 picking back up s40 when we talked about it last week there was an urge to let's just vote and and we could be about that point after 78 witnesses and discussion but because there has been it's been a little while since we actually looked at s40 I thought it might be good to to have Damien get the high notes for us before we get into our final discussion. Hopefully I find it. Thank you for the record Damien Leonard legislative council so s40 is up on the screen behind you and I will walk you through it here quickly so on the first page if we scroll down just a couple of lines there we go what you'll see here is the minimum wage goes from the current rate which is 1050 up to a rate of $15 per hour by January 1 2024 the increases start smaller at 60 cents a year and end up at 90 cents a year in the last year so they kind of scale up as time goes on the next major change there if we go to the bottom of page 2 this change here if you remember a representative rights bill from earlier this session this bill was added as an amendment in the Senate and what it provides is that a tip is the sole property of the person that it provided to or given to so if you're a tipped employee and you receive a tip your employer is not allowed to pool that tip with non tipped employees the only exception to this is that if there's a tip pool set up between tipped employees so all the servers pool their tips or the servers pool their tips with bartenders or the hostess or something like that and that's considered a valid tip pool among tipped employees that's still legal and that currently occurs so basically what this is doing is preserving the status quo and the reason for this is there is a recent federal rule change which is allowed to pooling with non tipped employees provided that the employer pays the employees at least 725 an hour before tips so so this basically maintains the status quo here questions before I move on to the second section okay the second section here what this does is it provides that to the extent funds are appropriated the Department for Children and Families will essentially shift the sliding scale for benefits under the child care financial assistance program over to basically compensate for any increase in the minimum wage so for example right now as your wages increase your amount of benefits goes down and what this is saying is that if the minimum wage goes up by 60 cents then the benefits that slope shifts over correspondingly so that folks who are on that down slope here but whose wages would go up as a result of the minimum wage increase will not see a hit on their benefits as a result of that minimum wage increase this does not eliminate the down slope which would be more expensive to do so that benefits cliff phenomenon which already exists in which you've heard some testimony about is not going away what this is doing is it ensuring that the minimum wage increase won't exacerbate it yes so this is to extent that the legislature appropriates funds to do this at the moment it's been discussed with both appropriations committees I do not know if it's in the big bill at this point or not so my understanding is that this is stopping in the appropriations committee after this or likely to since it affects the appropriations of the state so I guess yeah so and I know when I testified there they took testimony from myself Joyce Manchester Deb Brighton and the Reva Murphy and Ken Schatz from the Department for Children and Family Services on this issue so they're certainly aware of that but at the moment I'm not aware of the appropriation having been added the other thing that this would do is adjust the market rate based on so many childcare workers are paid or near the minimum wage so the other thing that this is going to do is affect the cost of childcare slightly as their wages go up and so that the second part here is in addition to sliding that scale over it's going to adjust the market rate to compensate for that so we're not so that the subsidy basically purchases the same amount of childcare as you're you probably remember it doesn't pay for the full cost of childcare because it's well behind the current market rate but what it will do is not be purchasing less childcare so any other questions on that section okay the third section here this is just a report from Legislative Council and Joint Fiscal to the members of the Legislature well to this committee and the Senate Committee on Economic Development so for any of you who are still here in January of 2023 I'll be submitting this report to you basically to identify mechanisms that other jurisdictions used to index their minimum wage to inflation and to identify and examine any alternative mechanisms for indexing the minimum wage because this will be coming up on the year when we switch from the the set increases in the minimum wage back to indexing for inflation and since this was adopted while most jurisdictions use the CPI or actually all there have been proposals to switch over to other measures of inflation that might be more accurate like the chain CPI the PCE deflator or the tying it to the Social Security rates or something like that other questions on that section okay the last section here section 4 the big change is on page 5 of the bill the rest of it is just style clean up and this is just defining what a tip is so a tip just to remind everyone as a sum of money that's gratuitously and voluntarily left by a customer for service this means that a mandatory service charge is not considered a tip for purposes of this bill and that's consistent with existing law so when you see a mandatory service charge on your bill the employer can use that to pay the wages of the employees it doesn't have to be given as a tip that's something that would depend by employer many of many of the restaurants will simply say service charge rather than saying tip or