We're glad to know you're still there. It's still the Breakfast on Plus TV Africa. Right now we're looking at the real cost of Bene Republic and Togo University Certificate's ban. The thing is that everybody's talking about this and it seems as if there's going to be or there is some sort of stigma attached to this so whoever's schooled in Bene or Togo or any other country that's been affected is now being looked at as like you know is your certificate good or is it bad? Is your certificate authentic or is it not? And so all these are constituting what may not be very good for some people who are genuinely alumni or still students in these countries. But let us hear first hand from people who have or someone who has studied in one of these countries. We're talking to our guest this morning who is Comrade Ollada-Port-Marcos Orekelewa National Organizing Secretary ISFOP University Alumni. Good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning. Thank you for having me. ISOP sounds like one. ISFOP. FOP. Yeah. So yeah it stands for Institute Superior Deformation Professional and in English it's translated as Institute of Professional Studies. Do you speak French? Yes. I speak a little bit of French. I understand a little bit of French. But you studied in a country that speaks French. Yes. Where is this? The Republic? Yes. The Republic. Okay. Tell us what it is like you know now is that see when you go to Bennett to get an education it is not an education. I'm sure there are people who understand that there are others that really had an education but we need to get it across. How is it like studying in those in that country? You see the studying in Bennett Republic it gives let me say it gives youth, it gives students, it gives applicants, those who are aspiring to understand that studying outside of Nigeria has its own benefits, cultural benefits, social benefits and a lot of benefits. Being an alumni of a school in Bennett Republic has exposed my mindset and understanding that education is not just about read and writing, it's about understanding, it's about learning, it's about skills, it's about culture, it's diverse. But you could have heard that in Nigeria and then NYSE to you know that that's fine. You see one thing that many people don't understand is that I used to think studying outside Nigeria is stressful and is expensive until when I met a friend of mine in 2013 and we spoke about schools in Ghana, schools in Bennett Republic and what have you. So one thing about the vast understanding about learning and understanding the cultural benefit of studying outside of Nigeria especially which is Bennett Republic which is a case study we are talking about today is that there is this misconception and there is this misunderstanding that people are putting out there that studying in Bennett Republic is as a result of not having a quality degree certificate or PhD or any form of qualifications that they are about. I'm a product of a school in Bennett Republic which is ISFOP and I must tell you that at least those that we graduated together it is clear to our eyes because once you are in a school and you know all these kind of things are going on and probably you are hearing stuff like this especially when I come back to Nigeria and people are be like are you sure that country which you are studying the degree is accredited it is accredited. I must say that there are lots of private investors in Bennett Republic but it depends on which one you are going to so if you are going to a particular private university you have to make your research that shows that you are wise as a student as an applicant who is aspiring for education outside of your country you cannot just go to a country whereby you don't understand your cultural values you don't understand your traveling policies you don't even understand your curricula. Take for example when I went to study I wanted to study economics but I have always loved to be a sociologist right from my secondary school days so but when I was trying to search and to check on the internet to solve to look for which is the best school for me to attend in Bennett Republic then I stumbled upon ISFOP Bennett University and I found out that okay this is a vocational professional institution which I can learn and be a sociologist and they will teach me in English and at that but that virtue I was able to to like okay I went for it and this has a result because of the fact that I have seen a product of that same school who is doing exploits yes who is doing exploits speaking about cultural value I think when I was planning my first visit to Bennett Republic I don't know how it feels like to be outside of Nigeria I actually thought I'm going to book a flight you know stuff like that but until when I got a very very very detailed explanation I first of all got in contact with their customer care line which is on their website and you know spoke to me and told me that in order to gain admission you know you you can come in with your wire and stuff like that and many Nigerians many youth you don't need jam no you don't need all those stuff because I think once it is not hard we always feel like it is it is too easy we feel like writing the quality is not good exactly the quality is not good but I must tell you that passing wire is much more difficult than passing jam it is very very it is very very clear passing wire is much more difficult than passing jam so you are kind of person that you made your c-scredit in your work and you're going through jam you're going through post jam I can recollect my first jam I had I think 222 and the course which I wanted to study requires 250 it has it has to take me a month that 365 days a year to apply for that same jam and when I did that first year second year I felt like no this is actually wasting my time I have other things to catch up with and once you are this kind of person that you you have goals you you need to achieve some things in life you have to look for other ways and I must tell you that studying Benna Republic is not cheap is not cheap mentally is not cheap financially because you you have to do a lot of research you have to be sure and that is the kind of research I'm talking about is it shows that you you are foresee the future because you know definitely Nigeria is a giant of Africa so even if you are coming from any part of the world to come to Nigeria back in the days 10 15 20 years ago we have whites who are coming to Nigeria to study in likes of unilag unibend and even ui but now I don't think we have more of that again we now have Nigerians going outside more and which way we can see the jacquard syndrome and let's not be like we are evangelists of jacquard now that we're calling on people to go to Benna Republic and all that but you know I needed to know what it is like you know studying in that country one of the questions I was going to ask you was how do you surmount the the challenges of language and culture but you've mentioned those things perhaps that is something that Nigeria should borrow because they can drive traffic to their country even though they are not anglophone so we are we speak English and we don't have French students coming to our country though maybe this is what we should explore but now that this thing has come out I'm just trying to get into your mind as an alumni of a school in Benna Republic how has it affected you as a person and others that you might know that came from the same background let me say that speaking on the saga which is going on especially the suspension that is Excellency President Bola Metinubu just slams on Togo and Benna Republic school I must say that even when I heard the news I thought it was a little more because I knew I think I first had something like this in 2020 that was I think pre-COVID era and a lot has been going on in the background see the in a kind of setting in the educational system whereby we can't really say that Nigeria is doing 100% good in the education sector we can't say that but in as much we we want to sensitize the system in as much we want to make sure that the Nigeria is top notch in terms of global recognition in educational sector we should also be careful in not affecting a lot of people generalizing a particular thing and making it affect those that are out of the game why I'm saying this is because when I heard the news first I think it came to me as a shock I thought it was a rumor and it's keep on going and I found out okay I'm I'm a news inclined person so I watch news almost every day on different channels so I found out okay this is true so a lot of things have been going on the the associations of of management in Ben Republic and the student association the alumni is everybody we're reaching out to themselves and what is this what is really going on and once something like this happened it begins to go from bodies to bodies to bodies the DSS is involved the national youth service core is involved NUC national national university commission is involved and many other bodies are involved and I like the sensitization I must be frank I cannot say Nigeria should be a dumping ground of of illegalities of dollars or people who are not capable of of holding a particular position or going to get a degree within six weeks and four months in fact I was laughing when I saw that and I was like how possible is that even your registration time it takes you more than more than at least if you're fast it takes you like two three months your registration and there is a particular time you can make some fees and one thing about Ben Esco is that these thinners actually it's the the kind of system of their education is driving most of Nigerians to that country because we know that your three years is going to be your three years your two years cost study of direct entry as a direct entry it's going to be two years I'm not saying all courses in Ben Republic are three years some are four years like some engineering courses and some medical courses are four years but your three years is going to be three years you've been in a country whereby you're trying to study trying to get a goal I was speaking about goal earlier and you've been affected by strike upon strike upon strike and you're spending money some people who come back to school and it is like they're forgotten what they studied in the previous semester so it's kind of traumatizing so when the generalization came up I feel like this investigation to me should have been done first because I think I heard in the news yesterday that the president has inaugurated a committee which would look at this this whole thing and I felt like yeah that's a good move I will I think like that committee should have been set up should have done all this rudiment of background checks and accreditations and all that stuff before the suspension the reason is because the suspension is is too sudden is too direct there's a bilateral relationship between Nigeria and Ben Republic that definitely we know that Ben Republic depends on Nigeria in some aspects in terms of