Residents Speak Out For Living Wages

Members of the public protested and spoke out against Republican proposals to eliminate living wage and Freedom of Information ordinances.

A number of residents in the new organization, Building Economic Equality – New Britain (BEE-NB), spoke in favor of the value of city ordinances (local laws) that promote that higher wages and local hiring at companies providing contracted services for the city.

Residents also spoke in favor of keeping a city Freedom of Information ordinance to ensure public access to public documents and meetings.

The residents spoke in the public participation part of the December 8, 2021 City Council meeting.

Republican Mayor Erin Stewart’s new Republican-dominated City Council has started the new term of office with a raft ordinance proposals, including several politically conservative plans to repeal progressive policies from the city ordinances.

In one such move, New Britain’s Republican-dominated city hall proposed eliminating the living wage ordinance – a twenty year old ordinance that requires that, if the city contracts with companies for certain services, the workers for those companies be paid a certain living wage. The amount of the living wage in the ordinance is determined by a formula based a federal data.

For 2021, that living wage is $15.03 per hour.

The ordinance, observers have noted, not only provides a guarantee to workers any time the city contracts for services covered under the ordinance, but it also discourages the city from contracting out for services, rather than hiring city workers with union rights and higher wages and benefits, to do that work.

The living wage ordinance that Council Republicans propose to repeal requires the $15.03 per hour living wage for workers under any contracts with the city over $25,000, “for the provision of food, clerical, transportation, building, property, equipment or maintenance services,” as well as, “janitorial cleaning, maintenance or related service.” The ordinance does not apply to construction or contracts for services that are “as-needed” or for fewer than five days.

The ordinance that Republicans seek to repeal also includes a provision to give first preference to hiring prospective workers who are residents of New Britain when they are hiring.

The Republicans also proposed to eliminate most of what remains of the city’s Freedom of Information ordinance after what was widely viewed as the most consequential part of the city’s Freedom of Information ordinance was repealed, in 2015, during Mayor Erin Stewart’s first term of office.

Until 2015, city ordinances allowed for the public to get up to forty pages of public documents per day for no charge. If someone wanted public records of greater than forty pages, they could come back the next day for another forty pages — for up to 400 pages in any thirty day period.

The changes reduced the city Freedom of Information ordinance to mainly offering the same public access to information that the state Freedom of Information law already provides. It is those remaining provisions that the new Republican proposal would revoke.