BALLOT MEASURES can often be a grab bag of wide-ranging and niche policy issues – expensive statewide fights intended to sidestep lawmakers or force them into motion. On Tuesday, voters will consider five ballot questions with clear workplace and workforce dimensions, revealing tensions in existing workplaces or creating new industries and workforce structures.
The CommonWealth Beacon newsroom discussed the ballot slate this week on a special pre-Election Day episode of The Codcast. Some highlights of the conversation follow:
Question 1
This initiative would give the state auditor the authority to audit the Legislature. The latest ballot question polling, from the University of New Hampshire, shows Diana DiZoglio’s quest to pry open the process of her former workplace is on track to pass handily with 65 percent of likely Massachusetts voters polled saying they plan to vote “yes.”
DiZoglio’s efforts are, even by her own telling, informed by her experience in the State House as a legislative aide, then state representative, then state senator. The Methuen native, who ousted incumbent Rep. David Torrisi for a place in the House chamber, was “always sort of on the outs with her bosses, or the power structure there,” CommonWealth Beacon editor Bruce Mohl noted.
The campaign pledge to audit DiZoglio’s former workplace – citing frustration with an opaque and often top-down lawmaking process – struck political gold and built a coalition of those on the left and right who are disgruntled with the Legislature.
Though they have not mounted an opposition campaign, legislative leaders have swiped at the audit effort as an attempt to overstep constitutional separations of powers. Even as they point to annual independent financial audits, lawmakers also insist that privacy is essential to their ability to craft legislation and horse trade to a final result. Yet, “the ability to just change rules whenever they want to,” Mohl said, can rankle observers and legislators without close relationships to leadership.
Question 2
A proposal to eliminate the 10th grade MCAS test as a graduation requirement has slipped below 50 percent of likely voters in favor, as state leaders including Gov. Maura Healey line up against the initiative.
The pricey ballot fight is backed by millions of dollars from the Massachusetts Teachers Association and opposed by business groups and individuals, including billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Inside the classroom, proponents say elimination of the high-stakes test will “free teachers up to teach a richer curriculum, to not be bound by the pressure they have felt to, as they put it, teach to the test,” said executive editor Michael Jonas. Critics, on the other hand, claim “teachers are concerned about the sort of judgment and accountability that comes their way based on how students are doing,” both in terms of an absolute level and in making progress, Jonas said.
The disagreement also turns on whether the MCAS test, more generally, is an essential ingredient to student and teacher success. The test would stay in place as a diagnostic tool even if the graduation requirement were removed.
Question 3
Attorney General Andrea Campbell this spring settled a suit brought by her predecessor, then-AG Maura Healey, to ensure baseline wages and benefits for drivers in exchange for Uber and Lyft dropping their ballot campaign to classify drivers as independent contractors. A separate measure plowed forward, championed by some workers unions, that would create a system for ride-share drivers to unionize regardless of their classification.
It crafts a system – objected to by some conservative groups as out of line with federal labor practices – that would let ride-share drivers define a union group and empower a bargaining coalition to negotiate on their behalf.
“The question is, essentially, what are the common interests of these sorts of gig workers and who should be in charge of arguing for them?” reporter Jennifer Smith said.
The ride-share workforce is diffuse, made up of drivers who use the gig model to supplement other jobs and others who essentially drive full-time. Massachusetts unions, likewise, have not all agreed that the ballot measure crafts the best way to create a unionization mechanism nor that the ballot was the best place to push a complex change to the industry.
So far the measure has 55 percent of support from likely voters, and, like Question 1, faces little formal campaign opposition in anticipation of the real fight taking place in court if the measure passes.
Question 4
Every once in a while, the ballot becomes the launch point for an entire industry. Years after cannabis was legalized first as a medical drug and then recreationally, it may be psychedelics’ turn. Less than half of likely voters so far say they plan to support the measure that would broaden access to certain psychedelic substances either in therapeutic settings or allowing home-grown psychedelic mushrooms.
The “psychedelic therapeutic model would be just a much more controlled and regulated way of doing psychedelics” compared to cannabis, reporter Bhaamati Borkhetaria said. It would create centers where a person could take a supervised dosage, she noted, which means concern is focused on “public safety, what dangers people could face on a trip that goes badly, what dangers people could face if someone isn’t properly prepared to help someone through a trip.”
Proponents not only say access to some psychedelics can be a transformative therapeutic option – some would also like jobs in the industry. Actress Eliza Dushku (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), has put hundreds of thousands dollars toward the campaign and hopes to become one of those licensed facilitators. Opponents, the most prominent of which also opposed cannabis legalization, are not hauling in the same amount of money.
Workplace squabbles and leadership turnover at the cannabis oversight body offer a cautionary note, as the psychedelics ballot measure would also introduce a five-person commission to oversee the industry.
Question 5
The final ballot question, which would raise the minimum wage for tipped workers and allow tip pooling between front- and back-of-house staff, now looks least likely to clear the finish line. Support has eroded dramatically in polling over the past months, setting at 45 percent opposed and 41 percent in favor, according to the most recent University of New Hampshire poll.
Part of a national effort to raise tipped wages, backed by a California activist, the ballot campaign argues that tipped work is often exploitative and rife with abuse and wage theft. Raising the baseline wage from $6.75 an hour plus tips to $15 an hour plus tips would address some of those issues, they argue, while restaurant groups opposing the measure say it would lead to high dining costs, layoffs, and even closures.
Tipped workers are now the most prominent face of opposition, reporter Gintautas Dumcius noted.
“I think anybody who’s probably been out for lunch or dinner in the last couple months has seen the debate has invaded the table,” he said, recalling a recent stop for lunch where inside his bill was campaign literature telling him to vote no.
“I’ve heard from others who say servers at some of these restaurants have launched into a pitch for a no vote for this,” he said. “Obviously that’s all the time and money that the restaurant owners are paying to defeat this measure. So it’s definitely one of the most interesting ballot measures to watch on Tuesday.”
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