On this 12 months’s midterm elections, voters confirmed a robust degree of assist for progressive poll measures throughout the nation. These victories have been tempered by the defeat of worthwhile poll measures in some states and the uncertainty of progress underneath a divided Congress. Nonetheless, voters throughout the nation accepted minimal wage will increase, protected entry to abortion, supported hashish legalization, and accepted measures to extend housing affordability and promote good union jobs.
Although a lot work stays to be performed to enact a progressive financial agenda, this midterm election confirmed clear indicators of assist for a coverage agenda that prioritizes financial, racial, and gender justice for working households.
Nebraska: Voters approved Initiative 433, which can enhance the state’s minimal wage to $15 by 2026.
Nevada: Voters approved Query 2, which can enhance the state’s minimal wage to $12 in July 2024. The measure additionally eliminated a provision that enables employers to pay staff $1 much less if they provide medical health insurance.
Tipped minimal wage
Voters in Washington, D.C. and Portland, Maine thought-about poll measure to remove the subminimum wage for tipped staff. The tipped minimal wage system, which permits employers to pay staff effectively beneath the minimal wage, is a legacy of slavery and disproportionately harms staff of shade and ladies. Over 3 million tipped workers nationwide are paid beneath their state’s minimal wage for as little as $2.13 an hour. In the meantime, staff in states with one honest wage have increased take-home pay and are much less prone to stay in poverty than staff in states that pay tipped staff the federal minimal of $2.13.
Washington, D.C.: Voters approved Initiative 82, eliminating the subminimum wage and elevating the wage ground for tipped staff from $5.35 to $16.10 by 2027. An identical initiative was handed in 2018 however was overturned by the D.C. Metropolis Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Portland, Maine: Voters rejected Query D, which might have raised the general minimal wage to $18 by 2025 and eradicated the subminimum wage for tipped work. The measure would have additionally categorised app-based staff as staff and established a Division of Honest Labor Practices to research and implement labor requirements on the metropolis degree. The Maine Heart for Financial Coverage, a accomplice of EPI’s Financial Evaluation and Analysis Community (EARN), estimates that over a third of Maine staff would have earned increased wages because of the change. An elevated minimal wage would have primarily benefited ladies and staff of shade within the state.
New York: Voters approved the Clear Water, Clear Air, and Inexperienced Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, which establishes prevailing wage requirements on building tasks. The invoice additionally allows the state and municipalities to require contractors to execute labor peace agreements and purchase American for structural iron and metal.
Illinois: Voters approved Modification 1, which can stop lawmakers from passing so-called “right-to-work” legal guidelines and provides staff a constitutional proper to collectively discount over wages, hours, and dealing situations.
Nonetheless, in Tennessee, so-called “right-to-work” was additional entrenched on the poll field. Voters accepted Modification 1, enshrining “right-to-work” within the state’s structure and making efforts to repeal the regulation far more tough. EPI analysis has shown that states with so-called “right-to-work” legal guidelines, that are designed to weaken unions financially, have decrease wages for each unionized and nonunionized staff than states with out such legal guidelines.
Colorado: Voters approved Proposition FF to offer free meals for all public college college students within the state. The measure, which may also fund pay will increase for varsity cafeteria staff, can be funded by limiting state earnings tax deductions by households incomes greater than $300,000 yearly. Colorado Fiscal Institute, an EARN accomplice, called the initiative a “honest, equitable” measure that “will increase the bodily and financial well being of our communities.”
Massachusetts: Voters accepted Query 1, an modification to the state’s structure that can enhance taxes on the state’s richest residents. The Massachusetts Price range and Coverage Heart, an EARN accomplice, estimates that the tax will generate no less than $2 billion a 12 months for investments in public training and reasonably priced transportation.
Medicaid Growth
South Dakota: Voters accepted Constitutional Modification D, which would require the state to offer Medicaid advantages to adults between 18 and 65 with incomes beneath 133% of the federal poverty degree. Although the Reasonably priced Care Act provided to pay 90% of states’ prices to increase Medicaid eligibility, 12 states have but to increase eligibility. In consequence, over 3.5 million folks—largely folks of shade—lack reasonably priced well being care protection. South Dakota is the seventh state to increase Medicaid by way of the poll initiative course of. An extra 45,000 South Dakotans will qualify for Medicaid underneath the expanded program, 14,000 of whom are American Indian.
