Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers Rights Committee 7/18/19

Well, good morning, everyone.

Today is Thursday, July 18th, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It's 9.40, and I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee, joined by my council colleague, Councilmember Bagshot, and Council President Harrell.

Thank you so much for being here and for waiting for us.

Really appreciate you being here today.

We have four items on today's agenda.

First is a presentation from the Office of Labor Standards on their Race and Social Justice Initiative Report.

Thank you so much for being here, OLS.

A briefing and discussion and possible vote of the notice of intent to sell legislation that I had a good chance to work with my council colleague, Council Member Bagshaw on some various amendments.

Excited to bring that forward and the discussion on that.

And then lastly, we'll have a discussion, no vote, a discussion on our hotel worker legislation.

And again, it's a four-part series.

We're talking about two parts today, which is specific to retention and workload.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Seeing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Before we get started, I do want to take a moment of personal privilege and let the committee know I did have a chance to go down to Tacoma yesterday and visit with our good colleague Councilmember Mello from Tacoma and folks from Catholic Community Services.

I had a chance to talk to some of the direct providers there and tour what they call their stability site.

Folks may know of the large tent that has the ability to have enhanced shelters in the tent and also the pallet shelters outside that provide privacy, two to four beds, and to visit the facility.

It was really a great experience.

I wanted to let you all know how much they appreciated us coming down.

Other cities, Everett, Lynwood, Vancouver, I hear are also going to Tacoma to take a look at their strategies there and wanted to bring back this PowerPoint as it had just been presented to their committee the day prior on Tuesday.

One really exciting statistic to share with you is that when folks come to this enhanced shelter, this stability site model, they're placing about one-third of the residents into permanent housing.

A one-third placement is incredible.

We were really excited about our our placement into permanent housing at about 20% when they come out of enhanced shelters versus mats on the ground, it's about five or 6%.

So I just wanted to bring this back for you and share that really great experience and publicly thank Council Member Melo for the invitation and the great work that they're doing.

So at this point, let's move into public testimony.

We do have quite a few folks signed up for public testimony.

I believe we have 25 people.

So in order for us to keep this within the timeframe, we're going to aim for a minute testimony, recognizing that folks may go slightly over, but we are going to ask you to keep it relatively short.

We're going to give folks, if it's okay with the council colleagues, we're going to try to cut this public comment off at least in a half an hour.

And I think if we keep it to a minute, then we'll be well within that.

Well, hello, everybody.

The first people that we have are Nicole Grant and Anne Wise.

Thank you so much for being here, and I'll call the next names in a moment.

Thank you, Council Members.

Annie and I are both with MLK Labor, representing workers and unions in King County.

And I wanted to start my testimony in support of Initiative 124 by saying that I believe in the hospitality and entertainment industries in our city, and I think they're important.

And when you care about something, you want to make it better, and you want to make it modern.

And I think that Initiative 124 did that.

And that's why it's a priority for the labor movement to protect that policy in its entirety.

Today, I want to, in particular, address the topic of workload and overtime.

As a construction worker, overtime is a central labor rights policy that people like me enjoy.

And I think it's one of the most important policies in Initiative 124 because it's about workers' bodies and women workers' bodies.

And we want to make sure that when somebody goes overtime doing back-breaking labor, literally, knee-breaking, shoulder-breaking labor, that that is not incentivized, that it is disincentivized, that they are adequately compensated for the sacrifice that they're making.

Thank you, Nicole.

Hi, Annie.

Hi.

I'm Annie Wise, and I'm the logistics director at MLK Labor.

Prior to that, I worked in the hotel industry for seven years.

During that time, I worked in many departments, from the front desk to sales and housekeeping.

I was actually not a hired housekeeper, but I was asked to work as one because we were experiencing a very high turnover in that department.

During my time as a housekeeper, I stripped and cleaned up to 25 rooms at a time, and it was strenuous and sometimes painful work.

I popped Advil like candy during this time.

The legislation as proposed strengthens the workload protections contained in Initiative 124 and ensures that workers have agency in working at a safer and more sustainable pace.

We strongly support this legislation, not only because it will bring long-overdue protections to some of the most vulnerable workers, but also bring justice to the 77 percent of Seattle voters who passed I-124 back in 2016. Thank you.

Thank you, Annie.

The next person is Jim Miller, followed by Dustin Hinkle, followed by Ann VandeHei.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Jim Miller, Executive Director of Millionaire Club Charity.

We've been providing jobs and support services to the homeless in Seattle since 1921. We are deeply concerned because we have become the subject of an Office of Labor Standards investigation regarding our hiring practice with the Fair Chance Ordinance.

We've been advised by Darren Williams, one of the investigators, that the OLS plans to issue findings and fine against Millionaire Club Charity in excess of $40,000.

Mr. Williams' leap in logic is deeply troubling.

The few individuals who were rejected from our program include those with felony charges of rape, child rape, sexual offenders, and armed robbery.

We cannot, in good conscience, place those type of individuals in the hospitality industry, whether it be CenturyLink, Tom Douglas Restaurant, a residential worker, or any other place We just cannot put anybody at risk.

And that's what we're being asked to do by the Office of Labor Standards.

Thank you very much.

We'll follow up with you as well.

Welcome Dustin, Ann, and then Mark Zamora.

Thank you.

My name is Dustin.

I'm employed at the Hilton Seattle.

I started my career at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, making less than $8 an hour, and I've enjoyed a lot of protections that cities have put in place.

I come from a family where my mom is a hospice nurse, so is my sister.

My dad is a police officer, and my mom's wife is a hospice nurse.

So my family, like you, has gone into a line of work where making an impact in people's lives is important.

I think most of the people in this room want to be of service to others, as do you.

With the workload, I think of it as an analogy.

I can think you have long days here in the council chambers and you might want to go down to City Grind Espresso at the end of the day and order a coffee.

Can you imagine if the bill was $63.50 and you said, why is that?

Well, three for the coffee, but this is the 51st coffee I've served today.

I just hit my quota, so now you owe me another $60.

That's what the workload does.

It puts it on the business, not the customer.

Not a perfect analogy, but think of the golden rule.

That's what we do in hospitality.

Thank you.

Appreciate you, your time.

Thank you.

Ann, Mark, and then Chelsea Hoffman.

Good morning.

I'm Anne Vande Hei.

I'm the Director of Sales at the Hilton Seattle.

Some of this legislation is truly inspired.

Panic buttons make sense.

Not one hotel employee in this room will disagree with me when I say that Bill Marriott said it best.

If we take care of our employees, they will take care of your customers, and business will take care of itself.

Some of this legislation that applies to hotel tenants, insurance, safety initiatives, and overtime require additional due diligence.

If you really want to protect hotel employee well-being, you will address what will ultimately cost them their hours, their benefits, and their jobs.

I walked to work.

In just this last week, I was hit with a two-liter bottle full of unknown liquid.

I watched a naked man walk down second.

I was solicited for illegal drugs on third and pike on my way home from yoga.

I watched a man urinate on the windows of Wild Ginger while diners recoiled in horror.

I routinely pass people shooting up, and every morning I pass by store owners who have to hose down and bleach their entries, which are used for public urination.

Tourism is a $10.7 billion industry in Seattle, and companies and tourists are going to leave.

Thank you very much.

So please prioritize.

And we're happy to take your written testimony, too.

Mark, Chelsea, and then Amanda Landers.

Good morning, my name is Mark Zamora and I'm the catering manager for the Hilton Seattle.

I've worked in the hotel industry for eight years.

I started my career as a restaurant server and then I moved up to convention catering and then sales management.

Just this past year I stepped back into the industry that I love after serving my country.

My question to all of you is, why are businesses who lease space in hotels being treated different from a business who lease space in an office building?

These businesses who lease space in hotels are like family.

We depend on one another to provide outstanding, memorable service to our guests.

Every day when I'm out in Seattle meeting new people or talking to one of our valued hotel guests, or taking them on a tour, we have homeless people screaming or removing their clothes.

Sometimes I have to walk our guests to their destination just to ensure their safety.

But let's keep focusing on requiring overtime for all hours worked if even employees exceed the mandatory minimum workload by one square foot instead of safety.

I can't think of another industry that is required to pay overtime for an entire day's work.

I truly feel that priorities are still not in order.

Please address.

Thank you very much.

Chelsea, Amanda, and then Terry Rutherray.

Oh, boy.

Sorry, Beth.

All right.

Welcome.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Chelsea Huffman.

I'm the HR Director at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel.

Over the years, I have worked in multiple industries.

I started out my career as a laborer loading 100-pound rolls of foam into semis by hand.

I have now been in an HR type of role for over a decade and never seen legislation that would clearly benefit a group of employees over another.

Our laws are supposed to be written to create equality, not adverse discrimination.

What I don't understand is how the hospitality industry is being targeted.

Are there other industries that are required to pay based on workload?

Does a meat packer get paid more for packing more boxes?

I don't believe civil servants have this kind of benefit either for helping more people.

How about delivery drivers and salespeople?

Are those industries required to provide the same type of location devices that are being proposed to the hospitality industry?

The hospitality industry does care about their employees.

At the Renaissance, we employ 250. The proof is in the numbers.

Nearly half of our employees would not still be at the Renaissance after 10 years if they felt they were not being treated properly.

15 percent have been with us for over 20. I ask that you not approve this legislation that puts legal and financial hardships on our industry.

Thank you very much.

Amanda, Terry, and then Jergen Oswald.

Good morning.

My name is Amanda Landers.

I'm the Director of Front Office at the Pan Pacific Seattle.

I have worked in the hospitality industry for seven years and was recently recognized as Washington's Hospitality Emerging Leader of 2018. The hospitality industry is incredibly unique.

All of us put everything that we have into our work.

It is back-breaking and we love it.

I have worked closely in all of the departments, including housekeeping, for many years.

I've done the job, I know how valuable their work is and how strenuous, but to pay one square foot of overtime for the entire day burdens the hotel and it demeans the work of all others as well.

So I just, you know, wanted to ask, you know, are we requiring overtime payment for our pizza delivery men?

our retail attendants, mail personnel, medical professionals, Seattle workers themselves, or anyone else besides just a specific worker in the specific industry.

Thank you very much.

Terry, followed by Jurgen, and then Hong Zong.

Welcome back, Terry.

Good morning.

That's row, two, row.

Row, two.

There you go.

I'm Terry Rotturo.

I'm the chef and owner of Lule in the Sheraton Hotel.

My relation with the hotel is I'm just a lessee.

I have a lease, and that's my entire business with them.

I'm here to plead that you review the word ancillary because it puts us in very critical situation, myself as well as 58 families that work with us.

Please review that and remove it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jurgen, followed by Hong, and then Stéphane Mort.

Good morning, council members.

You can't polish a turd, and I think that's what the council is trying to do.

The original initiative was written by non-legislatures, and not surprisingly, it results in justifiable lawsuits that are being upheld.

You legislatures.

Do it right without trying to mirror the bad parts and then adding even unnecessary other things.

As a matter of fact, don't do it at all.

Retention, for instance.

It's not necessary.

Hotels get sold day in and day out.

There's no new hotel owner that shows up with a school bus full of new employees.

We need our employees.

Nobody's losing their jobs when a hotel sells.

Workload, we have standards.

What's next?

You heard it from other people.

I mean, if we focus on workloads, then focus on everybody, right?

So my recommendation is focus on the things that Seattle voters really care all about.

Public safety, transportation, housing, homelessness.

I think that's enough work for all of us to take care of.

Thank you.

back and then followed by Stefan and then Braxton Myers.

Hi, good morning, everybody.

My name is Hong Zhang and I'm a housekeeper in the Chicago airport.

I have been working there for five years.

I know how hard it is to work.

After one day, you finish 28 bags and the supervisor asks you to in the actual room to do overtime.

You told them that, oh, I'm so tired, I don't want it.

But the supervisor, the manager will let you go home.

