Ann Arbor Tables Living Wage Changes

Consideration of several amendments to Ann Arbor’s living wage ordinance has now been tabled by the Ann Arbor city council. The action to table was taken at the council’s Feb. 19, 2013 meeting. If there’s not a motion to take up the issue again within six months, the changes would demise.

Previously, the council had postponed the ordinance amendments at its Nov. 19, 2012 meeting. The main proposed changes to the local law – which sets a minimum wage of $12.17/hour for those employers providing health insurance and $13.57/hour for those not providing health insurance – would exempt nonprofits that receive funding from the city for human services work. The changes would mean that such nonprofits would not need to meet the minimum wage requirements.

Following the council’s Nov. 19 postponement, consideration of the changes had been referred to the city’s Housing and Human Services Advisory Board (HHSAB) for more study. [For coverage of the HHSAB's Dec. 18, 2012 meeting of HHSAB see: "Human Services Group Ponders Living Wage"] The HHSAB is taking a bit longer with its recommendations in part because those recommendations will be informed by work done by a class of University of Michigan students. The class is being taught in the winter 2013 term by Ian Robinson, a lecturer in the department of sociology. Robinson attended the Dec. 18 meeting of the HHSAB, and sketched out the range of work he thought his students might be able to do to assist the board.

At the council’s Feb. 19 meeting, Jane Lumm (Ward 2) – a city council liaison to the HHSAB – indicated that the board was moving in a direction she did not feel she could ultimately support. That direction included interest in changes that would require the city to pay a living wage and to rescind an exemption for those events funded by the city’s community events fund (like the Ann Arbor Summer Festival). She ventured that the other council liaison to HHSAB, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), might be more inclined to bring such proposed amendments forward, but Lumm wouldn’t be the one to do that.

The current law applies to organizations that have contracts with the city for more than $10,000 in a given calendar year, and that employ five or more people (10 or more for nonprofits). The current law also provides an exemption for organizations funded from the city’s community events budget – an exemption put in place to accommodate the Ann Arbor Summer Festival’s practice of paying its temporary employees less than the living wage and the city’s desire to fund the festival at a higher level.

Among the other contemplated amendments to the living wage ordinance was an increase from $10,000 to $25,000 for the amount of a contract triggering the application of the ordinance. The timeframe would also change from a calendar year to one fiscal year. Also included in the proposed amendments was one that would allow the city administrator to grant a waiver from compliance with the ordinance, instead of requiring the approval of the city council.

At its meeting on Nov. 8, 2012, the council had granted such a waiver to the nonprofit Community Action Network, which receives funding from the city to do human services work.

At the Feb. 19, 2013 meeting, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated that he was still interested in seeing the living wage ordinance amended, to give the city administrator the responsibility of granting waivers.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]