Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers Rights Committee 9519

Well, good morning, everyone.

Today is Thursday, September 5th, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, welcome to order.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

It is 9.31.

Thank you all for being here.

As we've done in the past few meetings, we have two sections of our agenda today.

The first section will be devoted to Seattle City Light.

We will have a conversation with Baker Tilly on the outside financial audit, and we have about 30 minutes for that item.

We do have public testimony for folks who signed in to testify on that first item, and I'm going to double check, because looking at these names, I believe you actually want to speak to the second item, which is on the hotel legislation.

The second item that we will bring up will be related to the hotel safety protections, will be related to employees being protected from injury on the job and job retention.

These are three of the ordinances that the Hotel Safety Healthcare Workers' Rights Protection Ordinance has considered.

There's four components, as you know.

We will not be discussing healthcare today because we've heard from many of you that you would like to have additional time to weigh in with us on possible amendments to the healthcare section.

That will come up next week on September 16th.

We will also not be voting any of the hotel legislation out of committee today.

We've also heard from some of you, you'd like to hear more about the amendments today, we'll have a conversation.

And as we have done in past meetings, we will attempt to try to vote on any amendments in committee but not vote them out of committee.

That way all of the legislation will stay in this committee and we will then take up those three pieces in addition to healthcare next week with the intent to vote those out next week.

So just to reiterate, Amendments may be considered on safety protections, protecting employees from injury and job retention, three sections, and we will then hold those bills in committee with the intent to bring back healthcare next week and those three bills with the goal to vote them out of committee next week.

We are very excited about all the testimony that you all want to share, but I just wanted to make sure folks knew that PSA going into this discussion that we will have again another week, as you've all requested, to continue to provide us with feedback.

So the first item on today's agenda is, or the first section on today's agenda is, again, related to the Seattle City Light Outside Financial Audit.

And we will take public comment on those items specifically.

I do have four people signed up under the first item, but I think that maybe you all wanted to talk to the second one.

So if I don't see a jump up, I'm assuming you're not wanting to talk about Seattle City Light.

Anne VandeHei, Deanne Shweely, Jerwin Oswald and Michael Clark.

You all want to talk about a hotel, correct?

Okay, I'm seeing nods in the audience.

Excellent.

Is there anybody here who would like to talk about Seattle City Light?

Okay.

So, Farideh, why don't we go ahead and get into agenda item number one.

That will close public testimony for just the first section on Seattle City Lights audit.

And we will go ahead and invite our guests to come on up as we read into the record item number one.

And Council President, thank you so much for being here today.

We have the first 30 minutes dedicated to a Seattle City Light outside audit update.

Agenda item number one Seattle City Light report on 2018 financial audit for briefing and discussion Welcome.

Thank you guys for being here.

Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and we'll get you teed up for your presentation Good morning, I'm Mike Simmons.

I'm the controller for Seattle City Light Hi Kirstie Granger interim CFO Seattle City Light Hi, Aaron Worthman with Baker Tilly

Thank you all very much for coming.

We know that you have come from a distance to be here.

We're excited about this annual audit of Seattle City Lights financial statements.

And as you know, the audit is conducted annually by an independent outside auditor.

Baker Tilly is an accounting firm that is conducting this year's audit and has worked with previous audits to make sure that we are tracking how things are going at Seattle City Light from the outside perspectives.

Do you want to open up with any comments from Seattle City Light on this issue?

No, we do thank the opportunity to speak to this and appreciate your interest in listening.

Thank you so much.

Why don't we go ahead?

Again, my name is Aaron Werthmann with Baker Tilly.

I definitely appreciate the opportunity to present the 2018 Financial Statement Audit.

This presentation, part of which are required communications, will be similar in format to prior years.

What I'd like to do first is just go through and tell you, well, what exactly is an audit?

What comprises an audit?

Go through our internal control communication.

And then go through the otter communication with you charges governance, which are the required communications We need to have as part of the audit process and then open up to any questions you might have excellent So this year, I'd say the audit went well.

This year, there was a new PeopleSoft implementation which causes new work for the auditors and for management.

You have a new system integration, getting up to speed on those things.

So I'd say this actually, we were preparing for issues and we think this year's audit went well.

We had four weeks of fieldwork conducted, one of which was preliminary fieldwork in the fall, and then we conducted three weeks of final fieldwork in the spring.

Our last date of fieldwork was March 29th, and a big thing to note is we did not have any adjusting journal entries as part of this year's audit, which is always good.

Our audit was performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards.

Those are the standards that we are required to follow as auditors when we conduct every audit.

In addition, because your entity and the city receives federal funding, we're required to also conduct your audit in conformance with government auditing standards.

Those are additional standards that we have relative to due care, supervision, continuing professional education, independence, and quality control.

Our audit objective is to obtain reasonable assurance that your financial statements are free of material misstatement.

At the end of this year's audit, please report that your financial statements have received an unmodified opinion, which is also known as a clean opinion, which is the highest level of assurance that we can provide as auditors.

Taking a look at the audit, if we were to break down the audit into segment, you'll see where we spend our time and most of our time.

So to give you some perspective, I'd say roughly 30% of the work that we do is specific to internal controls.

and IT related to those controls.

That's where we spend 30% of our time.

So what we'll actually do is we'll go out and we'll determine what are the major processes at City Light, receivables and billing, work orders, fixed assets, disbursements, expenditures, things like that.

We'll take a look at those processes, we'll document what are the required internal controls and then we will test to make sure that are those internal controls present for the process.

And more importantly, are they effective and working?

In situations where they are, we can perform less substantive tests.

If we do find a breakdown in controls or a lack of internal controls, we would spend more of our audit time devoted to that area.

So roughly 40% of what we do consist of substantive tests.

That's taking a look at cash and investments, taking a look at fair values of those investments, taking a look at your receivables, things to that extent.

And then the last 30% of what we do is specific to audit planning, and then financial reporting, taking a look at your annual financial report.

But looking below at the work plan, you'll see, again, we spend a significant amount of time on IT infrastructure, your plant and service, which makes sense because if you look at your balance sheet, fixed assets make up a majority of your balance sheet, financial reporting, and then again, planning and administration.

But again, this lets you know where exactly do we spend our time relative to our audit.

taking a look at internal controls, I do want to state that we give an audit opinion on your financial statements.

We do not provide an opinion on internal controls.

However, as we conduct your audit, when we identify material weaknesses in controls or significant deficiencies relative to controls, we're required to communicate those and also categorize the severity of that internal control breakdown.

So the first category, the most severe, would be a material weakness.

Basically what that means is either a lack of control or a breakdown in control relative that there could be more than a reasonable possibility that that lack of control would lead to a material misstatement in your financial statements.

Please report we did not identify any material weaknesses.

The second category is a significant deficiency, which is less severe than a material weakness.

However, it's enough to warrant your attention as governance.

So this year, it's our understanding that the state auditor had issued a point, a significant deficiency on cash and investments from a city perspective.

So one thing that we need to note as being a department of the city, that the city did have internal controls over accounting and financial statement preparation.

for cash and investments relative to a significant deficiency in those controls.

Understanding a state auditor has communicated that, I believe their audit still might be in progress, they're hoping to issue soon, but because we are a department and the city takes care of our cash and investments, we need to show that state auditor point as well, which you've included and seen written confirmation of that.

Moving on to our required communications, one of the things that I wanted to point out that within note one, you'll see your standard accounting policies and procedures.

What we need to do is take a look at those procedures and policies, audit against those, and let you know if we had any findings.

One example of this would be your capitalization policy.

Another item to point out are accounting estimates.

