LANSING – The biggest change Michigan’s economy faces next year won’t be a result of this month’s election.
Instead, the restaurant industry is about to be rocked by a little-noticed Michigan Supreme Court decision last July 31. That had three major components. The first two were that 1) starting next year, minimum wage for most workers will rise from $10 to $15 an hour over the next five years, and then be tied to inflation, and 2) virtually all employees will be eligible for up to 72 hours paid sick time.
The third, however, sent restaurant owners into a tizzy. It mandates that between now and 2030, the minimum wage for workers who largely subsist on tips, mainly servers in restaurants, will rise from the present $3.93 to $15 an hour.
I first wrote about this in August, but it was little mentioned during the campaign. But now there’s a rush to tackle it in the so-called “lame duck” session before the lawmakers recess for the holidays and the new legislature takes office January 1.
Democrats still have the governor’s chair and the state senate, but Republicans will now control the state house next year.
State Rep. Matt Hall, a Republican from Saginaw County who will be the new Speaker of the House, told a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, “I think this is the biggest thing right now to face in lame duck.” Republicans have signaled they aren’t greatly troubled by the rise in the normal minimum wage, though they want the provision repealed that ties it to the inflation rate after 2029.
But they want to scale back the amount of mandatory sick time, and are especially determined to roll back the rise in tipped worker pay. Unions, however, oppose any changes, as do many Democrats.
The question is, are the lawmakers willing to change this — and will Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat with possible presidential aspirations, sign any bill that would do so?
Two bills (HB 6056 and 6057) that would scale back sick leave and repeal the increase in tipped worker raises were introduced shortly after the election by a bipartisan pair, State Reps. Graham Filler, a Republican from central Michigan, and Nate Shannon, a Macomb County Democrat who lost his reelection bid Nov. 5.
Republicans say it is urgent that this gets done during the lame duck session, because otherwise business will face rises in labor costs soon after the first of the year. Actually, the increases, which don’t kick in till February, would be fairly small, since the higher wages are being gradually phased in. However, opponents fear once the wage increases start, they will be much harder to roll back. My own unscientific survey of half-a-dozen servers found that none had heard of the coming increases, and most were excited when I told them.
However, union members, and most Democrats, seem adamantly opposed to tampering with the reforms, and contemptuously dismiss the claim that most servers make more money with tips than $15 an hour.
Danielle Atkinson, an activist who helped lead the drive to get the sick leave proposal on the ballot in 2018, is urging lawmakers to “stand firm” against any attempt to water them down.
In an opinion piece last week, she urged the business community to view this “as an investment in your most valuable asset — your employees,” and argued that a more economically secure workforce would be more productive.
Why did the Michigan Supreme Court do something that looked like “legislating from the bench?” Because of what they ruled was an unconstitutional act by the legislature in 2018.
Republicans controlled state government then, and when they saw that Atkinson and her allies had collected enough signatures to put the sick leave and wage increase proposals on the ballot, they feared the amendments would pass, and to thwart that, enacted them into law. But as soon as the 2018 elections were over, the Republican-dominated legislature repealed them, and Rick Snyder, the outgoing Michigan governor, signed the repeal.
But this year, the state’s highest court ruled that lawmakers could not enact a law and then repeal it in the same session. The justices voided the repeal, which meant the law took effect. Since it had been postponed six years, the justices wrote a new timetable.
Despite urgency on the part of the Republicans, the chances of the bills rolling back the wage increases will go anywhere seem slim. Democrats, still in complete charge till January, have a lot of other priorities they’d like to muscle through before they recess, probably around Dec. 19. Those include improving teacher pensions, gun control measures and police reforms.
Wrestling with the wage and sick time bills would be bound to anger some constituents, no matter how they decide.
Plus, as Atkinson noted, when Michigan enacted a total smoking ban for restaurants and bars in 2010, there were dire predictions of massive closings and layoffs. That never happened. Everybody adjusted almost immediately with no significant losses. Whether things will go as smoothly this time remains to be seen.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
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