http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2015/09/01/milwaukee-bucks-discuss-15-an-hour-wage-floor.html
The Milwaukee Bucks are discussing the possibility of a $15-an-hour “wage floor,” hiring from high-poverty minority neighborhoods and allowing employees to organize in labor unions, according to a leader of a coalition of unions, community and faith-based organizations in Milwaukee.
Those terms would apply to all employees at the new Bucks-operated arena downtown as well as ancillary commercial development the Bucks owners plan around the arena, Peter Rickman, a labor and community organizer with the Alliance for Good Jobs, told the Milwaukee Business Journal Tuesday.
The 'living wage' proposal would apply to the arena and surrounding development led by the owners of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Rickman said he is scheduled to meet Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with Bucks president Peter Feigin and an attorney with the Bucks. Rickman says the community group and the Bucks already have reached “a mutually agreeable solution” but still need to hammer out the details.
Rickman said he hopes to finalize the agreement by the end of this week and make an announcement by Labor Day. He also wants to conclude the negotiations before the Milwaukee Common Council votes on a proposed $47 million city funding package for the arena district Sept. 22.
“This will be a landmark, historic agreement for Wisconsin,” Rickman said.A Bucks spokesman would only confirm that Feigin will be meeting with Rickman and that the team hasn't agreed to anything at this point.
“We hope to have productive conversations with various stakeholders in the coming weeks about how this public-private partnership can create good jobs and best impact the community,” said Jake Suski, the Bucks senior vice president of communications.
The Bucks would be the first major employer in Milwaukee to agree to paying what Rickman calls living wages, the right to organize in a union and hiring from low-income neighborhoods. He believes the Bucks agreement would will lead to more such agreements for future projects in the city.
“This will set the tone and expectations for future development in Milwaukee,” Rickman said.
The Alliance For Good Jobs said in early June that it would oppose any public financing deal for a Milwaukee Bucks arena that does not include minimum wage and local hiring requirements.
Past efforts to mandate them on local projects, such as a hotel in the Innovation Campus project in Wauwatosa, have not succeeded.
In the case of the agreement being negotiated with the Bucks, employees covered would include janitors, food-service workers and ushers at the arena and future employees at a hotel and supermarket the Bucks owners plan to develop nearby, Rickman said.
The coalition’s members include Service Employees International Union Local 1 and Wisconsin Jobs Now, a community organizing group on behalf of minority communities, Rickman said.
Rickman emphasized the $15-an-hour wage floor is a goal and not a minimum-wage requirement. He said he and Feigin are working on “a path to a $15 wage floor for everyone.”
“There will not be a $15 minimum wage floor in 2017,” Rickman said, referencing the Bucks goal of opening the arena by fall 2017.
