A state representative wants to exempt private schools from minimum wage increases, in an effort to spare private schools from expenses that could put some out of business, but lawmakers and others are trying to weigh that against paying people what they’re owed.
The Senate’s government reform committee had a public hearing Tuesday on bills including House Bill 763, which is sponsored by Rep. Tim Remole, R-Excello. The bill would exempt private schools — meaning any non-public or religious organization-operated schools — from the minimum wage increases that became law Jan. 1.
More than 62 percent of Missouri voters supported Proposition B on last November’s ballot. The passage of the proposition into law means this year’s minimum wage was set at $8.60 per hour, and the state’s minimum wage will be $12 per hour by 2023 — via an 85-cent increase each year between now and then.
The law already doesn’t apply to public employees, and retail and service businesses with annual gross sales of less than $500,000 are also exempt.
Remole said that “already, private schools have received price increases from their vendors, because of (the minimum wage increase), and many could be threatened to even stay in existence.
“I feel (the same) as many people who’ve reached out to me; they feel that because the public schools were exempted, that we should be doing the same thing for the private schools.
“Private schools, especially in our religious schools, a lot of teachers, a lot of people there are pretty well volunteer; they do it out of the goodness of their heart,” Remole said.
Philip Marley is a grandparent and board member of Tri-County Christian School in Macon, and Marley testified in support of the bill in February. He said Tuesday that he only spoke for himself, and not in an official capacity of the Tri-County Christian school board, but he believes “the increase in minimum wage in the rural areas will drive up prices, force our private school to charge more tuition each year, which will make it unaffordable to our families. Many have multiple children attending.”
He said the school is not against paying teachers more.
“Being a small school, like many small nonprofits, our salaries are unfortunately low and close to minimum wage. Our teachers are worth every penny, but once we increase the afternoon (teenage workers’ pay), we are forced to increase our full-time staff accordingly,” Marley said.
Principal Heather Schrimpf said Tuesday that Immaculate Conception School in Jefferson City hasn’t seen too much of an increase in costs from vendors since Jan. 1
“A lot of them already have set prices for six to eight weeks. But we have noticed that some of our smaller companies that we work with — for instance, our bread company — they’re going to be doing a price increase because they’re much smaller, and I’m guessing the wage increase has affected them more, so they’re going to have to increase the price of their bread,” Schrimpf said.
“Some of our larger vendors, we really haven’t seen an increase, but a lot of it is set for the year, and so we probably won’t see an increase until next school year if there is an increase,” she said.
“For us, (the wage increase) has affected us. For the next school year, we are going to have to raise our prices of our summer camp program and our after school care program … we do have several high school students that we employ as hourly wage employees, and so we’ve had to increase those. When it happened, it was understood by the school board that those costs would be put onto the parents who utilize those programs,” Schrimpf said.
In terms of budgeting for salaries and wages, “we try to not cut anything out just because we have to increase salaries. We always assume there’s a cost of living increase. This is a little — at least it’s a gradual, step-process,” she said of the wage increases in the coming years.
She said the school has opted for a gradual increase to staff’s salaries, rather than all at once, “so the (financial) burden is not so heavily put on the parents right away.”
She said most teachers are already paid more than the current minimum wage; “we are currently at 89 percent of the public schools’ scale” for teachers, and teachers are most of the staff. She added minimum wage increases directly affect about 5 percent of the school’s staff — “cafeteria cooks, custodial staff, after school care staff, and of course that summer care program.”
Some other local private and public schools did not respond to questions from the News Tribune, or their administrators said they did not have enough information to comment.
Jamie Morris, legislative counsel of the Missouri Catholic Conference, said the Catholic Conference had not taken a position on Remole’s bill, and was just monitoring it.
No one besides Remole spoke in favor of the bill Tuesday in front of the Senate committee, but Remole said he would have had some supporters speak to the bill, but he had just found out Monday about the committee hearing.
Besides Marley, Jerry Hobbs, of the Missouri Education Reform Council, also testified in support of the bill back in February.
Remole’s bill was approved by the Missouri House in March by 92 votes in favor and 51 against.
The vote was mostly, but not completely, along partisan lines. Of the 51 mostly Democrats’ no votes on March 27, eight were by Republicans — including Rep. Rudy Veit, of Wardsville.
“It was a tough decision. I recognize those that work for private schools that need to be paid (minimum wage), but I also recognize that there were schools (that testified) that they were going to be out of business, who relied heavily on partial volunteer work, where people worked for less than the full amount of what they were worth in order just to support the organization,” Veit said Tuesday.
Two people spoke in opposition to Remole’s bill in front of the Senate committee Tuesday.
Karen Settlemoir-Berg, a union representative of United Food Commercial Workers Local 655, who said she represented “Jobs for Justice,” told the committee she provided several written statements from individuals from across the state, including business owners, private school and daycare workers, a reverend of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, and the director of the Peace and Justice Commission of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Settlemoir-Berg, as a Catholic, also quoted paragraph 2434 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church — a paragraph about a just wage being the legitimate fruit work.
Senate government reform committee Chairman Sen. Ed Emery, R-Lamar, asked her if her position on Remole’s bill meant she felt the government should determine what a just wage is.
“I think the will of the people should stand before anything. The will of the people is that people should be able to earn a living wage,” she answered.
Who pays for opposition to Remole’s bill was a back and forth Burlison was in with Tom Robbins, who testified Tuesday against the bill.
Robbins is a registered lobbyist and a partner at the Chesterfield-based Strategic Capitol Consulting. He represented the Sixteen Thirty Fund on Tuesday, and has been active representing the group since December 2018, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission. He had also testified against Remole’s bill in February as the only opposition then.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been called a source of “dark money” — it’s a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that’s not required to reveal its donors, and it gave more than $4.6 million to the Raise Up Missouri political action committee that worked to pass the minimum wage increase question on last November’s ballot.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655 in Ballwin also donated $90,000 to Raise Up Missouri.
Robbins said, “We believe each exemption (to the passed minimum wage law) undermines the voters’ will.”
“Religious institutions are not exempt from national standards on minimum wage, OSHA, workers’ comp and FMLA,” he added.
He said public employees were precluded from the minimum wage increase by ballot measure law — that “prohibits government appropriations” — not as a policy decision that public employees should be paid less.
Burlison asked Robbins questions about the nature of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, such as if it operates in other states and who is behind the Fund.
“Senator, I don’t know. All I know is this one single issue that I was hired on,” Robbins said in one response, adding he wasn’t trying to be evasive, but just didn’t know.
Separately from Remole’s bill, Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, also filed Senate Bill 348, which would exempt private schools operated by religious organizations from having to pay their employees the current $8.60 an hour — instead requiring the schools to pay the minimum wage required before the law changed on Jan. 1.
There’s been no listed action on O’Laughlin’s bill since February, when it was read a second time and referred to the Senate’s government reform committee.