Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.
Winning Pay Bump|Tipped Wage Litigation
Paige Smith: Just a handful of months after US House office workers cast the first votes to unionize, the first collective bargaining agreement has been reached, and it touches on one of the thorniest questions of negotiations: pay.
Staffers within the office of Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) came away from contract negotiations with $10,000 more in pay, with junior staffers making an average of $76,000, according to a tweet from the Congressional Workers Union, the primary group organizing House staffers.
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The average household income for Washington, D.C. is $154,873, but $76,000 is $31,000 more than the pay floor for House staffers Speaker Nancy Pelosi established earlier this year. Capitol Hill salaries have long been criticized for being less than desirable, often leading to high turnover in congressional offices.
“We’ve seen clear examples of trickle-down benefits for staffers offered throughout this organizing drive even before elections,” a spokesperson for the CWU told Bloomberg Law. “We look forward to many more life changing elections and contracts for Hill staffers in the coming weeks.”
For Levin’s staffers in particular, the agreement could be fleeting. Levin recently lost to fellow Democrat Haley Stevens in a Michigan primary election.
“As staff in Rep. Levin’s office close down operations and look for future employment due to his primary loss, securing an agreement on salary was paramount and sets a strong precedent for future office agreements to follow,” the CWU spokesperson said.
There was some debate about whether staffer pay would be on the bargaining table, though Levin has repeated for months that it could be discussed. The question now is whether other offices will push for more compensation, as four offices have already held unionization elections.
“When union workers make gains in their wages and working conditions through collective bargaining, other employers—whether they are union or not—must evaluate whether their current wages and working conditions remain competitive so that they do not risk losing their own employees who may leave in search of these better employment terms,” said Ohio-based labor lawyer Sarah Ingles of Wentz, McInerney, Peifer & Petroff, LLC.
Levin’s staffers essentially set a new floor, Ingles said, and it will be up to other members of Congress to match it or risk losing workers.
“Congressional staff often work long hours and do important work for the betterment of our democracy,” Ingles said. “It’s imperative that our Congressional staff’s wages and working conditions better reflect the value that they provide.”
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Rebecca Rainey: Just in time for the holiday season, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is scheduled to weigh in on a fight over a DOL rule that limits when employers can pay tip-earning workers a lower minimum wage.
The court will hear oral argument Dec. 5 on the Restaurant Law Centers and Texas Restaurant Association’s request to immediately block the rule, which has been in effect since December 2021.
The rule at issue requires employers to pay the full minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to tipped workers who earn the $2.13 hourly subminimum wage if they perform non-tipped work for 20% of their hours a week, or for more than 30 minutes straight. The Fair Labor Standards Act permits employers to pay certain workers $2.13 an hour, so long as they earn at least $30 a month in tips and their wages reach the full minimum rate of $7.25 an hour at the end of the pay period.
Whether the restaurant groups will be able to convince the court that the rule needs to be halted due to the increased compliance costs it has for their members appears to be an uphill battle.
A lower court in February initially rejected the groups’ request for a nationwide injunction, finding that they failed to prove they would be harmed if the rule was to remain in effect.
Judge Robert Pitman of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas questioned the timing of the lawsuit when handing down the decision, given that the rule had already been in place for more than a month when the challenge was brought.
The groups later appealed that ruling to the Fifth Circuit, close to a year after the rule was implemented. The plaintiffs could get a more favorable outcome this time, however, since there are twice as many Republican-appointed as Democrat-appointed judges on the appeals court.
The legal battle over tipped wages at the federal level continues even as several local jurisdictions have raised the local rate above the federal $2.13 threshold, or moved to get rid of it all together.
Voters in D.C. will consider a ballot measure next month that would scrap the city’s lower tipped wage of $5.05 and match it to the city’s regular minimum wage by 2027. Voters in Portland, Maine are considering a similar ballot measure to gradually increase the city’s minimum wage to $18 and abolish the tipped minimum wage.
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