Governance, Native Communities & Tribal Governments Committee 91522

Anyone you are.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody.

Today is Thursday, September 15. This is a meeting of the Governance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee.

The date, I already said the date.

Let's call this meeting to order.

I'm the Council President.

Chair, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council President Juarez.

Here.

There are four present.

Great.

We have a quorum.

We'll move forward.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

I will go through the approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be approved.

Not hearing or seeing any objection, the agenda is approved.

Chair's report.

Agenda item one is the appointment of Summer Hepburn to serve on the Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee.

Summer will be introduced by Todd Snyder from Seattle Public Utilities.

Next, we will consider the appointment of Kimberly Loving to become Director of the Seattle Department of Human Services.

And I understand Deputy Mayor Wang will present the Interim Director Loving's nomination.

There's Kimberly.

Thank you, really good morning.

And finally, we'll be joined by several folks from the Office of Labor Standards, Director Steve Marchese, Joshua Trebig, Lane Mindale.

And if I got that wrong, please correct me.

Carmine Estadine Estadine, if I got that wrong, too.

And Katie Jo Kippinger.

They're joining us today to share Office of Labor Standards, Race and Social Justice presentation.

I understand you guys have a 17 page PowerPoint to walk us through.

Steve, did I get everyone's name?

Make sure if I correct me on the names, which ones I got wrong.

You're a very close council member.

Carmen Estandia is the person who I think you probably got the furthest from, but everybody else, you did just fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm always conscious of that because people get my name wrong, so I always like to go back and make sure we honor people and say their name correctly.

need to learn how to say it better.

So thank you for that, Mr. Riccasey.

You're welcome.

I share that concern.

People do interesting things with my name as well.

So before we do that on our agenda, we're going to go to public comment.

And colleagues at this time, we'll now move into the public comment period.

Madam Clerk, as you shared with me, do we still have one person in chambers and no remote callers?

Yes.

Okay, that being said, we have 1 individual for public comment, and that individual will have 2 minutes and I will now hand over to you to present the instructions and the public comment recording.

Hello, Seattle.

We are the Emerald City, the City of Flowers and the City of Goodwill, built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the Council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when they registered online and used the meeting ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

A reminder, the speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted.

and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel Broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused or if the process impedes the council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the city.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in Council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open.

and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

Our first speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Sieg Heil, my damn dirty Nazi, Gestapo, fascist.

Fascist, fascist, yeah.

Fascist mob, yeah.

Mafia cartel.

My name Alex Zimmerman, I won't speak about.

Agenda number three, race and social justice.

35 years I live in the city and never see one day or one hour of race and justice for everybody.

And I give you a couple examples so you understand about what I am talking.

Two months ago, I spoke with Alex Pedersen, Q Council, about why you don't show us faces.

And he told me it will be changed in September.

Today, September 15, nothing changed.

It's very interesting for me, you know, what does it mean, why you stop doing our faces?

It's a pure racist, fascist, Nazi, Gestapo racism.

It's exactly what's happened.

Because we all have rights, because we all have the right color, race, and everything.

So right now, nobody can see who's black, white, brown, or yellow.

It's a pure racism.

And this is exactly what I told you, Seattle is the number one fascist city in America with Nazi, Gestapo, anti-Semite.

The second example that I give is for me very interesting, because the presiding judge in the consul chamber is elected only because she has 50% of Mexican blood.

I totally confused.

Is this racism?

Yes, exactly.

Because when you have 50% of Mexican blood, you can be a president of Seattle.

Maybe president of United States.

Okay, we're starting to cut the mic.

Madam Clerk, cut the mic.

We're not going to entertain that comment today.

No comments about people's race or gender, ethnicity.

You're done, Mr. Zimmerman.

Security, have Mr. Zimmerman removed?

Today's public comment, we speak to the matters on the agenda, not to people's ethnicity.

We're not doing that today.

So are we done with that?

There are no more speakers.

Great.

All right.

Now that we have our last Council Member Mosqueda has joined us.

Oh, good.

Welcome, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council President.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Okay, so let's start on a good note in a good way.

We have reached the list of our registered speakers.

And so we have now closed public comment.

So let's go on to our agenda.

Our items of business, Madam Clerk, can you please read item one into the record?

Agenda Item 1, Appointment 02267, the appointment of Summer Hepburn as member Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee for a term to December 31, 2023.

Thank you.

I would like to welcome Todd Snyder from Seattle public utilities.

Mr. Snyder is the apprenticeship program manager, and he will be introducing the nominee and Mr. Snyder.

I should add.

And where is summer?

There's summer.

I should add that.

We have your resume and your application and packet in front of us, and we've had it for a week.

So, thank you very much.

Mr. Snyder, the floor is yours.

Good morning Council again my name is Todd Snyder I am SPU's Apprenticeship Program Manager and the current Secretary of the JATC.

Under WAC 29605 the Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council has recognized the City of Seattle Washington's Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee or JATC With the responsibility and authority for administering all registered apprenticeship programs sponsored by the city of Seattle.

So this makes us part of the 50 state system that ensures that graduating apprentices journey level cards are a public record and like a college degree that can never be taken away.

Currently, I believe we have 10 separate occupations with apprentices employed by City Light, Finance and Administrative Services, Seattle Public Utilities.

Seattle Department of Transportation does have an approved occupation under our standards that is yet to activate that program since receiving approval.

Our committee is a joint committee equally representing both labor and management.

I'd like to introduce our Local 32 member, Summer Hepburn.

Ms. Hepburn is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz with a bachelor's in anthropology.

She joined SPU in 2013 as a water pipe worker apprentice, graduating in 2015. Since then, she has become a water pipe worker senior.

She joined our subcommittee, the Waterpipe Worker Subcommittee that reports to the JATC, has chaired that for the last, I believe, nearly three years, and has also acted as a lead trainer for our cohort of water pipe worker apprentices.

She's been one of the most outstanding people I have met at SPU.

Thank you Mr. Schneider before we go forward before I ask any questions, I want to ask my colleagues if they have any questions, I just have a few comments.

I'd like to make and then I want to hand the floor over to separate.

Are there any comments from my colleagues?

Our committee members.

Okay, not seeing any.

I want to just first of all, Summer, I think I've met you before.

I'm pretty sure I have a date when you have that annual labor gig up in the convention center.

I've been there twice with the women labor people.

I just was blown away.

Pipe fitters and construction workers, women from all over the United States.

I think we hosted that conference three years ago at the convention center.

Anyway, I had a chance to go through your confirmation packet.

We are all big supporters of apprenticeship programs.

I know that there's the one in the South Seattle College.

We also have one at North Seattle College that we did with Dr. Crawford and Dr. Brown, particularly emphasizing on women of color and women.

It's good to see you.

I understand you're on a mayoral appointment.

At this time, I'd like for you to share some of your resume and your accomplishments, and I'm also looking forward to seeing you confirmed today to be on this committee.

Go ahead, Summer.

Hi, thank you so much Council and I really appreciate your introduction, Mr. Snyder, and I am so happy to be here.

I'm honored to have been chosen as a representative of Local 32 and SPU as a whole.

I truly want to uphold the values of SPU and the apprenticeship.

It is, I believe, my responsibility to continue to support apprenticeship in any way that I can push for better recruitment, including for women and people of color.

I wouldn't have this job if that hadn't been made available to me by someone who worked for SPU, who happened to take the time to let me know that it was possible that I could do something like this, which is why I feel wholly responsible to be part of Women in the Trades Fair and other trades fair where that we can speak to younger generations and people who may or may not understand that this This life is available to them because my life changed greatly when I was accepted into the program.

