The Department Lecture Series. We begin today with an acknowledgment. Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Goyo Kono, the Cayuga Nation. The Goyo Kono are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Goyo Kono dispossession and
honor the ongoing connection of Goyo Kono people, past and present, to these lands and waters. At least once each semester, we turn the spotlight in colloquium onto research done by students and faculty that address critical current issues in planning. Today, the subject is worker rights at a time of rising inequality and how a number of progressive cities are tackling the problem. And so it is a pleasure to introduce Professor Mildred Warner and several of her students to discuss their study.
Mildred Warner has authored more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and professional reports, and has received major research grants from government entities and foundations. Warner works closely with local government, planners, policy analysts, economic developers, and union leaders, both in the US and abroad. She received her BA in history from Oberlin College and her MS in agricultural economics and PhD in development sociology from Cornell University. Dr. Warner will be joined today b
y students from the Economic Development Policy Workshop. Student presenters include Olivia Gee, Tiallora Lumbantuoran, Alikia Mukavelli, Carlos Lopez, Brian Toy, Kanyathia Prajita, Bella Sahirtian, and Mediatrich Triani. Please welcome Dr. Mildred Warner and her students. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you to all the students who will present today and all the students who will be listening. Everyone can see my screen? Yes? Good. So what we're going to talk about today is the probl
em of rising inequality and the potential for a progressive city response. And we're going to give particular attention to minimum wage and paid sick leave rules. And the goal of the workshop this spring was to look at these issues of inequality and the potential for progressive coalitions at the city and state level. So we have problems in the US of rising inequality, stagnant wages, and rising returns to capital. The US is exceptional among advanced industrialized nations in that we don't have
national policy that gives workers the rights to paid sick leave or to paid parental leave. It's only unpaid parental leave. Or even requires employer provided health insurance. And the COVID pandemic really illustrated the challenge that this provides for assuring human welfare. Today, the minimum wage is worth less than it was in 1979 in real terms. And that's why Congress right now, well, last week, was debating including raising the minimum wage in its COVID relief package. And then the par
liamentarian of the Senate said they couldn't do that. We also have diminishing unionization rates. And so what's happened in that context of the absence of federal leadership is that states and cities have tried to take a lead in raising minimum wage and in providing paid sick leave. But in the context of that, corporations led by the American Legislative Exchange Council have been pushing state legislatures to pass legislation that limits not only unionization, but preempts local authority to
take on these progressive actions. So what's the possibility of a progressive city response in this context? What we're going to talk about today, there are four papers on which this work is based. Two are ones with me and Yanshuo Xu, who did his PhD here a few years ago, looking at productivity divergence and the role of state policy, corporate capture, and labor power. Another is with Eunji Kim, who also did her PhD here, and Austin, who's doing his PhD, looking at the ways in which state pree
mptions block progressive city action. And then to flip it positive, because we as planners want to solve problems, not just talk about them, we have the two student teams from this fall's workshop class talking about the way in which coalitions form to push for minimum wage and to push for paid sick leave. And so that's going to be where we'll focus most of the talk on how we move progressive action. So when we think about the gap between overall productivity, which has just been growing dramat
ically in the US, and then what's happened to hourly compensation, which is basically flatlined since the late 1970s, that gap, that's the productivity gap, and that's the problem that we need to address. In addition, we can see that unionization rates have been falling since the 1950s. And as unionization rates have fallen, the share of income going to the top 10% has risen. And so we are now at a position of gross inequality as bad as it was in the Great Depression back in the late 1920s. So a
s planners, we need to have a new political economy of place that looks at this at multiple scales. So, oh, yes, the economic scale, there's rising inequality. And returns are shifting from labor to capital. Then we need to think about the demographic scale. What can we do at the metro level? And at the governance scale, we have to recognize that because there's no federal action, and we're starting to see some action at the state level, corporate interests have been looking at the state legisla
ture as the weak underbelly in the system where they could insert more conservative policies and preempt the ability of cities to do progressive action. And so that leads us as planners to ask, OK, in this context, is there still an opportunity for a progressive city? What is that progressive city role? So if we look at the circles on this map are the number of introduced state laws in the legislature that were supported by this conservative bill mill called the American Legislative Exchange Cou
ncil. That's the circle. And you can see that those circles tend to be higher in states with lower unionization levels. So unionization is in part a pushback against this. But we also see that they were also very high in Michigan, which is a state that's historically had high unionization levels. And so there was an effort to actually push back against places that had strong unionization. So in our paper where we looked at what explains this divergence between returns to workers and the overall
productivity, we see that Republican-controlled state houses, in those states, the returns to workers are lower. Where corporate lobbying is heavier, returns to workers are lower. And where unionization is higher, returns to workers are higher. But what's interesting is none of those variables are significant on overall productivity. So the good news is that those corporate-inspired efforts do not actually increase productivity. They just undermine returns to labor. And so I think that's an impo
rtant point for us to keep in mind. Now, we also did a paper looking specifically at what's going on in Michigan and Wisconsin where there's been these efforts to preempt city power by the state legislatures. And so we looked at states that have preempted the ability of cities to pass higher local minimum wage laws, that's 28 states, or local paid leave laws, that's 23 states, or local fair scheduling laws, states that are right to work, which means right not to unionize, that's what it actually
means in the US, and states that have prevented local prevailing wage laws. And what we see is in the states that have higher preemption of the ability of cities to address labor equity, those states, that preemption is higher where unionization is higher up here in the Midwest, which is why the story of what was going on in Michigan and Wisconsin, particularly in the last decade, is quite interesting. So we actually did a case study looking at Wisconsin and their 2011 budget repair bill, which
stripped benefits and wages of public workers and basically ended the teachers union in that state, and only police and fire have unions left. Despite huge pushback from the citizens of the state and the unions, they still lost their union rights. So that's a negative story. Now I want to switch to a more positive story, which the students will be carrying forward with their workshop papers, looking at the potential for progressive city action. So we're going to ask, who joins these coalitions?