in terms of workforce in terms of even this education and I must tell you that Ben Republic is not only a beneficiary Nigeria is a country of over 200 million people so definitely we have how many youths people who are aspiring to get and mind you Ben Republic is not is not a country whereby you are being limited by your age to study is drawn like almost like the National Open University of Nigeria so you can join at any given semester at any time in as much you at steadfast in as much you know what you came in for and you you are able to to achieve it I must tell you a three-year program might not even take more than two years and some months in as much you are steadfast and you know what you are doing in the school so there are many of us who are alumni of Ben Republic who went through the four walls of school who study Ubonna candles is a country with 24 hours electricity but yet we make sure that we know where we are coming from and where we are going to we are not stopping at Benic most of us are schooled in Benic came back to Nigeria did our masters I'm a living example did your masters and some has even traveled abroad so my problem is just in quotes the generalization saying that the Benin school togo school I don't know anything about it we have not been there before actually but Benin Republic as a case study I must tell you that even if there are illegal it is going on it is paramount and it is of necessity that the government should take his measures there's no problem about that but generalizing a particular thing I can give I can give instances of something as as compared to what is going on now which has happened to Nigerian investment I don't like to call names because it looked like as if I am I am trying to bring down students but did you have any wind of this kind of thing ever happening in Benin while you were there no no so this took you as a surprise it took me as a surprise it took me as a shock it is not to me I felt like it's not something that we should be welcoming new year with this this committee which he has set up to do the old check-ins and everything should should be the first thing it should do to me I feel like no I don't understand that you just slamming the suspension by a journalist who did a findings on the 28th of December if I could remember and the suspension is given on the on the 2nd of January 2024 within how many days no there should be there should be um a background check there should be okay checking out is is the case study of making sure to know that okay what these journalists have said or what this guy has said as concerning Benin universities or Togo universities at large is it true is he sure there are hundreds of people involved yes exactly what the people involved a stone to one should shouldn't be like as if you're stoning the all private universities in Benin and I must tell you that it is it is it is it is so disheartening because it has caused a case of pandemonium all over the alumnus and the associations and group of Nigerian graduates who graduated from Benin Republic who are presently in Nigeria and they have like what's all this like why is it going why is it supposed to be like this if the country were to be better educational wise we wouldn't disturb ourselves to go to Benin Republic I must tell you because that is just the fact you do your YAC you do your jam you do your post jam repeatedly two three four five years and you see that you can gain admission in a school whereby with your YAC and you will get a very good degree your comeback which is accredited by NUC and other bodies in Nigeria why not you take the shot but you did say that um man you this is not encouraging you to run away from Nigeria but you did say that it's not cheap to uh school in Benin Republic for instance so uh it's it's easier to school in Nigeria apart from this today apart from the the strikes and all that you know in my the school you went to was a private it was a private so compare that to Nigerian schools no no comparing it to Nigeria you see one thing about Nigerian private university is that it is the charge the uh should I say they are applicants or they are student based on what they consume because definitely it is run by the school it is financed by the school so it is it can be very expensive but I must tell you that only those that don't know that even the accommodation in Benin Republic alone is is more than some school fees in Nigeria the accommodation so I was laughing when they say somebody get a degree for I think I say 50,000 or 100,000 there are rumors everywhere we need to understand the media I understand the media to a large extent and I know that it is not everything that is said on the media that is actually true except you make your finding yeah but he got a certificate and he got accepted into NYSE and all those those are the things that the NYSE system should be questioned because a guy who served in 2018 came back and served in 2022 what is wrong with the NYSE database what happened to the authentication so we all thought that since we serve so those that serve in maybe 10 years ago can equally say that okay I think I like the polo now I can go back to the NYSE company I will serve so even if we are checking they are always is higher now so I don't really understand that if you if you serve before you're serving again then the system should be questioned as well we are only looking at the the we are only looking at Benin Republic Benin Republic no okay now now we know we know that there are people who genuinely went to school in Benin Republic they have a certificate they studied hard and all that we know that we know that but the fact that this happened and they checked the database and everything it checked out it means that there are some people also who could want to have an education genuinely yes in Benin Republic and they end up being scammed maybe by our own Nigerian brothers because whoever did that must have links with Nigeria as well so maybe by our own Nigerian brothers so what is the proper way to go in case you want to go to Benin Republic or Togo if you don't know anything about Togo but let's use Benin Republic in case you want to go to school in Benin Republic yes what channels are you likely to pass through so that we get to know that this is the right channel you don't get scammed you're not getting a certificate that is just a forgery of some sort I think this is a very great point which you've raised here and for the viewers who are watching I think it is very important that there is no organization established that does not have number one in websites their media should be up to date so even those that lives Nigerian study in the likes of UK and Canada they did their research online and they made contact with the school emails calls so if you want to go and study in a school and somebody is claiming to be an agent in your own country and you've not even seen the school you've not even met a staff of the school you've not even met somebody who graduated from the school like myself I've met somebody who graduated from the school who is using a certificate who have served who is articulately sound not just about the container now we talk about the content if I speak to you in five minutes I know that okay truly you went to school so that is what I did and after that I went myself to Ben Republic Ben Republic you don't have to take flights it does pass through but I agree you and Ben Republic is is stone through from Lagos here so you go there you go to the school the location itself you observe it yourself you look at when they started and where they are heading to and where they have my school was established in 1999 so you look at all these things you meet you go to the admission I'm sure all schools have the admission board you go there you know you you understand the admission process and if you're far maybe staying in the far north or in the east or something why not all these schools have websites in fact if you go to google now and just type it school accredited by NUC or that is accredited by Nigerian government in Ben Republic and click search is going to bring a list of them and once you're clicking on any of them it's going to be directing you to your website so I think with that you shouldn't be able to fall victim of I think it's because of the fact that some people are just selfish and don't want to that they don't want to acquire education in the proper way that is why I said that what is excellency president Bola Metinubu is doing is is is good is good is very very good sensitizing the educational sector of Nigeria is good but in that same vein there are a lot of people who want to take through the short cut of life to acquire what somebody did with with with sweats so that is why I recommended that and I applaud what the president is doing but in that same vein some people we just hear that school you can acquire this you know you don't even need to come okay maybe probably this thing you can they do that even in passport office they do that in anywhere any organization that is when you yourself you are not you you don't know what you are looking for you that you can easily be scammed and because of the fact that you you you in Yoruba language we call it Ujuku Kuru because of the fact that you you just want to attain something that it is not rightfully meant for you just by cutting corners and because it is cheap and that is why you see all this on us all on that road is all these people will tell you that bring a one million to me because I know that you said I still expensive so they will call a very cheap amount of money you are acquiring a degree and somebody is saying that you should come and buy a degree what happened to the skill what happened if you if you are employed with that with that cost what will you do what will you do you get a degree come back and do politics because you don't really need a degree in politics the way I see it in Nigeria today but you know my fear was that after this pronouncement maybe in your workplace for instance somebody is saying I heard you from Ben and Republic you got your certificate there let's let's scrutinize you more and all that but has it affected you like that it is welcome I'm all those kind of things does not I know of those that who I know that no if a challenge like that come or if a scrutiny like that comes up at any given time if they are tappered if you wake them up they are ready it is there is no problem in scrutinizing and I must tell you sir that even before we acquire our NYC certificate we wrote exams at the NYC headquarters in Jabinabuja we wrote exams like they will ask you questions about your school where it is located what you learned about yourself what was your the travel processes thoughts like that they ask questions and those who were not able to convince them they didn't get their certificates yes exams yeah well sometimes I ask myself what really is in a paper called certificate because we've seen we've seen people that don't have certificates so I drop out some you know never