And I really want to make space for others who may not understand that that's possible for them.

I truly also believe that apprenticeship in a whole, as far as apprenticeship for all of the city, including City Light and SDOT and drainage, that we're responsible for the future health and safety of our infrastructure.

So without that, we don't have a functioning city.

We aren't able to drink water.

We aren't able to have electricity.

We aren't able to have the comforts and the safety that we have now.

And I believe that if we can make space for folks to thrive within an apprenticeship, then we can make space for our infrastructure to thrive.

So that is why I'm here and I really appreciate all of your time today.

Thank you.

I did not know that you were part of local 32. I couldn't there's so many numbers.

I apologize.

I would be lying if I could tell you I know every union number.

So thank you for local local 32 representing before I move on to a vote.

Is there any other comments from my colleagues before we move on?

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to say, Audrey, thank you for your volunteer service and that perspective that you're bringing your statements just now explaining exactly why this is an important program and why you're a great candidate.

Thank you for your service.

Great.

I'm glad that Ms. Hepburn and Ms. Levin are both here today to start us off, as my Uncle Billy would say, in a good way, with a good meeting, with our hearts in the right place, because that's what we should be doing as good people serving this great city.

With that, I would like to move the committee to recommend confirmation of appointment 02267, Ms. Summer Hepburn.

Is there a second?

Second.

Got a second from my vice chair.

The motion has been moved and seconded.

There's no further discussion.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the appointment?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council President Juarez?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommends that the City Council confirm Ms. Summer Hepburn, appointment 02267 to the, and I gotta get this right, the joint apprenticeship, I don't have in front of me, I'm sorry.

Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, JATC.

JATC, thank you very much.

Congratulations, Summer, and thank you for being here.

Thank you all so much.

I hope that you have a lovely rest of your meeting, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you.

Okay, so we are gonna move on to our second matter.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item two, appointment 02348, the appointment of Kimberly Loving as Director of the Seattle Department of Human Resources for a term to September 1st, 2026.

Thank you.

I'd like to welcome Deputy Mayor Greg Wong, to address our committee for a second time in a row, but now as Deputy Mayor.

I was gonna say, I was gonna squish them all together, but now I'm gonna say it right.

Deputy Mayor Wong, please introduce the nominee so we can discuss Ms. Leving.

Thank you Council President Juarez, I appreciate you sending off the meeting on such good vibes.

It's a great way to do it and I do truly believe that will continue here with our discussion with Ms. Loving.

Council President, members of the Governance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee, it's my pleasure to be before you today in my first Council appearance as Deputy Mayor.

The Seattle Department of Human Resources is in my mayor's office portfolio, which is why it gives me great pride to introduce you to Mayor Harrell's nominee for director of SDHR, Kimberly Loving.

The person at the helm of SDHR manages a department that affects our entire local government workforce, so resultingly affects the people of Seattle.

Our city family deserves a qualified, capable, and tested SDHR director And we have found that in Kimberly Loving.

I think most of you probably already know Kimberly from her service as SDHR's Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, and since August of last year, Interim Director.

Over the pandemic, Kimberly and her team were asked to devise and implement solutions to unprecedented problems and a period of intense strain for employees across the city, including vaccine exemption review and remote accommodations.

She managed those pandemic challenges while still maintaining a focus on securing and fostering top talent for our departments, supporting morale and the employee experience, and engaging with our labor union partners who represent city employees.

Before Mayor Harrell referred her nomination for your review today, our office was sure to consult with stakeholders, including directors of city departments, Human Resource Leads and City Departments, several employees on the SDHR team, including direct and non-direct reports to Ms. Loving, and labor unions representing city employees.

Further, Mayor Harrell took a close review of Kimberly's work as interim director over this last year and recognized the care she has for her team, the service she provides her departments, and the dedication she has to the pursuit of equity.

Council Members, we're so fortunate that Kimberly Loving is willing to serve the people of Seattle.

And I hope that after meeting with her today, you'll agree she'll make an excellent permanent director of our Seattle Department of Human Resources.

And with that, let me turn things over to Kimberly to offer her introductory remarks before taking your questions today.

Kimberly?

Hold up, Mayor Wong.

What we have to do first, just procedurally, I gotta see if, I'm sorry, we gotta see if our colleagues have any questions, and then I will make sure that they get all their questions as I want to hand the floor over.

But thank you for stepping in there.

Appreciate that.

Colleagues, are there any questions before, I know that Kimberly answered, Ms. Loving answered 11 questions for Seattle City Council that we all have in front of us along with your confirmation packet.

So colleagues, are there any questions that you would like to ask the nominee at this point before we hand the floor to Ms. Loving?

Okay, not seeing any.

Oh, everyone's good.

Okay, great.

Ms. Loving, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President.

And thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong, for the lovely introduction.

First and foremost, I want to thank Mayor Harold for placing his trust in me by nominating me.

Thank you to all of you, the Committee on Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments for considering my nomination.

I am truly grateful.

I'm excited.

I'm honored.

I'm humbled to be here before you today.

I again want to say thank you to Deputy Mayor Greg Wong for his kind introduction and for his support of me for this position.

I also want to take a moment to thank Council, all of your legislative assistants and Council Central staff who do amazing work every day.

I have had the pleasure of working with some of you and I look forward to continuing our partnership into the future.

Thank you to the citywide HR leadership team, particularly for your work over the last two years.

I personally witnessed so many of you rapidly adapting while remaining a source of calm to city leaders and employees during the tough circumstances of the pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis pushed us all personally and professionally.

And while we still have a great deal of work to do, I'm grateful to have worked through some of those very challenging days with alongside you.

A special shout out to my executive leadership team for embracing me and trusting me.

And finally, my sincere thanks to the more than 100 Seattle Human Resources Department employees who are incredible and dedicated public servants, committed to provide equitable human resources support and services to our city employees and who work hard each day to create a community within SHR where each of us can continue to grow and learn together.

During last Sunday's weekly Zoom call with my family, my mother asked if I had a busy week ahead, and I reminded her, hey, mom, Thursday is going to be a pretty big day for me.

You remember that confirmation process I shared with you?

And she said, oh, yeah, that.

Honey, you just be yourself and they will love you.

So I come before you today humbled and with my mom's advice front of mind to be my authentic self.

Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words, Chair Juarez.

I'm happy to take any questions you have at this time.

Great.

And I just want to Deputy Mayor, you're right.

Usually I have the director introduced and then, but I wanted to give my colleagues an opportunity because Miss Levin, you provided with the mayoral packet that we received on August 19th.

We have had your resume and all your information and all your glowing letters.

So, I just kind of wanted to give my colleagues a chance to see if there's anything from the 11 questions that you had answered so thoroughly.

before I give you an opportunity to speak.

Now that you've spoken, I want to ask my colleagues if there are any other follow-up questions that we can present to Ms. Loving now that she has the floor.

We'll start with Council Member Mosqueda and then we'll go to Council Member Strauss.

Thank you very much.

It's wonderful to see you director loving and it's been wonderful to work with you as well.

Really appreciate your partnership on the Seattle City employees retirement systems board.

And that has been great to have your participation in those meetings.

And I absolutely have found that you always bring your authentic self, so very excited to continue to work with you.

I have two questions for you, and you did address some of these sort of on the macro level, but I just wanted to give you the chance to address them in the broader setting here for the public.

