen the strongest wage growth in recent years, but much of their gains have been eaten away by the higher cost of housing, cars, food and everything else, leading many workers to feel like they’re falling behind rather than getting ahead.
Minnesota has a relatively low cost of living, which means the average restaurant worker’s earnings are enough for a single person with no kids to afford the basic cost of living, but they don’t stretch far enough for a family with kids, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development cost of living calculator.
Restaurant workers in Minnesota are the 19th highest paid in the country, with workers in Delaware earning the most on average, $28.61 per hour, and those in Mississippi earning the least, $13.02 per hour. In the Midwest, Minnesota is followed by Illinois at $19.89 per hour and then Wisconsin at $18.55 per hour.
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump proposed eliminating taxes on tips, an idea quickly adopted by Vice President Kamala Harris. While popular — or at least populist — the benefit of cutting taxes on tips would be minimal, since more than a third of tipped workers don’t earn enough to pay any federal income tax, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. Many workers also don’t pay taxes on their cash tips.
At the same time, eliminating the tax on tips will likely accelerate the rise of tipping culture, making workers’ incomes more vulnerable to the highs and lows of the restaurant industry.
“If you’re a restaurant worker who’s already in an industry subject to a lot of ups and downs, a large component of your income coming from tips isn’t gonna simplify that,” Ara Kharazian, a research lead at Square, told Axios.
About 22% of restaurant workers’ income in Minnesota comes from tips, which is on par with the national average. According to Square’s analysis of its transaction data, restaurant workers in Minnesota earn a base wage of $15.89 per hour on average plus $4.55 per hour in tips.
Minnesotans are average tippers, adding 15.54% for a tip on average. That’s just a hair above the national average of 15.53%, and the lowest in the Midwest as a percentage. But restaurant workers in Minnesota still take home more money in tips per hour than any other Midwestern state save Illinois because of larger tabs, more customers or a combination of the two.
Amazon workers stage small walk-out
About a dozen Amazon workers walked out of the MSP1 fulfillment center in Shakopee on Tuesday afternoon to demand higher wages and an end to being disciplined for missing productivity targets.
The small, hourlong demonstration didn’t affect operations at the warehouse — where some 1,800 workers package hundreds of thousands of products a day — though it caught the attention of a handful of security guards and a steady stream of workers driving in and out of the parking lot during the 5 o’clock shift change.
“The only way that change happens is when we come together. It might start as two people, it might become five people, 10 people. Soon we have thousands,” said the demonstration’s organizer Eva Hadjiyanis, who’s worked at Amazon for 14 months. “This is the beginning of something.”
Amazon’s MSP1 warehouse in Shakopee has seen stirrings of worker campaigns over the years, including a short-lived unionization drive two years ago and a series of demonstrations that led to management promising to regularly meet with workers, a victory that would hardly count as such at any other company, but at Amazon garnered national media attention.
The workers called for $3 per hour raises, an end to discipline for missing productivity targets and more respect from management. The starting hourly wage at MSP1 is currently $21.50 and increases to $23.90 over three years.
The demonstration also drew several dozen supporters to the warehouse, including Teamsters members, who brought a branded semi truck and enough chicken alfredo to feed a hundred workers and supporters. Amazon is a top target for the Teamsters, which claims to have unionized hundreds of drivers and warehouse workers in California and New York.
Earlier this year, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry fined Amazon $10,500 for alleged worker safety hazards at its Shakopee distribution warehouse in violation of two new state laws. Amazon is appealing the citation, and a spokeswoman said the state’s claims “reflects a lack of understanding of how we measure performance.”
Minneapolis mayor vetoes Labor Standards Board proposal
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blocked the creation of a Labor Standards Board on Thursday, saying he supports the idea but that the council’s proposal was “lopsided” against businesses. He offered an alternative with more representation for business owners, but the council may have the votes to ignore him; they passed the plan with a veto-proof majority, 9-3, last week.