What is the role of unions? Are there other partners that are also extremely important? What are the strategies they use, especially in conservative states, which is the majority of states in America, and states where preemption of local power is present? Even in the face of preemption, what can a city do? And can these initiatives scale up to the state level? At the moment, we're starting to see some potential for scale up to the national level. The students in the class read Heather Boucher's
book this fall, and she is now on the President's Council of Economic Advisors. And she particularly emphasizes the potential of unionization and labor rights. Two planning professors that are well-known to most of us are Mark Dussard and Greg Schrock, who have been writing about the potential of these coalitions to scale up for state-level change. And Manuel Pastor, another well-known planner, has been writing for quite a while about the potential of progressive regionalism. But our students a
re trying to make that real, with real cases about how it works on the ground. And with that, I would like to turn it over to the minimum wage team. All right. Thanks, Mildred. All right. OK. Sorry to interrupt you, Laura, but your notes are showing with your slides. So you may have to reshare. Yeah. Let me just try that again. There you go. OK. I can get us started. Good morning, everyone. Today, Laura, Alekia, Brian, and I will be presenting on urban labor coalitions and their role in pushing
minimum wage movements. So why, first of all, is minimum wage a problem? Despite increases in worker productivity and living costs nationwide, the federal minimum wage has not increased since 2009, when it was set at $7.25 an hour. And more recently, the exclusion of President Biden's minimum wage proposal and his stimulus plan that would increase the national wage to $15 an hour by 2025 has shed greater light on the debate as well. While many argue that increasing the minimum wage to 15 could r
aise as many as 900,000 individuals out of poverty, many legislators also point to the millions of jobs lost, as well as heightened deficit by $54 billion over the next decade. And compounding this, many states, as Mildred mentioned, have preemptions in place that prohibit local governments from passing ordinances that would lead to higher wages. So in the map on the right, all blue states are those that have preemption laws prohibiting local government from raising the minimum wage higher than
the state minimum wage. And there are 26 of these states. The following study will show that even in such hostile environments, coalitions can come together to raise wages and affect positive change. So the second question is, why do we start at the city level? And the city level is a promising starting point because they are home to urban advocacy groups that can force legislative change. And as evidenced by the current federal debate on wages, sometimes progressive and local coalitions at the
city level can create a more fruitful environment from which to scale up. Our last question then is, why is a solution to this important? A solution will be salient to city leaders, mainly for reasons of cost. Elevated wages can reduce turnover and provide a win-win solution for employers and employees alike. And furthermore, municipal social programs must compensate for hourly wages that do not cover living costs. But consider what might happen when hourly wages are compensated for their work.
So the study parameters are as follows. We set up four criterias in analyzing the cities that we chose. The first one is identifying the relevant stakeholders. So for this criteria, we want to understand who are involved in these movements, who are opposed to it, who started it, and who eventually became involved in it. The second criteria is a coalition formation. So we wanted to understand how the coalition started to form and what eventually led to this formation. The third criteria is strate
gy development. So we wanted to understand the development of coalition's political strategies. And then the last criteria is change achieved. So we wanted to know and understand at which level of government coalitions were ultimately able to achieve change. And we use these criterias to understand better what happened in seven cities. We selected specifically these seven cities that were located in states with barriers to achieve minimum wage to understand the different creative ways of achievi
ng change in minimum wage. So the first one is Flagstaff in Arizona. The second one is St. Louis in Missouri. The third group is Greensboro and Durham in North Carolina. And lastly, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando in Florida. And the way we piece together how the movements developed were through a couple of different sources. The first group of sources are news articles, local news, research papers, to understand in great details how these movements came to be. And then the second sources we used, we
were actually able to interview a couple of those that were involved directly in these coalitions. So now we're going to look into the case studies that we explored. So for case study number one of Flagstaff, Arizona, we interviewed Eva Putsova, who is a former Flagstaff city council member and one of the architects of the dual Flagstaff minimum wage victories. And under her leadership, the city led a legislative effort against state preemption first in 2016, which successfully raised the minimu
m wage with a local ballot initiative, Prop 414. The city again succeeded in defending the wage raise against an oppositional amendment called Proposition 18 in 2018. So in Flagstaff, we see two successful campaigns in support of higher wages, both led by Eva Putsova with support from student, immigration, and local activist groups. Some of these groups included Flagstaff Needs a Raise and Restaurants Opportunities Centers United, as well as later support from different policy groups and legal N
GOs, such as the National Employment Law Project. So aside from leveraging these advocacy groups, Eva's local strategy centered around massive voter education efforts, elaborating on the wage initiatives through social media channels targeted at older constituents, as well as door-to-door canvassing to collect thousands of voter signatures to qualify the first ballot. Again, all of this led to a successful ballot initiative in 2016, then later a more expensive defeat of Proposition 18 that would
have lowered the wage again. Ultimately, Eva's leadership allowed the city to pass one of the largest minimum wages in the country and further to gradually eliminate the sub-minimum tipped wage, rendering Flagstaff the only jurisdiction to do so since 1982. The second case we analyzed was St. Louis Misery. So this St. Louis movement started in 2013 from an incident of a fast food worker, which gained support from, this fast food worker then gained support from SEIU, or Service Employees Interna
tional Union in Jobs with Justice. The local chapters of these organizations in St. Louis helped to start build up protests and marches, and they continued to partnership with Fight for 15 from 2013, and then continuously for the next two to three years, and started to work with other different groups of workers. So that includes academia, service industry, and small business partners. This eventually led to the city passing an ordinance in 2015, only for it to be turned over with preemption in
2017. This pushed city officials and coalitions to run a pledge campaign and scale up to state level. The outcome of this movements are two types. So between the preemption that happened in 2017 and 2018, around a hundred businesses made a pledge to still raise their minimum wage despite the preemption. And then along with the movement on state level, in 2018, a state level ballot initiative called Prop B that asked for an incremental minimum wage rise, won in 2018. So for, just as a side note,
this case study mentions Tampa, Orlando, and Miami, which isn't to say that other localities in Florida also had a role in the process of passing Amendment 2, because they definitely did. So for this case, we interviewed Ida Eskamani, a public policy director at the Florida Immigrant Coalition and an Orlando-based grassroots organizer. And this case is a unique case for several reasons. One of the major ones being that the Minimum Wage Ballot Amendment, Amendment 2, passed during the pandemic, a
