Announcing Proposal for Frontline Worker Bonus Pay

Republican members of the Frontline Worker Pay Working Group presented a plan Thursday, September 30, for allocating $250 million dollars in bonus payments to essential pandemic workers. The event comes three weeks after a deadline set by legislative leaders and the governor for a final proposal that could be acted upon in a special session. DFL and GOP members remain at odds over whom should be eligible for the bonus pay and the amount each eligible worker would receive.

The Republican plan would make health care workers, such as nurses, first responders, long-term care, hospice providers, and corrections officers eligible for $1,200 bonuses. An application process would verify that eligible employees worked at least thirty hours per week between March 2020 and December 2020, received less than one month of unemployment during that time and did not telecommute or work from home.

Senator Karin Housley, co-chair of the working group, said that the Republican members wanted to stick to the language passed by the legislature in creating the frontline worker hero pay account. “This money was supposed to go to long-term caregivers and those essential workers that had sustained and increased risk of COVID-19 exposures,” she said.

Following the GOP press conference, a coalition of essential workers representing nurses, food service and retail workers and janitors took the podium to express their frustration with the proposal.

Senator Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, a member of the pandemic pay working group, released the following statement in response to the Republican proposal: “In good faith, DFL workgroup members made a proposal before the Labor Day deadline. It is useful to finally see a counter proposal from our GOP colleagues. It is past time to finish this work for those who went to work, kept us healthy, alive, and our economy moving. Let’s complete our work, clear the deck of extraneous politics, and get this money out to Minnesota’s workers.”