something like that so questions okay that's the underlying bill I've asked Damian to prepare an amendment for us to consider related to the student wage not quite sure how to bring that up you want to post it or just display it pardon do you want to post it or just display it why don't you display it or you can post it too good posting is the only way okay so just starting with the first struck out language there if you can go down to the bottom of that language wrong there's just a minor change here the old bill s40 I forgot to update the minimum wage language between 2017 and 2018 when it passed the Senate so before it would say an employer show up and employee at a rate of less than $10 and then beginning on January 1, 2018 and then went on from there but since January 1, 2018 is already in the past it just says now an employer shown up play any employee at a rate of less than 1050 which is the current minimum wage so this was just it's just a little cleanup so we don't have extra language in the statute next change here the other thing to note is this is now subdivision a1 so before subsection a was all one big block broken out because it gets complicated Ron can you put this onto the website too onto today's anyway I'm sorry she asked if I could put it on the website and I said yes yes I said earlier you could post that immediate thing was getting up for us in case you couldn't do things simultaneously thank you I can't use it you can watch me do it but I can't you're on my computer right now so I can do it if you'd be watching me do it sausage making okay so page two the next subdivision here there we go perfect so this would provide so currently if you remember when we discussed the exceptions to the minimum wage there's an exception of minimum wage for students it's been a construed to apply to secondary school students and not college or university students and it's during all or part of the school year and normal vacation normal vacation periods which has also been construed to apply to times during the school year but not the break between school years the summer vacation is accepted so we end up with a funny situation where students are at the federal minimum wage during the school year the state minimum wage during which is 725 in the state minimum wage during the summer which currently is 1050 so this would if that was left unchanged by the end by 2024 under this bill what you'd end up with assuming the federal government doesn't update their minimum wage in the meantime is students being at 725 minimum wage during the school year and then their wage doubling every summer and then going back down in the fall when the school year resumes so what this does is it provides that a secondary school student and it clarifies that secondary school students cannot be employed at a rate of less than the minimum wage minus three dollars so the standard minimum wage currently is 1050 so they'd be at 750 although this wouldn't take effect until January 1, 2019 so it really be when the minimum wage is 1110 the minimum wage for students would be 810 and it would stay in lockstep and three dollars below year-round so so that takes the seasonality out of it it takes the seasonality out of it yeah and so for the first year it would be so if the minimum wage went up to 1110 it would just be 810 exactly and just track it like that so you just subtract three dollars from year one and this is student secondary school student right so yeah so it's if you're still a secondary school student you're covered by this condition if you dropped out or you've graduated then you're no longer covered as a secondary school student the only language that the committee might want to add in this case if you decided to adopt this amendment currently the law says you know during all or any part of the regular school year school year and regular vacation periods you could add that and then add the language and during the break between school years to clarify that is or you know alternatively just say throughout the entire year or something like that but that may be making things more complicated by eliminating that specification during any part of the school year regular vacation periods you're basically applying it to secondary school students so that's just an alternative wording I think this is simple and would do the trick so I just wanted to identify that since that had been I think in the bill introduced by representative Brighlin we added the words and during the break between school years and that would have just to bring you back to that bill that would have just extended the exception to year round for secondary school students are there questions on that addition a change the next change is at the very bottom of page or at the very top of page three so what this does is it strikes out the exception for students working during all or any part of the school year regular vacation periods and just changes the location at the end of the period in that section so this means that the students are now subject to the Vermont minimum wage provisions with that $3 below minimum wage requirement questions so the other exemptions all of all of the a through H are still in effect it's a through I yeah a through H I'm sorry yes yes they're all all still in fact and what can you remind me what the agriculture for example why what they're do they have a minimum wage so agriculture is kind of an interesting one some agricultural workers are subject to the federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act so to the extent that they do at 725 an hour there are various provisions for peace rates and so forth and Fair Labor Standards Act has a pretty complicated regime when it comes to agriculture including provisions around like child labor and so forth related to that but if you'd like I can pull up the agricultural language from the FLSA for you I just