nd it passed despite a pretty hostile state legislature trying to impose barriers to the ballot amendment being put forth to voters. So to provide some background, in Florida, local labor coalition created a movement that included several cities. This movement built up from city labor movements, beginning with fast food worker strikes that expanded to other types of essential workers. The local movements created a statewide platform with their own local advocates and with the help of national mi
nimum wage organizations, such as SEIU and Fight for 15, some city government officials who acted as allies and state and local advocacy organizations. They also benefited from the donation of an estimated $6 million from John Morgan, a wealthy Florida attorney. It said that now due to barriers put in place to introduce amendment to the Florida legislature, which were targeted at Amendment 2, that this amendment, this amount is the base cost to run a campaign for a Florida ballot amendment. The
strategy was a long-term one. After a Miami Beach minimum wage ordinance was preempted by the state, organizers moved towards passing Amendment 2 and specifically putting their efforts into engaging with workers on the issues who led local voter education campaigns. Ida highlighted that they built a communications platform that appealed to voters' sense of what dignity of life meant, which proved to be a salient talking point for otherwise more conservative voters. The outcome of this was the pa
ssage of Amendment 2 last year, which will phase in a $15 minimum wage by 2026. So our last case study was on Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina. And both of these local governments also operate in a pretty hostile state environment where the North Carolina state government preempted the local government. So they're unable to enact legislation raising the minimum wage above the state minimum for private sector workers. And then actually part of the infamous bathroom bill, HB 2, the government
further preempted local government, the state government further preempted local governments in that they can't even require government contractors to pay a higher minimum wage than at the state level. And that remains in effect today. So what these two municipalities did is they actually raised the minimum wage for their own city workers. And while this might not be universal, this is also something that local governments can do in Missouri and Florida, which also have these preemption laws. S
o the coalitions that formed in Greensboro was Working America, which is an arm of the national level AFL-CIO. And also they worked with some single issue grassroots campaigns like the Central Carolina Justice Center. And I don't have it listed, but they also worked with the state NAACP. And then in Durham, there was a collaboration between Raise Up, which is the Southern arm of the Fight for 15 movement and UELocal 150, which is UELocal is kind of a national union organization, but this is the
local chapter of that union. And they collaborated on something called the People's Budget, which they tried to get approved by the municipal government to address a lot of different social, economic and racial justice issues. Not everything from that budget passed, but the $15 minimum wage for city workers did pass from the budget. So interestingly, I guess, there was actually not a lot of opposition to raising the minimum wage for city workers. And it kind of sailed through both Greensboro and
Durham. Greensboro passed it in 2015 on a seven to two vote and Durham passed it in 2016 on nine zero vote. And this was raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2020. So currently city employees have a $15 minimum wage there. But a couple of interesting things was that, so in Durham, there was actually this campaign that happened alongside the campaign for, or the push for a $15 minimum wage for city workers, which was to have private businesses voluntarily pay a living wage. And they actually got a
hundred businesses to sign on in the city of Durham to this voluntary campaign. And then another interesting thing about the outcome of this push was that Greensboro and Durham city counselors really decided to explain their votes in terms of moral instead of political authority. So like that this was the right thing to do. And also as they could kind of act as a symbol for other local governments or as an example, or not other local governments, sorry, other private businesses, or as an exampl
e to kind of push as a local government for private businesses to increase their wages. And kind of another interesting thing that there's not a direct correlation between what happened at the local level and the state level, but the very conservative North Carolina state government actually recently passed a $15 minimum wage for state workers. And their rationale was that it did not impact the private sector. So it was okay to raise the minimum wage for state workers, but just kind of an intere
sting thing that also came along a couple of years after Greensboro and Durham did this for their own city employees. Laura, can you go to the next slide? So this diagram is kind of talking about the process of coalition success. So we identified across our case studies, some of the main supporters and supporting actors, and there's an arrow going both ways because depending on the exact context, some of the main supporters could be supporting actors or some of the supporting actors could be mai
n supporters. So the two main supporters that we really identified were local informal networks and regional or national workers' rights organizations. So local informal networks occurred in places like Flagstaff and the regional national workers' rights organizations were involved like Jobs with Justice and Show Me $15 in St. Louis, Working America and Raise Up in North Carolina and the Florida Fight for 15 in Florida. And then they were working with these other actors that we have kind of labe
led as supporting actors. So other social and racial justice organizations like the NAACP in North Carolina, the League of Women Voters was involved in the movement in Florida. Friends of Flagstaff's Future was another organization involved in the push in Flagstaff. So they were kind of involved in that movement. Also national level organizations like the National Employment Law Project helped Flagstaff with writing the ordinance. The Service Employees International Union was involved in support
ing the state level campaign and an earlier incident before the state level campaign in St. Louis and Missouri. Private citizens were involved. Ava Putsova, who we interviewed for the Flagstaff case study was actually working in her capacity as a private citizen a lot of the time. And also John Morgan in Florida, the millionaire lawyer was a private citizen supporting this movement. And then we have elected officials who like in St. Louis, for example, those elected officials showed support for
the minimum wage increase. You have in North Carolina, Greensboro and Durham City Council passing the minimum wage increase for their own workers. And then finally unions were definitely involved in the process and one specific example was the UE Local 150 Union in North Carolina. And actually after Working America left Greensboro, the UE Local 150 kind of stepped in and continued the fight in Greensboro specifically. And those workers actually are working to have a stepwise increase past $15 mi
nimum wage and they also have a paid parental leave policy. So we kind of have this arrow going around common opponents and the common opponents are restaurant associations, grocery associations and business associations like the Chamber of Commerce. And we just wanted to mention them that kind of with these pushes, especially when it affects private business and raising the local wage outside of just city or government employees, those are kind of three common opponents to this. So the members
of these coalitions, the supporters and supporting actors, they do things like monitoring legislative change. So they looked at things like preemption in St. Louis, they're monitoring when the St. Louis government was actually going to enact preemption, which happened after the city, the locality of St. Louis raised minimum wage. Also the coalition in Flagstaff was monitoring legislative changes, like the push for the Proposition 418, pushing back against the increase. And like in North Carolina
, the increase of the extension of that minimum wage preemption with House Bill 2. So these coalitions also lobby elected officials. So in St. Louis at the local level, there was lobbying of the elected officials. In North Carolina at the local level, in Greensboro and Durham, lobbying of elected officials there as well. The coalitions provide support with funding. So like in Florida, as Alekia mentioned, you need $7 million to even get a ballot initiative on the ballot. So in that case, one of