So oftentimes we'll have governing bodies or users of those financials ask about, what are the most concerning parts about financial statements?

If there's a what could go wrong, where would that be within the financials?

And I'll often say, or almost always say, in every instance, it probably has to do with an accounting estimate.

So within these statements, there are estimates for your pension liability, your OPEB liability, allowance for doubtful accounts on receivables, your unbilled revenues, environmental remediation liability, self-insurance.

where certain times you'll have specialists.

So for instance, if we take a pension, you'll have an actuary determine what that liability is, and you put that within your financial statements.

We as auditors need to look at the actuary, make sure that they're competent, make sure that they have good qualifications to be doing the work.

We'll review their reports and findings, and then we will use that and test your liability accordingly.

Just one example of this is, so for instance, your pension, City Light's proportionate share of the city retirement liability with a 7.5% discount rate is $232 million.

Because these estimates are so subjective due to the variables that are used to calculate them, accounting guidance requires you to show what this liability would look like just with 1% higher in the discount rate and 1% lower.

So if we decrease that discount rate to 6.5%, your liability would increase to $333 million.

And likewise, if you moved it the other way to 8.5%, that liability would move down to $157 million.

So again, that's a pretty big swing.

So can I sit here today as your auditor and say, without a doubt, your liability as it stands today is 232 million, well, I can't do that, but what I can tell you is between 147 and 333, I'd say yes, that's a reasonable determination, a reasonable estimate of where that liability stands today based on the best information we have.

So again, just know what estimates are within these financial statements, but more importantly, know the limitations of those estimates.

So when we think about the limitations in the financial audit here, how are we to categorize the financial estimates that we are hearing about in the press related to the billing estimates that many of the consumers are dealing with and the overbilling and potential Surprise bills that people received and I understand that that's Probably a different category as it relates to what the consumer is experiencing versus the estimates that the city that city light is assuming But how does that factor into?

Whether or not this is categorized as something you are looking at or this is outside of the scope.

Yeah So that's a great question.

So part of what we do, we are required, when we provide our opinion, we provide it on a material basis.

So what we would do is we look at all these estimates and we determine, are these material?

We look at them as such.

Now, what you're talking about, we would see in the allowance for doubtful accounts.

So, assuming there was a question on we've recorded receivables, we've recorded revenues, if there's a question of whether that or not will be paid in the future, that would be part of this allowance.

We would take a look at that and determine it's reasonable based on many factors.

Probability of collections going forward, looking back, well, what has collections rate been in the past?

If there was the system conversion a while back that you're talking about and there may have been some overbillings, we would take a look to see, well, were those material in nature?

What is the status of those?

Our understanding as of right now, we would not deem those material.

But management is definitely looking at those.

And we would have concern if we saw that those were material.

But the best of our knowledge, the estimate we have right now, we feel is reasonable in relation to your financial statements.

Thank you very much.

It will be interesting to know what the threshold is for when it becomes material.

I think we're just beginning to sort of scratch the surface on the type of overbilling estimates that some consumers have experienced.

Obviously, there's a class action lawsuit.

We have an audit that the auditor at the city is conducting and will be presenting in our committee at the beginning of next year that we've asked for beginning of, I guess it was mid-year last year, to look into these estimates.

Could you maybe stay in touch with us or get back to us at what point something becomes material?

Absolutely.

OK.

Yeah.

And a lot of times we get questions, well, what is material?

Right.

What does that mean?

I wish I could give a better definition, but the best definition I've seen is it would be an amount that would affect the decisions of the users of the financials.

So for instance, I could tell you, if you decreased, if you take a look at your income statement and you changed your operating revenues by annual operating revenues, let's say, by $40 million.

Could that change or affect the decisions of the users of those statements?

My guess is, yeah.

I would probably think that's material.

Now, take a look at the balance sheet.

You have a billion dollars of assets.

Let's say you didn't record or missed recording an asset of $2 million on a billion dollars worth of assets.

Would you view that as material?

And my answer would be, no.

I wouldn't call that material.

Now, when we look at materiality, we also need to realize there's two components.

You have your quantitative, which we kind of just spelled out, but then there's also qualitative.

So again, you may have a super large dollar amount relative to a fixed asset addition.

However, given that you're dealing with a billion dollars of assets, you probably wouldn't think 2 million is material for that.

But for the income statement, 2 million dollars of revenue relative to, you know, off system sales or something like that, you might view that as material.

So again, you gotta look at both the quantitative and qualitative.

Good question though.

As part of the audit, if we had any significant difficulties, we would need to disclose those.

And we did not have significant difficulties as part of this year's audit.

If we had any uncorrected misstatements, we would need to disclose those.

And as such, similar to every year, we do have a listing of waived entries that you've received as part of your management representation letter.

Those result from, again, this concept of materiality.

Oftentimes, as books are closed, clients may have a small entry that comes in.

They do not want to change their entire set of financial statements for an immaterial small entry.

But we as auditors need to keep track of those to determine if you had 12 of those and you take a look at them all, what would the effect be altogether?

Is that material?

And yours were not.

But what we do need to know is we need to keep a collection of those and report those to you so you can see what those amounts are.

But again, they were not material.

If we had any disagreements with management, we would need to discuss those.

This is definitely a year-round audit process.

We work with management closely throughout the year, whether it's due to new accounting standard changes, a system issue, some system implementation issues.

So I think part of the reason we get to the end of the audit and don't have disagreements is we vet these things throughout the year.

If we have concerns, we'll talk to management about those.

So when we get to year end, it can be a pretty seamless audit.

And if we had any other findings or issues, certainly we would disclose those.

Just know, if I did have a significant issue, this would not be the first time you folks would hear about it.

I would reach out to you directly ahead of time to have those conversations.

So again, there shouldn't ever be huge surprises when we get to this meeting.

If we had any material adjusting journal entries, we would disclose those.

And there were no material adjustments as part of this year's audit.

Management representations, one of the documents you've received are the management reps. What those are are the representations management makes as part of the audit process.

The representations on estimates, their representations on fraud, internal controls.

specialists, things like that.

So if you haven't, I suggest take some time to take a look at those representations.

I'd say every year that listing probably gets longer as management becomes more active and involved in this audit process and takes ownership of those financial statements.

If management had any consultations with any other audit firms, we would be required to be notified of that.

Sometimes that can also be known as opinion shopping, but we are not aware of any discussions that your management had with any other audit firms.

Independence.

Independence continues to be a larger and larger factor as part of auditors and the audit work that we do.

I'm pleased to report that we are independent in fact and appearance as it pertains to Seattle City Light and their employees.

Lastly, we just want to thank the department for all the help that they had.

You know, this year was a busy year.

Huge general ledger implementation, a lot of work went into that and trying to keep everything running and having an audit conducted.

But we appreciate all the work that they did and we definitely appreciate the opportunity to work for the organization.

And with that, I'll open it up to any other questions you folks have.

Any other comments from Seattle City Light?

We're appreciative of the relationship with Baker Tilly and that they bring good insight and professionalism to this.

Absolutely.

I do have two more questions, Mr. President.

Do you have any questions before I get into something?

Just a question.

Thank you for the presentation.

In terms of our bond rating and our credit worthiness and how we're doing as a institution.

Did you make any conclusions there?

Are we trending in the right direction based on our squeaky clean audit here or is that sort of outside the scope of the kind of things you review?

Great question.

That's a little out of the scope of what we do relative to financial health.

But one thing I can certainly tell you is having audited financial statements with a clean opinion definitely goes a long way.

But there's many different factors that those rating agencies look at.

They'll look at your debt position relative to your assets.