figure if we're doing a minimum wage increase that these exemptions are things we should address there's a lot of them yes so we want to put in a large burden on our retailers and others who are competing against pretty significant market but all of these other things domestic service agriculture so many of these reflect for deliveries many of them reflect what's in the Fair Labor Standards Act so and that's been where they've where they've been at the Fair Labor Standards Act has an exemption instead of instead of students a student exemption the Fair Labor Standards Act applies a has a training wage provision for individuals under 20 years of age so no longer has the student exemption so to the extent that that would be consistent that's there although this wouldn't provide that 90-day training wage it just provides a lower minimum wage for those students which is an approach that some other states have taken other questions on that the just on the student portion of it later on in the labor statute there's discussions of how 14 year olds or 16 year olds employed when you write secondary does that include I mean 14 year olds can be hired for limited work is that at age that's considered secondary yes so secondary school is considered through high school yes so yeah by the this doesn't change the child labor restrictions in terms of for individuals under 18 restrictions on preventing them from being employed for example in dangerous occupations and restricting the hours that they can work and so forth so this doesn't change any of that all this does is it affects the minimum wage for them so that as an employer you'll still have to comply with all of the same child labor standards under our state wage laws and the Fair Labor Standards Act and the only thing this is going to change is you'll have a consistent year-round minimum wage for those students and that wage will be increasing you know about three dollars down below what the standard minimum wage is if this this were added okay so the lot of discussions on this oh there's another piece yeah they just the effective dates so what this provides it's a pretty complicated effective date but basically what it provides is all the amendments necessary to do the student wage piece take effect on January 1 2019 everything else takes effect on this coming July 1st the reason for that is so that the student wage matches up with the next change in the minimum wage so you don't have a mid-year change for employers in this case it would be a mid-summer change for employers where the wage would suddenly drop and so this this just means that they can kind of plan and on January 1st those wages change and further questions on this suggested amendment discussion pretty straightforward certainly would eliminate confusion that that seems to exist now employers about the different times of the school year clarity some ability to move this of course the federal minimum wage has been frozen how many years can't remember off the top I had them in 2000s and unlike some of the other exemptions we did take testimony from the department and I wonder how much it will encourage employers to hire high school students rather than rather than others who might need jobs same question we know that they're the minority of low wage earners at this point I think you're probably going to see a lot of small business employers releasing some of their full-time people like Heidi said picking up part-time help and paying them as little as possible because it's going to put a lot of the small time small businesses out of business eventually this happens I think you're going to see a lot of part-timers just from the other side of the ledger I don't think there's been any show that that would happen you can ask to clarify simply to clarify how people can hire youth and that's that's been a question for the last five years and this I think this is a minimum wage it's not the only wage it could be an entry wage we only took testimony from one or two people that mentioned that they used the student wage we asked the chambers and no one knew of anybody who used this wage play it's the market you know if Shaws wants to hire people at 8 10 an hour and they can't fill it then they're going to start paying people more I think in the long run I'm not sure it's going to displace anybody that hasn't been shown to be the case in any situation now people have been able to charge or to pay less for time immemorial and they haven't been so I'm pretty comfortable with that may I rebut? I had to pleasantly rebut existing employer employees in a retail store or whatever that are right now maybe making $13 an hour or something like that the minimum wage raises these people aren't going to be happy with someone coming up to their pay level when they've been there five six or seven years they're going to want $3 or $4 an hour more as well which probably could lead them to look for another job or just gripe and complain until they're either fired or they quit I don't know if that to be a fact or not but I think there's a trickle process here that might be a problem down the road you can rebut rebut there you would and again the wage compression is something that we we talk about and we don't have we don't have any factual knowledge of it happening we've asked for facts and figures and stats and we haven't seen it happen over the last five years in fact the economy has been the economy's been as stable as it ever has been I mean we're not happy with the level of jobs and the number of people we're making minimum wage but I think we've seen that the economy has not been damaged by raising people's wages at the lowest end of the scale and I think that would still apply Representative Howard I just want to add a single mother with children who works two jobs may be able to work one job which would open up another job for someone else I just