A group of fast food workers and others are traveling from Huntsville to Montgomery for a rally in support of local control of minimum wages.
Workers will be joined by clergy, community supporters, and elected officials. The group will be meeting this morning at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham before holding a rally at the state Capitol in Montgomery at 1 PM.
A bill filed by Rep. David Faulkner of Mountain Brook seeks to mandate uniform minimum wages throughout Alabama and prevent local governments from establishing their own. Alabama has no state minimum wage and uses the federal minimum of $7.25.
The Birmingham City Council voted to expedite the first phase of a planned minimum wage increase March 1. The council may vote today to put the second phase of that wage increase, a $10.10 minimum wage into effect tomorrow.
The Alabama Attorney General's office has declined to comment on whether the proposed legislation would retroactively invalidate Birmingham's ordinance.
Southern Alabama can expect another round of severe weather starting tonight.
A low pressure system forming in Texas will bring the potential for severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. These will affect a region west of a line between Camden and Mobile and move into the I-65 corridor. The storms are expected to hit between this evening and early Wednesday morning.
Joe Maniscalco is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Mobile. He says that preparation for this level of weather is important.
“We just want to ensure and stress that people be prepared because this looks like it could be a very dangerous situation setting up for the Southern states from Mississippi, Alabama, and to the northeast.”
The National Weather Service provides additional preparedness information on their website.
While Alabama prepares for tonight’s severe weather forecast, the National Weather Service wants to train spotters for future storms. The agency is holding its latest SKYWARN storm spotter class tonight in Lauderdale County. The class includes basic and graduate storm spotter training ahead of the peaks in the harsh weather season.
John De Block is a Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Birmingham. He says weather spotters are an important resource in keeping everyone safe.
“One of the benefits is that you may be able to recognize the signs of a potentially hazardous situation and get your family to safety. And also by providing those reports to the National Weather Service we can then take that information and turn it around through a warning that we might issue or feeding the information to the local media.”
The National Weather Service will follow up tonight’s class with one in Morgan County on Thursday.