went to school we hear there was a story in one of the African countries where someone who didn't graduate from a law school was posing as a lawyer for whether 12 years or more and he never lost one case of all the cases that he had he never lost one it reminds me of a movie that I watched the other time catch me if you can you know he had to learn everything within a space of weeks and then he got the knowledge that he needed to do whatever or you're talking about suits a movie as well the person who was a professional did not have the knowledge as much as a person who did not even go to the lens that the other people went to but this is all we're talking about then a republic has been blacklisted as it is you are recommending that the investigation by the committee should have been done earlier before slamming whatever penalty it was on the on the on the schools and all that but what else would you recommend that be done to make sure that people like you don't have a bad name that other people that caught corners might have that is where the committee should the committee have their duty and I think I read through the article this morning even before I came to the studio that in order to be able to cope this and not to generalize the fact that a person is sabotaging the effort of students of alumni of graduates who went to better republic who did all rigorous activities to obtain their degree I think it is very important that after which this scrutiny has been done by all the private investors in better republic they should also make sure that they sensitize this country as well they should make sure that the educational sector of Nigeria is also better better off and should look into the likes of writing for three exams before gaining admission in my secondary school days I remember a guy who we studied together we we did all a it was in I think it was in commercial class I was in art class then and he was a Ghanaian he was just around I think his mom was married to a Nigerian and long story short he traveled back to his country while I was debattling with jams and push jams he was already in his second year so in as much we want to sensitize the quality of the degree and those who are working in the Nigerian sector which I don't know if the jobs is even available but let's just be positive we should also make sure that Nigeria educational sector is scrutinized well there should no be favoritism because favoritism is one of the biggest problem we face in Nigeria I'll give you an example you are supposed to be admitted to a school who needs you to score 60 in the opposed jam you score 59 you were not given admission and somebody who scores 45 was given admission why why is that so all these are big problems I can go on and on and on and on just like you rightly said it is not about the container it is about the content I can see many people are just glamoring on okay this is because the Republic is at the backyard of Lagos if this kind of thing happened in schools like maybe Canada or UK are we trying to say that people don't buy certificates in those countries are we trying to see that in Nigerians they don't buy certificates I'm not saying buying certificates is a good thing in fact it should it should be penalized it should that it should have a very a very big thing the penalty yes thank you penalty to that but I'm just saying that if in as much we are looking at one angle we should make sure we cut across every angle if we're sensitizing those who are coming from Penang Republic to Nigeria we should also sensitize our own country and make sure that our educational sector is good and the likes of wayek jam push jam I'm not saying it's bad to write those three exams but I must tell you that writing exams is not it is not a yardstick to show that a person is brilliant I must tell you it is when you're left for you jam will be scrapped I'm not saying jam to be scrapped is a whole body so I'm not going to let that come out of my mouth but at the same time at the same time you're just thinking I'm just I'm just saying yeah if I'm if I'm putting a position whereby I can make some adjustments as regards the educational system of Nigeria in the area of gaining admission and other stuff I will I will I will take wayek very very very serious and any other exam because people joke with wayek and take their push jam and jam serious I'm telling you your jam and push jam will end in the university you you are studying as far as Nigeria is concerned but wayek will take you west Africa that is why it is called the West Africa Examination Council so you can use wayek even to gain admission abroad in Europe I see a problem why do we have jam when we still have the internal exams that the schools give you and all that I don't know why that came up but fortunately it's generating a lot of money for Nigeria it's all about the money it's all about the money so sometimes you just look at it and say could it be the reason they are doing this and all that but has it had any psychological effect on you or anybody that you know that studied in Bene this slamming of a band on the Antogo yes especially especially those who recently graduated for those of us who has graduated for a very long time we we we are confident we know where we left you know the fact that you left a place and you've you've not been there for many years doesn't mean that the same way you live it's how it is so those that are much more affected are those that recently graduated because they feel like they are about going into the faithful market I won't call it the labor market and this kind of thing is how they after spending a lot of time they study their books and they will land in their own country and their certificate will not be recognized whereas why they study from their 100 to 200 to 300 level their school was recognized so what do they do is traumatizing how about the parents that spends a whole lot of money millions on their child to go and study in Bene so when they come back and they say that your school is not going to work with you didn't you make your research before didn't you check where so no one knows tomorrow you can predict the future but inasmuch you went to a school why you were there it was accredited why you studied it was good and this kind of this kind of news is all over the place I must tell you there was one thing Nigeria knows how to do best is carrying rumors that is what we know how to do best and once the rumors is everywhere you begin to see organization be checking out they will not have they will not be concerned more on your person they will not be concerned about what you have upstairs they'll be concerned about the paper which you are holding they say that okay can I see you as you want to see institute that this is a friend of the republic or can you step aside and you see that can be traumatizing because it can cause a lot of people to do it you know I think you understand best where I'm going to so it is very very in it is very very important that they take a look at when you want to make an announcement you should not you should not do it too sudden there should be a background check like it has to it has to gradually comes upon you when you want to give your statement you know I say okay following our rigorous checks and all this we find out that this and this and this not you heading in the in for this time and there is a suspension on the old country it's kind of traumatizing and I've heard a lot of people who sent me a message in fact immediately the news broke out as the national organizing secretary of my school I got a lot of message I get messages in a day at least an average of 20 from people who just graduated with graduated together who you know what do we think about this thing what was the president doing we don't understand this thing is going to it's going to cost us our jobs people will be looking at us then I say see it's all about you if you are relevant to your place of work if you are relevant to your job they know you I must tell you that even if they will scrutinize you they will say no this person has been with us for five six six ten years and we don't see any reason why we should take his paper important than his person yeah but when when when you have you are unfortunate that village people followed you followed you to your workplace they can use that against you I quite I quite agree with the trauma you're talking about yeah the fact that a lot of people might get affected because of that pronouncement we've been seeing it on this show all the time that when public officials want to say something they should scrutinize it and see the effect it will have it's just like fuel subsidy gone till today we are still suffering that last sentence and all that so we've seen these things happen time and time again but we are here where we are now there's there's no taking back the words that have been spoken already I'd like you now to talk to your alumni to talk to your fellow students that may have studied in Bennett or are still studying or just graduated from Bennett Republic just address them and give some words of encouragement as we wrap up okay um my encouragement will be that just be who you are you you know what you are made of you you've acquired your degree in a very in a very simple and a very very good manner so don't be downcast don't feel don't feel don't feel bad make sure we are going to stand throughout these tough times and we'll make sure that by God's grace we will come out of this and those who are trying to sabotage the universities in Bennett the corporate those who are trying to to sell certificates will be heard responsible for their for their sins and not the general public so I urge every um graduate of any Benin universities if you are still studying Mr. Fass continue to study and with God by your side you come out victorious yeah I use this time to urge you the alumni people who know their onions and know what they pass through to get what they got to also do your own findings find out this syndicate that because it's a syndicate that shows find out this syndicate help in the investigation that the government is doing right now so that these people will be fished out named and shamed because that also will vindicate you and everybody who is studying or who has studied in Benin Republic would like to thank you comrade for coming on the show this morning it was really good having to talk with you and thank you for keeping the time I remember when you got to the studio well ladies and gentlemen we've been talking with comrade or ladak for macos or a national organizing secretary um isphab university alumni he was talking to us here about the real cost of Benin Republic and togo university certificates banned the implication on the people the implication on the economy the implication on everybody and one of the recommendations was find out what really happened and what really happens before you slam a ban on an entire country or two countries at the same time without before you because if you slam that ban on everybody and everything it means that a lot of things might go wrong so find out the real thing be sure of your investigation before you take the necessary steps to punish whoever is the culprit we do hope that this kind of a thing will not linger for too long and we do hope that it will not spoil the relationship between Nigeria and Benin and togo as countries as well they are all west african countries and we should continue to be brothers as it is thank you so much for coming okay this is where we wrap it up on the show this morning it's been a pleasure being with you and we hope that we will return tomorrow for the breakfast again on thursday my name is Nyam Gul Aghaji have a wonderful day


