Michigan workers are about to get a pay raise courtesy the Michigan Supreme Court.
In a 4-3 decision issued Wednesday, the state’s high court ruled that, when the State Legislature blocked a pair of initiatives surrounding the state’s minimum wage laws to keep them off the ballot back in 2018, they were acting unconstitutionally.
The Republican-controlled Legislature at the time approved two petition-backed initiatives before election day that year, then came back later in the year and weakened the policies.
“In sum, by adopting the Wage Act and the Earned Sick Time Act and then later stripping those acts of their key features in the same legislative session, the Legislature unconstitutionally violated the people’s initiative rights,” Justice Elizabeth Welch wrote in authoring the majority opinion Wednesday. “Accordingly, we hold that the Amended Wage Act and the Amended Earned Sick Time Act are unconstitutional.”
That means workers will see an increase in the hourly minimum wage and new paid sick leave levels.
The Supreme Court’s decision puts the original minimum wage and paid leave proposals into effect Feb. 21. The citizen-initiated proposals set the minimum wage at $10 an hour, with increases to be phased in later.
The Supreme Court ruling, Michigan’s current $10.33-an-hour minimum wage will increases the $10.33-per-hour minimum wage by at least $2 an hour on Feb. 21, because the justices added an inflationary adjustment, which will be calculated by the state treasurer, to the $10 rate, The Detroit News reported.
However, Michigan’s minimum wage will continue to increase in the next three years, then be tied to inflation. Michigan’s minimum wage is expected to reach about $15 an hour by 2028, The News reported..
Likewise, the tipped minimum wage will go to 48% of the traditional minimum wage next year, likely around $6 an hour. It’s currently $3.93 an hour.
Under the initiative and the court ruling, the tipped minimum wage will gradually move to 100% of the regular minimum wage over five years following 2025. Originally, that was supposed to have happened from 2019 to 2024.
Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, called Wednesday “a great day for more than 494,000 workers in Michigan who are getting a raise.”
“We have finally prevailed over the corporate interests who tried everything they could to prevent all workers, including restaurant workers, from being paid a full, fair wage with tips on top,” Jayaraman told The News.
The three other Democratic-nominated justices, Justices Richard Bernstein, Kyra Bolden and Megan Cavanagh, all Democratic nominees joined in Welch’s majority opinion. The other justices – Elizabeth Clement, David Viviano and Brian Zahra – formed the dissent. All three are Republican nominees.
Zahra, writing the dissenting opinion, said the court’s majority is adopting “as the employment law of this state statutory language that was neither approved by the Legislature nor voted on by the people.”.
“The chosen remedy expressed in the majority opinion and the court’s choice to exercise legislative power by rewriting statutory language find no support in the Michigan Constitution, or in the history, tradition or case law of this state or this country,” Zahra wrote.
Under the sick leave policy, Michigan businesses under the new sick leave policy would have to provide earned sick time to each of their employees at the rate of one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. Employees could use the sick time for mental or physical illness, medical care or for meetings at their child’s school about the child’s health.
Employees of a small business—those with fewer than nine employees in a given week — could not use more than 40 hours of paid sick time in a year unless their employer allows them to use more, The News reported.
