EDINBURG — The council will have to consider whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 for city employees and the contractors it hires after a progressive organization submitted a petition with enough signatures to get their attention.
The move is a continuation of Ground Game Texas’ efforts to raise the minimum wage in cities throughout the state. Locally, they partnered with LUPE Votes, the political arm of La Union Del Pueblo Entero, to gather signatures.
The group decided to focus on Edinburg because the city had the framework in the city charter that would allow for such an initiative, according to Danny Diaz, the mobilizing director at LUPE Votes.
“We still experience a lot of wage theft cases, we still experience a lot of issues with economic injustice that goes on,” Diaz said about the reasons for pursuing the initiative. “We know that we’re limited on this issue because we know that we can’t just get on the ballot to mandate $15 an hour for the whole community, but we know that we can do it at the city level, we know we can do it for people that get contracts for the local government, so we thought that that was a start.”
He added efforts are already underway to submit similar petitions to the cities of Alton and Peñitas.
The current push to raise the minimum wage where they can, Diaz said, is significant to them because it comes at a time when it seems the price of nearly everything is going up and inflation has become a hot topic.
“Everything seems to go up for years, over a decade now, except for people’s wages,” Diaz said, believing that people across the political spectrum agreed on the issue.
“I think (the) vast majority of people — whether they were more conservative or moderate or liberal, whatever the case may be — I think they all agree that wages are super important,” Diaz said, “and that’s why I think they had a very successful effort in picking up the necessary signatures to put this on the ballot here in Edinburg (or) for the city to consider to put on the ballot later this year.”
Before it can be submitted to the city, the petition must be signed by a number of residents that is equal to at least 10% of those who voted in the last regular municipal election.
They needed 1,800 signatures for the petition and were able to secure more than 2,000 of them, according to Lorena Ramirez, a social worker and field organizer for Ground Game Texas.
Having collected enough signatures, the group submitted the petition to interim City Secretary Elizabeth Rodriguez on Thursday.
If found to be sufficient by the city secretary, she will then have to certify it and present it to the city council and they will then refer it to the proper committee, according to the city charter.
The committee will hold a public hearing on the proposed wage increase and then they will report the ordinance to the city council with its recommendation no later than 60 days after the date that the ordinance was submitted to the city council by the city secretary.
After receiving the ordinance and recommendation from the committee, the city council will have to vote on whether to adopt the ordinance or not within 30 days.
Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. said the interim city secretary informed him the petition had been submitted but he not had not seen it.
“I’d like to see it and be familiar with what the request is and then also, obviously, evaluate it as to where we’re at,” Garza said. “I’m obviously all in support of our employees and (making) sure they’re getting paid adequately, but I have not seen it so I can’t comment on the actual petition.”
If the city council does not adopt the ordinance, Ground Game Texas and LUPE Votes can still force an election on the initiative by submitting another petition with signatures that equal at least 5% of the people who voted in the last regular city election. Those people must also be different from those who signed the first petition.
For Ramirez, raising wages for people in the Rio Grande Valley is important because she has seen the struggles of people who don’t get paid a living wage.
“And then they get blamed for not working more, for relying on the system,” Ramirez said. “To me, that’s why it’s important.”
She said it would be preferable for the issue to be put before voters during the upcoming November election because it would give more registered voters a reason to show up to the polls and vote in other critical races that will be on the ballot.
“We want to keep people engaged and that’s what’s important,” Ramirez said.
“But either way, if they pass it, great. This is going to change people’s lives and in the end, that’s our goal,” she said. “In the end, our goal is to do better for South Texas.”