can't see someone working at a minimum at $10.50 an hour to try and support their family it just seems impossible to me Representative Reid I would say that people making the minimum wage are not our most vulnerable because they have multiple paths out there's already a built-in inflator every year annually tied to the CPI they can get a raise it's an employee's market right now at one point whatever percent they can go work for somebody else there are ways out of it the people that this hurt never mind the businesses which have been spouting about for three weeks but nobody wants to listen our seniors we have heard multiple testimony that in-home care is going to be diminished because a lot of those people make minimum wage so they'll have to cut back on services and Medicare will not be able to go with it so there will be fewer services these are our most vulnerable and we have our seniors who are coaching listen then we have our seniors who are barely getting by and we are going to raise how much it costs for them to live because prices are going to go up I mean you can't an employer can't just absorb this actually I shouldn't say that Costco or your box store they can absorb it small businesses cannot absorb it we have got to look at the reality of this and we are not we are trying to save the world and in doing it we are putting our most vulnerable at risk and it would be unconscionable for us to pass this unconscionable I will not go up to a senior who says he just made it more expensive for me why? I don't know because we wanted to have a minimum wage employee who is already entitled to a wage annually a raise or can do something about it we found that them to be more vulnerable than you sorry about that it's unconscionable I've just about had it with this whole bill and it's not about market because if it was about market we wouldn't even be having this conversation we are not letting the market do its thing I've got an easy question Madam Chair if this bill passes and the minimum wage increases yearly is there also going to be a cost of living increase that goes along regardless of what the minimum wage is at the end of 2024 then it is tied into it that's how it reads so there's not going to be any cost of living increases between now and 2024 are there clear step increases between now and 2024 which Damien would be in the beginning do you mean in the increases in wage or increases in benefits okay in the wages like we have we have employees in our town garage that are getting the wage now say this minimum wage didn't happen they're going to get a two and a half or three percent increase every year that's what we do for our town employees now if the minimum wage also goes up every year are we going to have to give them a two and a half or three percent increase as well do you know what I mean no this doesn't affect what a private employer has to do with their employees you know whether it's the town or the state or whether they're getting an additional raise or not only if they'd already be underneath the minimum wage they'd have to come up they'll have to come up to the minimum wage but beyond that it's up to the employer to decide what if increases they get I even said that I'm just confusing myself more it seems that a member of us are ready to move to the underlying bill and and get that vote underway but I wonder if we might weigh in first on the proposal related to the student wage starting with a hand count those who are in favor those opposed to the wage change I want to think about it more yeah I kind of want to as well I would have done some I didn't realize this was coming so I would have done some talking to folks is that something you're willing to do today in Mexico because barring other issues I would like us to to come to a final conclusion today continuing discussion on the underlying bill anybody who hasn't spoken yet first so I've already I'm not going to get into my I've been very clear about my position on this bill but but I'd also like to reiterate the importance of of decoupling the tipped minimum from the minimum wage if we're going to move forward on this so that would be decoupling and essentially leave it as a as an increase in the COLA keep it at 525 and then be a COLA what we have now so CPI increase on 525 it's the same thing so on that I just want to reiterate my position of holding the tipped minimum wage to the 50% be her testimony on how when we have a less percentage of our tipped minimum wage to our minimum wage then we have increased harassment in workplace and so it's a really important for me to at least hold that very quickly and briefly I support the bill as written in the amendment not addressing the not addressing the tipped minimum wage as written as written the tipped wage is an interesting issue and I know that we've heard testimony for both what Heidi's advocated for as well as as Deanna and it's been a little bit of a perplexing one for me to think about getting to it I had heard even before we began the discussion of congressional activity to try and eliminate the tipped wage sponsored by both Leahy and Sanders and in my mind that's probably the fairest long term strategy I remember hearing from Lisa clinical early on about the harassment she had she experienced in her job others have we have had testimony on this issue in the committee in the past although it's always been easier to get tipped employees to tell me on the side of what their experiences have been rather than to to come out on the record and that's understandable in many ways but I think it's while I would like to eventually see the tipped wage eliminated I don't know that it's realistic for our for our employer community to experience that at this point but I do would not want to see a rollback of what we provide at present personally the 50% anybody who hasn't spoken yet first and then those of us who