No, they won't let you go home because the customers are waiting for there.

And our union care about our human being, as a human being, but the hotels, They treat us as the tools to make how much from their eyes we are the tools to make as much as they can.

So that's the difference.

So because the hotel, they disrespect our rights, our will, we don't want to take the overtime, and we have no choice, so there's the penalty for them.

Because they are against our will, and they force us to do it, and we don't have good health, and after you finish your 28th bed, you feel arm pain, and during the night, you cannot sleep.

So who cares about us?

That's why we ask that we pass the I-124.

It's not the I-124 passed in the office.

It's in the real world.

We talk to the hospital.

Most of us are immigrants.

We don't know how to stand up, to talk, to fight.

Of course, our union to support us.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Stefan, followed by Braxton, and then, oh boy, Damas, Drzon.

Hi, Stefan.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

Stefan Moritz with Unite Here Local 8. I would like to address an important misunderstanding in regards to the workload protections in Initiative 124. This legislation contains a provision that workers receive overtime pay for the whole day if they are forced to clean more than 5,000 square feet per day or per shift.

This is not a provision that is intended to Give workers money.

It's a provision that is intended to make sure that workers are not being put in unsafe situations, in workloads that cause injuries, in people wrecking their bodies, in people basically having long-term consequences for the hard work that they do.

I think if there's one thing you can do as a council, it is to hold firm on the provisions as proposed, because that's the only way to disincentivize abuse of housekeepers in the hospitality industry that is real and happening every day here in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Stefan.

And I know that you had some written comments too.

We'll, of course, take those as well.

Braxton followed by Dimas and then Steve Saso.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Once again here today representing a first-generation Korean family that purchased a hotel here in Seattle five years ago.

and have enjoyed working within the Seattle city limits for the last five years.

Once again, urging council to take a very strong look at what it is that is being proposed.

We talked a lot two weeks ago about optics.

I think the optics play into a very large portion of kind of this argument that we're going through today.

and have been going through now for the last two and a half, three years.

It's very important to understand that not only is there a concern with ancillary businesses being brought into this legislation, but not every hotel in Seattle is owned by a multinational corporation.

My property that we represent is owned by a first-generation Korean family that came here in 1976. We're not fabulously wealthy.

We're not Marriott.

We're not Starwood.

We're a small family-owned business, and we intend to stay that.

We want to work with our employees.

We want to be as best of an employer as we possibly could be.

But as we run the numbers for initiative, or for the four replacement initiatives for 124, it literally, and this is not, I'm happy to sit down with each and every one of you and review the numbers, it places our business in bankruptcy.

It places our business in the red.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Damias, followed by Steve, and then Jenny Race.

Sorry for the mispronunciation.

Hello, my name is Demester Ronzon, this is Patience.

I'm curious how things are going to play out with this in general, and I have an applicable question to OLS and how they handle things.

Originally, I started employment with Share, and I dealt with them for a while.

In October of 2018, I started an inquiry with labor and industries regarding unpaid wages.

It sounds something similar that a lot of people might experience here with some of their situation as well.

The determination was made in December of 18 that they had failed to pay wages.

They said this was in lieu of rent for $6,760 that they still continue to unpay to this day.

A citation became final on June 30th of this year, and they are now in collections as of July 5th.

This is in regards to another issue that I have with them is housing.

On August 18th, we had to start a lawsuit against them because other agencies within the city of Seattle have not taken any action to assist us, including the Office of Housing, which has a Seattle levy agreement that has strict requirements that nobody is enforcing.

I went to OLS in October of 2018. To this day, I have no response.

So, how are they going to handle any of these people's concerns if these rules are placed in there for us?

And Ms. Mosqueda, one last thing.

I talked with somebody you recommended to me.

Her name was Erin House with your housing department.

That was February 27th.

To this day, no response from her again either.

If you want to email us, we're happy to follow up with you.

I know you have written testimony.

Happy to do so.

Thank you for being here.

Steve Sasso followed by Jenny Reyes followed by Shannon Sharon.

Okay so one minute I'll try to be quick.

Good morning my name is Steve Sasso and my hotel is a member of the Seattle Hotel Association.

and I'm a resident of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

I've worked in the hotel industry for over 25 years, and similar to others that have talked and spoken in the past few weeks, I've had multiple experiences and seen a lot.

This includes washing dishes, cleaning rooms, being a dues-paying union member, working with large corporations, small family-run businesses, partnering with, and more often than not, supporting elected public officials who may not always share the same views that I do.

What I haven't seen is a City Council look to quickly rush and pass complicated legislation under the guise of one or two items, when in fact the 100-plus pages written is far-reaching and has multiple unintended and negative consequences on businesses and workers.

You have heard many speak about this and surely this committee is well informed and aware of this.

I urge you to listen to all stakeholders and act in a common sense and impactful manner when it comes to your role as an elected public official, especially as it pertains to this legislation.

On a final note, I was hesitant to speak today as I've heard about and read about the echo chamber politics that takes place at times and the serious impact it has on all Seattle City residents that live here.

I'm hopeful this committee considers the feedback presented as it relates to legislation so that meaningful progress can be made for all involved, which includes everyone in this room and the city of Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for the extra time.

Thanks for letting us.

Followed by Jenny is Shannon, Sharon, Linda, Morton, and then Steve Vygotsky.

Good morning, city council members.

My name is Jenny Reyes, and I'm the HR partner at the Residence Inn Marriott in downtown Seattle.

I joined the hospitality industry nine years ago when I came to this country, and I have been working in the hotel industry for four years now.

I joined this industry because I felt represented, welcome, and given an opportunity that other industries were not willing to provide.

Hotels have the most diverse population within their workforce.

Minorities and people that made mistakes in the past are given another chance.

I believe this legislation is inspiring because it shows that we want to make things better for our associates, and I agree.

We care about our employees, and I have safety practice in place to protect them.

I personally make sure my team members are treated fairly.

However, this ordinance, specifically those items that are trying to regulate workload and health insurance needs additional review.

There is not an industry that requires to pay overtime for an entire day's work.

Thank you so much for listening and working towards improving this legislation.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Shannon Sharon.

I'm the Director of Hotel Sorrento.

I probably look somewhat familiar because I testify every opportunity that I can.

I deeply believe in this legislative process.

I respect the roles that you have and the complexity of this city.

We are at a very significant tipping point, and the cycle of this ordinance and what it impacts is really important.

And I continue to believe that there hasn't been the right amount of consideration.

There is a great deal of care and concern that our industry provides to our employees.

We are one team.

It's not us against them.

We've communicated that.

We've shared that.

We've illuminated that.

What is troubling is this legislation with every strike just seems to move forward and expand into greater complexity, and it makes it more difficult for anyone to enforce.

It doesn't take into effect even the sustainability.

My hotel is a small hotel, locally owned for almost 40 years, and this is a debilitating blow as we continue to expand the ordinance.

and persecute an industry that doesn't have the bandwidth to accept or tolerate this legislation.

Linda, followed by Steve.

You don't look like Linda.

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

You could be.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Linda.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

I'm Linda D'Alela Morton, co-owner of Terra Plata and the president of the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, which represents more than 2,700 restaurants in Seattle, most of which are small businesses.

I also serve on Mayor Durkin's Small Business Advisory Council, along with you, Teresa, the sponsor of this legislation.

The legislation you're discussing is not just about hotels.

It's about restaurants and other small businesses.

The voter's pamphlet written by supporters of I-124 says housekeeper six times, yet there was not one mention of small business or non-hotel employees.

This was never about small business community, yet you've now decided to include us.

You'll be discussing one of three ordinances today that explicitly includes non-hotel employees and small businesses under the definition of, quote, ancillary hotel business, unquote.

You're putting small business and restaurants in the same category as hotels simply because they lease space from a hotel rather than an office building across the street.

The impacts and consequences of this legislation, intended or not, could be devastating for a small restaurant or brick-and-mortar small business owner and their workers that depend on their business for their livelihood.

Seattle's restaurant and small business community stands together.

Please do not put us in the same category as hotels when that is fundamentally not who we are.

Thank you so much.

I'm happy to take your written testimony as well.

Hi, Steve.

How are you?

Hello, how are you?

Thanks for waiting a second.

My name is Steve Visotsky.

I'm the general manager at the Hyatt Elevate and the Grand Hyatt.

I'm here today to speak about a number of things, one of which is the additional foot, square foot of workload that puts an incredible burden on the hotel.

I often look at what would happen to the city's budget if a police officer, a firefighter was placed with one hour more of time, what would it do to your general budget?

It would decimate it.

Really, at this point, housekeepers enjoy the overtime, and this puts the hotel at a real opportunity to hold firm on trying to maintain a budget.

Second of all, I can't for the life of me understand how We've got several businesses that are adjacent to the hotel that are small businesses that the undue burden put on them as well.

It doesn't make sense.

It's competitively disadvantaged.

I think we have to call this for what it is.

It's a membership drive, and that more than anything is that Why was the CBA carved out of everything other than panic buttons?

It really is against economics for what's going on.

I'm just disappointed in where we are.

Take time, please, and look at this.

Thank you.

I appreciate everyone who's come to testify.

I just want to do one last call.

Is there anybody else who'd like to take a minute to testify?

Abby?

Thanks, and we'll get you signed in.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Abby Lawler with Unite Here Locally.

I just wanted to do a quick refresher for folks on the road that's gotten us to here today and also some of the pieces that were included in the initiative.

The petition for this legislation and its initiative form was filed back in 2016. All of the folks in this room had the opportunity to see the text then.

And then that petition language was signed by 30,000 registered voters in the city of Seattle.

And then in the fall of 2016, 299,000 residents of this city voted yes to pass that initiative, voted yes to workload standards for housekeepers, recognizing that this is a population of immigrant women in the city who've been taken advantage of, who do back-breaking work, and who need this additional protection.

And the goal of that was, as Stefan said, to penalize employers for requiring housekeepers to do a level of work that was resulting in pain and in injury.

So that piece is a holdover from the original initiative, as is the coverage from ancillary businesses.

And those were things that 299,000 folks in the city spoke out loudly in support of.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Abby.

Is there anybody else who did get a chance to sign up?

Okay, seeing none, I just want to thank everybody again for the opportunity to hear from you again.

Abby, speaking of the road to get here today, thank you for that reminder.

And also, thank you for all your work.

We know you are moving on to continue your education.

And if we don't see you in chambers anymore, we'll remember your words and appreciate your time.

Thanks, everybody, for being here.

And we're going to move on to our first item of business.

If you could read into the record the first item of business and we will proceed.

And just one more reminder for folks, if you did have testimony and you didn't get to say it all, please send it to us and we'll make sure that that's a copy of that's available for our entire council.

Agenda item one, Office of Labor Standards, Race and Social Justice Initiative report for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

And if we could please be joined by Marty Garfinkel, Director of OLS, Darius Foster, Business Engagement Specialist at OLS, Margaret Weiss from Senior Investigator at OLS, and Sarah Lehrer.

Good to see you back, Sarah.

Senior Labor Standards Investigator at OLS.

And Margaret, please do correct my pronunciation of your last name.

Thanks all for being here, and I want to first say thanks for Waiting to do your presentation to today.

We had a robust agenda last week.

I appreciate you coming a week later.

And why don't we start with introductions?

Sure.

I'm Marty Garfinkel, Director, Office of Labor Standards.

I'm Margaret Wise, Senior Investigator at the Office of Labor Standards.

Darius Foster, Business Engagement Specialist.

Sarah Lair, Senior Investigator.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I believe everybody has the materials.

So why don't you guys go ahead?

We have about 25 minutes for this.

Thank you for this opportunity for OLS to present on our RSGI work on RETs.

the Racial Equity Toolkits from 2018. My OLS colleagues are here to give you the details of the work, but let me just say a few things.

First, I am very proud to say that RSJI principles are really baked into our mission.