They look at, do you keep your rates current?

They look at many, many different factors.

But the first step in that is having annual financial statements audited, which they'll include in any official statement, for your subsequent debt issuances.

And you have a clean opinion.

So again, that definitely goes a long way.

That's a good first step.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I just have two questions.

One is, you mentioned the estimates that are being assumed.

at Seattle City Light currently with our current policy around collections.

This is a policy that is going to be updated soon.

And we, in my office, as Seattle City Light knows, are looking at what other cities have done to try to get away from a collections policy when there is a debt issued, if people are beginning to pay on a regular basis towards that debt.

I would love for there to be debt forgiveness, as some other municipalities have done.

So does that, would that factor into future audits that you do, or does knowing that policy change on the horizon change any of your conclusions here?

So you're right there's no utility is exactly the same relative to those types of things But what we need to do is what we'll do assuming this policy changes It's our responsibility then to go in and take a look at that.

We would make sure that you're following your policies otherwise, that would be a a recommendation comment we have that we noticed that you're not following the policies.

But most importantly, the way we would look at it, we would take a look at your allowance for doubtful accounts and how that policy related to that estimate.

Any changes in your policy, we would then want to make sure worked its way into offsetting your receivable balance with the relativity of either It's going to be paid or it's going to be waived or forgiven.

But we would definitely look at that as it pertains to the estimate on your allowance for doubtful accounts.

Okay, great.

Last year we had a significant number of concerns that were raised about the over cost or the overrides in the capital construction costs.

That doesn't seem to be appearing too much in the conversation today.

Do you, I guess anecdotally, do you believe that what you saw was a course correction on some of those capital overrides?

Can you give an example of what the overrides are specifically?

Sure, and maybe Seattle City Light can help us.

We had some major projects that we hadn't taken on in the last few years, and some of those had significant cost overrides, and I'm wondering if that was a factor in your financial...

When it comes to that, one of the things we look at is controls.

Are there budgets, and is there actual to budgets performed comparisons after projects are done?

That is a control.

And investigated, you know, why were there cost overruns?

You want to make sure that they're valid reasons.

So one thing we do is we make sure, hey, are there budgets being completed, first of all?

And yes, there are.

Is the actual to budget comparison being looked at and evaluated?

Which it is.

To our knowledge, I think any overruns have been valid and have support for them.

Now, we don't look at every case and instance, but the biggest thing is, that there is a control in place and those variances are investigated and investigated on a timely basis.

It's not uncommon to have budget overruns for many different reasons.

You as a governance, I would just want to make sure, hey, what were the reasons for the overruns and does it make sense?

And do you continue to see those?

Because then there might be a question, well, is there an issue with budgeting?

Do we need to reevaluate how we budget?

Try to figure out themes.

Is there a consistent reason why we're over?

And if so, identify what those are.

But nothing came to our attention of note being a material issue by any means, but we do look at some of the controls around that overall.

And then the last question that I have is more forward-looking.

Just this week, we passed an effort in full council chambers to allow for us to enter into the Western imbalance market.

And I know that this is a new market for us.

We're going to be looking at trading our energy across the West Coast.

And it's a really exciting opportunity for us to put our greener energy product out on the market so that fewer entities, municipalities, and private sector are having to consume carbon emitting energy.

So we're really excited about this, but we also know that we need to closely track our participation in that.

Next year, assuming that we're going to be working with you all again next year, will this be an issue that you're looking at in your audit to make sure that we're within the confines?

Absolutely.

You know, when we look at you know, our other audit clients that are already doing these types of things like Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and even in the Texas market or some of these other larger areas, we see this all the time.

So the good news is we definitely are equipped to audit these things.

You know, certainly we'll be looking, do you have any derivative positions that need to be recorded?

But no, this will be a significant change for this upcoming audit.

We would definitely take a look at it.

We would test it.

And again, we would go right down the line, you know, what controls should be in place with this entity trading?

What are those controls?

We'll test those and we'll see if there's any breakdowns.

And then lastly, you know, let's say there's derivatives.

We'll make sure that those are reported at fair value.

within your financial statements and the disclosures are appropriate for counter parties and all these other different options.

But yes, that would definitely be a major point of emphasis for this upcoming audit.

Excellent.

Thank you.

That concludes my questions.

Seeing no other questions, we just want to extend a huge amount of appreciation for your work.

We know you've come up here and you've traveled for this presentation and your team as well has done a tremendous amount of work.

So thanks to you.

Thanks to Seattle City Light for Continuing to engage in this transparent auditing process and we'll look forward to sharing with you any future policies as it relates to collection changes any changes to billing estimates that may come from the City auditors report that will come to our committee We believe in February of next year and then to engaging with you as we enter into the Western and balance market Okay

I'd like to say your report was earth shattering, but I guess that's what you're not looking for in an audit, right?

Thank you.

Less is more.

Thank you very much, and we appreciate your time.

Thank you so much, Farideh.

Why don't we go ahead and we are going to move into public testimony for the second item on second section of the agenda, which includes three items.

We have a number of people signed up for public testimony, and I had a few people ask how much time are we going to allow.

We really want to try to get through this public testimony in a half an hour, and we have exactly 31 people signed up.

So, let's do one minute per person and recognize that we really value your time and your commitment here.

If you can stay within that one minute, we really would appreciate it.

And much of what we will have to talk about today, we get to talk about again next Thursday.

So, with that, we're going to go ahead and take folks in the order that they've signed up here.

Ann, Vanderhay, Deanne, Jurgen, Oswald, and Michael Clark are the first four people that have signed up to testify.

We will put a minute on the timer here, and just by way of reminder so that we're following all the rules, we want people to know that we're talking about three items on today's agenda.

Hotel job retention.

protecting hotel employees from injury, and hotel safety protections.

These are included in today's agenda as items 2, 3, and 4, Council Bill 119556, Council Bill 119554, and Council Bill 119557. On today's agenda, we are not talking about healthcare, but I think it kind of weaves in and out, as people have talked about before.

Just know that we will have another week to consider healthcare legislation, and if you do have comments on these three bills that are here today, that would be very timely.

So with that, thank you for signing up first, and we appreciate you being here, Anne.

Good morning.

My name is Anne Vande Hei and I'm the Director of Sales at the Hilton Seattle.

I've been in the industry for 35 years in a variety of hourly and management positions.

The panic button legislation was important and underscores the desire and responsibility of the hotel industry to ensure the safety of our valued team members.

The latest definition we've seen leaves determination of who is covered and who is not up to the rulemaking process.

It's irresponsible to pass a law without understanding or specifically stating who it applies to.

Additionally, I urge you to learn more about what the hotel industry already has in place to ensure the safety and wellness of all of our employees.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anne.

Appreciate you being here.

Diane.

Hi, Diane.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Deanne, and I'm the HR manager at the Hilton Seattle.

I've worked in the hospitality industry my entire life.

The safety of our employees is always top priority, and that is why we have supported and provided panic buttons to all of our associates.

Everyone is concerned about overtime calculation, which is now three times pay for additional time spent.

Why are we the only industry being attacked?

We have all heard you say that this overtime is necessary, but what makes three times more pay to associates safe?

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

And the press folks, you are also welcome to come behind the fence here if the security folks, if you do want a different view.

I know it's kind of awkward there.

So you're welcome to come behind the gate here.

And you're welcome to come behind.

Thank you.

Hi, sorry to interrupt you.

No, no worries.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Juergen.

I work at the Hilton and overtime calculation at three times the hourly wage.

Why?

What makes the hotel industry so different from other industries?

You're selling this ordinance as part of protecting housekeepers.