have so I just think everybody knows but I feel the same way I'd like to I hope this country eventually eliminates the tipped minimum wage but at this point I would not support rolling back on it and I support the bill with and also the amendment for the student wage anybody else on this and let somebody else say I support small businesses in the state of Vermont and I support senior citizens in the state of Vermont and anybody that votes against or votes in favor of this bill I don't feel does support that that's just my opinion I can feel my head turning I am offended by that I am sorry I am offended because I have many senior citizens in my district I have many many families in my district many single parent families I know what it's like to run a business we have had two businesses I don't have millionaires living in my district and anytime I can help my constituents who sent me here to represent them I'm going to do so I truly support this bill and this amendment and I hope that this bill passes I am a senior citizen so I feel obliged to speak up not a battle a little bit older than you a lot longer and I think this is going to okay I think this is going to benefit our economy as a whole and I think this is a matter of a rising tide that truly will float all boats that's one reason why I am in favor of this bill I guess I've been fired for a while I guess the system has been broken we look at the data that we've received we look at the problems that we've heard about the system has been broken we have an opportunity to at least change the direction a little bit what we did as a legislature by moving the support staffs of the dedicated agencies up to $14 an hour protects that vulnerable population of seniors will be covered in that in that group when we saw the information from Mrs. Manchester that she shared with us from Harris the 8,000 plus employees that are working in that you know entity will not be affected adversely by this change we will help that group and they're the ones that actually are supporting all of those folks that we're talking about in that senior care venue explain that will you hear that yeah I was also there when she showed everything about the job loss of 2,250 people and it dropped in the GDP of .3% from this that's the same economist so you can't hear it what she says it isn't a question of cherry picking there is still the fact that those people are being covered those funds we allocated in our budgets for the increase and I'm not sure how much they've disaggregated that number yet to find out what the effect of that's going to be but based on the general information that we've received I personally feel that we're going to be okay over time it's just like in businesses and I run businesses myself too I started probably earlier than most people in this room and I get that question about the viability of the business the one thing I do know about that is that if you do a good job and you provide a good service and you build a customer base they will come and they will continue to come and that's what grows a good business and you know that yourself are you saying let the business owner run his business is it her business without being told what to do this isn't telling what to do we have not done our job as government moving that needle what's in 68 the last piece that we saw was in 68 there was that chart where the line just everything was moving consistently and then we stopped changing we're adding you know to and the lines just went into like alligator mods they split very drastically and that's what we're working on you know like now for that that period of time there has been no growth you know whatsoever across the board and that's not fair we're trying to bring some fairness back to this equation I sense once again that members of the committee are wanting to talk about and mostly move toward some final resolution on the bill and I want to get a an indication of where people are if there is a specific proposal related to a tipped wage and let me frame that the way I think I'm hearing it and Heidi helped me but your proposal would be to decouple a tipped wage a 525 another increase in the annual by CPI that would be my proposal and I guess I could move that if somebody would second it just a question just to be clear Heidi there would still leave the obligation to get them to the minimum wage it wouldn't change that we move away from the current requirement that the employer pay 50% can I see a show of hands at this point how does it change I don't have it drafted up if it's not going to go anywhere I'm not going to have it drafted up so this is just a straw poll it's a straw poll at this point I don't fully understand you don't fully understand what Heidi's proposing right now let's have Damien remind us of what the status quo is Ron can you pull up the amendment please or whoever's got it hooked up so just briefly the status quo is if you're a tipped employer your employer has to pay you a base wage you pull up one half the minimum wage rate and then the assumption is you're going to get tipped to fill up that other one half you'll get more than that but at the end of the week the amount of tips you get and the amount of base wage you get doesn't equal the minimum wage for the hours you worked your employer fills in the gap and covers the difference that's the way it is right now what representative Sherman is proposing currently the tipped wage is $5.25 so what this would do if we look at number three here line 13 where it says less than one half the minimum wage that would change one half the minimum wage would be struck and it would say $5.25 and then after that it would say beginning on January 1, 2019 and on each January 1 thereafter the basic wage rate shall increase by the it would be by the percentage increase in the CPI and in no event shall it decrease if it's going to track our