Labor groups — notably the Service Employees International Union and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha — have been lobbying for the board’s creation. They seek to empower workers across various industries to develop labor standards with employers and community members for city leaders to consider.
City leaders — including Frey — have held multiple press conferences in support of such a board over the past two years, while restaurant owners and other business leaders voiced their strong opposition. The battle over the board was largely philosophical, however, because the specifics were undefined until council members Aurin Chowdhury and Katie Cashman and Vice President Aisha Chughtai introduced the proposed ordinance earlier this month.
Under the proposal passed by the council, the Labor Standards Board would have 15 members with equal representation for workers, employers and “community stakeholders.” Twelve would be appointed by the council and three by the mayor. The board would then create subgroups with a similar make-up for specific industries, such as child care or property maintenance, to negotiate proposed ordinances that would go to the council and the mayor for review.
Frey proposed equal appointments for the mayor and council and equal representation for businesses and employees, saying that businesses won’t participate if they will be heavily outnumbered in discussions.
The city already has a similar labor advisory board that businesses don’t participate in. It’s called the Workplace Advisory Committee, which currently has four open seats for business representatives.
The proposed Labor Standards Board wouldn’t have any more power than the Workplace Advisory Committee, just a slightly different make-up and a focus on creating industry-specific recommendations through subcommittees. When first proposing the Labor Standards Board, labor advocates wanted its recommendations to go to the council for an up-or-down vote so they couldn’t be watered down by the council, but that idea didn’t make it into the final ordinance.
That’s why the Labor Standards Board, if created, is unlikely to be as powerful as opponents fear or proponents hope. Given labor groups’ many allies on the council, labor interests will continue to be influential in city policy with or without a new advisory group.
Minneapolis teachers union group moves event with Palestinian speaker
A group affiliated with the Minneapolis teachers union, MFT Educators for Palestine, said on Thursday it would move an event on how to teach about Palestine from the union hall to another location after some union members raised concerns about featured speaker Taher Herzallah, a Palestinian activist who has made comments widely considered antisemitic.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish, called for the event to be canceled in a Twitter post, citing a video in which Herzallah says “Anybody who has any relationship or any support or identifies themselves as a Jewish person or as a Christian Zionist, then we shall not be their friend. I will tell you that they are enemy number one.”
In an email to the Reformer, Herzallah said he misspoke and meant to say “Jewish Zionists,” and noted that in those remarks he also praised Jewish youth for protesting the United States’ support for Israel. In those remarks, he also said Zionism, or the movement for a Jewish state, is “rooted in white supremacy,” which may be considered antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition though not the Jerusalem Declaration definition.
Members of the teachers union met on Wednesday to discuss concerns about the event and its featured speaker, after which members of MFT Educators for Palestine decided to move it to another location.
An Instagram post by MN Educators 4 Palestine said the reason for the venue change was because of Frey’s “inaccurate description of the event has caused concerns for the safety of our members.”
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers President Marcia Howard, who convened the meeting for the union members to talk to each other, cast doubt on that explanation.
In a message to the Reformer, she wrote “MN Educators 4 Palestine’s online statement seems to cite safety concerns brought on by Frey’s statement without acknowledging the member meeting where the venue change was made. That characterization is…a choice.”
The event is the latest controversy to embroil the state’s largest teachers’ union in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Last year, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers approved a resolution on the Israel-Hamas war that it later walked back, saying that it “harmed many Jewish members, students and families while causing unnecessary division.”
Attorney general settles with food company over employment practices
Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office announced a $142,000 settlement with Conagra Brands on Thursday for not providing seasonal workers at its fruit and vegetable processing facility in Waseca with key employment information like wages and hours before the start of employment, as required by law. The company also failed to maintain necessary employment records.
“Under Minnesota law, workers must be told how much they will be paid, what work they will be doing, and whether housing is provided before they agree to travel hundreds of miles to take a job in Minnesota,” Attorney General Ellison said in a statement. “I am pleased that Conagra Brands changed its practices and that my Office was able to secure restitution for employees.”