However, we are also roping in non hotel employees and small businesses that have nothing to do with housekeeping.

So let's finally remove those ancillary businesses from this legislation.

The latest definition, who is covered and who is not, leaves it up to the rulemaking process.

isn't it irresponsible to pass a half-baked law?

And if that's the case, let's not rush, please, but please be diligent and continue to work on these ordinances so that we can really get a product that makes it good for everybody and doesn't leave room up for interpretation.

I think that's really important not to rush the process.

So thank you, appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

And Michael Clark.

Hi, Michael.

Good morning.

Can you hear me okay?

I'm Michael Clark.

I'm the GM of Renaissance.

I'm also on the board of the Seattle Hotel Association I've been here before so I won't review my 33 years in our industry I can tell you that safety and well-being of employees is a top priority for our association and For me personally the well-being of the employees that work in my hotel is more important than matters of business I continue to be concerned about the overtime calculation now at three times the time for the overtime spent, extra time spent cleaning.

We're not mandating, you're not mandating this for one other position, any other industry, any other business, and it just, it doesn't make sense.

And I've heard you say that it's necessary for employee safety, but if that's so critical, then why aren't hotels with collective bargaining agreements required to pay three times?

That just doesn't make sense.

And interpreting the voter approved protection of housekeepers to extend to a range of non-hotel employees and small businesses.

It just doesn't make sense.

It's time to take a look at that and remove that.

And the latest definition we've seen leads the determination of who's covered and who's not up to the rulemaking process.

It's irresponsible to pass that without understanding who specifically it applies to.

And you're welcome at my hotel anytime if you'd like to meet people, understand what we do, our processes and procedures.

I would love to have you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Welcome Councilmember Gonzalez as co-sponsor of the legislation.

Thank you so much for being here.

The next three people are Chad McKay, Michael Hirsch, and Hobart, Hobie, Figuerate.

Welcome Chad.

If folks want to line up that would be helpful too.

Great.

Good morning.

My name is Chad McCann, the CEO of Fire & Vine Hospitality, a family business based out of the Northwest.

I'm here today to specifically talk about the ancillary hotel businesses and why independent groups are being caught up in a war against the hotels.

Don't understand the healthcare is going to be a big component of this.

of why our Inn at El Gaucho, which is 17 rooms, would be exempt from legislation, but the restaurant attached to that, the El Gaucho, would be included in the legislation.

I think it's poorly written, and I think it needs to be really looked at.

When you look at the healthcare component, I know that's later, you're talking about someone working 20 hours with a family.

adding $20,000 of labor costs, almost $20 an hour per for those employees.

That's an incredible burden.

And final is that the ACA, you're going to put us into a discriminatory noncompliance with ACA by doing contributions for one location different from another.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Chad.

Michael.

Followed by Hobart, followed by Brianna Fox.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you.

I represent the family owners of 13 Coins and the ownership group of the Lodge Sports Grill.

We have two impacted properties.

And again, just asking for a conversation, a dialogue about the ancillary hotel business language removal.

I have reached out and asked for some kind of dialogue.

We've served the city for 53 years.

We're not worldwide, we're not nationwide, we're local and longtime families and mystified as to how a safety initiative that began for hotel employees has now reached this point into apparently the only poor decision that was made was the location of our business with the impact here with the hotel co-location.

We'd love to have a conversation about how to remove it or what the underlying goal is in including us in that and see how we can help to be partners in achieving the city's goals.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I'm a owner of a company called AVMS, Audio Visual Management Solutions.

We're suppliers of hotels.

Been in the hospitality business probably for 30 years, in Seattle for about approximately 25 years.

You know, our employees are not hotel employees we support.

We're a supplier of hotels.

I don't see how this particular legislation includes, you know, ancillary business.

You know, we're also, you know, I would consider small business, and it's difficult for small business, you know, to operate in some of these parameters.

I think it should be looked at again as to how ancillary business is directly impact this particular legislation, but I appreciate your time.

Thank you for your time.

So following Brianna, just one second Brianna, after you will be John Guber, Pam Hinckley, I'm sorry you guys, John Gingerber, Pam Hinckley, And then, Thissery Badawa.

I'm really sorry.

You all can correct me when you come up here.

Hello.

Welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Brianna Fox.

I'm the HR Director.

We'll start your time again.

My name is Brianna Fox.

I'm the HR Director at BMI Hospitality Management.

We employ about 200 people here in the city of Seattle.

The issue I'd like to comment on today is the ordinance addressing square footage limits as well as overtime pay if workers exceed that square footage.

The council is claiming that the purpose of this legislation is to increase safety in the workplace for Seattle workers.

I believe if that were truly the intention, this council would provide an ordinance that covered all Seattle workers.

There are workers in Seattle cleaning office buildings, cleaning medical facilities, cleaning schools.

I would ask why aren't they receiving these same protections?

Like why are we targeting one industry?

I'd also ask why all these employees here in the red shirts, why aren't they receiving those same protections?

If the intention is truly to provide protection or increase safety in the workplace for hotel workers, why is the union being exempted?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Hi, John.

Pam, and then this, this is for you.

Madam Chair and committee members, my name is John Engbern.

I'm the director of the Retail Industry Coalition of Seattle, a grassroots organization of over 130 retailers in the city.

We appreciate the work of the chair and the committee to narrow the definition of ancillary hotel businesses.

However, the current definition still potentially extends the ordinance to businesses that are not closely related to the operations of a hotel in which they're located.

Specifically, we urge the committee to combine clauses 1 and 2 with an and and delete clause 3 related to restaurants.

This change would reduce the incentive for retailers to relocate to non-hotel space while still achieving the goal of improving health care for hotel workers.

We believe it's important for the committee to make this change in the ordinance rather than rely on the less predictable rulemaking process.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thissery and then Sheila Ordonez and then Brian Zanz.

Hello.

Got it?

My name is Pamela Hinckley from Tom Douglas Restaurants and I'm here representing our restaurant Lola.

We rent space in Hotel Andra.

Thank you to the committee for your continued effort on worker safety, but we do have several concerns about how the proposed legislation is structured and ask the committee to rethink the intent.

Ms. Mosqueda states in her August 20th newsletter that hotel workers are some of the most vulnerable workers.

We disagree.

Our restaurant teams are experiencing dangerous conflicts from the conditions on our Seattle streets every day.

We have offered self-defense classes, mental health counseling, and trainings from the Seattle Police Department and the MID to protect our employees.

An ordinance that just protects hotel workers is biased and unfair.

We also do not understand the logic of including ancillary businesses in the legislation.

Our business at Lola is driven by being a community restaurant with less than 5% of our revenue coming from the hotel.

I'll save the healthcare things for next week.

Okay, thank you.

Sheila, Brian, and then Nicole Grant.

Hi.

Good morning.

My name is Sheila Ordonez, and I'm the assistant general manager at the Mediterranean Inn.

I've been working for hotels over a decade.

Same for my mother, my sister, and my aunts.

The company I work for and I represent has been a good working place, where we are in favor of help, listen to all, and each employee.

Their safety is our safety, and we have been supporting providing the panic buttons to employees as an important part of the safety.

We are a small and family-owned business and I'm concerned about the overtime calculation, which is now at three times pay for the additional time spent cleaning.

About the workload being critical to the health of workers, why are they allowing to be waived at the collective bargaining agreement?

I do think we should be equal and fair.

This legislation started saying that it's about protecting hotel housekeepers, but it has developed, and it seems to me and my family, that it's more about forcing workers to join a union.

Also, for a small business, you are jeopardizing the right to stay in business.