the coalition actors, John Morgan funded that. And then organization and community engagement. So these coalitions were really important with voter outreach when there was a ballot initiative, providing a platform for like community forums and like for kind of pushing for further gains past the $15 minimum wage, like I just mentioned in Greensboro, North Carolina. In St. Louis and Missouri, to get something on a ballot, you needed 200,000 signatures. So they were involved in that. And so yeah, t
hose things like organization, community engagement, and all of that push is to convince these main decision makers to increase the minimum wage. So you have elected officials, which can be either state or local level, but that is one route to increase the minimum wage is to have your elected officials pass that. If there's no preemption at the local level or at the state level, if the whole state increases its minimum wage. And then voters with a ballot initiative. So as we saw in Missouri, Flo
rida, and Flagstaff, the ballot measure is what passed and raised the minimum wage for workers there. You can go to the next slide. So to conclude, and based on the case studies that we've compiled and our understanding of coalition together, we've put together a potential framework that local governments and labor coalitions can use to begin to envision a long-term minimum wage strategy. So the first question at the local level that should be posed is whether or not a local ordinance is possibl
e. And if local ordinances are possible, progressive cities could pass ordinances within their city councils, or where that doesn't seem likely, local labor coalitions could mobilize voters to decide on propositions. If local ordinances do not seem possible, but city coalitions have the capability to connect with other coalitions and to raise the issue to the state level, then they can work on bringing the issue to voters with ballot initiatives. In a best case scenario, state governments would
face enough political pressure and motivation to change minimum wage laws within themselves. But in a scenario where statewide efforts might seem to have an unlikely impact, cities can set a precedent for other businesses to increase minimum wages by raising minimum wages for their own employees. There also should be some parallel actions that labor coalitions take. So there should be an effort to create local supporting business coalitions to ensure that there is private sector support. There s
hould also be a giant effort to align minimum wage movements with social justice issues because of how deeply they're related to each other. Finally, minimum wage movements need to be proactive about future barriers. As we talked about in the case with Florida, it's only going to get more expensive to bring these cases to voters. And since that seems to be one of the most successful strategies in terms of actually passing minimum wage at the state or at the local level, organizers need to be pro
active about funding and also be proactive about defending any barriers that might be imposed on the future. So how does this relate to the national minimum wage policies that were discussed at the beginning of this presentation? Well, as we've mentioned, one of the most successful strategies is to leave it to the voters. And if voters can't scale up their issues to the federal level, then the lesson from this study and the studies that this was based on should make the case for why local and st
ate progressive politics should matter just as much, and if not more when it comes to minimum wage issues. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was excellent and raised a lot of great points. Do we have Carlos? Yes, can you all see my screen? Okay. Yes. Perfect, thank you. Okay, so let me start off this presentation. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present our work today. So our team will be talking about basically, we are looking at examples of how progressive cities
mobilize in this case is how they managed to propose basically if law enactment in their cities. We are also looking at their strategies, different approaches, also their main motivations. For this study, we conducted a comparative case study of several cities, which are the finer cities such as San Francisco and Seattle and the late implementers such as Pittsburgh and Duluth. A detailed observation and how those cities implement the basically will be our main discussion for this study. So as yo
u can see here, our big question is what are the key factors that motivate and enable a city to pass and implement the paid sick leave ordinance? We are examining how did the main actors come together to push this agenda forward. And of course, this kind of movements must have various challenges with different kinds of difficulties depends on the cities and what were the approaches they used to tackle those challenges. Also what to anticipate, what are the lesson learned for other cities that wa
nt to pursue similar progressive initiatives? Next slide, please. So what is paid sick leave? Paid sick leave is a law or policy that allows employees to take time off when they or their family members get sick without losing pay or risking termination. So it is absolutely beneficial for workers. And what are the other important factors that made paid sick leave important for this study? So even though it is beneficial, paid sick leave is not a nationwide policy. As you can see on this map, the
orange colored states are the states with paid sick leave law. Across the US, only 12 states and District of Columbia mandate paid sick leave as a statewide policy. Actually, there should be Colorado on the map, but we haven't got the chance to update it since it just recently, the Colorado had just made the paid sick leave law effective this January. Additionally, over 40 million American workers do not receive paid sick leave from their employers. Most of these workers are in service industrie
s, construction workers, and in small businesses who also considerably have lower income. Also workers with higher income tends to get more sick leave, whereas workers with lower earnings, they have less or no sick leave at all. Consequently, the lack of paid sick leave disproportionately burdens minorities and low wage workers. For example, when this employees or a family members become sick, they cannot afford to stay at home to rest or take care of that family members who got sick because the
y would lose the much needed income. Also, one of the most recent factors will be the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, people would highly need the benefit of paid sick leave in a hard time like this. As a matter of fact, New York and New Jersey have extended their paid sick leave since March, 2020 as a response to the pandemic. Next Carlos will discuss our findings on our case studies. Thanks Taya. So how do cities promote paid sick leave? Well, in this comparative case study, we reviewed legal do
cuments, reports, policy briefs and news articles to rebuild the process that allowed these cities to pass paid sick leave laws. We chose San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington because they were among the first cities that approved these initiatives. San Francisco was the first city in implementing a paid sick leave ordinance in the United States in 2006 and Seattle the third one in 2012. We also chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Duluth, Minnesota who implemented it more recently. Pi
ttsburgh approved it in 2015 although it took effect until 2020 because of the state court delayed the enactment of the act. And Duluth approved it in 2018 but the audience took effect two years later giving businesses enough time to adjust to the new requirements. In terms of passing mechanisms, San Francisco was the only city in our study where a public ballot was used to pass the ordinance. Whereas in the other three cities, it was the city council who approved the law. Furthermore, we found
that the ordinances in the four cities differentiated the requirements and benefits according to the business size and in some cases, the type of employee. So to illustrate in Pittsburgh, the ordinance requires one hour of paid sick time for every 35 hours worked. However, businesses with less than 15 employees must warranty a maximum of 24 hours per year per employee and businesses of 15 or more workers should give a maximum paid leave of 40 hours per year. Seattle included an exemption of two