current minimum wage so basically you're looking at probably between two and three percent increase year after year depending on inflation does that do it I just want to could Heidi explain what's the reasoning of benefits for the worker yeah because um well so number one minimum wage they have to meet the minimum wage regardless of what the minimum wage is could be $30 could be $15 whatever our minimum wage is the employer has to meet that if they don't get it in tips so the minimum wage is taken care of regardless how it benefits the worker is that you know when they if you increase it by 50% if you keep it at 50% um the increase in the back of the house in their management you increase it by 50% it could put them for example because then all costs go up they'll get a higher tips are based on on uh the cost of the dinner or the meal right basically 20% 15% of you know so they get even that much more in tips um and a lot of times you'll end up with servers who are making more than managers of the things so um in general you're talking about we're talking about a minimum wage bill here we're talking about minimum wage um these are generally uh healthy wages um you're in in general tipped and I would say all of the people who want to get rid of tipped of the tipped minimum um that is going to um that would have an incredible impact on a really healthy economy uh industry which is a restaurant industry um and I don't think you will be able to find um I mean just now you talk to servers or bartenders and I have yet to find one who would rather work for $15 an hour than tips um I I have yet to find one um and that is in my community and it's elsewhere I've asked um and um so I think one of the worries is that you're really changing the dynamic of of of the industry right now um they're you know they'll go to counter service some other things some other options or options out there for them instead of having those tipped employees I keep surprises down that one of the food uh yeah I mean it won't increase them as much I mean they're still gonna anybody that's doing you know farm you know local local foods and what have you is gonna increase the cost but I think when you talk to restaurant owners you're you're dealing with a pretty healthy um wage uh that you're already talking about and um and when we're talking about minimum wage we put that into consideration so and I again I think they the um the concern for restaurant owners is that we'll end up moving you know they'll end up moving to more counter service fewer um fewer uh servers um and what have you so overall reducing the employees I understand that no one has proposed eliminating tips um some restaurants and other places I don't know of any in Vermont have done so um I don't know what their effect has been I know other states have eliminated the tipped wage the while there has been discussion of eliminating the tipped wage I don't know that that's a proposal on the table right now it seems as though what we're talking about is what Heidi has proposed um essentially the decoupling and the CPI on the tip for the stat or the status quo of what we do now which was passed by the senate and s40 which is um the tips remaining 50% of the regular minimum wage going forward yeah I share the same constituencies as representative Sherman on this issue and it's been very um instructive to hear their economic development issues with the tip minimum wage and it's very compelling to me what I'm finding though just the fact that what it meant and what the plan was to me tells me that it would be really difficult to vote for it today just as it would be difficult to vote for getting rid of the tip minimum wage all together in terms of not getting enough testimony I mean I've heard from my restaurant owners pretty deeply and I understand what they're talking about um and personally I also am very the idea of discrimination and harassment that happens in restaurants is very close to who I am and where I've been in my world and so at this point I would if there's time I don't know if there's an amendment I hate to bring up the idea of another study that the whole minimum wage or the wage section that we're dealing with we're dealing with a small portion of it there are elements in here that follow this that deal with time and a half we've heard well people can work 50 hours and get time and a half on that it's like well these jobs don't get time and a half there's a whole list of jobs that are not eligible for time and a half this idea of what should happen with the tip wage tip workers for sure except for restaurant workers though we think that there are tip wage workers elsewhere in the economy and you know I would just I mean again on my left hand I don't want to bring up another study but on the other hand there's a lot in this statute that's dated there's things like wage orders which we haven't done for forever you know there's a lot of language not on like so I'm putting on my title and that like I did about wanting to see the title 7 rewritten there's elements in here that I think we should visit because you know even the exemptions that we that are in there we don't understand we haven't taken up testimony to understand but what does it mean to do an exemption to a nanny or the agricultural worker um so I mean if I had to come down on it if I had to come down on either side of the fence that I'm sitting on you know I would say I would support status quo right now but push to have a serious study done on what the ramifications of social and and economic development was what the effect of changing the tip minimum wage would be as well as the other aspects of the of the statute that we haven't touched we haven't touched them as far as I can tell in quite some time based on the changes that have been made so I'll throw that out there but in the very least I would like you know to lean