If the goal is to help hotel workers, this is not it.

Thank you.

Just before you I think we have Brian Excellent.

Thanks Brian, and then after Nicole be an wise anyways Hi, my name is Brian's hog.

I've been in the service industry and a Seattleite for 30 odd years and This is home.

We're not the enemy.

I could say the same things everybody else has said.

The legislation has big problems, and you guys know that.

I understand that sometimes it's advantageous to make a political statement, even though the courts are gonna have a problem with it later.

It would be so much better.

We're not the enemy.

If you sat down in good faith, open-minded, went over the problems, and brainstormed together for solutions, we could spend our time with our families and our coworkers and doing life things instead of fighting this stuff in court or showing up at council chambers where none of us want to be.

We're not the enemy here.

The families I represent or work for have owned and maintained places, these aren't REITs, for 30-odd years.

They promote from within, it's a career path for people, and they take very good care of their employees.

And none of you guys ever want to come talk to us or see us or learn about it.

And I wish you would.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Community Chair Mosqueda, council members.

I want to thank you for your leadership on this legislation.

It's been a lot of work and a long time.

And we actually shouldn't have to be here doing this right now, because the same night that a hotel mogul, a gleeful racist, a gleeful sexist, was elected to be the President of the United States, we also passed legislation to make these changes to this industry.

And since that time, there have been more positive changes.

There have been the Me Too movement.

There have been even better policies passed in other American cities.

There have been horrible attacks on immigrants in this country that have made it clear we need to fight for immigrant workers in new and strong ways.

I know the multi-billion dollar hotel industry has fought this policy and drug it through the courts, but this is the time to pass it for the workers whose lives are affected.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Annie Wise, followed by Katie Garrow, followed by Doug Hua.

Hi.

I'm Annie Wise.

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 front desk to sales to housekeeping.

I was actually not a hired housekeeper, but was asked to work as one because we were experiencing 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 took a lot of Advil during that time.

This legislation strengthens the workload protections contained in I-124 and ensures that workers have agency in working in a safer and more sustainable pace.

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

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Katie Garrow, and I'm a member of Laborers Local 242, a construction union.

My dad worked construction for 30 years.

He also worked at the TransAlta coal plant down in Chehalis.

He has had two knee replacements and a hip replacement.

The person who replaced him at the coal plant died in a tragic workplace accident in a coal runoff pond in December of last year.

That worker was 28 years old.

And yet the hotel housekeeping industry is more dangerous and more prone to injury than both coal mining and construction.

Dangerous work necessitates the highest safety standards.

One of the ways that we can limit workplace injury and make workplaces safer is by implementing safety standards like those contained in Initiative 124. Hotel housekeepers are every bit as deserving of workplace safety standards as construction workers are.

Thank you.

It looks like we're going to do some interpretation, transition.

No, OK.

Are you guys a group?

No, I'm just here to support.

Oh, excellent.

OK, I'm so sorry.

Thank you.

Please go ahead.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Donghua Wei.

I'm from China.

And I was a housekeeper at the Western Hotel for nine years.

The job is very hard on my body.

I had pain every day.

I worked and still have pain.

The manager push us.

very hard to clean many rooms quickly and faster and make us very stressed out.

In the busy summer season, a couple of years ago, the manager forced us to work six days overtime.

One day, I got a pain attack.

I was very dizzy.

I could not breathe and I could not stand up over Over time, my pain got so bad that I had to go on medical leave.

My pain was not recognized by the government as work-related.

My pain was not getting better, and it's impossible for me to do housekeeping work anymore.

I was unable to keep my job after one year of medical leave, and the Western fed me.

Please pass this law with stronger housekeeper.

Work loud, protect, and don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next three folks are Maggie, Jasmine, Jeremiah, and Jacqueline Liu.

Maggie, welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Maggie Jesmy, and I worked in hospitality for 10 years, some of it as a restaurant server of a non-union Marriott hotel.

One night, I was working the back section of the restaurant.

One of my tables were high-profile guests, former VP Dick Cheney and his daughter, Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

I also had a table of two older men who were drinking and getting uncomfortably touchy with me.

One reached for my hands, asking me to bless their meal with them at the table, only to hold on for too long and kept reaching out to touch my arms and waist while I was serving them.

They noticed the Cheneys and tried to catch their attention, so our restaurant manager called security to come and escort the two disruptive men out of the restaurant.

On their way out, one pulled me into a smothering long and unwelcome hug right in front of all of my managers.

I broke away and rushed to the kitchen, slamming the door, saying, gross, and trying to shake off the icky feeling.

Rather than risk upsetting the guest and call him out, our security manager followed me into the kitchen and reprimanded me, saying, I hope you don't talk about me like that.

I felt disgusted, ashamed, and unprotected.

Women and men working in Seattle's hotels tell me stories of sexual harassment far worse than this, that they experience every day in the city.

They are expected to bear their shame and silence and live with the fear they feel when they see their harassers walk back into their hotels and restaurants.

This isn't right.

The legislation you pass needs to protect as many workers as possible in this city, including restaurant workers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Maggie.

Thank you for your bravery.

Jeremiah, Jacqueline Hong, Zong, and then Stefan Moritz.

Hello.

Good morning, council members.

Hope you're doing well.

I've heard talk of family-owned businesses a number of times today, and I just want to bring up that the workers who operate and, you know, work for these family-owned businesses also have families, and that we deserve a minimum quality of safety, health care, and time to be with our families as well.

And that without our families, we wouldn't be offering the same quality of employment to these businesses.

I've worked at the Edgewater for 13 years.

I've been in the city for about 15, 16 years in the hospitality industry.

The Edgewater is owned by Noble House Corporation.

I worked for another Noble House business, the Deck Hotel in the University District.

They subcontracted out their restaurant and banquet services.

As such they offered much lower if none at all health insurance or benefits at all to their employees So I just think the council members should look to prevent these hotels from giving loopholes to The businesses that operate their restaurants, thank you very much Hong and then Stefan

Good morning, council members.

Good morning.

I'm Jacqueline Wu, a resident of Beacon Hill, an alumna of the Evans School of Public Administration at the University of Washington, and a board member of OCA, Asian Pacific American Advocates Greater Seattle, a civil rights group dedicated to the social, economic, and political investment of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

OCA supports the passage of the three bills.

As part of a national organization, we are refusing to host a conference in Seattle to stand in solidarity with hotel workers.

Everyone deserves a safe place to work and access to health care.

Everyone deserves a work environment without the fear of sexual harassment.

You have hotel and service workers taking time on their day off to testify the importance of having a safe workplace.

These workers ensure the care of hotel guests as well as that of their own family.

They are the backbone of the city's economy and deserve a safe workplace and health care.

We hope to see the passage of all three bills.

Thank you for your time.

Stefan, I think you're up.

Did I miss someone?

Hong?

Hong, I'm so sorry.

Please go ahead and then Stefan.

Welcome back.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Hongda, a housekeeper in the WG Hotel.

I worked there for five years already.

So today, I just want to make sure everybody understands the nature of housekeepers, the job of housekeepers, because we finish eight hours by the numbers of the rooms.

We're not finishing our shift by the hours.

Now, after the other department, there is a limit for that's how many guests you need to serve.

Your eight-hour shift, you need to finish it by the hours.

But the housekeeper, there's a limit.

number of the room you need to finish in eight hours.

So before the law, the housekeepers were given 20, 30 rooms a day.

They're still living in it.

And the housekeeper got an injury.

After the housekeeper got the injury, like the co-worker, she is not recognized by the LLI.

This is a worker injury.