years for new businesses and also for businesses with less than five employees. Also, we found that the participation of the coalition of different stakeholders and interest groups was a constant characteristic among these four cities. In some cases in which the local government and some or some members of the council publicly supported the initiative, the city council and even the city mayor were among the key actors. But in general, the involvement of a strong coalition was crucial of the appr
oval of these initiatives in our four cities. But who were part of those coalitions? Well, we found that think tanks, labor groups, advocacy groups and communities tend to be part of those coalitions. We also identified particular characteristics in each city that allowed us to understand the multiple variations that processes like these ones can take. In San Francisco, it was a bottom-up initiative that was not supported by the government. In Seattle, we observed an active coordination between
the city council and the coalition. And in both cases, San Francisco and Seattle, the states followed cities and approved basic leave afterwards. Pittsburgh's experience was particular because the ordinance was challenged in court by a coalition of business owners and the court delayed its implementation. It was until July 2019 that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the act arguing that the city could legislate in forbearance of disease control and prevention. And in Duluth, the local govern
ment itself delayed the initiative, which contrasts with the experiences in the other three cities. But what do the four cities in our study have in common? So in this case of studies, we see local governments leading progressive efforts and even influencing other jurisdictions such as other cities or even states. We also identified that coalitions played a crucial role to gain political power and visibility for these initiatives. And also the negotiation process among the different stakeholders
led governments and supporters to adjust the laws to make them correspond to businesses' reality and limitation. And now Annie will talk about benefits and challenges of basic leave. Thank you, Carlos. So why should cities care about basic leave? So our study across these four cities shows that implementing basic leave could gain multiple benefits in public health aspect, productivity, and city attractiveness. So first for the government itself, it could lower the transmission of diseases and i
mprove public health. So a study in Washington State found that the access to basic leave could reduce the share of employees who go to work when they are sick about 8%. And more recently, the CDC also include basic leave as an effective measure to control the spreading of COVID-19. Also the enactment of this ordinance could increase the support. So we found that after two years it was being implemented in Seattle, 70% of employers supported. So other benefit is that the paid leave increases the
morale of workers because it also improved their job security. Workers should not worry about losing their jobs for not able go to work due to their sickness. So this can boost the motivation of the workers and they can be more productive, which in turn benefits the employers. Another point that we found that is there's no increase in costs burdened by the private sector. Because for example, in Seattle and San Francisco, we learned that less than 20% of businesses reported negative impacts on
their profits. So it is because worker do not use all the available paid sick leave since they see the benefit similarly like insurance where they only use when needed. Additionally, cities with good working condition become more attractive for employees. So in San Francisco, the food service jobs, for instance, grew more rapidly than in neighboring countries two years after introducing this paid sick leave. The fact that employees can stay at home when they are sick means the exposure of cowork
ers to infection decreases too. And the workers also have faster recovery times and they're also more productive due to reduced turnover and absenteeism. And lastly, like research institutions and non-government organization that advocate for this ordinance would also benefit because their active roles will increase the public exposure on them. So next, so how we can contribute? So the study shed a light on some form of opportunities where each key actor may contribute. So for example, local gov
ernment might take the role to actively initiate the ordinance such as in Dood and Pittsburgh, they initiate the process directly by the city council. The private sector meanwhile, as one of the strongest opponents of this ordinance we found across the case study, may instead take the role to lead the implementation. So in Pittsburgh, several business owners agreed to implement the ordinance before it took into effect to test the feasibility of this ordinance. Workers may also take roles in syst
ematically initiating public movement to echo their interests and perspectives so they can organize a coalition or movement in Seattle, the Coalition for a Healthy Workforce, they mobilized over 50 groups from different stakeholders to pass the ordinance. And the non-government organization and civil society, they could also strengthen the initiative by providing studies like that present the benefit, the cost, the empirical evidence and data to demonstrate the economy and social impacts in the
short and long run. So the coalition in Seattle released a study, for example, on the positive impacts of the ordinance to support the advocacy efforts. So next, so what are the obstacles? So on the other hand, we also note that a considerable amount of challenges faces by different stakeholders. So for example, government, they have the lack of political influence and authority could become a real challenge. So in Seattle, therefore the initial support from a councilman was very crucial to intr
oduce the initiative to the city council. The other challenge is the pushback from different city partners, such as the business owner who were in Pittsburgh, they challenged the ordinance in court, which in the end delayed the enactment process. The challenge burdened by the private sector is definitely the extra costs that they perceive initially can hinder their profit and their business. So, however, as what we mentioned earlier in Seattle, some study shows that the extra cost is not signifi
cant. The other thing that comes from the private sector is the benefit, for example, particularly for small businesses where they already have a very small margin. The challenges faced by the workers and the public widely is the limited resources and political network. So political and money influence in San Francisco, for example, from the business community could hinder the efforts of the worker coalition in fighting the ordinance. Other than limited resources and political network is also li
mited skill or experience to organize movement. And lastly, the challenge faced by the nonprofit organization or as an institution is the lack of financial resources and limited political network. So in San Francisco, the board of supervisor, because they have a very strong, so the business owner have a strong political and financial influence. So it could really become the obstacle of the San Francisco to push the advocacy. So how to overcome these challenges? So next Ella will share more about
the proposed strategy. Yeah, thanks Ani. So from our case studies analysis, we identify four main strategies to promote paid sick leave and address some of the challenges that Ani mentioned. The first one is forming a coalition. The coalition may consist of unions, workers, advocacy groups, small businesses, think tanks, government officials, as well as community and faith organizations. And this is extremely helpful to face barriers such as lack of political influences, lack of resources, lack
of organizing skills that citizens or the public face. For instance, in San Francisco, a labor coalition was formed and it was led by an advocacy group, Young Workers United and the coalition composed of other advocacy groups and workers such as Chinese Progressive Association, Fair and Voices, Low Income and Immigrant Workers among others. And they really helped mobilize resources and created political pressure on the board of supervisor to put the ordinance on the ballot. Next slide, please.