There has been a merger of HR among departments over the last few years.

I think it began before I started, so about five years ago.

But just wondered if there was an opportunity as you take the helm in a more permanent way to do some evaluation internal with departments and frontline staff to see how that merger of HR systems is going at least four or five years ago when I started.

there were some hiccups to begin with and some concerns around how folks were able to navigate the system.

And I think that things have smoothed out quite a bit and wondered if now would be a good opportunity with your leadership to go back in and really assess if there's still issues or concerns, especially among frontline workers or among representative union represented unions in the Coalition for City Unions of how they'd like to continue to see improvements since that merger took place.

Then the second question that I would have is, right when I started, especially in the midst of the Me Too movement, there was a lot of individuals who within our own city family felt that we could do better in terms of improvements for how to address harassment, intimidation, retaliation, even just maybe inappropriate comments.

And so part of what I tried to do was set up the Office of the Employee Ombud, so people had a place to go, but wondered if you could reflect a little bit as well about how that partnership with the Office of Employee Ombud is going.

And if you have thoughts coming into this role with your leadership on how you'd like to take those issues head on, as we know, sometimes concerns or complaints about how systems are working don't really get expressed because of people's fear or trauma that they've been through.

So those are the two questions I had asked of you in terms of system evaluation or reform.

Thank you, Council Member Mesquite.

It's good to see you as well today.

So I'll take your first question first, but I may have a question about it.

When you talk about merger, what comes up for me is the conversation that once upon a time took place about pulling HR together across the city centrally.

Is that, I see you nodding sort of affirmatively.

So that did not happen, and we have a federated model of HR in the city.

It remains that way, as it was when I joined almost seven years ago.

There was conversation at that time, but there are departments that do have their remain to have their own HR teams that work with us, that partner with the central department.

And then the central department, SHR, we are responsible for the HR services, soup to nuts, you could say, for 20 departments.

So some of the smaller departments, including SHR, we manage all of the HR services.

So what I can tell you in terms of systems and challenges and opportunities and probably what you might be referencing in terms of hiccups.

What we've worked really hard to do is to continue, and I do mention this in one of my answers about the citywide HR leadership team, So we meet regularly, it's usually bi-weekly, and that's where the HR leaders across the city discuss and sort of work through policy, HR policy, and any other issues.

The last, the thing that's been front of mind for all of us until very recently, for example, is how we came together in order to address the pandemic and, you know, sort of move as a school of fish, if you will.

Although we are this enormous enterprise with very different lines of businesses across the city.

So I'll stop there with that, and if you have further, OK, if that's responsive.

In regard to your question about our relationship or the Office of the Ombud, I would say that that is one of the departments where I have our department and I have one of the strongest relationships.

because of the work that they are responsible for and the synergies with our HRIU, the HR Investigations Unit.

As a matter of fact, I recently implemented an organizational shift that placed our learning and development team within the division that also houses the HR Investigations Unit.

And the reason for doing that, Councilmember, at a high level was because the data and information that we receive as a result of the investigations that come our way with respect to harassment, et cetera, we want to be able to leverage that information and understand exactly what we could be doing on the front end from a learning and development and training standpoint.

and I will end that by saying that the office of Dr. Khan is involved in all of that with us along the way, her expertise and partnership.

Thank you.

Is there any follow-up, Councilor Muscata, before we move to Councilor Strauss?

No.

Very excited about the nominee and I really appreciate that perspective.

Thank you.

Councilor Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Not a question, just a comment after reading the responses, hearing Council Member Mosqueda's comments and your comments, Director.

I just am here to say your mom is right.

Come as you are, and we are loving you, so I'm excited to have you on board.

That is thrilling to hear.

Thank you.

Thank you for saying that.

I will make sure and let her know.

when I listen to her throughout my life.

And when I don't listen to her is when I regret it.

So I finally learned that lesson.

So thank you for saying that.

And for all the moms out there, moms are always right.

Just just FYI on that one.

As my mother used to say, there's a scoreboard and it's always mom five.

You zero always never changes.

So stop.

Yes.

OK, are there any other questions that we have for the nominee Miss Loving before I move to a vote?

Deputy Mayor, would you like to add anything before we move to a vote?

Just a sincere thanks to Ms. Loving for her willingness to serve the people of Seattle.

I've gotten to know her over my time as deputy mayor, although brief, I am just thrilled.

I really think that she's going to be a huge asset to the workers who work at the city and in the end, the people of Seattle by improving systems and equity throughout.

And so it's just a pleasure to be able to put her forward for your consideration.

Thank you.

Ms. Levin, you've been with the city for over a decade, correct?

No, ma'am.

Not quite.

Some days it might feel like that.

For good, good reason and being stretched to learn and be challenged.

But I started in 2016. Oh, 2016.

Oh, I was looking at your resume.

OK.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

And you've been serving, though, as interim for a year.

Yes, ma'am.

I was asked to step into the role in August of last year.

So it's a little bit over a year.

So, yes, I have.

I should thank my clerk, Sarah May.

She always puts together what she calls fast facts.

She tracks your whole career for me.

So that's not all me.

So thank you.

Okay, with that, I'm going to move to a vote.

I move the committee recommend the confirmation of appointment 02348, Miss Kimberly Loving.

Can I get a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded, and there's no further discussion.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the vote?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Great.

The motion carries and the committee recommends that the City Council appoint Ms. Kimberly Loving appointment 02348 as our Director of the Seattle Department of Human Services.

My understanding is that the committee's recommendation will be heard at City Council on either September 20th or 27th, depending on Director Loving's availability.

The committee clerk will be in touch.

Thank you, Ms. Loving.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council members.

Thank you, Council President.

It's a pleasure.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong.

Thank you all.

All right.

On our agenda, let's move on to item number 3. Madam Clerk, can you please read item number 3 into the record?

Agenda item 3, Seattle Office of Labor Standards, Race, and Social Justice Initiative presentation.

Great.

Director Marchese, I'm going to let you introduce your whole crew, since I didn't do a very good job in my opening.

So I'll let you do it and then we'll open it up for questions after you do your presentation, because I know you have a PowerPoint as well.

Sure.

Thank you so much.

And I think I'm going to try to get this shared in the in the Zoom meeting.

So give me a second while I get that loaded up, if I can get that done.

So hold on.

Because I'll be doing the driving.

Is that up there.

Can you all see it.

Perfect.

And I'm glad you're doing the tech stuff because, well, you'll be see how glad we are when we actually get to that point.

Okay, let me get going.

Well, let's get started with you.

Okay, well, introduce your team.

Yep, sure.

So thanks.

Thank you so much, Council President and members of the committee council members.

I'm here with members from the Office of Labor Standards, who are going to present the race and social justice initiative report for 2021 for our office.

I'm joined by Katie Joe Keppinger our enforcement manager.

Carmi Estandian, who is our data research person, Joshua Trebig, who is one of our investigators, Lane Middaw, who is a policy analyst.

And we're excited to spend some time with you to let you know what we've been up to.

Obviously, this is a 2021 presentation.

Much of this, though, does translate into 2022, and we'll talk about that.

Looking forward to answering your questions as we get to this through the presentation.

Each person is going to introduce the next person as they move through it so they'll be doing the handoff that way.

So I'm going to begin with just a brief overview of the of the presentation so we can just talk a little bit about it.

We're going to talk a little bit about our coven 19 response.

