Just four months after they were cleared to begin gathering signatures, organizers for the campaign to raise Alaska’s minimum wage wheeled a cart of signature petition booklets containing more than 41,000 signatures into the Division of Election offices.
The number far surpasses the Alaska Constitution’s requirement to get an initiative onto the 2024 ballot, which is signatures equalling 10% of the previous election’s turnout — about 26,000 signatures in this case — representing at least 30 of the state’s 40 house districts. It would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, require paid sick leave for most employees and protect workers from mandatory political or religious meetings unrelated to their job.
At a news conference ahead of the turn-in, Alaska AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall credited the fast turnaround to the work of a combination of volunteer and paid signature gatherers, which she said are critical to ensuring the signatures count, but said that the content of the measure made the work easier.
“The thing that’s important to remember: This isn’t hard,” she said. “When you stand in front of REI, or you go to your friends and say, ‘Would you like to raise Alaska’s minimum wage?’ people grab the book out of your hand and they are happy to sign. We’re not exactly selling the people something they don’t want to sign.”
As long as the petitions turned in meet the state requirements, this will be the third time since 2000 that a minimum wage initiative has been headed to voters. The 2014 initiative raised the state’s minimum wage to $10 per hour and linked it to inflation, passing with voters by nearly 70%. At the news conference, Ed Flanagan, a longtime labor organizer and prime sponsor of the initiatives, conceded that the last effort should have aimed higher and predicted the $15 figure would pass with broad support.
“Since 2014, the paradigm has shifted. The minimum wage is not supposed to be a starvation wage,” he said. “It’s supposed to be, hopefully, close to a living wage. … Over 32,000 Alaskan workers and households with 22,000 children will get a raise by 2027, when this goes to $15 an hour.”
The minimum wage would be stepped, raising the minimum wage to $13 per hour on July 1, 2025, and raising by a dollar per year until it reaches $15 per hour. It would be linked to inflation after that.
The measure would require employers to provide workers with a minimum of one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, with the total an employee can bank depending on the business size. That provision is critical, said Rebecca Reiss, an in-home caregiver who spoke at the meeting about how the lack of paid sick leave in her job forced her out of her home after a surgery.
“No one, neither caregivers nor anyone else for that matter, should work full-time and be unable to take care of their basic needs. However, I’m here to tell you that this is a very real thing. There is something wrong with that concept,” she said, recounting bouncing between apartments and family after surgery. “I’m left with the question for those that don’t have family or a support system: What happens to them?”
The final provision of the initiative would protect workers from retalition by employers that put on mandatory political or religious meetings. Organizers said the issue is gaining concern nationally, with Teamsters political coordinator Pat Fitzgerald saying that such meetings can be “pretty bad” and can be loaded with political, religious or anit-union messaging. Some, he said, hold such meetings daily.
The Division of Elections has 60 days to review the signatures to ensure they meet the standard under state law. If approved, it would appear either on the state’s primary or general election ballot, depending on the timing of the legislative session.
The legislature can preempt a voter initiative by passing a substantially similar law, which is precisely what happened after organizers got the minimum wage on the 2002 ballot. Republican legislators followed up the year after, however, by repealing much of the measure. A similar tactic was attempted in 2014 by the Republican House Majority, but it never emerged from the Legislature after Flanagan and others cried foul.
Flanagan and Hall both said they were confident that enough key legislators are wise to the tactics and that the matter will ultimately be left to voters.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.