Business Expansion Amendment
Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:20 pm
Colleagues,
I’m providing a revised amendment for the Business Expansion Program item for Thursday’s agenda. After our work session discussion with staff, I’ve reduced the number of amendments from the 5 I handed out this morning to the 3 below:
• Incentives should be targeted, and additional incentives should be considered, for businesses and employers in lower-wage sectors who choose to pay their employees above the City living wage. Incentives should be targeted, and extra incentives should be considered, for businesses and employers that are cooperatively owned or managed, or who have democratic forms of representation for their workforce, or who build their projects using workers that have democratic forms of representation in the workplace.
• The City living wage must be paid to the Austin-based employees of the business receiving incentives, and there will be no waiver or exception process for this wage requirement. [To clarify: this amendment is in addition to the staff recommendation to provide incentives to firms that pay their workers above the market rate for the MSA.]
• For economic incentives provided to higher-wage firms, economic incentives shall only be granted to those firms for providing other community benefits other than high wage jobs. Such community benefits could include, but would not be limited to, achieving the goal of the Workforce Master Plan: bringing Austinites up from below 200% of the federal poverty line into jobs that lift them above that standard.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Greg
I’m providing a revised amendment for the Business Expansion Program item for Thursday’s agenda. After our work session discussion with staff, I’ve reduced the number of amendments from the 5 I handed out this morning to the 3 below:
• Incentives should be targeted, and additional incentives should be considered, for businesses and employers in lower-wage sectors who choose to pay their employees above the City living wage. Incentives should be targeted, and extra incentives should be considered, for businesses and employers that are cooperatively owned or managed, or who have democratic forms of representation for their workforce, or who build their projects using workers that have democratic forms of representation in the workplace.
• The City living wage must be paid to the Austin-based employees of the business receiving incentives, and there will be no waiver or exception process for this wage requirement. [To clarify: this amendment is in addition to the staff recommendation to provide incentives to firms that pay their workers above the market rate for the MSA.]
• For economic incentives provided to higher-wage firms, economic incentives shall only be granted to those firms for providing other community benefits other than high wage jobs. Such community benefits could include, but would not be limited to, achieving the goal of the Workforce Master Plan: bringing Austinites up from below 200% of the federal poverty line into jobs that lift them above that standard.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Greg