sigma and sigma prime. Then I can do a similar thing. I can stabilize the ambient form manifold. So the statement is if I take sufficiently many connected sums with S2 cross 2, these exotic services will eventually become smoothly isotopic. And this operation where we change the ambient form manifold is called an external stabilization. Alternatively, I could modify the services themselves in some way. So here the statement is, again, if I've got some exotic surfaces, the analog of stabilization here is I'm going to be attaching some tubes to the surface. And if I attach enough tubes, again, these two surfaces will eventually become smoothly isotopic. And the conjecture in all of these cases is that a single internal or external stabilization should be enough to dissolve the exotic behavior. Since it's a little bit of loom mating, let me sketch the proof of this theorem of bicarin synixians. The idea is, okay, sigma and sigma prime, they're homologous. So they co-bound some safer hypersurface embedded in X, which I've sort of drawn cartoonishly here. And I can think of this as a co-bordism between sigma and sigma prime. And I can give this a handled decomposition. So why is it three manifold? So it's going to be built out of some one handles and some two handles. And let sigma tilde be the top boundary of the one handle co-bordism and sort of the bottom boundary of the two handle co-bordism. I can describe sigma tilde in two ways. It's the result of doing S0 surgery on sigma, just sigma.  Dualy, it's also the bottom boundary of Y2, which means it's also S0 surgery on sigma prime.  But these were two different descriptions of the same surface. So this is the claim, actually, that if you attach tubes to sigma and sigma prime, eventually they'll become smooth like X topic. But this co-bordism is sort of found abstract. You have no idea how many one handles are in this handle decomposition. You have no idea how many tubes are really necessary to dissolve the exotic behavior. Okay. So and again, in a closed case, I believe that every known example of closed exotic surfaces in a four manifold, a single stabilization external or internal is enough to dissolve the exotic behavior. But the sort of positive evidence is countered by negative evidence in the relative case. So last year there's this paper of Lyndon Mukherjee where they found a link in S3, which bounds an exotic pair of linked disks in a punctured K3 surface. And they show that this link actually remains exotic after a single external stabilization. So you can take a connected sum with S2 class S2 and this link pair will remain exotic. And our main result is that there's an analogous thing for this internal stabilization. So we show that for any positive integer P, there's some not J sub P in S3, which bounds a pair of exotic discs, DP and DP prime in the four ball. And moreover, these discs remain exotic after P minus one internal stabilizations. So attaching P minus one tubes. And just some terminology here. We say that the stabilization distance between a pair of exotic discs is the minimal number of internal state stabilization is required to make the two smoothly isotopic. Excuse me, sorry. So rephrasing, our theorem just says that the stabilization between these two discs we construct is exactly P. So the main tool we use to prove this result is not fluorohemology, which we've heard about a fair amount this week, so I won't say too much. Recall the structure is given a knot, there's some associated effo joint U module, HFK minus and if I have a co-partism between two knots, then there's an associated map between the not fluorochemologists. And since these maps are invariance of the surfaces up to ice-to-be-roll boundary, if you want to distinguish two surfaces, it's enough to distinguish that they're induced maps. Not fluorochemology is really well suited to studying stabilizations because a stabilization has a very simple effect on the induced maps. So if sigma tilde is the result of an internal stabilization of sigma, then you can write down explicitly what the induced map is in terms of the map induced by sigma.  And this means that not fluorochemology immediately gives you a method for finding a lower bound for the stabilization distance. If you've got a pair of surfaces, sigma and sigma prime and you want to show that they're still going to be distinct after you stabilize n times, what you can try and do is show that the two maps are going to be distinct after you multiply it by U to the n. Give me a moment here. So maybe the first obstacle is that there are not a ton of known exotic disks floating around. One example is due to Kyle Hayden. So he has this knot, which we'll call J, that bounds a pair of disks, which are topologically isotopic but not smoothly isotopic, no boundary. On the left, there's sort of an immersed picture on the right. There's a handle decomposition and the bands here are the saddles in these two disks. So maybe the first thing to try is, well, one, can you compute the maps induced by these disks and two, after you multiply by U, will the maps be the same? It turns out that you can compute the maps induced by these disks and moreover, they're distinct. So not fluorochemology can tell the difference between these two exotic disks. So the next thing you want to do is say, well, if I multiply by U, are they still different? And unfortunately, the answer is no. The maps end up being equal. And this follows some from this general fact, that if I have a ribbon knot K, so a knot that bounds a ribbon disk in the four ball, then I can consider its fusion number, which is the minimal number of bands that appear in a ribbon disk per K. And then it turns out if I have any two ribbon disks with boundary K, the maps always are going to be equivalent after I multiply by U to the fusion number. So if I go back to these examples here, these disks both have a single saddle, which means their fusion number is one, which means a single power of U is always going to be enough to make the two maps equivalent. But that's actually fine, because you can show explicitly that if you attach a tube in the right spot, these two disks actually become smoothly exotopic. So the surfaces are the same. So the maps better be the same as well. So the punchline is, if you want to use Hfk to find a pair of disks with a large stabilization distance, you need to work with a knot that's got a large fusion number. Otherwise, the single power of U will always sort of make the two maps equivalent. And the way we'll find such candidates is by using a satellite construction, which I'll remind you what that is. So here's how satellite works. You pick a knot in S3, and you choose some pattern not P, which lives in the solid torus. So here's sort of a cartoony picture of this. I've got this knot that lives in the solid torus. What I do then is I take my knot K that's living in S3, I cut out some neighborhood of that knot, and then I glue in this new knot that I have in the solid torus. When I do that, I get what's called the satellite of P with pattern K. And as you can see, well, you know, this satellite knot is sort of clearly related to K, but it's got some more complexity due to the complexity of the pattern. So this pattern that we've shown is called the 3-1 cable pattern. So cables are when I pick the pattern knots to be the torus knots. And here 3-1 means this knot wraps around the longitudinal direction three times and once around in the wraps around once in the meridional direction. And the really powerful thing here is actually there's a four-dimensional extension of the satelliteing business. If I have the concordance between two knots, which I'll call C, and recall the concordance is an annulus embedded in S3 cross I, such that one boundary is K and the other boundary is K prime. This induces the concordance between the satellites of those two knots in almost the same way. I take some pattern knot in the solid torus and I cross this with I. Then what I can do is I can just cut out a neighborhood of the whole concordance in S3 cross I, and I can glue these two things together. And just by construction, this new thing is going to be a concordance between the satellite of my first knot to the satellite of the second. So back in our situation here, we had these two disks that both bound this knot J that Kyle Hayden found. If I puncture those two disks, that will give me a pair of concordances, which I'll call C and C prime. If I take this pattern to be this cabling thing, this P1 cable, then I get concordances between the P1 cable, the unknot, and the P1 cable of this knot J. But if we go back here, if I wrap around P times in the longitudinal direction and then once in the meridional direction, this knot here is actually still the unknot, which means I really have a concordance from the unknot to the cable of J, which means I can just cap off this concordance and this will actually give me two cable disks, which now bound, which have bound to the cable of J. Even better, it turns out this knot J has fusion one, fusion number one as we saw, it had a single band, but after you cable it, the fusion number increases. So the P1 cable actually has fusion number P, which is what we wanted. So it also turns out that these cable disks that I've shown here on the right are still topologically isotopic and this just follows from the fact that I had a topological isotope from D to D prime and the existence of topological normal bundles tells me that this immediately gives me a topological isotopic between the cable disks. Like I said, these disks have now sort of lots of saddles necessarily, so there's some hope that if I multiply by U lots of times, the maps will remain distinct. So the last thing to do is figure out if you can compute the maps induced by these cable disks by bootstrapping some knowledge about the maps induced by the original disks and that's what we do. And it turns out the right tool to do this is bordered Haggard-Fleur homology. So let me briefly tell you what this is. So bordered Haggard-Fleur is a package of invariants for three manifolds with parameterized boundary. So to a surface, there's an associated differential graded algebra, which we call A of F. And then if I have a three manifold with boundary, there are two invariants. One is a left differential graded module, which we call CFD hat, and the other is