Abortion
Voters in Kentucky rejected an modification that may remove residents’ proper to reproductive freedom and prohibit the usage of public funds for abortion. The proper to an abortion is a matter of economic security, independence, and mobility for tens of millions of girls throughout the nation. People who find themselves denied abortion entry usually tend to live in poverty, be unemployed, and face different hostile financial outcomes. Kentucky at present has an abortion plan in place, however the state Supreme Courtroom will consider the constitutionality of the ban this week.
California, Michigan, and Vermont voters approved amendments that enshrine reproductive rights, together with the rights to contraception and abortion, into the state structure.
Constitutional amendments to abolish slavery
Voters in Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Alabama accepted measures that take away language of their state constitutions allowing slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a criminal offense. Louisiana voters rejected a measure to take away language allowing slavery from the structure after the modification’s sponsor expressed issues that the measure’s complicated wording might inadvertently erode protections towards slavery. Louisiana voters will think about a revised measure in 2023.
Many state constitutions retain language much like the thirteenth Modification to the U.S Structure, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude besides as punishment for a criminal offense. The Abolish Slavery National Network—which is organizing the trouble throughout the nation—and different civil rights advocates argue that extraordinarily low-paid (or, in some instances, unpaid) pressured work in American prisons quantities to fashionable slavery. Incarcerated staff should not solely exempt from minimal wage legal guidelines however are additionally denied extra time safety, office security ensures, and the suitable to unionize. Supporters see these slavery abolition amendments as an preliminary step in disrupting the ability dynamic between incarcerated staff and jail employees and establishing primary rights for the incarcerated workforce.
Hashish legalization
Marijuana is now legal to make use of recreationally in 21 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam. As legalization efforts acquire momentum in states throughout the nation, it’s critical that lawmakers defend hashish staff’ collective bargaining rights to make sure that this rising business gives secure, good-paying, and community-sustaining jobs.
Maryland: Voters approved Query 4, which allows residents to own, smoke, and develop marijuana (inside limits) and permits the Common Meeting to tax the sale of marijuana. Companion laws to the modification proposes an expungement course of for previous marijuana convictions and an help fund for small, BIPOC-owned, or woman-owned companies. Maryland Heart on Financial Coverage, an EARN accomplice, estimated that decriminalization would save the state tens of tens of millions of {dollars} on enforcement prices and that taxing the sale of marijuana would generate a whole lot of tens of millions in income for the state.
Missouri: Voters approved Modification 3, which legalizes leisure marijuana and can routinely expunge the data of people who have been convicted of non-violent marijuana offenses and should not at present incarcerated. Presently incarcerated people can petition for launch from incarceration, probation, or parole. State advocacy teams estimate that file expungement will impression thousands of Missourians whose marijuana offense convictions restricted entry to employment, housing, and the social security web.
In the meantime, Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota voters rejected marijuana legalization.
Voters in a number of states and localities accepted measures to fund the development of reasonably priced housing. Because the housing scarcity grows and housing turns into more and more unaffordable, significantly for communities of shade and low- to moderate-income households, reasonably priced housing building has develop into an particularly pressing precedence. In Kansas Metropolis, voters approved Query 2, which permits the town to spend $50 million over 5 years to construct reasonably priced housing items for low-income residents.
Colorado voters approved the one state-wide reasonably priced housing measure on the poll this November. Proposition 123 will direct $300 million of the state’s taxable earnings to assist important staff like academics and nurses purchase properties, in addition to assist native governments enhance housing provide. In line with Colorado Fiscal Institute, an EARN accomplice, minimal wage staff in Colorado would want to work 75 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom house.
Los Angeles voters approved Measure LH, which grants the town authority to develop 75,000 items of reasonably priced housing for seniors, unhoused, and low-income residents. Measure ULA, which can increase $1 billion per 12 months for reasonably priced housing and homelessness efforts within the metropolis by taxing property gross sales over $5 million, additionally appeared likely to pass as of this writing.
And Austin voters approved Proposition A, the town’s largest ever reasonably priced housing bond. The $350 million bond can be used to construct and protect reasonably priced housing for Austin residents with annual incomes beneath $61,800.
When given the chance, tens of millions of voters throughout the nation confirmed their assist for insurance policies that can strengthen staff’ rights, reproductive justice, and racial fairness. Lawmakers at each degree of presidency ought to take notice.