We're going to have some discussions about change team and our budget transparency process process.

one of our initiatives to have a discussion group on RSGI, some skills training work that we've done in the past year, a discussion about one of our particularly RSGI-focused initiatives, which is to provide a per diem policy for our Domestic Workers Standards Board members who are workers, and then also a discussion of our Race Equity Toolkits and a preview for 2022. So I'm going to start back up really just for a second and just recenter us on the work that our office is doing really is key tied to the RSGI work overall.

Our work is embedded, RSGI work is embedded in the very purpose for our office.

You don't get an office like ours unless we are in a place where we want to uplift the experience and the needs.

of low income, particularly by pocket immigrant workers, and we want to focus city resources and making a promise of equity reality for those workers, and that really has infused the work that we do.

It infuses our mission as you can see here on the screen.

We are focused on engaging with workers in the community.

We are focused on working with our businesses, particularly our small businesses, where they don't have a general counsel who can really be there to advise them to ensure they can comply.

And we also think about how we do our outreach work, where the real focus on equity as it relates to both culturally competent and linguistically accessible work with community organizations that are doing work in the community.

We also think about this in our policy work, where we talk about how we are enforcing that work and our enforcement work and we also think about this in terms of how we try to operate our office.

So, this is central to the work that we do as the Office of Labor Standards and I want to appreciate the work and the fact that you as council members and your predecessors have provided us with the opportunity to do this work through the legislation that you've done.

because you have given us the tools to actually stand up for workers and make it possible for them to get redress and I'm going to talk a little bit about that and highlights from 2021. We are always meeting emergent needs and policies as we think about what we do.

We had to respond in COVID with with programs and initiatives related to the legislation that Council passed for hazard pay for grocery store employees with pandemic premium pay for gig workers and TNC drivers.

These obviously were important to those workers and provided them with support at the time that they were going to be most at risk for being working with the public in the middle of the pandemic.

And that's been key and continued during 2021. We were also providing a lot of information in community about the kinds of labor standards that are most relevant to workers.

For example, access to paid sick and safe time, which is critical for workers to know at times when family members are becoming ill and they need to care take or when children are home and they need to be taken care of and there needs to be time off to inform community members and workers that they have access to that information.

Also to work with community organizations to provide that information in accessible ways so that they can provide that out virtually in ways that would make sense to reach the communities that they connect with.

We've also had real success in 2021 with enforcing the protections.

that we had.

And I want to call attention to the $11 million that we were able to recover for workers.

And I want to highlight that because I think it's key to understanding how tangible the work that we do directly impacts community.

This is money that we assessed through legislation that you passed that enables us to collect that on behalf of workers and bring it to workers directly.

That is money going to community.

And that is a tangible benefit that we were able to provide to workers when we are able to enforce effectively the laws that you create.

And so this is important at a time of stress for our community to be able to do that and to be able to do that effectively.

I want to talk a little bit just briefly about our internal work and we know that we've been, you know, obviously in different budget situations between last year and this year but we have been committed, all the way through since the start of the pandemic, particularly and being clear with our team in order to elevate their opportunity to provide feedback input on our budget process.

So my predecessor, the interim director, Jene Jan, and our finance manager, Dwayne McLean, who were leading the office prior to my arrival in early 2021, really worked with our change team to build a process to be inclusive of our staff and staff perspectives on how we can develop the budget going forward.

They created primers, they created a plan for sharing information, And we began using that information as part of a process to build the budget that we delivered, requests that we delivered in 21 that are part of our 22 budget.

Some of the things that came out of that, for example, have been requests for increasing COEF funding for our partners who are in the community doing worker outreach.

for increasing funding for the recommendations to implement recommendations from the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

So we have used that information as part of our budget creation, and we did it again this year, and you'll see that results when the budget is released to you later this month by the mayor's office for FY23.

So we have taken this to heart as part of an internal operating aspect of what we do.

We've also been consistently thinking about how to make our practice and the work that we do stronger and more equitably based.

And here are some of the things that we've been able to do over the 2021 cycle to increase our skills and competencies.

For example, working on a language access toolkit and best practices with our OIRA colleagues, working on racial equity toolkit training with the Office for Civil Rights on a number of different aspects, including gender justice training with the Office for Civil Rights and our colleagues there have been very generous with their time and working with our staff.

And also our management team took time late in 2021 to really think about how we could work on being more equitable in our supervisory and management practices and work with the Just Lead organization on how to build our competencies as a management team.

So now I'm going to turn the presentation over to my colleague, Joshua Trabick, who's going to talk a little bit about the change teamwork that our office is doing.

Thanks, Steve.

As he said, my name is Josh, and I'm an investigator on our enforcement team, and I'm one of the OLS change team co-leads.

Some of the challenges our change team has faced this year are continuity with membership and leadership turnover within change team And like rest of the world, many folks are experiencing a lot of burnout from the pandemic to the national and local climate around racial justice.

However, our goals for 2022, we're probably still here.

Despite these challenges, Change Team and OLS recognize the importance of engaging in RSJ work.

I've been joined by a new colleague, Jennifer Molina, who brings tremendous creative energy.

And we're working to reinvigorate the role of Change Team at OLS and excited to be working with our new deputy director to promote race and social justice work and continuing to work with management to promote equity in hiring and job classification.

Next slide.

One of the great and less formal ways we're promoting race and social justice at OLS is with our RSJI discussion group.

This group creates a safe space to discuss race and social justice issues and experiences in our work at OLS and in our personal lives.

We use source material to expand and deepen our understanding of historic and systemic racism and to connect these issues to the work we do every day at OLS.

While our group is open to all and doing the pre-reading is not required, here's some examples of the materials we've been working with.

So you want to talk about Race by Seattle's own Ijeoma Oluo, Exterminate the Brutes, a documentary deep dive into the way historic racism has brought us to today, Regulating the Poor, analyzing the historic relationship between government, employers, and workers, and The Sum of Us, looking at the costs of racism on all people of all races and all parts of society and how we can prosper together.

Next, you'll be hearing from policy analyst, Lane Middaw.

Hey, Joshua, can I ask you a quick question?

Yes.

You know, some of the sample sources that you, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but one of them, the Some of Us, wasn't that a book that came out?

Yes, it's a fairly recent book, I believe.

Yes.

Okay.

It's very insightful.

Okay.

Thank you, Josh.

My name is Lane Middaw, and I am a policy analyst at OLS.

and the department's liaison to the Domestic Workers Standards Board, which is made up of domestic workers, hiring entities, and community members.

So our relatively new per diem policy came out of a recommendation from the board, which identified a significant barrier to participation for some board members.

which is that it's difficult for board members to fully engage and participate in board activities when they can't afford to miss an opportunity to work or they may incur other costs by participating in board activities like added care costs or transportation expenses.

So in order to encourage full participation, we developed a policy where for board members who have lost opportunity costs, again, could include foregoing paid work or incurring other care costs, anything that enables, it can be compensated for any costs that may otherwise hinder their full and sustained participation in board activities.

So in order to make that happen, eligible board members, so those who are not being compensated by another organization or work on the board may receive $25 an hour via gift certificates for qualifying board activities.

So that could include monthly public meetings, subcommittee meetings, any required trainings, and then the board's annual retreat.

And so to make sure that everything is according to the policy, we've got different documentation that's required, including an eligibility form.

We verify attendance and then require written receipts for when the gift cards are received.

And so, we have several vacancies on the board right now and we hope that this policy can encourage full participation from everyone.

How many board members are there and how many vacancies do you have?