a right A infinity module called CFA hat. And the really powerful thing about bordered Haggard-Fleur homology is that if I have two three manifolds with common boundary, I can glue them together. And if I want to know what C have hat of this glue three manifold is, that's homotopy equivalent of this derived tensor product of CFA hat. The first thing tensor CFD hat of the second. And there's a version of this pairing theorem for Knott-Fleur homology as well. If I just think of Knott-K is living in one of these three manifolds with boundary, this box tensor product recovers the Knott-Fleur homology of K living in this glue three manifold. And this is sort of really well suited to studying satellite operations, because that's exactly how we define these satellite knots. I had this pattern knot that was living inside the solid torus, and I glued it to the complement of my knot in S3. And bordered Fleur then tells you exactly how to compute H of K minus of this satellite knot. So then we also describe these cable disks as sort of luing together two co-bordisms with corners. And the next theorem, which I won't read all of, I'll just try and give you the idea. Excuse me. Given a concordance between K and K prime, we saw that that induced some cable concordance between the satellite of K and the satellite of K prime. And the fact is that you can compute the maps induced by this satellite concordance by passing through bordered Fleur homology. And sort of exactly the way you want. We built this satellite concordance by first cutting out a neighborhood of the concordance and then gluing in a solid torus cross pi. And you would really want the map induced by that concordance to be like the identity on the solid torus tensor product with some map induced by the complement of the concordance. And that's what we show. So here is basically how the rest of the proof goes. You can use the fact that, okay, you know what FD and FD prime are, and you can sort of bootstrap that knowledge to figure out what the maps associated to the complements of these two disks should be. And then that previous theorem tells you that if you want to compute the maps induced by these cable disks, then you can compute these as some tensor product with these maps associated to the complements of these disks. Once you do that, you use just a direct computation that shows if you multiply these two maps by U to the P minus one, the maps are still distinct. But a single additional power of U, the maps become one. So again, that shows you that the stabilization distance is at least P, which is already maybe great. And it's not so hard to show that stabilization distance is exactly P by just constructing an explicit isotope between the P fold stabilizations of DP and DP prime. And that was our main result. And I think I'm roughly in time. So let me stop there. Thank you so much for listening. Yeah. So the knot you started with has fusion number greater than one. It's actually, I think it's open that the N1 cable has fusion number N times P. I think Jen would probably know the answer to that question.


picking back up s40 when we talked about it last week there was an urge to let's just vote and and we could be about that point after 78 witnesses and discussion but because there has been it's been a little while since we actually looked at s40 I thought it might be good to to have Damien get the high notes for us before we get into our final discussion. Hopefully I find it. Thank you for the record Damien Leonard legislative council so s40 is up on the screen behind you and I will walk you through it here quickly so on the first page if we scroll down just a couple of lines there we go what you'll see here is the minimum wage goes from the current rate which is 1050 up to a rate of $15 per hour by January 1 2024 the increases start smaller at 60 cents a year and end up at 90 cents a year in the last year so they kind of scale up as time goes on the next major change there if we go to the bottom of page 2 this change here if you remember a representative rights bill from earlier this session this bill was added as an amendment in the Senate and what it provides is that a tip is the sole property of the person that it provided to or given to so if you're a tipped employee and you receive a tip your employer is not allowed to pool that tip with non tipped employees the only exception to this is that if there's a tip pool set up between tipped employees so all the servers pool their tips or the servers pool their tips with bartenders or the hostess or something like that and that's considered a valid tip pool among tipped employees that's still legal and that currently occurs so basically what this is doing is preserving the status quo and the reason for this is there is a recent federal rule change which is allowed to pooling with non tipped employees provided that the employer pays the employees at least 725 an hour before tips so so this basically maintains the status quo here questions before I move on to the second section okay the second section here what this does is it provides that to the extent funds are appropriated the Department for Children and Families will essentially shift the sliding scale for benefits under the child care financial assistance program over to basically compensate for any increase in the minimum wage so for example right now as your wages increase your amount of benefits goes down and what this is saying is that if the minimum wage goes up by 60 cents then the benefits that slope shifts over correspondingly so that folks who are on that down slope here but whose wages would go up as a result of the minimum wage increase will not see a hit on their benefits as a result of that minimum wage increase this does not eliminate the down slope which would be more expensive to do so that benefits cliff phenomenon which already exists in which you've heard some testimony about is not going away what this is doing is it ensuring that the minimum wage increase won't exacerbate it yes so this is to extent that the legislature appropriates funds to do this at the moment it's been discussed with both appropriations committees I do not know if it's in the big bill at this point or not so my understanding is that this is stopping in the appropriations committee after this or likely to since it affects the appropriations of the state so I guess yeah so and I know when I testified there they took testimony from myself Joyce Manchester Deb Brighton and the Reva Murphy and Ken Schatz from the Department for Children and Family Services on this issue so they're certainly aware of that but at the moment I'm not aware of the appropriation having been added the other thing that this would do is adjust the market rate based on so many childcare workers are paid or near the minimum wage so the other thing that this is going to do is affect the cost of childcare slightly as their wages go up and so that the second part here is in addition to sliding that scale over it's going to adjust the market rate to compensate for that so we're not so that the subsidy basically purchases the same amount of childcare as you're you probably remember it doesn't pay for the full cost of childcare because it's well behind the current market rate but what it will do is not be purchasing less childcare so any other questions on that section okay the third section here this is just a report from Legislative Council and Joint Fiscal to the members of the Legislature well to this committee and the Senate Committee on Economic Development so for any of you who are still here in January of 2023 I'll be submitting this report to you basically to identify mechanisms that other jurisdictions used to index their minimum wage to inflation and to identify and examine any alternative mechanisms for indexing the minimum wage because this will be coming up on the year when we switch from the the set increases in the minimum wage back to indexing for inflation and since this was adopted while most jurisdictions use the CPI or actually all there have been proposals to switch over to other measures of inflation that might be more accurate like the chain CPI the PCE deflator or the tying it to the Social Security rates or something like that other questions on that section okay the last section here section 4 the big change is on page 5 of the bill the rest of it is just style clean up and this is just defining what a tip is so a tip just to remind everyone as a sum of money that's gratuitously and voluntarily left by a customer for service this means that a mandatory service charge is not considered a tip for purposes of this bill and that's consistent with existing law so when you see a mandatory service charge on your bill the employer can use that to pay the wages of the employees it doesn't have to be given as a tip that's something that would depend by employer many of many of the restaurants will simply say service charge rather than saying tip or something like that so questions okay that's the underlying bill I've asked Damian to prepare an amendment for us to consider related to the student wage not quite sure how to bring that up you want to post it or just display it pardon do you want to post it or just display it why don't you display it or you can post it too good posting is the only way okay so just starting with the first struck out language there if you can go down to the bottom of that language wrong there's just a minor change here the old bill s40 I forgot to update the minimum wage language between 2017 and 2018 when it passed the Senate so before it would say an employer show up and employee at a rate of less than $10 and then beginning on January 1, 2018 and then went on from there but since January 1, 2018 is already in the past it just says now an employer shown up play any employee at a rate of less than 1050 which is the current minimum wage so this was just it's just a little cleanup so we don't have extra language in the statute next change here the other thing to note is this is now subdivision a1 so before subsection a was all one big block broken out because it gets complicated Ron can you put this onto the website too onto today's anyway I'm sorry she asked if I could put it on the website and I said yes yes I said earlier you could post that immediate thing was getting up for us in case you couldn't do things simultaneously thank you I can't use it you can watch me do it but I can't you're on my computer right now so I can do it if you'd be watching me do it sausage making okay so page two the next subdivision here there we go perfect so this would provide so currently if you remember when we discussed the exceptions to the minimum wage there's an exception of minimum wage for students it's been a construed to apply to secondary school students and not college or university students and it's during all or part of the school year and normal vacation normal vacation periods which has also been construed to apply to times during the school year but not the break between school years the summer vacation is