Group continues minimum wage fight

LYNN – The Essex County Community Organization is excited that the House approved legislation raising the minimum wage to $11, but it’s not ending its drive to get the initiative on the ballot just yet.”We’re celebrating; we’re really excited,” said ECCO Executive Director Daniel Lesser. “It will be the highest minimum wage in the country and will affect 600,000 people.”ECCO, a grassroots organization of 25 congregations and institutions that fight for social justice issues, teamed up with the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign to collect signatures to get two initiatives on the ballot. The first question would increase the state’s minimum wage from $8 per hour to $10.50 per hour. A second ballot question, if approved, would allow all employees access to earned sick time.Lesser admitted the House bill is more than they asked for, however, it falls short in that it does not tie the increase to the cost of living, for which the Raise Up campaign is hoping to achieve.”It’s disappointing that they did not include indexing, and we asked to bring the tip minimum up to 50 percent of the minimum wage, which they didn’t do, but, overall, $11 is better than what we had,” he said.While they are celebrating, Lesser said they are not giving up over a year’s worth of work collecting signatures just yet. Lesser said he’s glad the Legislature responded to the fact that Raise Up gathered 350,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot, and they plan to keep their drive going until Governor Deval Patrick signs the legislation making the increase official.Lesser said the group actually turned in all of its signatures to city and town halls across the state yesterday, and they have collected more than enough signatures.”We have 30,000 signatures for each of the earned sick time and the minimum wage, and we only needed 11,000 each. This was 100 percent grassroots. It’s one of the most successful grassroots movements in Massachusetts history.”Lesser said the boost in minimum wage would not only help more than 600,000 families but it would also have a major impact on the state’s economy.”Here in the greater Lynn area, approximately 11,100 workers – 22 percent of the area’s workforce – will be impacted,” he said. “This victory for working families would not have been possible without the collection of over 300,000 signatures from across the Commonwealth. ECCO congregations collected 23,150 signatures to put both a minimum wage increase and earned sick time on the ballot.”Should Patrick sign the House bill, and Lesser believes he will, Raise Up will withdraw its ballot initiative but the earned sick time will remain. Lesser said, if approved, the earned sick time would mean that every worker in the state would accrue an hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to five days.Businesses with 11 employees or more would be required to offer paid sick time while companies with 10 or fewer employees would be required only to provide unpaid sick leave.”The earned sick time petition will go forward to the November 2014 ballot as planned,” Lesser said. “ECCO will be gearing up to get out a major education campaign on that.”The earned sick time petition will go forward to the November 2014 ballot as planned.