I believe we have four right now out of a total of 13. The board is actively recruiting currently.

OK, let's let's connect with our office, too, because we got some folks up north.

Oh, wonderful.

Yeah.

And obviously, I want a big shout out to customer Mosqueda, who brought forward all the domestic workers legislation and pulling all this stuff together.

So now we have a place to actually place people who are doing these this type of work and compensating and recognizing.

And I know that at one point, I'm sure customers will chime in here, making health care portable as well for these type of workers.

So.

All right, I'll follow up with you.

Thank you.

Right.

I got my clerks, our policy advisor, Sarah.

She's our policy person.

She's like, oh, you're not out there.

OK, well, it doesn't matter.

We'll get we'll be in touch.

That's good.

If there are no other questions, I'll pass it on to Katie Joe.

Morning, I'm Katie Joe Keppinger and I am the enforcement manager at the Office of Labor Standards.

And I will be talking about one of our racial equity toolkits from 2021. This toolkit has continued this year.

And it is concerning our settlement check distribution.

After our settlements, there's a process that we've been examining internally and then externally with the employers that we've investigated.

for getting the workers the money that they're owed under the settlement agreements.

And the purpose of this RET was to attempt to eliminate racial disparities in the speed and success of the distribution of those settlement funds, particularly for BIPOC workers, with looking, you know, with a careful eye on folks who are experiencing language barriers, immigration barriers, housing instability, who may have mistrust of government or lack of access to banking.

And we spoke internally quite a lot about this, not just with our investigators and enforcement team, but with all of OLS staff.

And we also consulted with the Office for Civil Rights, the Finance and Administrative Services, who we work with in distributing checks, and also consulted with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to learn more about their process, interviewed several claims administrator companies, and then spoke with other labor standards enforcement jurisdictions about their practices and challenges that they're seeing.

And we also conducted, planned and conducted a survey of workers who had received settlement funds from our office in 2021. And some of the issues that we identified, you know, we were interested in whether the use of prepaid debit cards or some other payment platform like Venmo or something like that would work because we have found that many workers may not have easy access to banking.

Unfortunately, we found that there's still a pretty high risk associated with those of the funds not reaching the correct person.

And that is not something that we can pursue right now.

We also identified that the distribution of these checks is very time and labor intensive.

Our investigations cover current and former employees.

We go back up to three years from the date of the complaint.

So often there's pretty large class of workers, many of whom may not have ever known that our investigation was underway until they hear about their settlement check.

And so tracking those workers down and getting them their funds is can can take quite a bit of time and effort.

Hey, Katie, let me just real quick.

You kind of answered it.

But when you said you're having difficulty getting the funds to the workers.

Is that what you mean?

You mean finding them?

Is that what you mean?

Not actual trends?

or both the actual physical and also finding them?

Finding them and making sure that we have the right contact information and address where we can be assured that they're going to receive their check.

So you said something really interesting.

I'm glad you said it because this is something I thought about then it leaves my head, but it's back and you brought it up.

How do you interface with the EEOC?

Well, so we don't directly interface with them, but I reached out to them because I know that they have sort of class-wide investigations and cases to ask them how they approached settlement fund distribution.

And her name is escaping me right now, but I did speak with someone at EEOC in Washington, DC.

And their system is different than ours.

However, they do work with claims administrators and they put me in touch with various claims administrators that I could interview and learn more about their processes.

So they don't do what we have been doing, which is they don't generally distribute the checks themselves.

They usually have a third party that does that, or perhaps the employer themselves, but generally they work with a third party.

So that was my exploration was to talk more with them about that.

I think your instincts are right on that, because when the government wants your money, they can find you.

But when we want to give them money, we've seen these in settlements, and we've often used a third party.

I know you listed one of the issues about maybe losing some control, but finding that third party fiscal agent that's a safe third party, whether it be a credit union, a bank, a union.

someone belongs to a union that's always a good fiscal agent knowing because they usually know where they're working or you know there's so those are some of the out-of-the-box thinking I guess I've seen some of this in some prior litigation trying to get out checks to folks so if there's anything we can do to kind of work with you on that piece I work with Councillor Mosqueda and a lot of her labor issues come through our committee or governance committee so I know she's listening intently so I just wanted to flag that so thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And we have worked very successfully with some unions and locating workers and was very successful in reaching a vast majority of the workers for a couple of these cases that we worked with one of the unions because, you know, all those workers mainly were members of the union.

And so they were able to contact them and The workers were already familiar with the union.

I think sometimes when workers are hearing from us out of the blue, they're not really sure who we are.

Yeah.

So yeah, so that that has been really a helpful partnership too.

And then one of the other issues, of course, is the pandemic related contact limitations, people moving more.

and our office being closed for a period.

So workers were not coming in to pick up checks.

That's not that frequent anyway, but that just narrows down the opportunities for them to connect with us.

Next slide, please.

So out of those conversations, our RET came up with some recommendations.

Those are to develop our written policies for ourselves, including some pilot payment guidelines for our settlement agreements and our findings.

Also an internal check distribution procedure to lay that out more clearly for ourselves and for the investigators.

who are assisting and tracking down workers, and then updating our settlement agreement language to incorporate claims, third-party claims administrators, and relying in some instances on the employer to distribute the money, to take the first run at it.

Yes, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, shall I?

Just go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I didn't want to interrupt you.

So if you'd like to conclude on this slide and then I just was getting my hand in the queue for a question afterwards.

Oh, sure.

OK, sure.

Thanks.

And so the written policies are one recommendation.

The other recommendation is somewhat related to that, and that's internal to our offices, clarifying the roles and expectations amongst our staff.

Um, because we, you know, due to the number of checks and workers that we're trying to reach, um, we do need to share that work amongst our enforcement staff.

Um, and are always trying to shorten the time between, you know, getting the check from the employer, having that deposited with treasury, waiting for it to clear, and then distributing individual checks to the workers.

We're trying, always trying to keep that time as short as we can, um, Also, clarifying the roles and expectations with employers and with the claims administrators trying to streamline that process and avoid you know checks expiring and and or coming back on deliverable that kind of thing and then finally.

we're.

Another recommendation was to require distribution by employers and claims administrators in large cases, not with small, you know, small businesses, but with some of the larger investigations, trying for a more efficient and streamlined process with those employers.

So that's that slide.

I think I have one more.

Did you want to ask your question now, Kelser was good on the slider.

Did you want to wait?

I'll wait until the next slide was next.

Actually, I think that was my my last slide.

Sorry.

So, yeah.

That's what I'm scared.

Well, okay, I'll ask it.

I'm on slide 13, then I just wanted to to double check about the staff capacity.

This is really great recommendations that you put here.

And again, I appreciate that.

all of the claims that go to workers are, as Director McCasey said, directly going into the hands of workers, frontline workers, and notably higher rates of wage theft among workers of color and low-wage workers.

So this really has a true racial equity analysis to it in terms of making sure that people get their claims.

How much of this is feasible?

How much of this recommendation is feasible with existing staff?

Is is there any additional investments that are needed for your staff to make sure that we can bring forward these recommendations, because that I think is going to make the difference between whether or not you're able to achieve your work on racial equity and making sure our institutions become more more.

grounded in our commitments to being anti-Black and commitments to folks of color and frontline workers, especially low wage workers.

So do you have the staff capacity to do all these recommendations currently?

I can speak to that a bit and then perhaps Director Marchese might have something to add, but currently we are testing these with the staff that we have and it's Still in the beginning stages, we will be taking a first pass at evaluating them at the beginning of 2023. So far, it appears to be functioning, but we'll have to wait and see what the success rate will be.