Next is building political power, feasibility and accountability through identifying potential allies, conducting research and utilizing campaign strategies. These are important strategy to address the challenge of building political influence from different groups of interest. So in Seattle, the coalition allied with the council member to introduce the proposal to the city council. And the picture here shows council members speaking at the basic leave press events in which the coalition present
ed a new proposal for the basic leave ordinance. Another example in San Francisco, the Young Workers United survey 300 service sector workers to identify agenda priorities and they serves as a basis of proof for advocacy to the city. The coalition also utilize phone banking and door-to-door campaign to increase feasibility. Next slide, please. The third one is coordinating effort within and outside the government through mobilizing social networks, public hearings and press conferences. In Pitts
burgh, the coalition worked together with the National Partnership for Women and Families to create petitions and coalition to provide data and reach out to the city officials. In Seattle, council members and the coalition organized press conferences and public hearings according to the city council's agendas to put the proposal in the spotlight, which increases the council's probabilities to discuss the project. Next slide, please. And lastly, as mentioned before, across case studies, not surpr
isingly, we find that main pushbacks of the paid sick leave proposal come from the business community, but the cities were able to accommodate their interests because they engage with critical stakeholders in early stages, which provide enough time for proposal adjustments and negotiation. For example, in Duluth, the council gave ample time for small businesses to evaluate amendments and help them navigate the new rules. We also see this in Seattle, where the small business owners' early involve
ment helped the coalition reduce the requirements for small businesses to make the proposal palatable for them and this increase the support for the paid sick leave proposal. So next, Athea will discuss the takeaways of our study. Yeah, so to conclude our study, we drew three takeaway points. The first one is cities can lead. We have seen examples of how cities could take the initiative on their own and even influence other cities to take similar actions. In some cases, like in Pittsburgh, they
also managed to upscale the scope of the law from local level to the state level. The second is how substantial paid sick leave is for public health benefits. The pandemic has especially given the highlight of the paid sick leave importance. And the last one is no one size fits all approach. As discussed before, even though the case cities have their similarities, they have different ways and strategies to approach the issue. One might have the source of multicultural public communities, like in
San Francisco. The other might move forward because of the capacity of the city council. So there are unlimited ways to proceed with the initiative and local contacts will always matter. And we also suggest that these three takeaways could characterize how progressive cities could be and in which direction they could move forward to. Yeah, so this is our last slide. Thank you for listening and we'd be happy to answer if there's any questions. Great. Thank you very much, everybody. Questions can
be posed in the chat or, and we can go from there, raise hands. Quinn. Hi, yeah. Thank you for that great presentation. I was curious with respect to the minimum wage policies, perhaps also with respect to the paid sick leave policies, if there's any evidence that just by having cities and states increase the minimum wage and also organizing coalitions of businesses to voluntarily sign on, if there's any pressure that that can exert enough of a force on the overall labor market that it substant
ially raises wages with other businesses more broadly. That's a good question. I don't know of any specific evidence for that. I know that a couple, like I believe for the Dussard and Schrock in their book, they really talked about the importance of also like symbolism and kind of even taking that at the local level and trying to scale it up to the state level. But I don't, I personally don't know of any specific evidence about that. Yeah, just to add on, I feel like the examples we see have bee
n from local to state, it's always been somewhat indirectly and it's more of spreading that knowledge of why it's important. So for example, in the St. Louis case, they drove small businesses to pledge and by the time you need signatures for the Prop B, they got way more signatures than they needed to. So we see like some indirect ties to it, but we haven't really seen exact correlations. Any other questions? Quinn, can I respond? You were asking about the effect on wages or the effect on change
s in state policy. I was asking about the effect on overall wages, yeah. But I guess, yeah, the state policy is a powerful mechanism as well, which I didn't really fully register, so. So Mark Dussard and Greg Schrock have a new book coming out looking at the way in which these initiatives have scaled up around the country to affect policy change. With respect to wages, if you have enough employers in a jurisdiction offering higher wages, that will have an effect on the other employers because th
ey can't get labor. So for example, we have a company town here and Cornell employs most of the people. So whatever wages and conditions Cornell sets actually helps to put a floor for other employers. It can have a pull effect, or if it sets its wages too low, it can have a depressing effect. And so historically, when we've looked at, even when municipalities have said, we're gonna do a living wage ordinance and we're not gonna have any contracts with local nonprofits that don't pay a living wag
e, that forces then the living wage up in those nonprofits and people who are going for those kinds of jobs are going to now expect that level of pay in other jobs in the community. So it does have an effect at the community levels, particularly studying it. I know historically when Uri Mansouri was here as a faculty member, he was working with the living wage coalition here in Tompkins County to actually run IO models showing that effect. If you have enough employers playing, then that sends a
signal to the labor market and then job seekers are going to be demanding that as the floor on the wages they would consider accepting. Thank you. Alvino, did you have a question specific to that? Yes, I do have a question specific to that. And it may just be sort of the answer and the same answer again, but I was wondering what anybody's thoughts were on the executive order that Joe Biden signed to get the office of budget and management a $15 minimum wage for all federal contractors as well as
federal employees. And what effect do you think that will have on our entire nation? And given that the, hopefully we have an infrastructure week, but given that the infrastructure bill will come up as something people are going to be fighting for over the next couple of weeks, do you think it'll have an impact on the companies that get federal contracts to develop infrastructure? One of the students want to speak to that or I will go ahead Brian. I mean, I certainly hope so. I mean, I think th
at that's kind of a little bit of what Greensboro and Durham were trying to do. Although they couldn't do government contractors, but their own city employees, because then they have like, well, one has a tangible effect on those employees, but also while they mostly described it as like a moral thing, there was another argument that now they would have the, like a competitive economic, either they would get the best people in and things like that. But yeah, I certainly hope so. Cause I think th
at they really were trying to, by doing that, so that would be at the federal level, you would be raising it for the federal government and by doing that, so that would be at the federal level, you would be raising it for your own employees and contractors. Then hopefully you would have private businesses see that and buy in to some degree. And then you have the effect on those workers as well. So if I could add this, this strategy has been used by cities for several decades, this living wage mo
vement and pushing local governments to require their contractors to pay a living wage. So now we finally have the federal government saying, oh, something cities have been doing for decades, maybe we could do, since there's something called the shadow of government, there's more than seven jobs funded by the federal government, seven times more jobs funded by the federal government than direct federal employees cause there's so much contracting in the federal government. So to set this kind of
a standard would have a huge impact on the employers that are paying less than $15. My concern is that they're not going far enough because states, many states have prevailing wage laws, which isn't a living wage, it's a prevailing wage in a sector. And for infrastructure, those jobs are better paid than $15 an hour. $15 hour is setting the floor too low. And I would rather see them follow what a lot of states have done, which is set prevailing wage legislation. So you can't contract out for les
