By Phillip Lucas | The Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM (AP) — Fast food workers, clergy and others are planning to travel Tuesday from Birmingham to Montgomery to show support for local control over minimum wages.

The group, which is expected to include advocates from the Raise Up Alabama Coalition and Moral Monday Alabama, plans to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and rally at the state Capitol at 1 p.m. They vow to push lawmakers to scrap proposed legislation that would block Alabama cities from setting local minimum wages.

A bill filed by Rep. David Faulkner of Mountain Brook looks to mandate uniform minimum wages throughout Alabama and prevent municipalities from establishing their own. Alabama has no state minimum and uses the federal hourly minimum of $7.25. Faulkner’s bill also seeks to block municipalities from requiring other employee benefits that aren’t required by state or federal law. Proponents of the measure have said it will help sustain economic development in the state.

Birmingham City Council voted in August to establish a local hourly minimum wage of $8.25 by July 1, then $10.10 by July 2017.

City leaders said it was time to act on behalf of low wage workers considering recent development and rising rents in the city — although the decision came two weeks after the group approved of raising its own base annual salary from $15,000 to $50,000, also effective 2017.

“It’s hard with the money that I do make to provide for my children. It’s a struggle to keep a place to stay,” said Bush Pauling, 46, who works at a Birmingham McDonald’s.

“You can pay rent, but off of $7.25 an hour you can’t even pay your light bill or your gas bill,” he said.

“We work hard daily. We take a lot of verbal abuse, we take a lot of abuse on our body for the money that we’re being paid,” said Chico Tate, a 32-year-old Burger King employee who makes $7.25 an hour and said he’s trying to support five children. Tate and Pauling both said they plan to be part of Tuesday’s protest.

Birmingham City Council voted earlier this month to expedite the first phase of a planned minimum wage increase to March 1.

A city council agenda says the group could vote Tuesday to move the date of the initial increase to Feb. 24 to try beating lawmakers from taking further action on the bill.

The Republican-backed bill has already won approval from the House of Representatives on a 71-31 vote that fell largely along party lines, and Republicans have a supermajority in the Alabama House and Senate.

The Alabama Attorney General’s office has declined to comment on whether the proposed legislation could retroactively invalidate Birmingham’s wage increase if it passes after the city’s ordinance goes into effect.

However, a section of Faulkner’s bill declares as void “any ordinance, policy, rule or other mandate” that doesn’t comply with the law.

After Birmingham leaders approved the ordinance calling for a minimum wage increase this summer, attorney general’s spokesman Mike Lewis said there is no specific authority for a municipality to adopt a minimum wage, but municipalities can use the general authority of a state law to adopt policies that improve constituents’ quality of life and prosperity so long as the measures are consistent with state law.

Legislation to block municipalities from using that authority, known as pre-emption bills, are a popular tool among lawmakers who say they’re looking to preserve economic development by blocking municipalities from exercising local control over minimum wages.

Groups in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville have also been rallying for an ordinance similar to Birmingham’s.