We try to be very intentional about focusing our efforts to help the most vulnerable workers, many of whom are workers of color and immigrants.

This is reflected in all of our efforts from policy development, outreach, enforcement, as well as our own internal processes, including hiring and promotions.

But we know we need to do more than that.

We have also worked hard to shape our office culture in a way that demonstrates on a daily basis its commitment to racial equity.

In the past, as you may know, OLS has done its RSJI work as part of Office of civil rights, OCR.

In 2018, of significance to us is that we separated that RSGI work from OCR and we created our own change team and processes.

We welcome that change because we saw it as a bit like adolescents separating from their parents, a necessary step for our young department to stand on its own two feet and develop its own RSGI culture.

We also created a leadership change team committee, which meets monthly.

This is a forum for continuous discussions between our management team and our change team, which consists of about 10 people, which is about 40% of our office.

I don't mean to suggest that we have figured everything out by no means.

One of the toughest areas and for which there is no clear roadmap is how do we create a culture where our staff can feel safe to process and resolve the daily issues of conflict and racial pain.

I've learned a lot in my first year and a half on the job, and I have a tremendous respect for this city's dedication to race and social justice.

As a white man in leadership, I feel my role is to stay humble and model an approach that values listening and learning.

I want to thank my staff, some of whom are here today, for their dedication to this incredibly important work.

And I also want to give a huge shout out to the RSGI team at OCR.

They've helped us a great deal.

They do great work.

with a small group.

And it's really been wonderful to work with them.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Margaret to start it off.

Thank you.

Thanks, Randy.

So I'm Margaret Wise.

I'm a senior investigator with OLS and also have been serving as a change team co-lead for the department.

So I'm going to be talking about some of our challenges from 2018 as well as some of our successes.

And then we'll provide a brief overview of the racial equity toolkits that we ran in the last year.

So 2018, as Marty said, was a big year of transition for our change team.

Splitting apart from OCR came with a lot of challenges as we tried to determine what the best structure would be for moving forward.

We also had lots of staff changes in the last year, a lot of growth in staff, as well as Marty coming on as the director.

And so with that came some adjustments.

And as we focused on how to both meet individual needs with folks coming in with different backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, while also kind of building a baseline of shared understanding throughout the office.

We also, one challenge, despite staff growth, was maintaining capacity for continuing to push forward with RSGI work as folks are moving their day-to-day work.

Some of our accomplishments, despite those challenges, were that we, as an OLS change team, drafted our charter and work plan.

We adopted a committee structure.

whereby we split work into subcommittees so we're able to focus on different areas.

Some of those committees, as Marty described, were the monthly leadership team meetings.

We have co-leads who attend monthly citywide meetings to encourage collaboration across departments.

We have the RIT coordination committee.

And finally, an education and training team that helps coordinate all staff learning opportunities.

As a change team, our membership grew from three people on the joint change team to 10 out of a staff of 24. So it's been really great to have more representation across the department.

Another accomplishment was that following our all-staff retreat discussion, at the end of 2018, we decided to send all staff to the People's Institute on doing institutional racism training this year, so we're looking forward to that.

Let me ask you a question, Margaret, and Marty, jump in here if you prefer.

You're talking about internal work within the City of Seattle.

What kind of training is being done for your staff for external relationships?

Sure.

Well, I think most of what we've done so far is we've done bias training, internalized bias training, as well as staff has attended the city-led staff.

But I don't know, Marty, if you want to expand on, I think, some of those principles that both apply to internally how we operate as well as how we interact with outside.

Yeah, I would just echo that.

The racial equity work that we try to reflect internally is also something we try to demonstrate externally as well.

What would be an example of that, Marty?

Well, for example, microaggression training.

It's just as important to be aware of those possible microaggressions for your coworkers as it is with working with people who call in, businesses, workers, and so forth.

My question is probably a bad question.

I apologize for that.

What I'm trying to understand is when you're dealing with external clients, when have you sat down with them and sort of either trained them or used what you're learning in how you deal with them.

I guess that's what I was trying to arrive at.

Sorry, I'm not sure I'm understanding the question.

So this internal training sounds like you've been doing with the committee structures and the work plan.

I'm trying to see how it sort of, what actions you've taken dealing with who you're investigating, either employees or employers, What had changed?

You took a left turn instead of a right turn.

How did it sort of manifest itself in the actions that your department took?

Are you talking about in terms of our racial equity training or training in general?

Your race and social justice training.

that it sounds like you've attended the microaggression workshop or some of the training that took place internally.

I'm trying to see how it then resulted in actions in the field.

Is that clear?

Is it unclear?

I'll keep going.

I'll keep trying if I can.

I understand.

I think you're good.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, we've done, there's been a variety of trainings, both through the Internal City Cornerstone Program, as well as folks who have come in.

I don't know that I can identify a specific example of where the training has changed a particular person's treatment of external customers, if that's what you're asking, but I think it's an ongoing process of education and learning about how race, racial equity, and approaches to racial equity affect different people, both within the office and as well as the businesses.

I think that's what you're talking about, the businesses that we investigate.

I'm going to keep us going.

It looked like somebody else had one more comment on that question from Councilmember or Council President Harrell.

Okay.

Well, just to, the reason I make this line of inquiry is because all of the training is great and I applaud your department for, I sound like everyone went through it, it's great and we want to encourage that.

But if we can't cite examples of when we're putting it into action, then then we have a challenge here.

And so I'm always, and I ask all the departments the same series of questions.

How does it result in what you do?

And I didn't hear any examples that came to mind.

Perhaps this isn't, maybe I wasn't understanding your question, but for example, we have enforcement priorities, for example, which look to trying to highlight the most vulnerable workers, the people with the lowest income as well, and many of whom are people of color.

as well as industries that I would call high-risk industries.

So in terms of focusing our enforcement work, we're trying to focus our enforcement work with an eye toward racial equity as well as who are the most vulnerable workers in Seattle and we can help.

So those are changes that we look at through the racial equity toolkit.

You're going to hear about, for example, our website.

How do we make the website more accessible to the general community, both workers and so if I'll come back later because...

And I'm happy to chat with you offline about this when we have more time.

We could chat.

I prefer to do it openly, but we can chat offline as well.

I'll come back to it because I'm still trying to understand.

There are minority-owned businesses out there that have their unique set of cultures as well.

Minority-owned business owners that have cultures embedded in the organization.

And my understanding of this work in the last decade has been that part of the RSGI training is understanding those cultures as well.

And as the Office of Labor Standards, which I think by design is sort of a neutral party to some extent, that you come in here and look at the legislative charge of your group is to understand the culture of the organizations as well.

In fact, one of the issues that had come up early in the onset of the Office of Labor Standards was We realized during the minimum wage discussions that a lot of businesses, businesses from the Immigrant and Refugee Committee, businesses owned by different organizations, they probably were running afoul of the rules a little bit.

And when we encouraged the minimum wage, because we wanted everyone to make a working minimum wage, We realized that in the training piece and how we deal with many of these organizations, a lot of these were cash businesses.

They were having nephews and nieces working there and children there paying cash.

And rather than put them all out of business, we made a conscious decision to invest in training such that we didn't treat them differently than a big box retailer, but we understood their cultures.

That's essentially the RSGI work as well.

And to be candid with you as I get into the discussion, we heard testimony today that that wasn't achieved, but we had a presentation by the Small Business Advisory Council and I'm sure you might have watched it, but that was also a rich part of that discussion that your office is failing to understand the cultures of the organizations you're investigating as well.

And so I'm trying to get to how we're going to.

I appreciate that.

And I'm going to keep us moving because I think what you're talking about is strategic engagement and outreach.

And so I'm going to ask that we don't go into the website component.

And let's skip to slide 10, which really gets into the strategic enforcement and then goes into, the stakeholder engagement, I think that that will be really directly related to the Council President's inquiry about how do we engage with especially some of our smallest businesses and folks who might be from both minority communities and limited English-speaking communities as employers and workers.

Okay, hi, Sarah Lair, senior investigator.

I am also a member of the change team and I was the coordinator of the strategic enforcement racial equity toolkit in 2018. And so strategic enforcement is how do we use our limited resources to the maximum impact in the community?

It's how can our work create ripple effects to broadly encourage a culture of compliance with Seattle's labor standards?

It includes strategies and tools that are broader than the traditional investigation, such as education, relationships, and press, as ways to increase compliance.

In 2018, OLS thought a lot about strategic enforcement.

We engaged with our community and business partners.

We talked to national experts Janice Fine and Terry Gerstein, and we did office-wide thinking about how we can work strategically It's a really big, complex topic that involves both external and internal components, and so for the Racial Equity Toolkit, we decided to focus on OLS's internal systems.

This is because strategic enforcement is a strategy that could potentially touch every single person inside of OLS.

So the RET looked at how can we design a strategic enforcement program that will have maximum equitable and inclusive results inside the Office of Labor Standards.

For the RET, we held individual hour-long interviews with every single person at the Office of Labor Standards.

The conversations asked people what they understood about strategic enforcement.

what type of program they would like to see, whether and how they would like to participate, and if they saw any barriers to participation and inclusivity.

The conversations highlighted how smart, talented, and committed to the Office of Labor Standards mission every single person in the office is.

And people highlighted both equity concerns and brought up a lot of great ideas.

Some of the main themes that were repeated by many staff were the feeling that strategic enforcement policy should have us working together more, create leadership opportunities, include accountability to our communities, and learn from past experiences.

Let me ask a quick question.

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit more about the systems of accountability to the community?

particularly around strategic enforcement.

When you first opened up, you talked about listening and learning being a critical value.

What kind of input are you getting from the community that helps you reflect on this system of accountability?

Sure.

So the thing that came out of this racial equity toolkit was a draft policy and procedure guide, how we systematically approach strategic enforcement.

And one thing that you can learn by educating oneself in implicit bias is that having systems that apply in the same way.

helps get around potential implicit bias that can come in decision points.

And so that was an important part of this process.

We have a document that was developed partly out of work with national experts, internal thinking of 20 questions for strategic enforcement campaigns.

And those include questions where we would engage with community business partners about like, Where are the industries that are really having the impact and like what are ways to affect those industries, to have a ripple effect in those industries?

Are there particular businesses that would tend to influence others?

Are there associations that would tend to influence others?

What are the true experiences of workers?

What are the violations that they're experiencing?

Et cetera.

So on the front end, there's community input.

And this is when I say community, I'm talking about community and business.

We do have funds that we spend a lot of money engaging community and businesses and seeking their assistance in our work.

And then we sort of consider our work in a strategic enforcement campaign to be hopefully co-enforcing with community partners from impact that represent impacted communities.

And then finally, there is a kind of like a debrief lessons learned where, you know, at the end, we would evaluate each of our strategic enforcement campaigns similarly.

And part of that work would be looking at actually asking people that were impacted by the strategic enforcement campaign, how did that land?

Was it successful?

Were there unintended consequences?

What should we do differently next time?

That's your question.

So thank you for that.

That's very helpful.

In terms of strategic enforcement, do you treat during the investigation process, let's say, an immigrant and minority-owned company identical to a big box retailer, perhaps publicly traded or part of a large conglomerate, do you treat them identical in your enforcement strategies?

No.

I don't think so because, you know, we actually do, for instance, if we did find, I mean, you know, we try to meet people where they're at.

And so, for one thing, you know, if there are any accessibility needs, language access needs, we certainly take those into account.

Education, I think, is a part of every single enforcement action.

But then even when it comes to if we do find violations that like workers have actually been harmed by this business, whatever this business's background might be, we take into account equity considerations when assessing damages and penalties.

So a good example, we know that there's high amounts of wage theft at one point.

Perhaps it's been corrected in the fast food industry.

Notably, Jimmy John's has a lot of press attention to the wage theft that occurred there.

When you think of strategic enforcement, I think of industry-wide investigation, recognizing that many of the same violations are occurring in that industry.

When you do strategic enforcement, you're looking industry-wide.