accepted so we end up with a funny situation where students are at the federal minimum wage during the school year the state minimum wage during which is 725 in the state minimum wage during the summer which currently is 1050 so this would if that was left unchanged by the end by 2024 under this bill what you'd end up with assuming the federal government doesn't update their minimum wage in the meantime is students being at 725 minimum wage during the school year and then their wage doubling every summer and then going back down in the fall when the school year resumes so what this does is it provides that a secondary school student and it clarifies that secondary school students cannot be employed at a rate of less than the minimum wage minus three dollars so the standard minimum wage currently is 1050 so they'd be at 750 although this wouldn't take effect until January 1, 2019 so it really be when the minimum wage is 1110 the minimum wage for students would be 810 and it would stay in lockstep and three dollars below year-round so so that takes the seasonality out of it it takes the seasonality out of it yeah and so for the first year it would be so if the minimum wage went up to 1110 it would just be 810 exactly and just track it like that so you just subtract three dollars from year one and this is student secondary school student right so yeah so it's if you're still a secondary school student you're covered by this condition if you dropped out or you've graduated then you're no longer covered as a secondary school student the only language that the committee might want to add in this case if you decided to adopt this amendment currently the law says you know during all or any part of the regular school year school year and regular vacation periods you could add that and then add the language and during the break between school years to clarify that is or you know alternatively just say throughout the entire year or something like that but that may be making things more complicated by eliminating that specification during any part of the school year regular vacation periods you're basically applying it to secondary school students so that's just an alternative wording I think this is simple and would do the trick so I just wanted to identify that since that had been I think in the bill introduced by representative Brighlin we added the words and during the break between school years and that would have just to bring you back to that bill that would have just extended the exception to year round for secondary school students are there questions on that addition a change the next change is at the very bottom of page or at the very top of page three so what this does is it strikes out the exception for students working during all or any part of the school year regular vacation periods and just changes the location at the end of the period in that section so this means that the students are now subject to the Vermont minimum wage provisions with that $3 below minimum wage requirement questions so the other exemptions all of all of the a through H are still in effect it's a through I yeah a through H I'm sorry yes yes they're all all still in fact and what can you remind me what the agriculture for example why what they're do they have a minimum wage so agriculture is kind of an interesting one some agricultural workers are subject to the federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act so to the extent that they do at 725 an hour there are various provisions for peace rates and so forth and Fair Labor Standards Act has a pretty complicated regime when it comes to agriculture including provisions around like child labor and so forth related to that but if you'd like I can pull up the agricultural language from the FLSA for you I just figure if we're doing a minimum wage increase that these exemptions are things we should address there's a lot of them yes so we want to put in a large burden on our retailers and others who are competing against pretty significant market but all of these other things domestic service agriculture so many of these reflect for deliveries many of them reflect what's in the Fair Labor Standards Act so and that's been where they've where they've been at the Fair Labor Standards Act has an exemption instead of instead of students a student exemption the Fair Labor Standards Act applies a has a training wage provision for individuals under 20 years of age so no longer has the student exemption so to the extent that that would be consistent that's there although this wouldn't provide that 90-day training wage it just provides a lower minimum wage for those students which is an approach that some other states have taken other questions on that the just on the student portion of it later on in the labor statute there's discussions of how 14 year olds or 16 year olds employed when you write secondary does that include I mean 14 year olds can be hired for limited work is that at age that's considered secondary yes so secondary school is considered through high school yes so yeah by the this doesn't change the child labor restrictions in terms of for individuals under 18 restrictions on preventing them from being employed for example in dangerous occupations and restricting the hours that they can work and so forth so this doesn't change any of that all this does is it affects the minimum wage for them so that as an employer you'll still have to comply with all of the same child labor standards under our state wage laws and the Fair Labor Standards Act and the only thing this is going to change is you'll have a consistent year-round minimum wage for those students and that wage will be increasing you know about three dollars down below what the standard minimum wage is if this this were added okay so the lot of discussions on this oh there's another piece yeah they just the effective dates so what this provides it's a pretty complicated effective date but basically what it provides is all the amendments necessary to do the student wage piece take effect on January 1 2019 everything else takes effect on this coming July 1st the reason for that is so that the student wage matches up with the next change in the minimum wage so you don't have a mid-year change for employers in this case it would be a mid-summer change for employers where the wage would suddenly drop and so this this just means that they can kind of plan and on January 1st those wages change and further questions on this suggested amendment discussion pretty straightforward certainly would eliminate confusion that that seems to exist now employers about the different times of the school year clarity some ability to move this of course the federal minimum wage has been frozen how many years can't remember off the top I had them in 2000s and unlike some of the other exemptions we did take testimony from the department and I wonder how much it will encourage employers to hire high school students rather than rather than others who might need jobs same question we know that they're the minority of low wage earners at this point I think you're probably going to see a lot of small business employers releasing some of their full-time people like Heidi said picking up part-time help and paying them as little as possible because it's going to put a lot of the small time small businesses out of business eventually this happens I think you're going to see a lot of part-timers just from the other side of the ledger I don't think there's been any show that that would happen you can ask to clarify simply to clarify how people can hire youth and that's that's been a question for the last five years and this I think this is a minimum wage it's not the only wage it could be an entry wage we only took testimony from one or two people that mentioned that they used the student wage we asked the chambers and no one knew of anybody who used this wage play it's the market you know if Shaws wants to hire people at 8 10 an hour and they can't fill it then they're going to start paying people more I think in the long run I'm not sure it's going to displace anybody that hasn't been shown to be the case in any situation now people have been able to charge or to pay less for time immemorial and they haven't been so I'm pretty comfortable with that may I rebut? I had to pleasantly rebut existing employer employees in a retail store or whatever that are right now maybe making $13 an hour or something like that the minimum wage raises these people aren't going to be happy with someone coming up to their pay level when they've been there five six or seven years they're going to want $3 or $4 an hour more as well which probably could lead them to look for another job or just gripe and complain until they're either fired or they quit I don't know if that to be a fact or not but I think there's a trickle process here that might be a problem down the road you can rebut rebut there you would and again the wage compression is something that we we talk about and we don't have we don't have any factual knowledge of it happening we've asked for facts and figures and stats and we haven't seen it happen over the last five years in fact the economy has been the economy's been as stable as it ever has been I mean we're not happy with the level of jobs and the number of people we're making minimum wage but I think we've seen that the economy has not been damaged by raising people's wages at the lowest end of the scale and I think that would still apply Representative Howard I just want to add a single mother with children who works two jobs may be able to work one job which would open up another job for someone else I just can't see someone working at a minimum at $10.50 an hour to try and support their family it just seems impossible to me Representative Reid I would say that people making the minimum wage are not our most vulnerable because they have multiple paths out there's already a built-in inflator every year annually tied to the CPI they can get a raise it's an employee's market right now at one point whatever percent they can go work for somebody else there are ways out of it the people that this hurt never mind the businesses which have been spouting about for three weeks but nobody wants to listen our seniors we have heard multiple testimony that in-home care is going to be diminished because a lot of those people make minimum wage so they'll have to cut back on services and Medicare will not be able to go with it so there will be fewer services these are our most vulnerable and we have our seniors who are coaching listen then we have our seniors who are barely getting by and we are going to raise how much it costs for them to live because prices are going to go up I mean you can't an employer can't just absorb this actually I shouldn't say that Costco or your box store they can absorb it small businesses cannot absorb it we have got to look at the reality of this and we are not we are trying to save the world and in doing it we are putting our most vulnerable at risk and it would be unconscionable