s than what your department labor determines to be a prevailing wage for that type of work in your region. It's unfortunate that the Biden administration isn't taking a clue again from policies that have been in place at the state level for decades to set that for the federal government in their infrastructure bill. Thank you. Thank you for your answers. So Professor Forrester asks the students, as you were doing your interviews of organizers and others, did you encounter any surprises in terms
of their answers or the information you gained? I can just start this off. I can just start this off. I think the way when we talked to Ida for Florida, and then when we talked to Eva for Arizona, I think their approaches were slightly different. I think the Florida one ended up being a little bit more organized while the Arizona one was very grassroots. So I think it was interesting just how the level of creativity needed to push for these type of policy in different states was interesting. I k
ind of lost my train of thoughts, but if anybody else wanted to add to that. Yeah, this is like a slightly different than what Laura said, but my biggest surprises I think came from Ida from Florida. And the first one was just the $7 million figure of that's how much money it takes to get something on the ballot in Florida. Because when we were talking to her, it was like, she was like, it's really a lot of corporations are trying to push for those laws and make it harder and harder for people t
o get something on the ballot. And I thought she had like a really interesting perspective on the $15 minimum wage, because we were asking her like things like, how do you convince people to vote for it and stuff? And she was like, well, I don't think it's that hard of an argument because you're basically telling people, oh, we wanna pay you more money. So that was just like an interesting perspective that I found. Any other thoughts from the students on that? I just remember, no, I'll just add
that when we talked to Ida, she actually walked us through the back and forth between the supporters and the opposed and how they had to foresee what the opposers would argue. And then they had to prepare something for that and it kept going back and forth. And so I think the level of sophistication you need to understand like how to push it, what political pushback you're going to get, that was very interesting. And that was, I mean, we know in theory, but to hear it like how much work and unde
rstanding and knowledge you need to know about political kind of explains why work and understanding how local movements happen is so important because not every places might have this knowledge. Not every city might have this access to these political knowledge or understanding of how to do it. So that was interesting. Great. So I have a question. All the presentations stress the importance of coalitions, but then you focused on a specific issue. So when you talk to these coalitions, you talk t
o these people, how do they balance all the competing interests they have within their own organizations and then focus in on these things in order to achieve a goal? How does an organization decide, oh, we're going to put time and energy into this versus all of the other things that some of these organizations like NAACP are involved in? What compelled them to say, now is the time we're going to invest our time and money and effort into getting this to happen? I could answer that. I guess from
our basic leave team, we don't necessarily interview coalitions. We just research like news reports, all that. But I see from San Francisco, for instance, that they survey workplace concerns of like 300 surface sector workers in the early months of 2006. And during this time, they really spent a lot of time talking to workers such as janitors, waiters, all those things in the surface sector to understand the problem that they face daily. And from that, they found that the lack of basic leave to
be the top concern. And they took the survey results to one of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And that leads to public hearing and it opened doors to the creation of the ordinance. Any other thoughts? I might add a little on that. So also I'm from the basic leave team in one of our case cities in Pittsburgh, for example. So there has been a major shift of business sector. So like in the past decade, like the business sector have been moving towards the education and health sectors reall
y a lot. And that just makes the other sectors more marginalized. So that brings the awareness of like people, like for example, for the health access, health benefits, it's less affordable for this low wage worker. So they have these shared concerns and that's how they decided to move forward to this initiative. Oh, Olivia, were you gonna say something? Yeah, I guess also to that question, specifically for the minimum wage team, one of the reasons why so many coalitions were able to coalesce an
d kind of get involved is because of the lack of institutional engagement or partnership, especially in Flagstaff. Because we found, and from talking to Ava, we found that when there's less kind of constraints, progressive coalitions can kind of push their own narrative and shape the language in the way that they want and make it kind of molded into something that's beneficial for all. So beneficial for restaurant groups, immigration activists, and all those sorts of things. So it was a bit more
flexible in that situation. Brian, did you wanna add something? Yeah, I think I was just gonna also say, I think in Flagstaff, like Ava also, I wanna say ran on a $15 minimum wage platform. And like in that specific case, it was really like she pushed a lot of the coalition building, if I remember correctly from our interview. And then in the Durham case, it was a little bit more of like a wide ranging. They really tried to push for, they called it the people's budget. And there was like a wide
range of issues that they were pushing for in the budget. And the minimum wage was just one of those issues there. So that one, so not everything passed from the budget, but it was one of the things that did. Thank you. I think it's just very interesting, particularly again, as planners to think if we're going to help support something to happen, to understand a bit about the dynamics that you laid out about how coalitions form and act and how fluid the situation is in every different locality.
I think that's really useful information and really good insights, how to have that perspective, how to know where to intervene, how to know who to call on, who's going to help you build and provide the strengths you need to get something done. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? I think with the minimum wage team, it might be nice for y'all to emphasize the role of coalitions that reach to the millionaire in Florida that helped finance the initiative or reach to the faith-based communi
ty in North Carolina. So partners that might not be your usual partners. When I'm thinking of a economic development planner, you work with your industrial development authority and they just give away tax breaks. You work with your chamber of commerce and they reflect the interest of small business. Neither one of those groups are progressive and they're not either one of them focused on the needs of labor. You don't tend to see planners focus on working with unions. So sort of amplifying Jeff'
s question, if you're gonna be a progressive economic development planner and the two most obvious partners are definitely not progressive actors. Though in some communities like this one, the chamber has actually been progressive historically. The industrial development agency has not. Thinking about these unusual partners for an economic development planner, the faith community, the union community, which didn't figure so highly. I remember I was asking you guys, how come y'all aren't talking
more about unions in your first drafts of these reports because they weren't the primary actor. So can you talk a little bit about the partners that an economic development planner would work with on these kinds of coalitions if you really wanted to put social justice at the core of economic development planning and social justice is not at the core of economic development planning. Economic development at its core is about increasing the tax base by giving it away to certain corporations, which
is a really weird game. But if you wanted to put it at the core, you could focus on labor, which is what these efforts have done. Think about what that might mean for you as a planner building upon these eight or 10 or 12 case studies that you've looked at in your work, whether it was minimum wage or paid sick leave. Does anyone wanna reflect on that for a minute? Cause you're all gonna be professional planners here in another few months or a year. Yeah. I think one thing for me that kind of, I
don't know if I have specific groups in mind, but the expansion of this coalition into other social justice areas, like working with the NAACP or other grassroots organizations focused on justice issues that might not necessarily be labor is something that I think to keep in mind, especially when moving out of like a Seattle or Chicago or something. And that was something that came up, I think in one of Dusard's works actually of like moving into the, he calls it the ordinary city of like expan
ding beyond that. So I think for me, it kind of just impressed a little bit upon that there are other actors that are really, it's like looking beyond kind of who you would maybe think of as like your union or your branch of the AFL-CIO or fight for 15 and like what other social justice organizations are in the area that would support this and could form your coalition. Good. Alvino. Well, it's in the same sort of thread that Mildred just asked. I was just wondering what were some of the, I gues
