Proposal to slow Nebraska minimum wage increases eyes merger with bill weakening paid sick leave

Yahoo

27-05-2025

State Sens. Jane Raybould of Lincoln and Tony Sorrentino of the Elkhorn area. May 22, 2025. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)
LINCOLN — State lawmakers who want to slow Nebraska's voter-approved minimum wage increases could attach it this session as an amendment to a bill weakening voter-approved paid sick leave protections.
Lincoln's State Sen. Jane Raybould's decision to file her once-defeated minimum wage proposal as an amendment to Lincoln State Sen. Beau Ballard's Legislative Bill 415 comes after Speaker John Arch decided not to reschedule her stand-alone bill due to time constraints. Nebraska lawmakers voted to reconsider the vote where her measure fell to a filibuster after the rest of the Legislature's Democrats and one nonpartisan progressive forced a faster vote while one GOP senator was off the floor.
Raybould said her reason for not waiting has to do with the political dynamics facing her bill if the lawmakers don't act right away.
Under the voter-approved law, workers would see larger wage increases. Currently, the state minimum wage is $13.50 an hour. If lawmakers do nothing, voters will increase that to $15 next year, except those workers earning tips. Then the base wage would increase each year based on a cost of living measurement based on a calculation of inflation for the Midwest region from the previous August.
Raybould's revived proposal, in its current form, would shrink the wage increases by setting the annual increase at 1.75%. It also would create a youth minimum wage and amend a separate state training wage to limit it to workers aged 16 to 19 at 75% of the state minimum wage later this year, rather than at 75% of the federal wage. Training workers can earn that wage for up to the employee's first 90 days on the job.
If Raybould's proposal waits to pass until next year, it would claw back some of the increases that young people would have gotten under the law voters enacted.
'It becomes a little bit more challenging, and the optics look a little bit different,' Raybould told the Nebraska Examiner.
Combining the measures could make it easier and cheaper for opponents of both legislative attempts who have promised a possible petition-led repeal effort at the ballot box. Voters would only need to sign and vote on a single petition and ballot measure seeking repeal instead of two.
Raybould and supporters of her measure said her changes would protect small businesses that could not afford to pay more. Democratic-aligned lawmakers against the legislative effort to slow wage growth have said they are defending the 'will of the people.'
'It's a tremendous incentive to businesses if they can hire 14 and 15-year-olds at $13.50,' Raybould said. '[Some] might disagree with that, but years of experience know, having done something similar to that in Washington, D.C. with the trade association, it really motivates businesses to give 14 and 15 year olds that opportunity.'
Over the past few weeks, Ballard and Raybould both said they were open to amending her proposal into Ballard's paid sick leave bill. His bill, LB 415, would remove the current law's blanket sick leave requirements, letting employers offer no paid sick leave to young teens, ages 14 and 15, to temporary, seasonal agricultural workers, and to workers at the state's smallest businesses, those with 10 or fewer employees.
Ballard previously said he would prefer to keep his bill clean, but he said he doesn't consider Raybould's amendment unfriendly and would support it. Ballard said the issue is whether the amendment can be brought within the two-hour time frame Arch has set aside for his bill. Several motions had already been filed as Democratic-aligned lawmakers prepared to filibuster Ballard's original proposal.
'All the other [motions and amendments] that are filed, there's no doubt it's going to be challenging,' Raybould said.
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