This is a personal.

and the housekeeper lose their ability to go back to work.

That's why we asked the city council to pass an MMP4 to housekeepers for the workload.

That's important.

And the one and a half hour time after the limited, that's the penalty and the protection.

Everybody, before we care about the private in their pocket, we care about the people and the community if we lose our ability to work.

So we're going back to our community.

It hurt us, it hurt also the community.

Everybody has a responsibility.

So that's why I encourage everybody to pass the 1124. We need a respectful and a protection law to protect our hotel workers.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Hong.

Hi, my name is Stefan Moritz with Unite Here Local 8. First I want to thank you council members for continuing to dig in and make sure that this legislation is the strongest possible legislation it can be to protect hotel housekeepers.

You heard from Dong Hua here earlier, she can no longer work in a hotel because of the injuries that she sustained over years of doing this housekeeping work.

You heard from Maggie about her experience of sexual harassment on the job.

So these protections mean a lot to folks in real life, in their day-to-day experiences, and we strongly support you in finding the strongest possible legislation for housekeepers, for restaurant workers, for hotel workers.

We are excited about the amendment conversations that you're gonna have today.

We are open to have a conversation about how to phase in some of these protections for really small businesses who will need some time to be able to deal with this.

But overall, what is important is that the people who work in our hotels and the businesses that serve our hotels every day, can go home to their family and be there for them and be safe and healthy.

And thank you for advancing that agenda.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I'm looking around to see if there was anybody else who had intended to sign up for this and didn't get called.

Okay.

Hi, Terry.

Welcome back.

And then if there's anybody else who would like to testify after him, please just go ahead and line up and we'll get you signed up.

Sorry if I missed John here.

Good morning.

Thank you again for having us today.

I had nothing better to do this morning.

My name is Thierry Rautureau, the chef and head owner of Lulay.

I happen to be having a restaurant lease in the Sheraton Hotel.

I have no employee correlation with the hotel.

I'm not a hotel restaurant.

I'm a restaurant entity on my own.

I would really encourage you to review the ancillary wording that you place in this legislation.

When I hear all the people complaining about their work, I agree with them.

I mean, better work environment is where we try to provide to our employee.

But I think you guys are pushing the envelope by putting the ancillary in there.

That's a different function.

I'm not part of the hotel, but you have to remove this ancillary wording.

And to follow up, I forgot his name.

But I would really like to talk to you guys about what we do every day and how we do it, and why this has nothing to do with us.

You're mixing apple and oranges.

We call that common in my business.

Please review this word and remove ancillary from your legislation.

It is very important you understand the repercussion of that word.

Thank you.

Thank you, Terry.

Is there anybody else who'd like to testify who didn't get a chance to sign up?

Okay, seeing nobody jumping.

Oh, go ahead ma'am.

Thank you for Raising your hand and Terry will get you signed on here and then we'll get your name as well ma'am Hello Good morning, everyone.

Don't mind me.

I'm slightly shy So I work for a pioneers.

I work for can tell I'm kind of new to this, bear with me.

I work for Embassy Suites at Pioneer Square.

I've been a housekeeping slash breakfast attendant since July of last summer.

I honestly, you know, love seeing my guests happy, smile.

It's great when the guests are happy and they enjoy the food and our services, right?

But frustrating when I come home and my feet are aching and my back is hurting and I'm tired and I don't have time for myself or my family.

And I have to get up the next day and hit the ground running.

But where's time for myself?

My health is fading away.

I just got out of the hospital.

This week because I'm just super stressed out because of this job because I give my a thousand percent not a hundred I give my blood sweat and tears to this place and for these people to act like they don't give two craps about me and I'm dedicating my whole Everything just giving them out all my heart and my soul and I have to come home with an achy back And they tell me they don't care.

That's not good enough for me I shouldn't have to be stressing about a second job right now because that's what I'm facing because bills are piling because You know, it's ridiculous, and that's all I have to say.

Well, thank you very much.

Coming to testify again today, we are going to go ahead and close public comment, and we will move into items two, three, and four on our agenda for folks who are here to present.

Come on up.

Thank you, central staff, for being here.

And Fadi, why don't we go ahead and have you read into the records item two, three, and four.

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 119556, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 119554, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employees to limit room cleaning workloads for certain employees for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

And finally, agenda item number four, Council Bill 119557, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employees to take certain actions to prevent, protect, and respond to violent or harassing conduct by guests.

For a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

And Central Staff, would you like to introduce yourself for the record?

Karina Vola, Central Staff.

Dan Eder, Council of Central Staff.

Excellent and I want to thank Councilmember Pacheco and Councilmember Bagshaw for being here.

Thank you for being here for public testimony as well.

I didn't get a chance to recognize you when you walked in and I already thank the other two council members for being here.

So really appreciate you being here yet again.

Just a reminder for folks as we get teed up with some of the materials on the screen for people to see the various amendments we're considering on these three bills.

This is the eighth time that we are hearing the hotel worker legislation in this committee.

It feels like a lot because we've had a lot of work to do and we've also responded to a lot of the folks who've been asking us for additional time.

We are, as you heard, discussing the possible bills today and we'll be considering various amendments on these three pieces of legislation.

with the intent to amend the underlying bill and then keep it in committee and then vote those out next Thursday along with healthcare, which will be a robust discussion.

But we wanted to make sure that we included much of the feedback that we've heard from various stakeholders, a diverse, broad set of stakeholders.

And it's really important that folks know that their requests for both some language and for additional time was heard and incorporated.

We are today considering three bills, safety, injury, and workload, and retention in committee.

We'll be tracking, as we said, a healthcare conversation next Thursday, and we will, with every intent possible, get that.

As you saw, the draft legislation was amended in committee three weeks ago now, and we will make sure that if there is any additional amendments that we get those sent to the committee.

far in advance of next week's conversation.

The bills that are in front of us today represent not our thoughts, not central staff's thoughts on a whim.

This represents multiple conversations that we've had with stakeholders across the board and including coming directly from many of you on council.

I want to thank a handful of folks especially starting with our central staff who has been diligently engaged with us on committee and on the full council in terms of our thoughts and desires as you've researched some of those.

And those have come directly from stakeholder engagement.

I want to thank Anna Boone and John Lane of the hotel managers and restaurants who've been meeting with us weekly for the past couple months to get this policy fully sort of vetted.

And we understand that there's points of disagreement.

But we'll keep meeting weekly.

We want to thank Stephan.

Thank you and to the team at Unite here for engaging with us weekly as well as we've been considering not just how this legislation compares to initiative 124, but what this looks like compared to other cities and municipalities that have passed similar legislation and learning from those municipalities.

So we'll continue to engage with your team.

weekly as well, and we understand that there's also points of disagreement, and we're going to continue to work to try to address some of those questions that have come up.

And I want to thank the folks who've helped to provide you both with feedback as you are representing a large number of individuals and organizations.

Also, as it relates to safety protections and workload, it's really important to note that we have been engaged with the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and the King County Prosecutor's Office.

They've been heavily engaged with us as we think about safety protections for workers so that no one is in a situation where they've been, where they're experiencing harassment or assault, unwanted touching or comments.

like the conversation that we heard today in public testimony and that when that occurs that we have the appropriate protections in place.

Thank you to the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and King County Prosecutor's Office.

I want to thank as well the ACLU who has been engaged with us over the last few months and I believe is sending an updated communication our way regarding some of the protections that we put into place when an incident has occurred, how we handle that currently, and how we would like to see some of those protections for workers expanded.

They've been tremendous to work with and we appreciate the concerns that they've raised and that they've worked with us to help address ways to mitigate those concerns and to put forward robust legislation in front of you all.

