Chamber Cries Crocodile Tears

Won’t anyone consider Delaware’s poor and misunderstood Chamber Of Commerce?  The legislative proceedings of June 30/July 1 prompted this poignant lament from those who have always had the best interests of Delaware at heart:

Chamber Disappointed in Late Night Minimum Wage Vote

The Delaware House of Representatives held a late night, with a 3:30 a.m. vote to increase Delaware’s minimum wage by $.50 a year for the next two years. House Republicans were able to negotiate the passage of a bill that would create two lower-wage groups—a training wage, and a teen wage, to be paid at most $.50 under the minimum wage once the bill goes into effect on January 1, 2019.

The Delaware State Chamber, along with other business groups, were on hand throughout the last night of session to provide input and feedback on how this legislation was being crafted and handled. 

Each year legislation has been introduced to raise the minimum wage, which was last raised in 2015. Each year the legislation is sent to the Senate Labor Committee (as it generally originates in the Senate), where it passes, and goes to the full Senate for a vote. This year, the first minimum wage bill, SB110, followed that process.

At a hearing lasting two hours and full of testimony from nonprofits, the agriculture community, and members of chambers from around the state, all offered testimony on the negative impact increasing the minimum wage would have on their businesses and their employees. Ultimately SB110 would fail in the Senate when it came up for a floor vote.

Fast forward to later in the year when SB170 was introduced, another bill by the same sponsor, Sen. Marshall, that would raise the minimum wage. The bill was heard, and released, from the Senate Labor Committee. On July 30, SB170 passed the Senate as part of a negotiated deal to provide relief for Delaware casinos, and headed over to the House and was assigned to the House Economic Development Committee.

In years past (at least since 2014), when a minimum wage bill passed the Senate, and headed to the House, the bill was heard, and failed in committee. (True. Pistol Pete deliberately assigned it to the House Business Lapdog Committee, where Chair Bryon Short, and members Quin Johnson and Andria Bennett killed it, often quoting Chamber talking points word for word). The same process of having impacted businesses, nonprofits and farms share their stories followed, and ultimately, members of that committee would vote to defeat the bill. (True, b/c Pistol Pete had stacked the committee with enough Chamber lackeys to kill it.)

Last night, in a dramatic departure from the usual process, members of the House voted to bring SB170 to the floor for action under a suspension of the rules, a process normally reserved for non-controversial bills. As evidenced this year, with other legislation in the Senate, departure from that process seems to be increasing in its frequency, a trend we hope does not become the norm.

What is most disturbing about what happened on July 1, is that members of the general public, both opponents and supporters of a minimum wage increase, were unable to have their voices heard. Thankfully, a second bill was negotiated to provide alternative wages for training and for teens, but that shouldn’t have been undertaken in the wee hours of the morning.

The Delaware State Chamber, along with the New Castle County Chamber, the Central Delaware Chamber, the Delaware Restaurant Association, the Delaware Food Industry Council, the Delaware Chain Drug Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, and other business groups have all worked together over the years, including this year, to let legislators know the negative impacts of raising the minimum wage, and the numerous studies showing how it negatively impacts the employees they are trying to help.

The Chamber remains disappointed in the passage of SB170 and will continue with others in the business community to maintain the message that these types of bills hurt business and they hurt workers. Legislators will continue to be told that businesses will have to decide how to cut additional costs to pay for this added payroll expense. It is imperative that people working full time for minimum wage are encouraged to add to their education and outfit themselves with skills that meet workforce needs in order to improve their personal or family situation.

For more information regarding Chamber advocacy efforts, please contact James DeChene at jdechene@dscc.com.

Sincerely,

Michael J. Quaranta
President
Delaware State Chamber of Commerce

I’ll wait while you wipe away your tears. The same Chamber that has thrived on post-midnight raids in Dover year-after-year laments the fact that the ‘process’ wasn’t followed this time. It’s the same ‘process’ that has consistently enabled the Chamber to slow-walk consideration of legislation they don’t like while picking off the most gullible of state reps. It’s how, with the assistance of Jack Markell and Pete Schwartzkopf, they had succeeded in killing minimum wage legislation in the past. BTW, it’s the same tactic that the NRA and its, wait for it, ilk, use to kill gun control bills.

BTWBTW, this is the same Chamber that, in this past session, succeeded in killing the estate tax and succeeded in privatizing government giveaways of money to businesses via the reordering of the the Delaware Economic Development Office. In other words, their thievery has been rewarded time and time again by its enablers in Dover. But, as PAL Longhurst pointed out, they went apoplectic over ‘100 pennies an hour’.

They do, however, thank their lackey-in-chief, small businessman (in every sense of the word) Mike Ramone, for the barely face-saving ‘compromise’ that enabled everyone to leave town. The compromise?: Screw teenagers and new hires via a so-called ‘training wage’, presumably b/c businesses have never before had the responsibility to train new workers and have never before built that cost into their business plans. Except for every time. Training is a cost of doing business. If you do it right, you build a stable workforce. If you don’t, or you don’t care to, you just churn people out all the time. Which you can bet that some businesses will do instead of paying a decent wage. It’s part of some businesses’ plan. And we’ve now enabled them via the training wage.

Keep in mind what the Rethugs did here. They decided to hold the Bond Bill and other legislation hostage b/c they just HATED the idea of paying workers a meager increase in the minimum wage. They knew they had a terrible hand, and they folded once Ramone’s amendment to screw teenagers and trainees passed.

I can only hope that, with several new legislators coming to Dover in November, the power of the Chamber to ride roughshod over the General Assembly will continue to diminish as we move forward. Three of the Chamber’s biggest D ass-kissers are leaving: Brian Bushweller, Bryon Short, and Melanie Smith. As ex-Phils manager Gene Mauch once said, “Sometimes you add by subtracting.”  More subtraction, please.