But if there was a Jimmy Johns, as the Council President is saying, that has clearly, you know, a number of attorneys and deep pockets and can kind of have more resources to bear versus a stand-alone mom and pop that happens to be in that industry, there's a difference in approach in terms of how you investigate?

Potentially.

Or the conversations you have and then the potential penalties.

Yeah, definitely with the way our penalty is structured we would look at things like that, you know.

But I would like to just say it does This conversation is shifting a little bit between what is our investigative process and what is strategic enforcement.

You're absolutely right that strategic enforcement is looking at impacting subsectors of industries and trying to create a ripple effect.

Yeah, thank you for that reminder.

And so as we think about racial and social justice initiative, I think the questions that have been asked about are about how do the internal trainings affect our external work.

And you're reminding us that this is an internal process that you all have taken on to better identify individual bias and system-wide maybe bias in how we do investigations, but this is really internal focus for the RSGI toolkit.

So just to understand, do you investigate them the same or do you take an RSGI filter in how you investigate?

I was describing strategic enforcement investigation, so I stand corrected.

So I guess what I'm trying to understand, do you investigate them identically or is there an RSGI lens as well as during investigations?

Well, it's sort of hard for me to separate.

I mean, once a person in an office makes a commitment to take an anti-racist approach.

You don't just do that here and here and here.

You do it in everything you do.

And so I think all this education that we've been talking about has been helping us build our lens.

And then I think also the racial equity toolkits that we did last year and in prior years have looked at small aspects of our work.

I don't know if you've ever engaged in a racial equity toolkit, but it is a massive undertaking.

And so that's why this year we focused just on the internal processes to Office of Labor Standards.

All the training and all the consideration, all the work that we do really does pay dividends for both internal and external relationships.

Thank you.

And this is reminding me, I would love to have an overview of some of the strategic investigation components as a standalone.

I think the questions are really warranted in terms of our commitment to trying to make sure that there's more effective use of your all-time and I think applying the race and social justice lens to how that work is done is really critical.

So I do think that maybe what we could do is an additional briefing on how that lens is applied and what that strategic investigation and other components of your work look like at another point as well because I think the questions are really valuable.

I understand the nexus that the Council President is getting at and appreciate it and also think it could be its own standalone meeting as well.

Definitely.

I'm going to encourage us to keep going.

I know there's a few more questions, so let's see if you have a few more slides and then we'll entertain a few more questions.

I could just pick up just to give you a quick overview of the policy and procedure guide that we drafted.

It was built around these sections.

How does OLS identify and select strategic campaigns?

How do we stay accountable to the community and our community partners?

How do we free people up within OLS to work on strategic campaigns?

How do we determine who works on what?

How do we manage the work and who makes the decisions?

And how do we evaluate the work?

So in early 2019, the RET committee proposed this guide to OLS staff and management, and it was well-received.

Management adopted many of the recommendations, but some of them went beyond a single strategic enforcement policy.

And so management actually used them to inform a new training and professional development program in the office.

OLS is continuing to work with the Strategic Enforcement RET in 2019 to evaluate the policies and procedures as we put them into practice.

So we expect to have a revised and updated Strategic Enforcement Policy and Procedure Guide at the end of the year based on our experiences as well as some lessons learned from actually trying to work through this system.

just in case you weren't sure, this is a picture of the North Star.

And OLS is sailing our many little boats towards our North Star, which is to effectively use limited resources to create a culture of compliance with Seattle's labor standards equitably and inclusively.

Thank you.

And Darius, I did not mean to skip over you, business engagement specialist.

We've been talking a lot about that.

Let's hear from you.

I know you were probably going to talk about the website, but feel free to chime in on any aspect that you'd like on the RSGI effort.

Well, thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

I guess we're saving the best for last.

Just pull your microphone real close.

All right.

Thank you.

So yeah, so I was part of the team that focused on the website RET.

And so most of Seattle Labor Standards education material and training available to workers and employers is housed on the OLS website.

Our goal for the RET was to expand access to educational material on labor standards by defining gaps in access to information, and establishing an internal policy to ensure greater visibility and access to educational material specifically for communities of color.

This includes individuals with disabilities, populations with limited English proficiency, and limited access to technology.

So in our initial phase of the RIT, we engaged the following stakeholders, community business organizations and workers, business owners, specifically small, minority-owned, and under-resourced businesses, and professional service providers whose clients predominantly include or include populations of color, limited English proficient populations, and small employers.

Community business...

Do you have a list of those stakeholders by chance?

Yeah.

Offline?

Yeah, I can get you that.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Sorry to interrupt your rhythm there.

So community-based organizations are contracted to provide labor standards outreach, education, and technical assistance to employers and workers through OLSs, community and business outreach funds, professional service providers or entities that provide direct business services such as payroll providers, for example, ADP, Paychex, or CPAs, certified public accountants.

So as a result of the feedback provided by these stakeholders, they offered some valuable insight Essentially five primary issues and recommendations were laid out and they are as follows.

Issue one, the website is inundated with text heavy documents.

A recommendation is to increase visual elements and documents for easier cognitive processing and understanding.

Issue two, website contains too much legal jargon.

A recommendation is to simplify language by using common everyday words and reducing language to the most critical point.

Issue three, Website is challenging for individuals with limited English proficiency.

The recommendation is to include more language options at the homepage and add those options to the top navigation bar of our website, the homepage, for easier visibility and access.

Issue four, website layout is overwhelming and challenging to navigate.

The recommendation is to condense webpages, streamline information, and limit hyperlinks within the website or the webpages.

And issue five, there's a need for additional labor standards tools to support employer compliance.

The recommendation is to engage and communicate to the public recent website developments.

This mapping exercise is one example of the steps we're taking to fulfill our goal.

Presently, we're working with the OLS communications manager and a Seattle IT web architect on remapping and reorganizing the OLS website based on stakeholder feedback.

Our timeframe, barring any unforeseen circumstances, is to implement all recommended changes by Q4, quarter four of 2019, so by the end of this year.

We will continue to utilize and respond to stakeholder feedback via surveying through our community partners.

And moving forward, we recommend inviting stakeholder feedback as needed, and we will evaluate the website annually, and we intend to publish this RIT on the website and report updates periodically.

Thank you.

Well, good advice for all of our websites and external facing materials.

I know Councilmember Baxter has a comment, and then we should wrap it up.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks to all four of you.

And Marty, I especially want to thank you for Karina Bull.

It's delightful.

For Karina Bull, who is now working for Council Central staff, and we're delighted to have her on board.

She's a real asset.

I want to say thank you for the work you're doing.

I appreciate the value of listening and learning.

and particularly focusing on education in the community.

And I just want to express something that I've heard a couple of times in the last three weeks, which I find concerning.

Marty, I gave you a quick call about this a few weeks ago.

Rather than feeling supported and listening and heard, I've heard on two occasions a sense that OLS has been combative and disrespectful and not working with small businesses.

So I just want to say this, this concerns me deeply and as we're talking about true race and social equity that it goes two ways and not just internally but it's got to be external.

I'm happy to come back and talk to you about this.

I'm concerned about what I've heard and because I've heard similar things just in the last few weeks from two different parties with exactly the same complaints, I think that we've got some work to do.

So happy to talk to you about that.

Can I just say that I'm happy to chat with.

you or anyone else about the specifics of any situation.

I will say that we, on the enforcement side, and I'm assuming this is on the enforcement side, we take very seriously the legislative command that we investigate fairly and impartially.

The laws are powerful laws.

They cover a lot of requirements, and I think everyone on the enforcement team endeavors to look at these fairly and impartially and call it where they see it.

But if there are specific instances that need to be looked into, I'm happy to do that.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap us up and say that you will have an opportunity to come back and talk about an investigation and enforcement.

Council President, very quickly.

Thank you.

This is, I will go quickly, but this is extremely important to me because I've heard a lot of testimony about when you say the organization has been fairly and impartially, I know you charge us to be a neutral arbiter, but I'm getting a lot of feedback that that it's just not occurring that way.

That's why I was trying to understand the philosophy behind the RSGI.

There seems to be little transparency in the office from the feedback that we're getting in terms of documents or investigations that are occurring and what you're sharing with them.

And the point, I guess, I'll share my frustration and I look forward to some ongoing work is that when we created the organization, We really wanted that RSCI lens to be there, that you're dealing with organizations, many of whom do not trust the government.

They don't trust us.

They don't trust what we're doing.

So we were willing to invest resources, making sure that you're in these organizations, dealing with the employees, and understanding their unique cultures.

The overwhelming feedback is that's not occurring.

The other thing is on another presentation, every other department does the purchasing and consulting contract to see where you are in terms of your numbers.

And maybe you didn't get that feedback, but what we're also trying to do is capture how well you're doing using minority and women-owned businesses for your purchasing and your consulting contracts.

No criticism about the website at all, but there has been a lot of criticism on how it the training manifests itself during the process of investigation and resolution that there's not a lot of training being done.

It's just seems to be heavy-handed on the investigation side.

So I hope we can work more collaboratively together because there seems to be a complete misalignment on what's happening out there in the field and RSGI work.

Thank you.

So I... I'm reading your body language to see that you disagree so we could talk.

Maybe I'm over-reading it, but that's why I said I'd do it openly and transparently, because if you have some pushback, just push back, because I'm getting all of this feedback.

Well, it's helpful to us to hear specifics when broad statements are made.

I can give you specifics.

You want specifics right now?

I don't want specifics right now.

I think the chair may not want them.

I can be very specific if you want those.

Mr. President and Director, thank you both for your continued conversation around this.

I'm going to be real specific and say that we're going to bring folks back here and we will have an opportunity.

Before budget?

We can try to do that, yeah.

I think it should be before budget because the education piece versus investigation piece has been a disaster.

So let me just say this.

We did have a chance to hear from the Small Business Advisory Group who came to a morning briefing.

And I will also say that at the conclusion of that conversation, many people who were there when you came to talk to the Small Business Advisory Group acknowledged that your presence in that meeting and the conversation that you all initiated at that discussion really helped to open the door to future discussions and they expressed appreciation for you being there and hearing them.

So perhaps what we could do is get a follow-up from them as well on how those conversations have gone.

I'm going to cut this conversation off and also acknowledge that last night I had the chance to talk to some youth at the University of Washington about public policymaking.

It was a room filled with about 200 students and they asked, this all sounds great what you're working on, but how do you make sure it works?

How do you make sure that the laws that you're passing are actually received by the people who are intended to benefit?

And I talked about the work of the Office of Labor Standards, especially in light of the fact that we didn't have OLS when we had wage theft pass.

We didn't have a robust office when we passed sick leave for the first time.

And the work that you all are doing is actually making it possible for the nationally recognized labor standards that we've passed here in Washington State to actually be experienced by the workers.

And we also know to the Council President and Council Member Baggio's point that unless workers are in a place where their employer understands the responsibility and their obligations under the new laws, then those workers never experience the benefits that we fought so hard for.

It's a both and approach.

And I will ask you all to come back to talk about investigation later on.

But we are about 10 minutes over.

So I want to thank you for your time and appreciate the work that you're doing internal and external on committing to race and social justice efforts.

And thank you very much.

If any of you could read into the record item number two.

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 119537, an ordinance relating to the sale of low-income housing.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Welcome, Tracy.

Thank you so much for being here.

If you could introduce yourself real quick.

Shirley, Tracy Ressliff, Council Central Staff.

Wonderful.

So this probably doesn't need a big tee-up because we've talked about it now at least twice in committee, the notice of intent to sell legislation.

Again, I want to thank my council colleague, Council Member Bagshaw, for both creating opportunities to hear directly from those who sell properties that are multifamily properties.

and for working with us on some legislative amendments.

I think it's really exciting what we have in front of us.

I think I'll save my comments as we walk through the legislation.

Did you have anything that you wanted us to project on the screen?

Nope.

Okay.