We have a paralegal who manages this entire process.

and it is not her sole responsibility.

So that is why we are incorporating investigators somewhat into parts of this process.

It does take time, though, a lot of time, and it takes them from their investigations, but it's also, you know, very satisfying for us to know that we're actually making good on those settlement agreements and getting the money into the hands of the workers.

Thank you, Katie Joe I think you've given some aspects I think of the answer.

Thank you, Councilmember skater for the question.

I think one of the things that this this these recommendations highlight is that we have to think about the infrastructure that we need as an office to implement the things that we are doing in an effective way.

And so, One of the realities of our staffing has been that over the course of time, our capacity to support what we're doing on the administrative side has not kept up with what we need on the policy and enforcement side.

And what I mean is, as Katie-Jo mentioned, we have one paralegal who's doing multiple different things.

We actually are just in the process of hiring a second paralegal that we received funding for.

to help us with the independent contractor protection ordinance, predominantly focused on the alternative enforcement options for that, but who can also do other things.

We have not had an increase in our administrative staff since the inception of our office in 2017 when it became an independent office.

And what that means is that we have people doing multiple duty, on things and not able to focus on one thing or a few things.

So we lose some efficiencies we lose some effectiveness as Katie Joe was saying, when our enforcement staff who could be doing investigations are doing outreach to figure out how to track down somebody to make sure they get their check.

And so I think if I could sort of suggest this as sort of something to keep in the back of your minds, as you review budget processes and you look at the requests that we provide, that we are always trying to include additional support for administrative aspects of our office so that we can do this work more effectively.

And so that that's not sort of extraneous to the accomplishing the mission of the office that is actually intimately tied to being able to get the work done so if we have extra administrative staff extra enforcement staff.

It's not to have them just sort of sit and stare at the wall.

They are tangible tasks that we have folks that need to get done.

And I think part of the work that we are doing that I am doing that I'm working with my management team on is really reviewing how we're doing what we do so that we can also develop not only the processes, but we can have the staffing to really fill out the larger mission and goals that I think we have and that you have helped set out for us through legislation, so that we can be successful in doing this.

We want the workers to get the money that they are owed.

That's why we have staff that are spending the time creating the investigations and the records and the findings and the settlement negotiations.

So I think, think about how these things work together, because they are interrelated very closely.

And I think we're ready to move to the next slide.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Our next speaker will be Carmi Estandian, our Senior Data Specialist.

Thank you, Keijo.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Carmi Estandian.

I am the Senior Data Specialist for the office.

I will be talking about the Demographic Data Toolkit.

This is also a carryover from the year before.

We've been doing this project for the past in the past few years now.

And the goal is through topical demographic data collection analysis about the communities that we serve, and also identifying the gaps and how to improve.

how we serve the community and also the lives of the BIPOC workers and how to tell their story better.

As far as the method and data collection, we've used sending survey links via email.

We've conducted the survey via phone, mail, and also via mail.

As with engagement actually presented our results to the data analytics racial equity group in the past, and I've received a lot of feedback and recommendation and how to.

redesign the survey better and as well as using different languages that concerns privacy issues.

Continue to consult with internal and external city governments that does similar data collection and work with SDOT, standing demographer, the OCR and also other students and researchers from primarily UW University and issues that we've identified.

I analyzed the most skipped questions and thought about rewording that question and also eliminating it.

We've had images in our survey.

A lot of people found that confusing, so we deleted those images and also created a new internal database to track populated surveys to better understand the patterns and trends and how to reach out to workers more.

And there was also a concern of the survey being translated inadequately.

and how the question might be different in someone's primarily language.

Next slide.

And for recommendation, we would like to improve the response rate.

Right now, it's currently still at 15% response rate.

And to increase that, we've had team training in how to best practice and how to conduct a survey, improving the design of the survey using Likert scale, to get a better understanding on how our office is doing, shortening the questions, and also creating accessibility and simplifying the language translation.

We recently got the premium package in SurveyMonkey to allow us to do the translation via the link that we create to different, groups that we send out to.

So hopefully with some of the recommendations and changes, we'll have a higher response rate.

And that is my part.

Any questions?

Having it off back to Steve.

I think we're good.

No, I just had my head down.

I made sure I was looking at all the tiles, see if there's any hands up.

So I think we're good.

Oh, I see a hand up.

All right.

Councilor Mosqueda.

Um, could we just talk a little bit more about.

On slide 14, there are the engagement with the other departments.

Thank you.

So as we look at trying to address employee burnout and how many employees are overworked in our city system overall right now, probably before the COVID pandemic, but especially in the midst of the pandemic still, in the interest of efficiency, do we know if other departments are doing similar demographic work already?

And are there any opportunities for joint surveys across departments?

Yes, that's actually a conversation I've had with the DARE team and trying to consolidate a lot of the data that the citywide are collecting and for us to have a one central location that if such data exists, then we can use that.

And different departments use different questions depending on the need of their office, but using some of their their question method, also the results that they're getting to fill in the gaps that identical to what we're looking for.

So we're not serving same people and over and getting same questions.

So that's the goal is to basically share more of our collection citywide and And it's been a conversation I've had with demographer OCR is trying to consolidate those and trying to find a central location.

There is the open data portal that some are available but not specifically demographic.

related to workers.

So that's something that's the piece that's missing.

I know that EOD has some data related to labor and workers, but it doesn't really identify demographically on like race, income.

And that's something that we would like to collect.

So it's been a conversation and hopefully there's an end goal in like having that more centralized.

Did you say OED or EOD?

I don't understand.

If you said EOD, I don't know who that is.

The Economic Development.

Oh, you mean the city department?

Yes.

So it's OED?

Yes.

OK.

OED, sorry.

Yeah, I was writing it down.

I'm like, what the hell?

OED, they do have a, yeah.

The one I didn't know about, so I was going to ask you about it.

Yeah, I was talking to somebody in their data team, but he recently just left.

So I'm not sure if they filled that yet.

They probably have, but they did have some data available on their website.

that I've looked at before, but has recently changed.

So hopefully connecting with them more.

Well, on this slide, which you put down the goal statement, you should be so hard on yourself.

Advancing economic justice through policy enforcement and outreach is a huge lift, and people have been doing it for decades.

So I applaud your goals.

And I think that they're not just lofty.

I think you're actually drilling down on a lot of this stuff.

and that your presentation and the questions, particularly customer mosquitoes follow up, you know, really target in on because you are really doing a deeper dive and addressing these issues.

So I think you're doing a great job.

I wouldn't be so hard on yourself.

Thank you.

There's a lot to do.

Thank you.

I mean, our outreach team does talk to a lot of the workers.

They do conduct similar survey is truncated a little bit because they do have a lot more in person.

interaction with a lot of the workers.

So there are response rates a lot higher.

And that's something we found is that in person and talking to them about it leads to higher results.

Well, I don't know if you're watching earlier about our appointment to summer Hepburn to the Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee.

I mean, that's another whole other area where they're bringing in women of color and women and people of color.

I mean, that's another area you might want to explore because they have data and they have people and they have addresses.

And I mean, that's just another area to go to, to find out, to answer some of the on the engagement piece.

So it seems like you guys would be like fit hand in hand on those kind of issues.

So thank you.

I said your name wrong earlier and I apologize.

It's Carmi.

Yes, it's Carmi.