towards status quo for now and then work on try to work on fixing what the tip minimum wage should be everybody clear right now about what Heidi's proposing show of hands of those who are in favor of what Heidi's proposing other ideas are there other amendments out there so um it sounds as though folks may need a few minutes to explore the student wage the huddle and think about that 20 minutes do it okay so come back at at uh two one five is this for every all members to sign or just start committing you know I got it from Tommy Tommy do you know wrong with probably not alright because if it's everybody if it's everybody I'm just going to put my name at this point because because we are and then I couldn't find it that's the case what what no just just start committing okay great take as much space as you want important distinction okay back on yeah alright so we come back to the student wage proposal any further discussion about that thanks for thanks for uh giving me the time um I was trying to figure out where this remember kind of where that whole thing came from and uh what was what the issues were expressed and um and um while we heard a lot from people about tips minimum and seasonal workers I think the only one that I recall anyways from Representative Briglin with regard to the student thing so um I don't understand not many people use this um how many businesses use it so um so I appreciate it but I don't think it needs to be uh added to the bill but anybody else I wonder if we could have a discussion in support of the student wage so second so it's been moved in second any further discussion if not clerk would you kind of call the roll this is on the amendment the student amendment $3 consistent year round okay so this is actually so this is not on the okay but they are Representative Stevens yes Representative Gonzales yes Representative Reed no Representative Walls yes Representative Strong no Representative Christie Representative Fields yes Representative Sherman no Representative Howard votes yes Representative Smith no and Representative Head yes so now we come to S40 as amended with the student wage fair amounts been said but I'll open it up in case it hasn't all been said I'll go ahead and make a motion to accept the test for it as amended to concur with the senate with further proposal of amendment it's been moved and seconded any further discussion I will just say that I think we are doing an incredible disservice to Vermont employers and employees I think the women I know we've been talking a lot about women but the women I'm looking at are also people like Sarah DeFelice who has started a business is working on ensuring that business success and she's going to have to close three days a week and possibly, probably eventually wherever I think about Kayla McGoon and the other guy in the county who's invested a lot and again these are just the kind of young entrepreneurs we want and want them to grow their business want them to invest in further businesses and more businesses grow their wages organically with the market which they are doing but but what we're putting into place will make it exceptionally difficult and the employees of those small businesses I think we're doing an incredible disservice I've listened to the Vermont retail gross association I've listened to the Vermont Department of Labor and I've listened to a small little store in the corner of the northeast kingdom I've listened to big, right down to a little tiny four employer four employees and that's why those three decided to have made me those three witnesses have made me decide how I'm going to vote on this we've heard from a variety of witnesses within our total of 78 and there have been a lot of compelling stories and I've certainly been moved by both employers and workers alike and those who represent disadvantaged populations all arguing for a not all but many arguing for a gradual increase in the minimum wage and I certainly believe based on the work that we did with the study committee in the fall and the work our committee has done that $15 by 2024 will strengthen our wage base and and be a productive move if there's nobody else when you're ready Mary okay representative Stevens yes representative Gonzalez yes representative Lee representative representative waltz representative strong no representative Christie yes representative fields representative Sherman representative Howard votes yes representative Smith no representative Hett yes seven four okay thank you all Madam chair just to let you know I'm just going to be clear to the committee that this might if this comes to the floor this might be something to speak on on the floor so you all know I've already told the chair Madam chair that I definitely will be against the floor I probably will as well while I appreciate you're letting me know I find that disappointing there's been a long standing addition of committee members either supporting their committee or remaining silent on the floor when they cannot do so so that's disappointing I still want to take that into consideration with all due respect I'm here for my consistency it's not for anybody's party or for protocol and I understand that but this is important well I trust that we can go on to work together on important things for the rest of the year based on our mutual respect and support and we've done some great work this year and I think we have the possibility of doing more as our bills come back from the senate so I thank you all for that I'm going to make a suggestion mm-hmm any other bills that you brought up so um we're back on the floor at three and we're back committee next at nine in the morning is that right nine in the morning we've got more twists and turns with um short term rental oh wait 90 minute nine just updating what's happening at the senate with our bills and then short term rental at 9.45 okay