What you have should have in front of you that I sent out last night and that is also attached to the agenda is the substitute legislation that I will be walking through and highlighting where we have made amendments to the legislation, and that would be version D8.

And if you don't, I can give you- If I can just quickly ask, as you're going through this, we have focused on small businesses and small buildings and buildings that are five and more units, and if you can go through that, because we have heard from, listened to, and tried to amend this ordinance based upon the feedback we've gotten from both people that own units that are two to four units and then also larger ones.

Correct.

Correct.

And so thank you, Tracy.

If we can, we're going to try to project some of the amendments just so the folks in the audience can see.

Anybody who's watching in our robust Seattle Channel viewing audience at home, you can also find this information linked to our website.

Sure.

So let's just dive right in to the amendments that are being proposed in the substitute.

So the first one, which is really probably the most substantive change made to the legislation, begins on page three, line 14, it's subsections D through E.

And this is the amendment that establishes a tiered notice requirement that is in fact based on the size of the building.

So what this amendment does is it establishes different time periods by which certain things have to happen.

So let's just take an example of the multifamily building size with two to four units.

So 15 days after the owner has issued the required notice, a tenant or non-profit housing developer or the office of housing or SHA has to provide to the owner a statement of interest, that they are in fact interested in purchasing the building.

If nobody at that point, at that 15 days, issues a statement of interest, the owner is free at that point to go forward with the sale of the building.

Can I ask a quick question on that?

So this could be noticed prior to listing.

Oh it is, absolutely, yes.

So if I had a four unit duplex, which I don't, but if I did, and I put a notice up in the building and maybe the entryway bulletin board saying I'm intending to list this property in 15 days.

that's the notice that's required.

Right, it's not 15 days at that point, but it's a notice that they're going to intend to sell the building, and they have to do it, in the case of a listing, 90 days before they would intend to list.

So there's a time period by which they have to, in advance of listing.

Now, that's the one scenario where they're intending to list.

There's the other scenario in which they get an unsolicited offer.

So they have to issue a notice within two days of receiving that offer.

that unsolicited offer.

So let's let's say it's Bruce's building and I give him an unsolicited offer.

He at that point has to put on the bulletin board a notice for 15 days before he can accept my unsolicited offer.

Well, potentially longer than 15 days.

So remember.

But if somebody, nobody responds.

Great.

If nobody responds at that 15-day mark, he is free to go ahead and list and or accept that offer for his building.

That is absolutely correct.

This changes fundamentally what we started with as it related to the legislation, which was initially we said you have to give a 90-day notice before you intend to list.

And you can't go forward with accepting an offer, listing, or anything else until that 90-day elapses.

We have now said, nope, we're actually going to say, we're going to give these different time periods by which people have to express their interest.

If they express interest, they get another period of time, depending on whether they're a tenant or a nonprofit, to show the next phase, which is their ability to actually financially consummate a deal.

And that's in the case of tenants or tenant groups.

If they don't at that point show that financial viability or ability, Again, the owner would be free at that point to go forward with the ability to list or to sell the property.

And then the final tier is, say that somebody has indicated their interest in purchasing.

If they're a tenant, that they've shown that they have financial availability.

or a nonprofit that has interest, then they have 30 days after that statement of interest has been issued to in fact submit an offer.

And if at that 30 days they don't submit an offer to the owner to buy, then the owner again is free at that point to go ahead and to list and or proceed with the sale of their property.

That's for the two to four unit building.

Moving to a larger building, a five plus unit building, so for that first statement of interest time period, it's 30 days from the receipt of that notice of intent to sell.

The next period is 15 days for, if you're a tenant showing that you have the financial wherewithal to purchase the building.

And then finally, if you can do that, or if you're a nonprofit who doesn't have to show that, you have 90 days from that time at which the statement of interest was issued to in fact submit an offer.

clarifying question yeah on the you might cover this when I took a break but because of the the two or more housing units description would that cover that now with our attached dwelling units and DADUs, none of that stuff?

Nope.

Because of the definition that we use in this legislation as a multifamily, it excludes single-family and also excludes ADUs or DADUs, very clearly.

Yeah, I think that's a really good clarification.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Council President Harrell, we wanted to make sure nobody got swept up in that.

This is truly those structures that have two or more units.

the requirement that somebody it's at least 80% or less as far so at least one of the units in the building whether it's two to four or five plus has to be affordable rented at an affordable rate for somebody at 80% of AMI and if it's not

then they don't have to issue the notice.

Yep.

Is that going to have a negative influence on what we're trying to accomplish?

One of the unintended consequences I want to avoid is, let's say, once again, Council President's four units, and right now one of them is affordable, but he goes, I don't want to do this notice, so I'm raising the rates.

So now it is full market rate for all four of them.

So...

I know we're asking for a report at the I think at the one year and two year mark on this but.

So I'm not sure that we would be able to.

in that evaluation, I don't know that we would be able to prove that, that somebody is getting around the notice by raising the rents.

I suspect a tenant could note that, boy, they raised the rents and then they, you know, we hear that they put the building up for sale.

A tenant could do an individual complaint to the city about that and say, we think they may have, you know, tried to get around this notice requirement and we would obviously have to do an investigation.

That'll be interesting to look at.

I'm always concerned about unintended consequences, but it's not something that we've heard so far.

Shall we keep going?

Yep.

Some more questions about the tiered notice requirement.

I'll move on to the second amendment, which is on page six, line 12. And this is the amendment that would request the city auditor and the office of housing to conduct an evaluation of owner compliance with the notice requirements about two years after we actually implement this legislation.

And a report then would be due to the council by December 30th of 2021.

Thank you Councilmember Baxter for your interest in that amendment.

Really appreciate it.

Okay, moving on to amendment number three.

This is found on page six.

It is a new section, section four, starting on line 18. This would request the Office of Housing to facilitate workshops with interested stakeholders to discuss how to enable sales of buildings to interested parties, including the provision of technical assistance to tenant groups, nonprofit housing developers, and other organizations to assist in the purchase of buildings that might be up for sale.

So I'll comment on this one very quickly.

We had quite a bit of a conversation at the last meeting around the importance of not just making sure people had notification, but then how do we help when people are interested in pursuing this option and getting them access to non-profit developers who may be interested in purchasing and helping to preserve the structure, or as individuals, like I can keep thinking of my example where our Eight-unit apartment went up for sale.

If those individuals wanted to come together and collectively purchase, what tools are we giving them?

This was one of the recommendations also in the National League of Cities report that I handed out at the last meeting to really facilitate the education and engagement that we would potentially provide to prospective buyers, both as tenants and as nonprofit developers.

And I would also say nonprofit organizations that are getting more into the area of wanting to help address the housing crisis in their city.

So, you know, think of organizations like El Centro who until seven years ago wasn't interested in potentially doing development for affordable housing and now is really looked at as a great model of how we create affordable housing.

for especially our communities at highest risk of displacement.

So I want to thank Councilmember Herbold as well who worked with us over the last week to try to find some language that aligned with what her intent was and what my intent was and I think we have a good compromise here to make sure that we're doing workshops, to help build connections between different parties with the hope of creating new buyers and also helping to make it easier for those sellers so that nobody is in a situation where somebody raises their hand and then has not the ability to follow through.

Have we reached out to any of the lending institutions to see if there's some partnership opportunities?

I think a couple of years ago that, and help me out with this, Council President, I think it was called Express, but it was a, I think it was a credit union, not positive on that, but that they had loans available And it was lower than prime rates for organizations that would like to participate in something like this?

I think the intent is that those folks would be at these workshops to be a resource potentially to tenant groups or to non-profit housing developers or other community organizations who might be interested in a future purchase.

And I know that we've done this with Office of Housing, that we've got some money available, but obviously it's not going to cover the world.

It's going to cover a few units.

And Emily Alvarado, who couldn't be here today, did send us an email that clarified what the pot of money is that they currently have, and so I think that gives us a good base to build from.

Also, to your first question, I just want to publicly acknowledge and appreciate Raza Development Fund, who does exactly what you're talking about, help with folks who potentially don't have access to traditional bank loans and help get folks into, well, to help purchase buildings to create more affordable housing.

They're on the kind of the more development funder side.

Is that the right way to explain them?

More like, what's the right word?

I'm not, they're not a bank, but they're a funder.

They provide loans and support.

I think they're CDFI, Community Development Finance.

Thank you.

I think the more information we can have about organizations like that that could be useful, that we could access, that potential buyers slash builders could access, it's going to be better for the whole program.

So the final amendment, if we're ready to move on, is amendment number four, and this is found on page seven, beginning on line one.

And this would request the Office of Housing and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to develop strategies to enforce the provisions of the ordinance and to provide a report to the city council on such strategies and any additional costs to implement such strategies.

And they would submit this report by September 30th of 2019.

And this again goes back to the conversation we had last committee where we are really wanting to make sure that this is feasible to implement and that the word is getting out and that we do maybe a more proactive job on our side of identifying where there's buildings that potentially meet this match.

Again, this is sort of the hybrid between what Council Member Herbold and I were discussing at the last meeting and to get that information prior to your budget deliberations I think is a really good timing for us to consider.

I hope in this I support this amendment.

I hope that in that discussion We identify what our problems were rather than just pouring resources into monitoring enforcement because we weren't We weren't enforcing very effectively.

I've been told at $500 So an analysis is was it just resources or just commitment?

I mean it we need to sort of figure out what was wrong first as we what the problem we're trying to solve and what the causes are as opposed to just pouring money into it.

I'm assuming that this amendment captures that.

It does.

I think it's always going to be an issue of priorities.

And I think we will hear from OH when they report back to the council, what do they see as the priority as it relates to this specific ordinance.

To be really clear, we don't have resources that are going to allow us to purchase a lot of these buildings.

I think that's what the intent is, is try to help enable tenants and nonprofits to purchase these buildings.

But we don't have the resources that's going to allow us to do a lot of this at this point unless we have some bags of money that we don't know about.

So I think that is what then becomes the balance for the Office of Housing in terms of how much staff you allocate to doing the monitoring and enforcement when in the end you can't help facilitate the thing that I think everybody would love to do, and we will when we have the opportunity, but we just have to kind of recognize it's limited, and then they have to make decisions about how they allocate.

Now, we can still say, well, we want you to do more of that, and we'll fund you to do more of that, but at the end of the day, our ability to, in fact, have resources available to help facilitate some of these sales.

is limited and we just have to all be really clear about that.

And I think that underscores how important this is as just one small component to the larger puzzle.

As we make information more available and potentially more tenants or non-profit developers can reach out to organizations like CDFIs and leverage additional dollars or lending opportunities, then we're creating more opportunities than just the City of Seattle can do alone or just Seattle Housing Authority.

So thank you, Council President Harreld, for acknowledging that we've got to do a look back as well and not just kind of pat ourselves on the back if this passes.

And that will come to us in September.

I wanted to see if there was anything else from Tracy.

That's all.

Okay.

I sort of got ahead of myself and I wanted to underscore for our colleagues, I want to be sort of eyes wide open about this.

This is not going to solve our housing crisis.

This is not going to make it possible for every nonprofit organization or tenant to be able to potentially purchase these buildings that come up for sale.

But I think as we've seen in other cities like San Francisco and the city of D.C.

that this element is an important component of the puzzle.

And as we make a commitment to try to figure out how we can help, especially those organizations who are looking to house those who are at the highest risk of displacement, this is one opportunity.

There's an element of this that's also reflected in what the mayor and the executive office is considering around strategic acquisitions.

So we've been having conversations with them as well.

I think it complements it nicely.

So again, hoping that our puzzle continues to grow and that we continue to add pieces to it.

And love to take any questions.

I know Erin House did a lot of research on this too.

Tracy, thank you for your intense research on this over the last six months.

And if you do have any other questions, happy to entertain those.

Great.