Because on the screen, when I look at it, it looks like there's an N in there, but there's not.

That's why I'm saying Carmine.

So I apologize.

All right.

Thank you.

Are there any questions on this one?

And we can move forward.

I'm not seeing any I'll hand it back over to you.

Mr. Casey.

Sure.

Thank you so much and thank you for your questions, Council President Juarez and Council Member Mosqueda.

There is a lot of work that we're doing and I'm just pre-viewing 2022 just to kind of give you a hint of sort of what we're continuing work is on this, in this area.

So much of it is RSJI based, it's sort of hard to tease out what is and what isn't, it's all infused.

And the work that we're doing and so when we look into what we're doing this year just some highlights we're continuing our race and social justice discussion group sharpening our ability to talk and can be conversant in the issues and the language and the understanding of this.

We are continuing to work and improve our language access work.

We do a lot of language access work is certainly important priority for the city.

We will partner really closely with a wire and their colleagues and IRA we build capacity.

Internally we've had some staff turnover and we're working hard to train up the people who have taken over.

on how to do the language access work, and it's infused in all of the publications and everything that we do, all of the new laws.

We have to make sure that we're thinking about how to do the presentation of that effectively in language, and that's a significant part.

When we estimate costs, we're always estimating costs that include translation and effective presentation.

We're working with another RIT that we have going on internally to think about the intersection of immigrant rights and worker rights.

It's complicated because obviously folks have hesitations about reporting when they feel that their status and their ability to remain in the United States is at risk.

We want to make sure we think about how to also think about being effective in outreach and being sensitive in community to be able to help people know what they can do and what they can ask for and create safe ways to do that.

So we are in the midst of that process.

We're not ready to sort of talk about what that is, but we are working on that and that our group is working on that.

Then I want to highlight sort of work that I know you all know, and particularly Council Member Mosqueda, our work with the Domestic Workers Standards Board to the recommendations they delivered to Council and to the Mayor and to our office last year that we are implementing.

It is a work in progress, but we are working very closely with the Board.

We received the funding that you appropriated last year.

It was originally $500,000, but down for budget cuts to $400,000 for the year.

We've been getting that money out to community or into the research that we're doing in direct alignment with the board.

The board conducted its own process this year to talk about how we could use this work and use this funding in racially equitable ways in order to be able to implement the recommendations and some of the tangible things that we're doing have been, for example, to use funding, about $250,000 of the funding, To do organizing in domestic worker communities with workers with organizations that are connected to the workers again to do culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach work.

This is organizing work in a community that is very difficult to reach.

because domestic workers by the nature of the work are in diffuse locations.

Many, many people of color, mostly women of color in certain aspects, men of color and others, where language access is certainly an issue and certainly getting access to work sites is an issue.

That's going to be important to evaluate and that work is going to continue into 23. We are researching and working on the resolution that you passed last year.

to study a portable paid time off program for domestic workers.

That research work is ongoing.

We've got a lot of good head start work.

To highlight just to understand that we are talking about something that is trailblazing nationally.

No other jurisdiction in this country has implemented really An effective pay time off program certainly at the municipal level.

So there's a lot of work to do we're working closely with the coalition of organizations and advocates who care about this.

We've got a lot of work to do.

And so we want to make sure that what we bring to you.

early next year is well-researched, well-thought-out, is something that we think we can think about implementing maybe in stages, in a more pilot capacity, maybe with more full implementation over time.

And we're learning a lot that I think is also applicable to other sectors outside the domestic worker sphere, but obviously we have to think first about how we scale it up within the domestic worker sphere.

So again, I want to really thank you for this opportunity to highlight the RSGI work that we're doing.

I want to thank you for this opportunity for my staff members to join me and to present on the work that they're doing and talk about the work that our office does overall.

I know we're relatively new to this committee.

It's a report to this committee.

We're not new to all of you.

You've been working and working in this area with us for many years, most of you.

And so We're excited as we go into this year, as we continue the work that we're doing, as we think about the opportunities to continue to support workers and to make sure that the promise that we have as a city to ensure that workers are treated fairly, get the funding and the recourse that they need, the wages that they need, and are treated in the ways that are appropriate, that we're able to do that.

And we'll look forward to continuing the partnership that we've had with you to be able to make that happen.

And I welcome your questions.

I didn't want to stop you.

You're on a roll there.

So I was ready to go back on slide 16 real quick, just so I can clarify something.

So, and I probably know the answer, but I just want to make sure I understand and maybe the viewing public when you have the 2nd arrow on immigrant rights, racial equity toolkit.

That's not a, is that a subsection or wouldn't that be included in the continuation of race and social justice?

Because I understand the immigrants rights racial toolkit is going to be different because as you shared, there's going to be a language issue.

There's going to be immigration status issues.

There's going to be outreach issues.

So just so I understand the slide correctly, those are just four headings.

Those aren't like immigrant isn't, they're not their own separate thing.

They're part of, Raising Social Justice?

Absolutely.

They are an RIT that is part of our office's RSGI work, Raising Social Justice work.

The first bullet or the first arrow is really talking specifically about internally for the staff to continue working on the discussion group and sort of, again, sharpening our own language and skills and understandings about that.

It's been good internally, particularly during the course of the pandemic.

when staff have been in different places working remotely mostly to have that space and time to talk and certainly issues related to immigration and status and language and past histories of race and racial injustice have come up in those conversations, but they're really more focused for internal staff.

The Immigrant Rights Racial Equity Toolkit is really thinking about our work as an office and the mission that we have to serve the community and particularly to do the work that we do with an understanding of how race and immigration lie together and how they intersect with the laws that we enforce so we could be more effective in actually the process of what we do.

So what I would suggest in the future, if you, I know you're going to come back again to do another presentation, but if we could, I know I just kind of off the top of my head and you know this too, just from listening, I've learned a lot today from you as well.

The more we know why immigrant rights, racial equity, token and immigrant rights are, why they're a little bit more distinct and more intense and more emotional than just, and I'm not just saying race and social justice isn't, it's because we are also dealing with, as you shared, besides language and immigration status and outreach, we're also dealing with a group of people that are actually being threatened on their immigration status.

And so from my prior work at legal services and representing Immigrants and apple growers are not the growers, but the workers that was like, this is.

Decades ago, probably when customer mosquito was in elementary school, so dealing with that stuff.

And you're right nationally, there was there's never anywhere to go.

to say, because we are legal services, to tell other institutions, meaning the city or the county or the state, that these are real threats that are affecting people's lives if they're deported and they get hurt in the country that they came from.

These are life and death decisions.

And so if we would have a slide in your deck or your presentation to say why they're distinct, and a lot of these are life and death situations, certainly in the last four years that we saw under this prior administration, Because I think that is such a human rights abuse and I would love to see us, I know we're going to work on this, to shed more light on what we can do at the city government level.

This leads into my last comment.

Just so I can clarify, when you were talking about policy and the enforcement, you're including the enforcement piece under administration, correct?

for funding, because is that what you were saying?

Well, I think you're talking about in terms of thinking about administration of our office and support for the office work that we're doing.

You're saying funding and you're saying there's the policy and then there's the enforcement or the administrative side.

So I'm guessing that enforcement is under like the administrative side that needs more funding, just so I'm clear.

Well, I think I think of administration to be supporting the work of you do to keep the office functioning.

And there is sort of an administrative quality to the paralegal work, for example, that is done to help our enforcement team.

It's sort of a hybrid because, I mean, it's obviously supporting enforcement, but it's also supporting the actual result and kind of getting the work done.