s, what are some, in the cases that you guys have looked at and the things you all studied, what are some challenges that come up when working with some of these like faith-based groups or with unions? Because each kind of has their own set or their own agenda that may differ from what you're looking for. So I'm wondering like how do you help or how do you like negotiate that and bring everybody to the table for a specific goal? Particularly faith groups, faith-based groups. It's tough when ever
ybody talks at the same time. Yeah. This work was completed a few months ago. And so I imagine it's not as fresh in your mind at all, but I know the faith-based groups especially came up in the North Carolina case. Maybe you were just finding that they were there, not necessarily getting into the details of how. Does the minimum wage team wanna speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I don't have a great answer for you on that for the North Carolina one other than they were involved and like certain,
like there were certain other things just like holding meetings at certain, like where to even meet and stuff like that. Just like holding meetings at certain, like where to even hold a meeting sometimes was like, I'm not sure if they're a faith-based group, but like the Central Carolina Justice Center was like where they held meetings. Yeah, I unfortunately don't have, because they were at least in the North Carolina case, they were there, but they were kind of supporting actors and the amount
of pushback that actually, like there was not much pushback. So in terms of the coalition, the coalition was kind of formed, but there wasn't a ton about like how they really got people involved and what those groups more specifically did to push through. Also for our study, we didn't mention the organizations or coalitions that declined to be involved because in Flagstaff, I know like there were many cases where they reached out to people who just didn't want to engage. And we didn't put that i
n our presentation, but for example, so the United Way, which has kind of a lot of broad sweeping public values, they wanted to stay away from the minimum wage conversation. And so their help wasn't able to be used. And also the Flagstaff, I think Independent Business Alliance, which not that surprising, but also could have played an instrumental role and they're not really a coalition, but they also declined to have a voice in the movement. So it's not everyone was on board, obviously. Which is
a great, you know, it's a great thing to think about. And the other thing I suspect is that there, you know, communities will have alliances between not just organizations, but critically between individuals. Who are the activists and may, you know, on an individual basis, belong to two or three groups and know other people and help form organizations. So it's interesting, you touched on this briefly, but it's also interesting to think about how much of these coalitions existed in some form bef
ore this issue came up and how much had to be organized specifically around this particular fight. And, you know, because it's harder to form a coalition that doesn't exist than it is to work with one that's already in place. And I know, and I'm sure any of you know, if you've done political work in the past, that once you're in the milieu, you're getting calls and invitations and issues and everything every day in your mailbox or inbox. And so that's part of being progressive within a progressi
ve coalition and then more broadly within a progressive city. That's, Jeff, that's a good question to ask the groups. How many of these coalitions were already longstanding? My impression from the way the stories were told were that these were organized on, at these times on these issues. That might be wrong. Could you all speak to that quickly? For the case of St. Louis, I actually tried to look at the historical background of the improvements of minimum wage. And before the 2015 city ordinance
, before that, I think it was 2008 or 2004. And I think it was, you know, there would be a movement and then once the city passed something, it maybe didn't really completely disappear, but it dissipated. And then in 2003, that incident happened. And then that kind of, you know, like instigated a whole, like a whole new fire for the movement. So that's what I found out for St. Louis. Well, let me just follow on. I mean, the thread here started from Jeff asking about coalitions. I mean, I was ask
ing what you learned if there were major surprises from talking to the organizers. And then Jeff said, well, these are all instances of coalitions. How did they keep together? And aren't they so disparate? And, you know, how's that work? And then Mildred upped the ante and said, well, you all in another year or so, you're gonna be in a situation of potentially having to talk to this fascinating range of people. And so there's a sort of political slash cultural slash literacy problem of the capac
ity of you all at work to speak not exactly in a range of voices, but certainly with a range of sensitivity to organizations with different background, different biases, different ideological frames. So, you know, a chamber of commerce is one thing and young people's organizations, another. And so there's this interesting, almost multilingual, not literally, but politically multilingual capacity that planners need to develop to talk to this range of people who might then be parts of important co
alitions. But the whole idea of coalition is that they have different lead values, different priorities, but they're willing to come together at certain times in certain ways. But so Mildred's question about what would this be like for you is a really important question not to lose. So that's not a question so much as saying there's a thread here about this significance of coalitions that seems real important. Thank you. Alvino? Sorry that I keep asking so many questions, but this is just an int
eresting subject to me. I think this will be my last question. The question is, do you see different, I know every community is different, but do you see, you know, the word template is coming into mind or a template of a type of coalition depending on what community you're in and depending on where you are at on the map. Like if you are in the South, I know in Georgia and Marietta, I imagine you would partner with the NAACP and not with a union just because of the state. But do you see differen
t sort of, not just different coalitions, but do you see like, okay, if you're in the South, you should expect, or these are the types of people you should reach out to or groups you should reach out to if you are trying to get something running in, you know, whatever city you are in? I feel like there are two patterns at least that I see, which is the first one is that in every single state, no matter whether they are progressive or they're hostile towards these progressive movements, there is
always a national or regional organizations or coalitions that have a local chapter. And so that kind of serves as a tool, but then again, we need to highlight that at least the cities that we were looking at, we're still a little bit of a bigger cities. So that might not apply for smaller towns. And then the second thing I think in our minimum wage, at least there are two different groups, two different patterns, which is there are a few cities that have a lot of support from their aldermen and
mayors. And then there are ones that really had to start from zero. So I think, for example, in the case of Florida, Eva was talking about how she really started from grassroots, which means that includes doing Facebook group for certain types of population where they prefer to hang around on Facebook and then knocking on doors to people who really appreciates door-to-door and face-to-face interactions. But then in the case of cities where the mayors and aldermen are very supportive, cities set
ting examples by having their minimum wage, by having their minimum wage for their city workers was kind of more the pattern to go. So for example, I think I didn't mention it, but in St. Louis, because that wasn't really the focus of their campaign, but their own city workers employee was already pretty high for their own city. Good. Well, I'm gonna thank everybody for a really excellent presentation. Those slides were terrific. And again, to reiterate, just to check in with Mildred, all of tho
se materials, those articles and information are available. They're published, they're on your website, among other locations, so we can follow up. And we all know where you are, so we can follow up with specific questions. So thank you very much for the presentation today. And we'll see you all next week with Andre Perry from the Brookings Institution who will be the speaker. Mildred, did you wanna say something? Oh, I just wanted to tell the group that Yanet Lathrop from the National Employmen
t Law Project was here and she had to leave before the paid sick leave team, but she asked for a recording and she was very appreciative of your work. She was a early key informant that helped get y'all started and I wanted to let you know that she was here. One of the advantages of online is that people can come from a considerable distance even if they only can squeeze in part of the time. So thanks again for your efforts on this. Great. All right, take care everybody and see you next week. Th
ank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.
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