And I do want to say thank you for being open to what I think we've accomplished here, which is to separate the larger and the smaller.

and allowing ways for tenants to get that word, but without sinking the possibility of a seller selling within a time frame that is, you know, it's just market sensitive.

So I want to acknowledge that.

I'm thankful that we did some work on it.

Thank you for your being open to that.

and Tracy for going back and looking at what San Francisco and other cities are doing.

And my understanding is that, especially now as we're doing these tiers and different gates that people have to walk through, that it's consistent with what those other cities have done.

We're not wildly out of line.

Always a good thing.

Okay, are there any other comments?

You guys, I would love to consider a motion to move this out of committee after now three times.

If you're so inclined, I would love to move that the full counts are, sorry, that the committee consider passage of 1195.37 for the full council's consideration.

As amended.

As amended.

Version D8.

Oh, thank you.

Version D8.

I'll second that.

I'm willing to vote.

Do we run the risk of voting when it wasn't listed for vote on the agenda?

It was listed for vote on the agenda, I believe, was it not?

Right now it says briefing and discussion.

So I have a, okay, very good.

Thank you, Council President, because I did not catch that.

It's a briefing discussion, so.

And it has been reissued?

Okay.

Good, thank you for catching that.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any other, has it been seconded?

It has been.

Okay.

Are there any other comments?

Okay, all those in favor vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Thank you very much for your work with us to amend this legislation and we will get the script in front of me so Mr. President and I may be able to ask for this to be considered by the full council on Monday, July 20. Do we have to make a motion here?

I don't think so, no.

Because it's before noon, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Oh, no, we're on Wednesday.

I got an hour.

I'm good.

It's Thursday, actually.

Yeah, I think we're good.

It's noon today, so we're good.

Well, thank you very much, then.

We will bring this on Monday, July 22nd, to full council.

Notice of intent to sell legislation, which we are referring to as our noise legislation.

Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you for your work on this, Tracy and Aaron.

Thanks.

Okay, let's move on to our last item.

We did extend this committee agenda until noon.

I know that many council colleagues have hard stops at 1130, so I appreciate your time and absolutely recognize that you may have to leave early.

We are not voting today.

Thank you for the reminder.

Farideh, could you read into the record items number three and four?

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 11954, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle, requiring student employers to limit room cleaning workloads for student employees.

For briefing and discussion, agenda item four, Council Bill 119556, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle, adding a new chapter 14.29 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

For briefing and discussion.

Great, and could we have you guys read your names under the record, please?

I am Karina Bull of Central Staff.

Dan Eater, Central Staff.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

I want to recognize that this is now the sixth time we've had this conversation in her full council, goodness sakes, in our full committee agenda.

We have also had a evening briefing on this.

And thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez, for being here and co-sponsor of the legislation.

We have an amended timeframe that I wanted to share with folks.

You know, many of us are very interested in the details.

We are policy wonks.

We care about getting these details right.

And after conversations over the last six months, we also acknowledge that there's ongoing discussion and we want to be responsive to some of the items that have come up.

We have gone ahead and add basically another four opportunities for both public comment and for us to engage in a dialogue.

at Council.

You will see in this agenda we have added August 1st, August 15th, and August 5th to the Council Committee agenda to give us a robust amount of time to walk through the details.

As we heard earlier, there's four components of the legislation, two of which we will do issue identification for today, which is worker retention and workplace injury.

The plan is after two weeks, then we will have the chance to vote on those amended sections.

At that point, on August 1st, we will then have issue identification on the healthcare and the harassment sections.

After, again, two weeks, we will then bring back amendments and have the chance to vote on those amendments.

Then, after another two weeks, we will bring back the full council bills, all four items, with the hope that with that amount of processing and time between each meeting, a full two weeks between each meeting, that we will be ready to potentially vote on the legislation as amended from this committee and then bring it to our full council for consideration on September 9th.

which will be ample time before budget starts, and that gives us basically another six weeks of discussion.

I want to make sure you all have that.

I believe it's already in your binders as we've distributed throughout the council floor, but wanted to be very explicit about that to the folks who are in the audience and also to anybody who's viewing.

Karina and Dan, thank you for your ongoing work with us.

We know we have two items for issue identification today, worker retention and workplace injury.

And if you do have anything that you'd like us to project on the screen, perhaps the memo that you have in front of us, we can go ahead and throw that up there and I'll save other comments as we walk through.

Council Member Gonzalez, as co-sponsor of this legislation, did you have anything else that you'd like to add before we start walking through the two items for issue identification today?

Only that I appreciate the ongoing work between our offices in terms of recognizing the importance of having a little bit more time to consider some of the issues that have come up in both public testimony throughout the prior hearings that we've had and in our own internal conversations with each other about issues that we recognize still need to be subject to additional discussion, consideration, deliberation, and a public process.

So really appreciate the ongoing work together to collaborate on making sure that we have enough time to have the best version of a bill that we possibly can to ultimately meet the underlying policy goals that we are trying to accomplish with these four different bills.

So thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

And we will go ahead and turn it over to central staff at this point to walk us through the two items we're talking about today.

Again, worker retention and workplace injury.

Thank you.

So as you noted, today we are focusing on two of the proposed bills.

It is the protecting hotel employees from injury ordinance and the Hotel Employees Job Retention Ordinance.

There are three discrete issues that have been identified for further discussion.

The first one addresses what are informally referred to as the overtime pay requirements in the ordinance protecting hotel employees from injury and What this requirement basically does is require employers to pay employees at a higher rate when they perform room cleanings that exceed a maximum floor space of 5,000 square feet in a workday that is eight days or longer.

And the ordinance...

Eight hours.

Eight hours or longer.

Thank you.

That would be too long.

Specifically, the ordinance requires payment for all the time that the employees are performing work cleanings for that workday.

So if it's a 10-hour workday, they'd be paying the one and a half times rate for the entire 10-hour workday.

Is there any other industry where we do that for the entire workday?

Not to my knowledge.

There is other cities who have done this.

So I think it's really important that we know that Long Beach and Oakland have passed ordinances limiting workloads to 4,000 square feet, which is 1,000 square feet less than we're talking about here.

And they're also doing double time for any amount for the entire day.

for any amount that triggers that over that square footage.

So we're talking about time and a half for the whole day if anybody cleans over 5,000 square feet.

In Oakland and in Longview, they do all day double time for any square footage that is cleaned over 4,000 square feet.

So their ordinance that they've passed is stronger than the provisions that we've outlined here so far.

That was new information to me as well, so I wanted to share it with you all.

If I may.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Chair.

So I think it would be really helpful if Council Central staff could pull together a document, a memorandum that sort of lays out the different components of some of the other laws we know that exist in other jurisdictions that I'm pretty familiar with the Long Beach effort.

I went down there a couple years ago and had a good conversation with their local Unite Here chapter and their council members and other folks on the effort that they were trying to undergo to pass a similar legislative package in Long Beach, and so I think it would be really helpful to have that.

That ultimately also went to initiative in Long Beach, but I think it would be really helpful for us all to have sort of that as a foundational setting of other cities that have taken similar legislative action, either via ballot or councilmanic.

Yeah, that would be really wonderful.

I just want to add that to the request that we made, perhaps so that it's one document.

We originally had a document that said what was in Initiative 124, what was being proposed in our language here, and then we were asking for a document that identified proposed amendments corresponding to those sections.

Love the idea then adding a column that says where we see similar legislation in either other cities or in other industries that we have currently.

And I'm wondering also if there's been any look at, is there an option to this reference to double time going back from hour one?

Is there another option?

Is there a, I don't want to call it a penalty, but maybe it's an excessive hours or an excessive space fee that gets added on.

I begin to worry about getting into areas like time and a half or double time going back to the beginning.

I'd just like to see if there's some other alternatives, maybe reaching the same result, which is really minimizing how any worker is taken advantage of, but at the same time separating that we're not looking at time and a half or double time itself.

That's a good point.

And as a reminder, I think the legislative intent is important in this section.

The intent is not to add dollars to the workers' pocketbooks.

The intent is to help provide a disincentive for anyone being asked to work over that 5,000 square feet work requirement.

So that's a really important point.

How do we fulfill that intent is part of the question that we're going to be going through over the next few weeks.

I will also say that I was watching the body language of some folks in the front row over here when one of our people who publicly gave comment earlier saying our workers enjoy the overtime and the workers in the front row are going, not the case.

So I think that we need to acknowledge that there's a difference of opinion here and we're trying to thread the needle.

I just, thank you Chair, I just wanted to also add in this particular space around time and a half, double time, that we also don't have to look too far away from home to look at policy decisions that the City Council has made in the labor standards space around creating a disincentive to overburden employees or to put employees under undue pressure to do something that they may not want to do.

in our secure scheduling legislation.

We have a model that strives to accomplish and deliver on that policy perspective, both in the context of the situations in which somebody might need a shift change or want to shift change or pick up hours or leave early.

There's an incentive in the legislation that, or a disincentive in the legislation related to penalty pay to sort of discourage the sort of short you notice type of situations.

There's also specifically related to the health of the worker aspect around clopenings as we like to refer to, as they would get referred to often in the industry is, you know, the incentive there is if somebody works a clopening within a certain period of times, hours, there is a requirement for the employer to pay a time and a half, I believe it is, to the employee in those events.

So it doesn't prohibit the employee from taking up a double shift.

It does, however, require that the employer compensate the the employee for having to, for making the decision to do that.

So I think we have examples of that here.

Ultimately, the policy that was driving us in the secure scheduling context was, as you stated, it wasn't about giving the employee more money, it wasn't about penalizing the employer, it was about recognizing that there are physical harms and mental harms to employees' health in doing cloak openings all of the time, and that in the event that they do do cloak openings because they've chosen to for whatever reasons they've chosen to do, that it is only appropriate to compensate them for that time.

Good reminder.

Thank you for that example.

Council President.

Yeah, question and a comment on the application.

If an employee finished their eight-hour shift But they did not do 5,000 square feet.

They did 3,000.

They just were a little slow that day.

I don't even know what's faster, slow in this industry, so excuse me on that one.

But then they want to work extra hours that day for whatever reason.

Does it still trigger the 1.5 for the full day even though they're below the 5,000?

Because I thought I heard Stephan say it only triggers if they went beyond the 5,000.

So if they didn't do 5,000 but they want extra hours, Is it a time and a half or the whole day?

If I'm understanding correctly, if they did 3,000 square feet in, say, six hours or seven hours, and they requested additional square footage to clean, and the employer agreed, and then at that point they went over 5,000 square feet, they still would be owed the 1.5 times rate.

Corinne, let's say they don't go beyond the 5,000, they just went up to 4,000, but it's the ninth hour.

If it's the ninth hour, then that is 4,000 square feet cleaned in the workday.

It doesn't reach the maximum floor space and they are paid at regular rate.

Unless the ninth hour is.

Goes beyond.

Goes beyond the 40 hour week under state law.

So what I'm basically saying is they have to go, there's just two requirements.

They go beyond the 5,000 square feet and they work beyond eight hours.

It has to be both for the 1.5 to apply for the full day.

they have to go beyond 5,000 square feet.

It can be less than 5,000 square feet if they're working, if it's prorated.

Say for example, they're working a six hour shift and they're not cleaning 5,000 square feet, but maybe they're cleaning 3,000 square feet.

I haven't done my math, but it can be the 5,000 square maximum floor space, it can be prorated based on the length of their workday if it's less than eight hours.

Councilmember, I think you were asking about an 8-hour day where they worked 6,000 square feet.

Is that what you're asking?

No, the opposite.

An 8-hour day where they only worked 3,000.

Okay.

See, I understand the concept of they go beyond 5,000, beyond 8 hours, we pay 1.5 for the full day.

But I thought I heard Stephen say, and I just want to understand it, is if they didn't do 5,000, but they want to do some overtime, It doesn't, the 1.5 for the full day doesn't kick in because they haven't reached the 5,000 square foot.

That's what I understand, that's correct.

That's correct, Mr. President.

