Jobs and Labor budget’s burdensome mandates and tax increases will significantly increase costs on Minnesotans and small businesses

On a party-line vote, Senate Democrats yesterday approved a hyper-partisan $1.5 billion Labor and Jobs budget bill.

“Though this bill recognizes the need to support job creation, passing out money to unaccountable non-profits and a slick branding campaign to appeal to businesses isn’t enough to make up for a fundamentally bad business climate,” said Senator Eric Pratt (R-Prior Lake).

The jobs portion of the bill includes a number of controversial provisions:

  • Several burdensome mandates that will hurt local schools and Main Street businesses, decreasing any incentive to invest and create jobs in Minnesota
  • Diverting money from the Worker’s Compensation Fund, which is designed to pay workplace injury claims, to instead fund operations at the Department of Labor
  • Significant funding for a variety of nonprofits on an uncompetitive basis and little accountability

“This bill contains an alarming amount of provisions that will make Minnesota undesirable for small businesses, employees, and consumers,” continued Pratt. “We should be looking at ways to revitalize our business environment and our state’s economy—that means targeted investments that encourage growth and limiting new taxes and mandates. This bill fails to do that on every level.”

Current law permits collective bargaining for “terms and conditions” of employment, including work hours, compensation and personnel policies related to working conditions. However, the Labor portion of this bill alarmingly expands “terms and conditions” to include staffing ratios, adult-to-student ratios in classrooms, student testing, and student-to-personnel ratios. This will limit locally-elected school boards and will take away the ability to manage enrollment and programs, and will also reduce the flexibility for local school administrators to address unexpected needs in the classroom.

“As the son of a public-school teacher and a former school board member, I respect and trust our public-school teachers,” Pratt said. “We should be putting forward policies that support teachers and create the best environment to attract quality educators. By including controversial language that takes control from locally-elected school board officials, we are failing to do that. I’m concerned that this bill sets Minnesota on a dangerous path that will end up hurting our public education system.”