So thank you to the ACLU.

I want to thank as well One America and the Refugee Women's Alliance for their engagement with us as we think about who these workers are.

And Councilmember Pacheco has been great about reminding us as well of your individual experiences, the experience that we've heard from many of the folks who come to testify.

A lot of the workers who we're talking about protecting are women and people of color and immigrants.

And so having One America and the Refugee Women's Alliance providing us with feedback has been very helpful.

I will save all of our additional thank yous for the robust number of stakeholders that have been involved, including the city attorney's office who has been helpful with vetting various language.

But I just wanted to frame that up so folks knew how large the stakeholder engagement has been, and it has not been one-sided or just one time.

It's been ongoing, and we are hopeful that some of the pieces that we will consider today and the various amendments reflect those perspectives that we've heard from both academics, community experts, and folks who are on the ground.

And so with that, I see Council President Richard for your microphone.

Go ahead.

Just to have a certain open and transparent dialogue on this and I appreciate all the comments you've made I'll wait that I know that many council members at this table have been working feverishly to negotiate, to do outreach, to listen to as many opinions as possible.

I still get correspondence and calls from particularly the small business community saying that we've done an inadequate job of that and so maybe you could at least refute that or respond to it because I get those calls and I've gotten them as early as today.

And, you know, this kind of legislation, you're not going to please everyone.

I've been around the block enough to know that.

But are you confident with the level of outreach?

Listening, for example, to the, you know, I'm responding specifically to the SBAC letter that we got, the Small Business Advisory Council letter that we got, that would somewhat I don't say contradict, but refute sort of what you were saying a little bit about our level of outreach.

And I've been somewhat removed from it, so I just don't know.

So that's not a gotcha kind of question.

It's just maybe you could openly talk about at least SBAC's position or the outreach that's been done thus far.

I appreciate you raising that.

One of the things I would suggest is that as we do outreach and engagement, we know that even if the conversation happens, that doesn't equal buy-off.

I want to make sure that nobody's hearing me suggest that.

But when we talk about engaging with a broad set of stakeholders, as I mentioned, Everyone from Unite Here to the hospitality industry, we're not just meeting with folks in the hotel industry, they also represent the restaurant association as well.

I'm sorry, the restaurant industry as it relates to hospitality services.

So that is not all encompassing.

There's not one perspective, just like there's not one perspective on labor per se.

But we have received a number of people who've written us with some feedback, some has been critical at times and we've tried to work on some of those amendments and I think what you'll see specifically to safety protections, we have incorporated feedback from folks like ACLU who have raised concerns initially and then we've tried to include some of those.

What you'll see as well when it comes to some of the language that we're considering today, and again I'm not suggesting that everybody's bought in on it, But what you'll see from us today is an amended version of ancillary business, for example, so that we are being pretty narrow in the definition or more narrow in the definition of who's being applied to.

You'll see as well when we think about healthcare next week, who is being incorporated and who is not, and then specific to the concerns that have come up around phasing in some of these protections.

We have some amendment language that you probably would We will you'll I think you'll appreciate and so we'll ask back related to phasing in some of these protections for our smallest employers So that's one piece that I would offer councilmember Gonzales anything else to add to that

I think you've done a good job of summarizing it.

I think that when we do community outreach and engagement at the city, regardless of what the issue is, it is very difficult to satisfy everyone.

And it is often the case that there are individuals who have just sort of caught on to a particular issue and may disagree with the policy discussion and ultimate outcome.

And that sort of leads to a feeling that That perhaps community engagement wasn't there, but I think that in this case the reality is is that this bill this initiative passed originally in 2016 there was a lengthy rulemaking process where a lot of various sized businesses and stakeholders were included from both the labor side worker side and the business side and that then sort of ultimately led to this entire process.

As you heard Chair Mosqueda mention, we have had eight committee hearings.

We've had robust public testimony from a variety of different stakeholders in this chamber.

We saw that again today and we continue to also receive a lot of input via email and phone calls from a variety of stakeholders.

And I consider all of that to be engagement.

and do feel that we are in a place now with the substitute bills that we will consider today and an additional substitute bill that we will consider next week.

We have, I think, as sponsors of this bill, made some modifications that I think are reasonable to the original initiative that was passed in 2016. that I think are reflective of some of the feedback that we have heard that has been consistent amongst the industry in particular and consistent amongst worker representatives and labor.

That doesn't mean that everybody got what they wanted, but it does mean that we made our best effort to listen and be responsive in the period of time that we have allotted to have this important policy conversation about these worker protections and for me my sort of North Star here is to make sure that ultimately we have a set of bills that will protect workers and that I still feel is a strong set of labor protections for this sector of workers and I believe that we will be able to accomplish that with the version of substitute bills that we'll be discussing today.

So with that, perhaps some of the amendments that we are going to consider today help speak to some of the feedback that we've received.

And if we could go ahead and walk through these.

For council colleagues, and hello, welcome Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you for being here.

For our council colleagues, what you're going to get from central staff is a handout on each one of the bills that we're considering.

We're going to start with the hotel retention legislation.

And does each one of our council colleagues have this table already?

So may I just to be clear you should be looking at this particular chart that says substitute bill hotel job retention version d4 and this is agenda item 2 Right?

Yeah.

And what we'd like council colleagues to focus on with this and what we're going to do is we're going to hand out the table for each bill so that the documents don't get confused.

But what you'll see for this table is a conversation specific to a substitute bill.

We tried to incorporate some feedback that many council colleagues have been working on and I'll save my thank yous for various council members in just a minute.

But we'll ask central staff to walk us through what this table includes so you can see basically what the amendments are to an underlying bill that has a technical and these two major policy or sorry these policy considerations included.

All right, so as this chart shows, there are five changes that are identified.

And the first change relates to the definition of ancillary hotel business.

Just to ground everyone in the history of this concept of ancillary hotel business, it started with Initiative 124, where in the definition of hotel, it also included contracted leased or sublet premises operating in conjunction with the building's purpose.

legislation, there was a new term that was used to describe this kind of business, ancillary hotel business.

And that's what this revision addresses.

There was originally a different definition, different than 124. This version, D4, has a definition that identifies three distinct kind of businesses.

One, it could be a business that routinely contracts with the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose.

Number two, it could be a business that leases or sublets space at the site of the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose.

Or three, it could be a business that provides food and beverages to hotel guests and the publics with an entrance within the hotel premises.

Something to note for the first two kinds of businesses is that they are defined by the hotel's purpose, which is not described in the legislation.

The idea is that Office of Labor Standards could develop clarification and interpretation of what the hotel purpose is through a rulemaking process.

This is, I think, the one that we have worked on the longest and the hardest, and I just want to assure the gentleman who's currently looking at his cell phone that said we hadn't been meeting with hotels that, indeed, we have, and have been talking to people regularly about this, trying to get this as right as we possibly can.

I want to acknowledge something.

Council Member Mosqueda, you and I spoke last night about 5 o'clock, and Shortly after that conversation, I did get an email from the hotelier representative that asked us to have ands in here rather than ors.

in the language, so the idea is that a business that contracts with the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel purposes is actually on site.

So their concern was if we have this language in without saying and leases or subcontracts space at the side of the hotel, that it could be interpreted that anybody that does any work for the hotel regularly and contracts that would be included rather than just we're focusing on the hotel workers.

So I wanted to bring that up today that the where we have number two that if it were to say routinely contracts with the hotel for services in conjunction with hotels purpose and leases or subcontract space at the side of the hotel that I believe that we would have the support of the organization.

Thank you, Councilmember.