for us to pass this unconscionable I will not go up to a senior who says he just made it more expensive for me why? I don't know because we wanted to have a minimum wage employee who is already entitled to a wage annually a raise or can do something about it we found that them to be more vulnerable than you sorry about that it's unconscionable I've just about had it with this whole bill and it's not about market because if it was about market we wouldn't even be having this conversation we are not letting the market do its thing I've got an easy question Madam Chair if this bill passes and the minimum wage increases yearly is there also going to be a cost of living increase that goes along regardless of what the minimum wage is at the end of 2024 then it is tied into it that's how it reads so there's not going to be any cost of living increases between now and 2024 are there clear step increases between now and 2024 which Damien would be in the beginning do you mean in the increases in wage or increases in benefits okay in the wages like we have we have employees in our town garage that are getting the wage now say this minimum wage didn't happen they're going to get a two and a half or three percent increase every year that's what we do for our town employees now if the minimum wage also goes up every year are we going to have to give them a two and a half or three percent increase as well do you know what I mean no this doesn't affect what a private employer has to do with their employees you know whether it's the town or the state or whether they're getting an additional raise or not only if they'd already be underneath the minimum wage they'd have to come up they'll have to come up to the minimum wage but beyond that it's up to the employer to decide what if increases they get I even said that I'm just confusing myself more it seems that a member of us are ready to move to the underlying bill and and get that vote underway but I wonder if we might weigh in first on the proposal related to the student wage starting with a hand count those who are in favor those opposed to the wage change I want to think about it more yeah I kind of want to as well I would have done some I didn't realize this was coming so I would have done some talking to folks is that something you're willing to do today in Mexico because barring other issues I would like us to to come to a final conclusion today continuing discussion on the underlying bill anybody who hasn't spoken yet first so I've already I'm not going to get into my I've been very clear about my position on this bill but but I'd also like to reiterate the importance of of decoupling the tipped minimum from the minimum wage if we're going to move forward on this so that would be decoupling and essentially leave it as a as an increase in the COLA keep it at 525 and then be a COLA what we have now so CPI increase on 525 it's the same thing so on that I just want to reiterate my position of holding the tipped minimum wage to the 50% be her testimony on how when we have a less percentage of our tipped minimum wage to our minimum wage then we have increased harassment in workplace and so it's a really important for me to at least hold that very quickly and briefly I support the bill as written in the amendment not addressing the not addressing the tipped minimum wage as written as written the tipped wage is an interesting issue and I know that we've heard testimony for both what Heidi's advocated for as well as as Deanna and it's been a little bit of a perplexing one for me to think about getting to it I had heard even before we began the discussion of congressional activity to try and eliminate the tipped wage sponsored by both Leahy and Sanders and in my mind that's probably the fairest long term strategy I remember hearing from Lisa clinical early on about the harassment she had she experienced in her job others have we have had testimony on this issue in the committee in the past although it's always been easier to get tipped employees to tell me on the side of what their experiences have been rather than to to come out on the record and that's understandable in many ways but I think it's while I would like to eventually see the tipped wage eliminated I don't know that it's realistic for our for our employer community to experience that at this point but I do would not want to see a rollback of what we provide at present personally the 50% anybody who hasn't spoken yet first and then those of us who have so I just think everybody knows but I feel the same way I'd like to I hope this country eventually eliminates the tipped minimum wage but at this point I would not support rolling back on it and I support the bill with and also the amendment for the student wage anybody else on this and let somebody else say I support small businesses in the state of Vermont and I support senior citizens in the state of Vermont and anybody that votes against or votes in favor of this bill I don't feel does support that that's just my opinion I can feel my head turning I am offended by that I am sorry I am offended because I have many senior citizens in my district I have many many families in my district many single parent families I know what it's like to run a business we have had two businesses I don't have millionaires living in my district and anytime I can help my constituents who sent me here to represent them I'm going to do so I truly support this bill and this amendment and I hope that this bill passes I am a senior citizen so I feel obliged to speak up not a battle a little bit older than you a lot longer and I think this is going to okay I think this is going to benefit our economy as a whole and I think this is a matter of a rising tide that truly will float all boats that's one reason why I am in favor of this bill I guess I've been fired for a while I guess the system has been broken we look at the data that we've received we look at the problems that we've heard about the system has been broken we have an opportunity to at least change the direction a little bit what we did as a legislature by moving the support staffs of the dedicated agencies up to $14 an hour protects that vulnerable population of seniors will be covered in that in that group when we saw the information from Mrs. Manchester that she shared with us from Harris the 8,000 plus employees that are working in that you know entity will not be affected adversely by this change we will help that group and they're the ones that actually are supporting all of those folks that we're talking about in that senior care venue explain that will you hear that yeah I was also there when she showed everything about the job loss of 2,250 people and it dropped in the GDP of .3% from this that's the same economist so you can't hear it what she says it isn't a question of cherry picking there is still the fact that those people are being covered those funds we allocated in our budgets for the increase and I'm not sure how much they've disaggregated that number yet to find out what the effect of that's going to be but based on the general information that we've received I personally feel that we're going to be okay over time it's just like in businesses and I run businesses myself too I started probably earlier than most people in this room and I get that question about the viability of the business the one thing I do know about that is that if you do a good job and you provide a good service and you build a customer base they will come and they will continue to come and that's what grows a good business and you know that yourself are you saying let the business owner run his business is it her business without being told what to do this isn't telling what to do we have not done our job as government moving that needle what's in 68 the last piece that we saw was in 68 there was that chart where the line just everything was moving consistently and then we stopped changing we're adding you know to and the lines just went into like alligator mods they split very drastically and that's what we're working on you know like now for that that period of time there has been no growth you know whatsoever across the board and that's not fair we're trying to bring some fairness back to this equation I sense once again that members of the committee are wanting to talk about and mostly move toward some final resolution on the bill and I want to get a an indication of where people are if there is a specific proposal related to a tipped wage and let me frame that the way I think I'm hearing it and Heidi helped me but your proposal would be to decouple a tipped wage a 525 another increase in the annual by CPI that would be my proposal and I guess I could move that if somebody would second it just a question just to be clear Heidi there would still leave the obligation to get them to the minimum wage it wouldn't change that we move away from the current requirement that the employer pay 50% can I see a show of hands at this point how does it change I don't have it drafted up if it's not going to go anywhere I'm not going to have it drafted up so this is just a straw poll it's a straw poll at this point I don't fully understand you don't fully understand what Heidi's proposing right now let's have Damien remind us of what the status quo is Ron can you pull up the amendment please or whoever's got it hooked up so just briefly the status quo is if you're a tipped employer your employer has to pay you a base wage you pull up one half the minimum wage rate and then the assumption is you're going to get tipped to fill up that other one half you'll get more than that but at the end of the week the amount of tips you get and the amount of base wage you get doesn't equal the minimum wage for the hours you worked your employer fills in the gap and covers the difference that's the way it is right now what representative Sherman is proposing currently the tipped wage is $5.25 so what this would do if we look at number three here line 13 where it says less than one half the minimum wage that would change one half the minimum wage would be struck and it would say $5.25 and then after that it would say beginning on January 1, 2019 and on each January 1 thereafter the basic wage rate shall increase by the it would be by the percentage increase in the CPI and in no event shall it decrease if it's going to track our current minimum wage so basically you're looking at probably between two and three percent increase year after year depending on inflation does that do it I just want to could Heidi explain what's the reasoning of benefits for the worker yeah because um well so number one minimum wage they have to meet the minimum wage regardless of what the minimum wage is could be $30 could be $15 whatever our minimum wage is the employer has to meet that if they don't get it in tips so the minimum wage is taken care of regardless how it benefits the worker is that you know when they if you increase it by 50% if you keep it at 50% um the increase in the back of the house in their management you increase it by 