It has to be both those things for the 1.5 to kick in for the full day.

So okay, so I just want to clarify that.

That's helpful, thank you.

So my comment is, as I'm trying to unpack what we're trying to do, I get the concept that we're trying to create a disincentive to have employees work more than 5,000 because that, you know, bad backs, bad elbows, bad knees, etcetera.

We get that and so then it becomes a work management issue that the hoteliers, if you will, may at 5,000 then bring in other people that are supposed to do it because they're not going to want to withstand that 1.5 full day.

So that's sort of the thrust of what we're doing.

But it seems to me that if you do have some employees, and I hate to say this in this world of political correctness, but if you have some employees that perhaps they're in college and they really wanna do all this, they wanna work more than 5,000, they're physically fit, and maybe there could be some wellness checks or something, but they say, look, I wanna do 7,000, because I'm trying to pay my way through school.

How do we allow that if the person has wellness checks, they're capable of doing it, they're not my age, And we still want to encourage the employer to allow that as well.

Is there a mechanism by which we could encourage it if it's appropriate?

My kids could do something like this, but I can't.

We don't, we sort of, it's like one size fits all it seems when you go beyond that eight hours and 5,000 square feet.

And it seems to me if we are really concerned about the wellness of the employee, which I think everyone is, including the hoteliers in many situations, perhaps they're not in many situations as well, but we could do like a wellness check and encourage it in those situations where the person is just physically capable and willing to do it.

My concern about this legislation is that it creates this perverse incentive for people to, because they need the money to go beyond the 5,000 square feet and at their own expense and their own health.

And they, you know, if the practice continues, they do 6,000, 7,000 and they bring home a bigger check, but it's really going to hurt them in the long run.

I appreciate what you're asking.

I'm going to try and take a stab at this just because I think it's a policy option versus sort of a technical question on the legality of it.

I think that the example that Council Member Gonzales shared with the clopening is if there's people who want to do that, they're absolutely able to if they have signed up for that type of shift and that's something that they'd like to do, you know, save the extra time and a half for the short period of time potentially that they're working in the summer and they're able and they're capable to do that and they've signed up willingly to do it, that is something that this legislation has allowed for.

But it also recognizes that much of what we're hearing so far is individuals who feel that pressure to work the extra time.

So it's not about not being able to, but trying to create that disincentive.

So I think to answer your question, we have created the ability for those who do have the ability and the interest in doing so, to be able to take that extra workload on.

But the reality is for many of these workers who we've heard have worked in the industry for years is that they are in situations where they're being asked to work more than they actually can.

And the consequence is we have higher rates of back injury in hotel industry for these workers than construction and coal mining.

And with that level of back injury and I think overall health complications that are created by this excess workload, we have a real opportunity to really limit the square footage like these other areas have done.

I think, and we'll continue to look into this, and I know I saw central staff taking notes, I think the answer to your question is we have created the ability for those who do have the ability to continue to take that excess work on.

And for those hoteliers who want to pay that extra amount, just like they do for the cloak opening example, they still have that option.

I see the, and that's why I'm really curious to look at the Oakland and Long Beach situations because I'm going to assume a natural byproduct to the legislation is that the hoteliers just aren't going to allow a lot of overtime.

I mean, if I own a hotel, I would say, hey, everyone's going to do 5,000, that's it.

And so the ones that want to do it don't have the opportunity because it's going to affect the bottom line of hotels.

And so, so how can you create an allowance to sort of a win-win for the employee and the hotelier?

Thank you for identifying that issue.

Council Member Gonzalez.

I mean, I think what it fundamentally comes down to the...

argument or the points that you are making, Council President Harrell, are fundamentally what we heard in the secure scheduling context around flexibility.

And the argument from restaurant and retail folks, the industry side of folks, was really like these employees want to work more time and they want to work more hours.

And that might be true for some employees, but I think we learned in the secure scheduling context that that was a minority of the employees, not sort of the whole industry.

And so I think it's important for us to, when we're crafting this legislation, is to really craft legislation and make policy choices based on what is sort of more of the mainstream perspective and sort of desire of the workforce as opposed to what a few people might want.

Otherwise, we're going to create an exception in the rule that you can drive a truck through, and I'm not sure that that's what we really want to do.

So that's one thing.

The second thing I would say is that, again, I think the policy choices before us is what is the problem that we're trying to solve.

For me, it's not about getting more money in the pocketbooks of employees as a matter of law or as a matter of course.

It's about prioritizing the health and the well-being and the safety of workers in this context.

And if we create a set of laws that effectively is toothless, it doesn't mean anything because you can always find an exception to allow workers to work more.

then we are cutting against a policy position that really is designed to prioritize the health and the safety and the well-being of workers as opposed to the finances of the workers.

So, again, I think we just need to really focus on the flexibility aspects of the concern that will not sort of tie the hands workers or hotel management so that if they have a reasonable, legitimate need to have more labor delivered to them to clean the rooms, then they have the flexibility to do that.

But when they make that choice, they understand that the employee deserves to have the time, the extra time and effort and exertion and physicality of doing that work, that that worker deserves to have that valued and compensated in a more fair way.

And I'm not saying that, you know, paying them just minimum wage is not value, but I just think that there's a policy position that is important for us to take that says, We think that it's important to protect the safety and the well-being of the worker in a fashion that we want to create a disincentive to just constantly have that employee come back and do more hard work for the same exact rate.

I appreciate you bringing that up, and I know that there were some notes taken as we're doing issue identification.

I believe it will be reflected in our next memo as we consider these ideas.

And Council President Harreld, I just want to underscore that I hear you in terms of looking at what other examples may exist, and we'll do some additional research in the next week or so here.

Any other comments on this first section, protecting employees from injury in the options outline?

The only thing I want to add is just a recognition of how darn hard this work is.

You know, oftentimes that you think about 5,000 square feet, but if you've ever had to clean 5,000 square feet, and if you're expected to do that every single day, It is a monumental task.

I don't want to underestimate that.

So as we're trying, as I say, to balance what we're asking our workers to do, but at the same time recognizing what the needs of the hoteliers might be, I think there's a balance here that we can reach.

But I do want to say thank you and acknowledge the work that is done.

Frankly, if you've ever made a king-size bed by yourself, that is a challenge in itself.

And if you have to do 15 of those a day, that is a big deal.

Thank you.

All right, let's go to section B, or sorry, 1B, definition of strenuous cleaning.

Okay, so in the ordinance, as we've already discussed, the maximum floor space is set at 5,000 square feet.

That floor space can actually be reduced depending on the types of rooms that employees are cleaning.

And if the employee is cleaning, what is called a strenuous room cleaning, then it actually, that maximum floor space is reduced by 500 square feet for the 10th strenuous room cleaning and for each strenuous room cleaning thereafter.

So then the question becomes, well, what is a strenuous room cleaning?

The ordinance defines it as the cleaning of a checkout room and a stayover room that includes the cleaning, removal, or setup of a cot, rollout bed, hideaway sofa, pet bed or crib.

And that for the most part mirrors what is in initiative 124. Something that is new is an additional requirement that a stayover room that has not received a room cleaning for more than 24 hours.

And so that's recognizing situations where perhaps there's a green cleaning initiative happening where the guest is not having their room tidied for the duration of their stay in an effort to wash fewer towers or to change fewer sheets.

So we've heard from stakeholders that perhaps for that third prong, perhaps more than 24 hours isn't long enough to reflect a situation that is a strenuous room cleaning.

Perhaps it could be increased.

An idea could be more than 36 hours.

And for employers, What we've heard is this could represent a more realistic threshold for rooms that merit the title of a strenuous room clean.

For employees, this could impact their additional pay requirements and impact the protections of the ordinance as far as protecting them from worst place injury.

It focuses on really whether the additional eight hours materially affects the safe working conditions and the workload, excuse me, the workloads of employees.

I want to echo what you said.

We did hear from stakeholders and we're looking at the top of page three on the memo from July 15th.

Thank you, Karina, for drafting this for us.

When you say we've heard from stakeholders, this is really exciting because as complicated as this legislation may appear to be, one of the things that we have heard from both Folks who work in the industry as workers and those who work in the industry as managers and owners, they both say that they think 36 hours is more in line with what's appropriate.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the feedback that we've received so far around potentially moving this from 24 to 36 hours and would also welcome folks to continue to send us feedback.

They haven't been shy so far.

Thank you.

But on the 36 hours piece, if this feels like we've gotten that component right, that is one small step in our conversation here.

36 hours makes sense, though, because that's a day and a half.

You check into a hotel, you're there for two days.

We can explore additional hour requirements for eight hours.

I just want to sort of echo, however, that this is based on feedback from both workers and hotel managers, and we've This is sort of one of the areas where there appears to be some consensus around the 36 hours, and I'd like to not kick the hornet's nest more if we don't need to.

But I'm interested.

Does it make sense?

That being said, if there are other additional concerns, obviously, we're happy to hear them.

I'm not going to kick this hornet's nest, especially if partners are working together.

I just understand the language.

It says, number one, the cleaning of, number one, a checkout room, and then a stayover, blah, blah, blah.

What is a check-out?

A check-out room is just any room you checked out of?

What is?

A check-out room means that the guest is checking out, so the room needs to be completely turned over and prepared for a new guest.

That's a significant amount of work.

Does the 36-24 issue apply to everything, a check-out room and a stay-over room?

Or is that just the number three?

Are we just, what was negotiated the 24 to 36?

I'm trying to understand, does the 36 hours apply to one, two, and three?

Is it an and or an or?

That's a good point.

It would seem to make sense that this idea that a room requires more cleaning if it hasn't been looked at for 24 or more than 36 or other number of hours, whether it's stayover or checkout, that's going to merit strenuous cleaning, if that's what I'm hearing you say.

So, okay, so strenuous cleaning is the cleaning of, number one, a checkout room, and then number two, so a checkout room is everything, right?

So for example, if I'm staying in a room for three days, the cleaning doesn't have to be a check out room.

It's a stay over room for the second day and the third day.

So maybe on the third day.

The last day is when someone checks out.

A check out room is a room that someone checked out is sitting there.

Yes.

A stay over room could just be like, you know, you don't get fresh sheets.

You just get clean towels.

They sort of tidy up a little bit, but don't do the full 100% scrub in a stay over room.

I think the intent was that the 24 hour or 36 hour period would apply to item number three only.

It wouldn't apply to the checkout room or to the rooms with those particular items like a cot or a pet bed.

So strenuous cleaning is any room where someone checked out?

That's right.

And everybody's fine with that?

Yes.

And thank you, Council Member Bagshaw.

We'll do some follow-up with you on any of the conversation we have over the next 25 minutes here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council President Harreld, thank you for asking that question.

If there's any sort of nuance in the language that we're using, that would be helpful to clarify on the number, 24 versus 36. Again, feel free to give us your feedback.

I was feeling pretty confident about the feedback we've received from both parties and looking forward to hopefully getting this over the hurdle at the next meeting.

Thank you, please continue Go ahead okay, so moving on to

the Hotel Employees Job Retention Ordinance.

The primary issue that we've heard about this ordinance is coverage that includes ancillary hotel businesses.

And to set the stage for the larger picture, all four proposed ordinances in this package of legislation protecting hotel workers cover employers who own, operate, or control hotels of certain sizes.

Three of the ordinances, including this one, the Job Retention Ordinance, also cover ancillary hotel businesses.

And then this ordinance also has an additional threshold for coverage that an ancillary hotel business have 20 employees worldwide.

The definition of an ancillary hotel business is contracted, leased, or sublet premises connected to or operated in conjunction with the hotel's purpose or providing services at the building.

So these are businesses that lease space from the hotel, It's connected to the hotel's purpose or operated in conjunction.

So it's helpful to know for reference that initiative 124 also covered employers that met this definition.

The initiative 124 didn't use the term ancillary hotel business, but it did cover them.

So it's not a new idea.

