A New Deal revival: Why labor unions love the Minnesota Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board

This story is part of a series by MinnPost reporter Matthew Blake on Minnesota efforts to stabilize its nursing home workforce which has long struggled with high turnover Part one looks at the state s plan and the pushback to it from nursing home operators Part two looks at the exhausting work performed by nursing home employees and part three delves into nursing homes complicated financial situations For organized labor in Minnesota the legislative session was a rousing success Unions worked closely with the Tim Walz administration and a DFL-controlled legislature on high-profile accomplishments like the creation of a state paid family and clinical leave initiative There were also less obvious goals like a new part of the state ruling body dedicated exclusively to the conditions of nursing home employees We were the driving advocacy group for the standards board to exist explained Jamie Gulley president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa a union that represents nursing homes across the state The nursing home is the lowest paid segment of our membership universe Gulley will get no argument from the nursing home lobby who have called the board they have sued to eradicate a favor to unions The threat is the workforce board turns into a political hammer explained Toby Pearson executive director at Care Providers of Minnesota Related Really taxing mentally and physically The travails of working in a nursing home And Rep Esther Agbaje DFL-Minneapolis reported she worked with SEIU and AFSCME Council in writing the bill that created the board Requested if the measure was meant more to improve the labor conditions of nursing home employees or completely increase the number of unionized facilities Agbaje commented A little bit of both But if the workforce board is unions leveraging their clout that raises the question of why labor is so into the idea Wage boards intertwine with unions rapid rise University of Michigan law professor Kate Andrias in published an article in the Yale Law Journal called An American Approach to Social Democracy The Forgotten Promise of the Fair Labor Standards Act Andrias s article tells a fascinating story of a forgotten New Deal experiment that has sparked a current political movement The original FLSA was more ambitious both procedurally and substantively than the low minimum wages and overtime protections for which it is known this day she wrote It created industry committees or wage boards composed of tripartite representatives employers unions and the populace with discretion to set minimum wages on an industry-by-industry basis with a statutorily defined range By such committees were established for primarily low-wage industries like garment and textile manufacturing Instead of a union bargaining behind closed doors with a single clothing manufacturer the committees were required to meet in population produce reports about working conditions and set an industry-wide minimum wage The resulting committees increased the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers during a short period and helped facilitate the rapid rise of unionism Andrias wrote The law professor pointed out that these boards withstood court challenges In fact it was President Harry Truman who scotched the boards in exchange for a Republican-controlled Congress raising the minimum wage to cents-an-hour After the Fight for While the federal boards were wiped out blue states like California and New York kept laws on the books for decades allowing for industry-specific wage boards In the concept was revitalized when New York state passed a minimum wage specifically for fast food workers That helped spark the consciousness of policymakers workers and advocates reported David Madland senior fellow at the Center for American Progress a Washington think tank that has advocated for wage boards A Center for American Progress review last year unveiled that six states including Minnesota have adopted industry-specific wage boards along with three cities The matter greater part relevant to Minnesota is Nevada which has set up a commission for home care workers In the Nevada board raised the minimum wage of home care workers to an hour while increasing Medicaid reimbursements for state home care providers Nevada s medical department has touted statistics that between December and April the state s home care workforce grew by employees or Related Direct Care Workers are in high demand but face meager pay despite latest increase unions are looking to change that But the soundness department also acknowledged that the state is thousands of home care workers short Meanwhile SEIU representatives in Nevada have pushed for a -an-hour home care worker minimum wage If there is a throughline between fast food nursing home and home care workers it is occupations that tend to elicit constituents and political sympathy The goal of the workforce board is to make sure our caretakers are cared for themselves Agbaje mentioned The post A New Deal revival Why labor unions love the Minnesota Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board appeared first on MinnPost