50% it could put them for example because then all costs go up they'll get a higher tips are based on on uh the cost of the dinner or the meal right basically 20% 15% of you know so they get even that much more in tips um and a lot of times you'll end up with servers who are making more than managers of the things so um in general you're talking about we're talking about a minimum wage bill here we're talking about minimum wage um these are generally uh healthy wages um you're in in general tipped and I would say all of the people who want to get rid of tipped of the tipped minimum um that is going to um that would have an incredible impact on a really healthy economy uh industry which is a restaurant industry um and I don't think you will be able to find um I mean just now you talk to servers or bartenders and I have yet to find one who would rather work for $15 an hour than tips um I I have yet to find one um and that is in my community and it's elsewhere I've asked um and um so I think one of the worries is that you're really changing the dynamic of of of the industry right now um they're you know they'll go to counter service some other things some other options or options out there for them instead of having those tipped employees I keep surprises down that one of the food uh yeah I mean it won't increase them as much I mean they're still gonna anybody that's doing you know farm you know local local foods and what have you is gonna increase the cost but I think when you talk to restaurant owners you're you're dealing with a pretty healthy um wage uh that you're already talking about and um and when we're talking about minimum wage we put that into consideration so and I again I think they the um the concern for restaurant owners is that we'll end up moving you know they'll end up moving to more counter service fewer um fewer uh servers um and what have you so overall reducing the employees I understand that no one has proposed eliminating tips um some restaurants and other places I don't know of any in Vermont have done so um I don't know what their effect has been I know other states have eliminated the tipped wage the while there has been discussion of eliminating the tipped wage I don't know that that's a proposal on the table right now it seems as though what we're talking about is what Heidi has proposed um essentially the decoupling and the CPI on the tip for the stat or the status quo of what we do now which was passed by the senate and s40 which is um the tips remaining 50% of the regular minimum wage going forward yeah I share the same constituencies as representative Sherman on this issue and it's been very um instructive to hear their economic development issues with the tip minimum wage and it's very compelling to me what I'm finding though just the fact that what it meant and what the plan was to me tells me that it would be really difficult to vote for it today just as it would be difficult to vote for getting rid of the tip minimum wage all together in terms of not getting enough testimony I mean I've heard from my restaurant owners pretty deeply and I understand what they're talking about um and personally I also am very the idea of discrimination and harassment that happens in restaurants is very close to who I am and where I've been in my world and so at this point I would if there's time I don't know if there's an amendment I hate to bring up the idea of another study that the whole minimum wage or the wage section that we're dealing with we're dealing with a small portion of it there are elements in here that follow this that deal with time and a half we've heard well people can work 50 hours and get time and a half on that it's like well these jobs don't get time and a half there's a whole list of jobs that are not eligible for time and a half this idea of what should happen with the tip wage tip workers for sure except for restaurant workers though we think that there are tip wage workers elsewhere in the economy and you know I would just I mean again on my left hand I don't want to bring up another study but on the other hand there's a lot in this statute that's dated there's things like wage orders which we haven't done for forever you know there's a lot of language not on like so I'm putting on my title and that like I did about wanting to see the title 7 rewritten there's elements in here that I think we should visit because you know even the exemptions that we that are in there we don't understand we haven't taken up testimony to understand but what does it mean to do an exemption to a nanny or the agricultural worker um so I mean if I had to come down on it if I had to come down on either side of the fence that I'm sitting on you know I would say I would support status quo right now but push to have a serious study done on what the ramifications of social and and economic development was what the effect of changing the tip minimum wage would be as well as the other aspects of the of the statute that we haven't touched we haven't touched them as far as I can tell in quite some time based on the changes that have been made so I'll throw that out there but in the very least I would like you know to lean towards status quo for now and then work on try to work on fixing what the tip minimum wage should be everybody clear right now about what Heidi's proposing show of hands of those who are in favor of what Heidi's proposing other ideas are there other amendments out there so um it sounds as though folks may need a few minutes to explore the student wage the huddle and think about that 20 minutes do it okay so come back at at uh two one five is this for every all members to sign or just start committing you know I got it from Tommy Tommy do you know wrong with probably not alright because if it's everybody if it's everybody I'm just going to put my name at this point because because we are and then I couldn't find it that's the case what what no just just start committing okay great take as much space as you want important distinction okay back on yeah alright so we come back to the student wage proposal any further discussion about that thanks for thanks for uh giving me the time um I was trying to figure out where this remember kind of where that whole thing came from and uh what was what the issues were expressed and um and um while we heard a lot from people about tips minimum and seasonal workers I think the only one that I recall anyways from Representative Briglin with regard to the student thing so um I don't understand not many people use this um how many businesses use it so um so I appreciate it but I don't think it needs to be uh added to the bill but anybody else I wonder if we could have a discussion in support of the student wage so second so it's been moved in second any further discussion if not clerk would you kind of call the roll this is on the amendment the student amendment $3 consistent year round okay so this is actually so this is not on the okay but they are Representative Stevens yes Representative Gonzales yes Representative Reed no Representative Walls yes Representative Strong no Representative Christie Representative Fields yes Representative Sherman no Representative Howard votes yes Representative Smith no and Representative Head yes so now we come to S40 as amended with the student wage fair amounts been said but I'll open it up in case it hasn't all been said I'll go ahead and make a motion to accept the test for it as amended to concur with the senate with further proposal of amendment it's been moved and seconded any further discussion I will just say that I think we are doing an incredible disservice to Vermont employers and employees I think the women I know we've been talking a lot about women but the women I'm looking at are also people like Sarah DeFelice who has started a business is working on ensuring that business success and she's going to have to close three days a week and possibly, probably eventually wherever I think about Kayla McGoon and the other guy in the county who's invested a lot and again these are just the kind of young entrepreneurs we want and want them to grow their business want them to invest in further businesses and more businesses grow their wages organically with the market which they are doing but but what we're putting into place will make it exceptionally difficult and the employees of those small businesses I think we're doing an incredible disservice I've listened to the Vermont retail gross association I've listened to the Vermont Department of Labor and I've listened to a small little store in the corner of the northeast kingdom I've listened to big, right down to a little tiny four employer four employees and that's why those three decided to have made me those three witnesses have made me decide how I'm going to vote on this we've heard from a variety of witnesses within our total of 78 and there have been a lot of compelling stories and I've certainly been moved by both employers and workers alike and those who represent disadvantaged populations all arguing for a not all but many arguing for a gradual increase in the minimum wage and I certainly believe based on the work that we did with the study committee in the fall and the work our committee has done that $15 by 2024 will strengthen our wage base and and be a productive move if there's nobody else when you're ready Mary okay representative Stevens yes representative Gonzalez yes representative Lee representative representative waltz representative strong no representative Christie yes representative fields representative Sherman representative Howard votes yes representative Smith no representative Hett yes seven four okay thank you all Madam chair just to let you know I'm just going to be clear to the committee that this might if this comes to the floor this might be something to speak on on the floor so you all know I've already told the chair Madam chair that I definitely will be against the floor I probably will as well while I appreciate you're letting me know I find that disappointing there's been a long standing addition of committee members either supporting their committee or remaining silent on the floor when they cannot do so so that's disappointing I still want to take that into consideration with all due respect I'm here for my consistency it's not for anybody's party or for protocol and I understand that but this is important well I trust that we can go on to work together on important things for the rest of the year based on our mutual respect and support and we've done some great work this year and I think we have the possibility of doing more as our bills come back from the senate so I thank you all for that I'm going to make a suggestion mm-hmm any other bills that you brought up so um we're back on the floor at three and we're back committee next at nine in the morning is that right nine in the morning we've got more twists and turns with um short term rental oh wait 90 minute nine just updating what's happening at the senate with our bills and then short term rental at 9.45 okay