Actually, in this proposed ordinance, it narrows the application because it has that threshold requirement for 20 employees worldwide.

And one, that's really important.

I hope folks got a chance to hear that here and who might be watching online.

This was included in Initiative 124. In fact, the language that we're now talking about specific to this section is narrower.

I also want to remind us as we have a conversation around ancillary businesses for this section, this is not yet our discussion opportunity for how it applies to healthcare.

We are going to do that, I promise.

I love talking about healthcare, but that's gonna happen in two weeks.

And so this is specific to our discussion today around retention.

What we've heard from employer stakeholders are concerns about the impact of this ordinance's requirements on small businesses who are meeting this definition.

These employers have shared the belief that the definition is too broad in their opinion.

and includes businesses that they believe might be tangential to the hotel's purpose, such as floral stores, clothing stores, hair salons, day spas, restaurants and coffee shops.

These types of business might be located on the hotel premises and also serve the general public with or without customer access into the hotel.

So several ways to address these concerns.

One is for administrative rules that would be developed by the Office of Labor Standards to clarify parts of the existing definition.

So rules could clarify what it means to be, in quotes, connected to and operating in conjunction with the hotel's purpose, providing services at the buildings.

And the rules could determine whether that restricts certain types of businesses.

Another approach is to Amend the language to be more specific and establish more discrete parameters, such as covering businesses that support the hotel's core function or the businesses that provide services directly that benefit the hotel guest.

Again, it's plausible that these amendments still would require clarification from administrative rules, but there's more guidance already baked into the ordinance.

The third approach is to slim down the definition more and to focus on specific types of businesses, such as, for example, food service establishments that either exist on their own on the premises or even further contract with the hotel.

So that's recognizing situations where the businesses truly are serving a function of the hotel.

And if we look into the past, one remembers hotels that were doing it all.

Hotels that had employers that were providing the food services, providing the gift service or the gift store.

retail service, and directly employing the hospitality management.

So this could recognize that for some hotels that function is being contracted out.

And so this, it would cover them.

Another option is to eliminate the coverage of ancillary hotel businesses altogether.

A question around food services.

So I, when I think of food services, I'm also thinking of coffee shop.

Do we have to say food and beverage to include coffee shop and bars or is food services all encompassing of more beverage oriented establishments?

The ordinance would need to contemplate how to define that because as we know with secure scheduling, there are, industry co-definitions of food and beverage establishments, and we would need to think about that.

We would need to think about Does the ordinance intend to cover coffee shops or does it just intend to cover a full-service sit-down restaurant?

Does it intend to cover a fast casual food service establishment?

That would need to be considered.

Okay.

As our process is to identify issues, I'd like to make sure that we, as we're talking about food, that we're clearly talking about food and beverages.

And I want to just make my colleagues and the public aware, obviously we are accustomed to having coffee shops and bars on premises, and I think that that's in addition to potentially a full-service food restaurant.

So that's really important for me that the definition be encompassing of beverage-oriented businesses as well.

Council Member Gonzales.

Yeah, I was just gonna throw out a little note of caution once we start getting into types of establishments and that's that you know it's really it's hard for me to imagine a definition that would effectively be a response to the wide inventory of the types of businesses that might be co-located with hotels that are either contracting with Hotels for Services or who, you know, are really part of the core function of a hotel.

An example that comes to mind as we sit here is around the food and beverage thing.

It's sort of like we have this list of different types of businesses, but we didn't include retail, for example.

So I think, you know, I think we start getting, we start putting ourselves into a situation where we have to enumerate everything that might be possible in sort of co-located businesses at hotels.

And so I think the challenge here will be to come up with a definition that perhaps is a little bit, that is a little bit clearer around sort of, that is a little clearer and more solid with sort of who are we trying to cover and why.

And I don't have a clear answer for you as to what that is right now, but I do want to sort of just throw out a caution on that piece and continue to have conversations about how we sort of wrestle with that definition so that we're not creating sort of an enumerated list and then that if you're not on the list then you're not covered even though you could be located within a hotel.

Thank you for that.

Council President Harreld, any comments?

Are we just sort of throwing things out there?

I was sort of hoping that this This retention ordinance piece was sort of negotiated because, you know, I voted for it when it was on the ballot.

I was one of the 70% and my intent- 77. 77%, 80% I rounded up.

My focus was on the housekeepers, quite candidly, the safety and the health of those employees.

And while the term ancillary business might not have been there, the coverage of tenants, if you will, I didn't pay that any mind.

I didn't even see it quite candidly.

And so I think that when we use as sort of the argument that that's what the voters wanted, I don't know if that's completely accurate.

Maybe people all thought, oh, yeah, we've got to get those tenants, too, to make sure they're, you know.

The reason why this conversation is a little difficult for me because I want everyone to have these benefits, whether they're a tenant or not.

But it does seem like we are sort of cherry picking a little bit that if we have these smaller businesses, even if they're 50 plus, that they are now treated differently just by virtue of the fact that they're in a hotel.

Just by virtue of that fact alone.

But they could do the identical business three blocks away and then they're not covered.

And so it was seen to me that if our core competency in this legislation is going to be the protection of these housekeepers, then this part is inconsistent, this part doesn't make sense.

So I'm trying to see why we would cover it just by virtue of the fact that they're tenants.

And I think we heard some testimony on that.

So I'm sort of struggling with this piece a little bit.

And dealing with Stefan and the great advocates for workers.

I'm not even sure why they're so vested in this piece as well.

Maybe it helps them in the work that they do.

I don't know, but there seems to be a misalignment.

So one of the questions I had to central staff was, how many businesses are we even talking about here in the city?

I don't know who these businesses are.

Have we heard from them?

So I'd like to see a little work done on, I mean, are there like three that have 50 plus or are there 100?

I don't think we've done any of that work.

And so it'd be nice to know who it affects.

before we just sort of say this is good policy.

And then in the global work that we do, if we want to look at those small businesses and try to give them the protection that they should have in alignment with employees that work with larger corporations, that's a different discussion.

But in this legislation, it seems to be a little misaligned.

That's just sort of my transparent dialogue on this issue.

And that's what we're all about.

Thank you, Council President.

I will appreciate you flagging that.

There's one item I'd like to flag as well.

You know, we've used the terms core function and then on item C here we talk about contracts, one area that I've asked for feedback from the stakeholders both on the hotel industry side and from the worker advocacy side is to help us with an understanding of what it might look like to define business relationship.

Sometimes there's a business relationship that is not a contract.

Sometimes there's a business relationship that provides core function to the guests of a hotel but they are not considered core function in terms of they're not cleaning rooms at the hotel.

So one of the other areas that I'd like us to continue to explore is where we have in other areas of statute used a definition around business relationship and that may be of interest to our council colleagues as well.

Any other items on this?

Well, I think on the core functions piece, I'm not sure we've, have we defined that in the ordinance?

We have not, and so that would be something that if it were added to the legislation, it's not in there right now.

Right now it says hotel's purpose.

That could be defined in the ordinance.

It could be a hotel's core function is doing X, providing room accommodation, overnight accommodation.

And I want to also acknowledge that the core function, I believe, is defined in RCW, so there potentially is a place for us to pull from there.

Okay, that's helpful.

Yeah, and I think as it relates to this industry, you know, I know there's a lot of, arguments that have been made on both sides about that particular component as it relates to ancillary businesses.

And so I think that defining it as housekeepers only is too narrow.

I think defining it as everybody in the sun, it might be too broad.

And so I just wonder if there's a better, more appropriate way for us to sort of think about what the core function is of, you know, I think at the end of the day, hotels are in the business of hospitality and sort of thinking about what does it mean to deliver hospitality services to a person who effectively rents a room from you for a set period of time, I think is a, might be a helpful construct for us to look at in determining whether or not we can come up with a clearer definition around co-services that might address the issue that I flagged earlier around perhaps moving away from enumeration of types of establishments and really focusing more on the thing they do that would be really the anchor of who would be covered under various different parts of this legislative package.

I fully agree with that, but getting the

The list of the businesses that are affected by this, that should be fairly attainable, I would imagine.

No.

We struggled with that in secure scheduling.

We struggled with it in paid family medical leave.

And we struggled with it when we looked at the employee hours tax in terms of who would be impacted by some of these issues.

The city just doesn't ordinarily track this information.

And if it does, FAS considers it proprietary.

Be clear on the information.

That's been my experience.

Just getting the tenants, the tenants of the hotels is what the list, I'm not the employees, just the tenants of the hotels, that's got to be a finite list of, that's got to be less than 50, right?

What I believe we have already, courtesy of OLS, is a list of the hotels that are covered by this ordinance.

Knowing the businesses that the hotels contract with or sublease premises with, that seems like a heavier lift to find out.

There would have to be a questionnaire sent to them.

I'm not quite sure how we'd find out that information.

Council President Harrell and I can do a field trip.

I think they're somewhat organized by virtue of the testimony we hear, so let's see if we can try at least, instead of just saying we can't attain.

I think we should be able to.

If we can't, we can't, but at least we can try.

You rebuffed my field trip offer.

I don't even know where to stay over.

A checkout room.

I'm not offended.

Thank you very much for flagging those issues.

Anything else in this area that people want to flag at this point?

Okay.

Green, I think we're at the end of your impressive memo here.

Is there anything else that you'd like to say as we look at these two components of the overall package in our attempt to try to identify issues?

We want to underscore we have two weeks prior to when we're hoping to bring back these two components of our package for potential vote on amendment.

And obviously, there will be more chances as we vote on the final package altogether, but the desire would be to bring forward any amendments on these two sections in the next two weeks for potential vote.

Any other comments on these two sections?

Thank you for your patience with me.

Oh, thank you for your patience.

It's five minutes to noon, so I appreciate it.

Dan or Karina, any other comments from you?

Okay.

So by way of reminder, we will have a chance to have a discussion in two weeks from now.

Our next committee meeting is on July 18th, where we will be discussing part...

That's today?

All right.

The July...

August 1. Thank you.

Time is flying.

Our next committee meeting is on August 1st, where we will be discussing Part 1, which is related to safety, Council Bill 119557, and Part 3, which is related to the healthcare components.

A lot of research is happening right now.

I want to thank both the folks from the Hotel Association and from Unite Here and the folks both on the worker advocacy side and the managers who've come to testify specific to healthcare.

I know we're doing a lot of research so your comments and questions and concerns have been well received and we hope to have some materials for you all to look at next week so that people have ample time to review prior to our committee meeting.

And then, again, as it relates to these two sections, do let us know if you have other ideas that you'd like central staff to look into.

I would assume that your deadline is relatively early next week for trying to craft amendments to the sections.

If I say Wednesday, is that too late?

If folks get to information by Tuesday, I think that that would be preferable.

so that you can then generate some information for us by Wednesday and Thursday, and that will give us another full week in theory to review some of the potential amendments.

Do let Councilmember Gonzalez and myself know if you have any questions or additional amendments that haven't been identified today, and that's for our full council colleagues if they're watching at home.

I hope you are.

Hello.

And we look forward to talking with you about this legislation in advance so that potentially we can work on amendments together that will ensure a smooth meeting next week.

We do have, I believe, 90 minutes allocated to this in the upcoming meeting.

So we have plenty of time to talk about both amendments to these two sections and then to do this issue briefing as well on the other two components.

And as a reminder for everyone who is interested in coming to testify, a final vote in our committee will not occur until the September 5th date according to our new timeline.

Any other comments for the good of the order?

Okay, our next meeting will again will be on August 1st at 9 30 a.m.

Included in the agenda, hotel workers, industry standards legislation on the two components we talked about.

We'll also have a chance to hear on the MFT renewal and annual report.

That's a multi-family tax exemption renewal and annual report.

You know, we got all these other things in our committee like housing and energy and and health, and so looking forward to bringing a few items forward again.

Thank you so much, and we will adjourn for today.

Thank you, council colleagues.

Thank you, central staff.