I don't want to put too many hard lines between that.

I think there's, when we talk in terms of our teams, we have an enforcement team, a policy team, an outreach team.

Each one of them is doing their functions.

There's a lot of matrix work obviously done because we're one's informing the other.

Our administrative team is a separate team, but again working across all of the teams.

I think it's important for us to think about support to accomplish the mission, not just being narrowly focused on do you have an investigator to investigate or do you have an outreach specialist to do work with the community organization but that we also think about what those staff members need and what the office needs overall to fill the gaps.

So I'm guessing around this budget cycle then we can see an org chart how that's divided up?

Yeah we will absolutely.

And I want to just appreciate, again, the point that you are making, Council President Juarez, around raising up immigrant rights in the context of this.

I wanted to, I know our RET group is in the midst of doing what it's doing, and I want to give them the chance to sort of get to the point where they're ready to go public with a little bit more of their findings, which is one of the reasons why you don't see a slide specifically on that.

It's a placeholder, as you said, for next year's presentation to talk about that next year.

And I want to just raise that one of the successes, or at least one of the cases that we did a finding on last year, in which immigration was a central part, was on a residential construction case that we did a very large finding on related to basically residential construction direct.

We do a fair amount of directed work and one of the priority areas has been in residential construction.

Why?

Because we know that in residential construction, we have a low rate of reporting, a high rate of potential violations.

We work closely with the Carpenters Union and Casa Latina to reach out to workers in one particular site and found in that site that there were numerous violations for minimum wage, paid sick and save time, wage theft, and those workers almost exclusively were immigrant men who were in this country and the concerns about their status were certainly related to their willingness and ability to talk.

So our investigators, when they encountered that, when they saw that firsthand, elevated that up internally in our own process and said, we need to focus on effectively thinking about how we can be effective given the reality of what that means.

And so that's what led to the racial equity toolkit.

And I think has led us to think about what do we need to do?

What can we do?

What can we propose to you or to the mayor in terms of legislative priorities, what we can do to work collaboratively with organizations in the community to increase the awareness, but also increase the safety of workers to be able to participate in this.

And there are some new policies that the federal government that have come out where there is a willingness by ICE to to use prosecutorial discretion to reduce the opportunity that status will prevent people to be able to willing to report and our office is going to be working to see if we can participate in that that hasn't been directed towards local organizations as closely as I think we have and we're working with other municipal labor enforcement agencies to see how can we partake of that because we know that that's an issue we are also able to as a U visa.

We can authorize you visas and sign you visas because of when workers are in situations where they're going to be reporting complaints we can participate in assisting them to not have their status become an issue to report so there's already stuff going on, and there's a lot more to do.

I'm sure you can share a lot with us.

I'm just going to end on this note because we see a lot of RSJI reports and obviously this one's a lot meatier because of the issues that you deal with.

We want to make sure that we are supporting you in the efforts that you and all your team shared with us today.

With that, are there any other closing comments or questions that my colleagues may have before we move?

Councilor Mosqueda.

Thanks so much Council President.

Thanks for having this presentation in your committee today.

I think it's a nice way to round out the year of public policy discussions before we head into budget and appreciate some of the budget items that were flagged in this presentation and the report that we received from OLS that features a number of budgetary needs to make sure that all of these great ideas can come to fruition.

I wanted to just flag for council members and also members of the public, and in partnership with our Office of Labor Standards communications team, every time they have a claims win, every time they have a settlement for workers, it's a great opportunity for us to republish that information.

So an ask for OLS is to not be shy about sending us your news every time you get a settlement so that we can really republish it and put it in our newsletters and social media.

Because we know that every time an employer sees another employer being held accountable for bad behavior, it actually corrects other bad behavior out there that hasn't been investigated yet.

And since we have a complaint-based system, largely, in some cases we have Sector wide investigations that are possible, but with limited staff, the best way for us to be able to prevent.

Maybe misunderstanding of the law, or circumventing the law in a worst case scenario is to make sure that people know that there's accountability for.

for not complying with the law.

So when a claim is settled and workers get the payments that they are owed, if we can push that out as much as possible, it has a real great deterring effect to other employers.

And for high road employers who want to be in line, they reach out and they say, how can I make sure that I'm complying?

And for other employers who might be circumventing the law, it's a reminder to them that they should stop that behavior.

So I just wanted to ask for all of us to really help amplify that news once it comes our way.

And thanks for police sending it our way and asking us to do so.

I'm so glad you brought that up and just shared something that we try to tell everybody.

Particularly everyone in our city department, our families, we all have newsletters, and I like to brag that I think I have the most readership.

I'm all well over 8000 now, so it's pretty good.

And I have tribal communities that read it as well.

So that makes me happy.

But all that aside, what counselor was just shared, like, the 11Million in the settlements that you make.

It is such a big deterrence factor.

And what we've done in our newsletter and I know other offices have done the same thing is we get I get weekly reports from parks and SPD that I put in my newsletter and all kinds of I don't it isn't just like informational, but it's also as council member Mosqueda was saying, the the the impact of having that information and even going back to in your slide about outreach and contacting people.

Having your office give us whatever it is you want us to put in our newsletter, whether it's training, outreach, we just recovered 11 million in wage theft.

This is where you can go for enforcement or reporting.

We want to be able to amplify that because ours goes out every, our deadline is Thursday at five.

goes out every Thursday.

We've been able to accomplish a lot, particularly when I was chair of parks and people understanding where you go for parks and find it, fix it, how much Clean Cities Initiative is working to picking up garbage and cleaning parks.

We do the same thing with SPD, Seattle Police, and a dashboard about where we're having shootings, where are the hotspots, where they're doing operational work, how the community can call in, you know, how you can get training.

So we encourage a lot of city departments and agencies and commissions from the newly formed Indigenous Advisory Council, puts in a blurb, a lot of subjects that are timely, not just local, but nationally.

So I would really encourage you to use as Councillor Mosqueda, great idea.

If you have something that you want us to get out, if it's weekly, if it's biweekly, if it's once a month, Please let us know, let us amplify that information so we can get it out.

We've had so much as you said in the construction sector going on in the north end residential construction.

It's just crazy, particularly with light rail coming in.

I mean, we've had well over 5000 units being built already and more to come.

And I know a lot of the numbers because we work with North Seattle College and their apprenticeship program as well.

So if we can be of assistance, please let us know.

And if it's, you know, if it becomes a monthly or weekly article.

And I love what Council Member Mosqueda said, you know, amplifying the deterrent effect, but letting people know that the Office of Labor Standards actually is doing the work and recovering money from those, you know, non-compliant employers.

who are not following the law, the policy, and engaging in wage theft or anything else.

So thank you for that, Councilor Mosqueda.

So I will leave it on that note if there's anything anyone else wants to say.

Okay.

So I think with that, thank you, Mr. Marchese and your team, all of you.

I learned a lot today.

Yeah, so thank you.

So colleagues, with that, I think that concludes our items of business.

It also concludes our regular meeting schedule for the year.

I'm guessing, I'm hoping that our next meeting will be a special meeting, and I hope we'd hope to have it, and it may come sooner or later, Thursday, December 15th at 9.30 AM.

Colleagues, is there anything you want to add before I adjourn for the good of the order?

All right.

Not seeing anything.

I'm not seeing any hands or any anyone dialing in to say anything.

All right.

With that, thank you, colleagues, for your work.

And with that, we stand adjourned.