It was really helpful to work with you on this, and I want to thank you for your ongoing engagement with our office, and your office has been very helpful with trying to brainstorm language, and we've all been working diligently to do outreach to the various stakeholders across the board to vet language.

You and I, I think, have a similar goal here.

We want to make sure that folks who are working in this area, in this industry, including like the type of industry that was mentioned where she was working in a restaurant and she was intimidated and harassed, that those folks in the industry, in the hotel industry, actually have the protections.

Obviously, this is a definition that we're trying to apply across various pieces of legislation.

So it's important that we had language that we felt comfortable with.

applying across the board.

I think that adding an and definitely changes the scope of what we're talking about and really makes it something that I can't support and appreciate that not everybody is happy with every single word there, including, and that doesn't mean that any one industry is happy with it.

But I think that the language that you and I worked on that's reflected on this chart is what I'm comfortable with and I think is in line with the goals and values that we've been talking about over the last few months and would respectfully not be able to support that change.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

I think we've got...

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

I want to understand.

I was a little unclear on exactly where your and went.

Is it on version D4, the word or?

If you're looking at the chart that rather than so it would say that any business that routinely contracts for the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose and leases or sublet space at the side of the hotel.

I believe it it deals and addresses with some of the concerns that we've heard from the hotels not just today but previously.

And I don't know if our chef in the hat is still here.

I can just see you back there.

The point we're trying to address here is that if it is an entity that is just subleasing space, and the example we have used is Storyville Coffee outside of the Alexis Hotel.

It definitely subcontracts or contracts and leases space, but it is primarily just leasing space.

And it's not primarily there for the guests.

It's for anybody.

It's a, you know, serves coffee to the public as they walk by the street.

I think we've done well to address that in here because that is not, in conjunction with the hotel purpose.

It is simply providing coffee to people on the street and they're leasing it.

What the concern I heard last night was that, you know, if it is offering food and beverages and it's within the hotel and it's clearly designed for both public and the hotel guests, that you would want the and there to focus on what is at the hotel site itself, not contracting for window washing as an example There's not a location there within the hotel.

So I just would respectfully ask that we have come so close here, we've come so far over the last few months to arrive at this definition that's inversion.

for but I want to continue to just listen to people that have some concerns and have an opportunity before next week to see if we can just fine-tune this a little bit.

So the same language that we're looking at here is what I shared with the very folks that you're talking about that you met that you talked to after 5 p.m.

at 9 a.m.

yesterday.

asked for feedback and that feedback was not offered.

I think the example of Storyville is a good example where they do not have an entrance into the hotel.

I don't believe that that is the example that would necessarily get caught up here.

It's another good example of where biscuit bitch around the corner would not be included in this definition and that was really important for us as we considered various legislations.

And you did move a long way with that, and I appreciate that.

Yeah.

So, again, the opportunity to provide feedback on this was given in the morning yesterday, and we did not hear that specific feedback.

And so I think at this point, I'm still not comfortable with it.

Council President, and then I see Council Member O'Brien.

So, and again, I want to thank you for having so many meetings.

And again, I know you're working, and many people are working really hard on this.

And I've tried to attend as many meetings as I could.

I expressed in one of the earlier hearings my concern about just stepping back from it, just including ancillary hotel businesses, period.

I said in early term I just didn't understand it.

So I guess my question is the safety and the health concerns of hotel workers, that issue about bad actors, bad patrons and all that, I understand that.

And I understand that in I-124 there was some inclusion on ancillary businesses.

But the issue of harassment and bad actors and that kind of stuff, that applies to the hotel workers.

For the ancillary businesses, it's pretty much about the healthcare piece, right?

That's what we're concerned about, the ancillary business.

They're not subject to the same kinds of bad acts by the patrons.

So is this, is the reason we are including ancillary businesses is primarily because of the health care?

Trying to include as many employees in the health care piece of it?

Or are they subject to, I don't know the industry, or are they subject to the same kinds of harassment and misconduct that the hotel workers are?

I certainly defer to the sponsors of the substitute to speak to their intent.

But I just, for clarification, the matrix that Karina is walking through is with respect to the job retention bill.

So we're not yet up to either the harassment and violent conduct bill, which is coming later today, or the health access to medical care, which is coming next week.

But this would apply to all, right?

Right now we're just looking at the job retention bill, so this is an amendment to the job retention bill.

So let me ask my question in very specific terms.

We are including ancillary businesses because it's just carryover language from I-24 and we think we're required to, or are we concerned about their healthcare benefits, or is it the harassment?

Why are we even including them?

I'm trying to understand what's the policy behind it.

Is it because it's just carryover language?

Because I'm hearing a lot of testament on the health and safety of the hotel workers.

I'm all in on that, but I'm still struggling with the, even in the inclusion.

I'm not the only one.

Obviously, there's been a lot of public testimony asking why are we including.

So I'm trying to see what's driving that.

Is it the health care piece or they're getting harassed as well?

I mean, I think it's a yes and.

So I mean, I think these are fundamentally now policy questions for the city council to consider.

So I wouldn't say that the health care bill is the driver of these decisions.

I think we have to look at each of these bills separately, identify what the intent of each of these separate bills is, and then making a determination as to who should be covered by these particular labor regulations.

It's no different than any other policy question we've had to deal with in all other types of labor standards that the city has passed.

before today.

And so in this context, we're talking about job retention in particular.

There were job retention provisions in Initiative 124 originally that had included all ancillary hotel businesses, regardless of size, type of business, or geographic spatial location.

And what we have done now is come up with a different definition within that job retention component that narrows the scope of applicability of which ancillary hotel businesses would be covered under the hotel job retention portion of the entire package.

So this is a policy discussion specifically related to do we believe that it is fair to have a job retention component apply to not just hotels, but hotel businesses that are providing services to hotels for hotel purposes with the same job retention protections.

That's the policy question before us.

And I think that as one of the co-sponsors, I can say that I do think it is fair to do that.

And that is what is represented in this particular legislative bill.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yeah, I just want to speak to Council Member Baggio's question on the and between one and two.

And for me, the critical piece on the job retention bill, and frankly, on a lot of the other bills, is that there's not a path where the folks cleaning the rooms, if they're employees of the hotel, they get treated one way.

But if you subcontract that work, they don't.

And so that's why that type of work, you know, they don't have an office in the hotel.

They don't lease space, workers that are contracted.

And so that's why I support your analysis, Council Member Esqueda, that I think undermines, I think, one of the fundamental intents of this bill.

So Council Member O'Brien, speak to me about what particular efforts, and we're not talking about contracting out for hotel cleaning services.

Are there other companies that you have either spoken to that are worried that they won't be included and they shouldn't be?

A little bit.

Karina's question about what constitutes hotel services is, but I would say that generally the types of things that I think a hotel provides, I don't know when I go to a hotel if the worker comes and cleans my room.

the person at reception, the person who parks the car, I usually don't bring a car to a hotel, but, you know, if those workers are getting a paycheck with the name of the hotel on it or they're coming from a third party, but what I do think is all those people are people that I think are working for the hotel, whether directly or indirectly, and they should receive the benefits of this.

The fear would be, you know, there are hotels in our community that I think want to treat their employees really well and do.

And that means that sometimes it costs more to do that.

And if there's another hotel that's competing with them and figures out a way to how to outsource, to avoid this, to avoid that, then we end up in a race to the bottom.

And I want to prevent that.

And that's why I think this legislation is crafted, does allow for You know, the biscuit bitch type situation to have more flexibility.

I love that we get to say that on microphone just because that's the name of the business.

That allows that flexibility, which I think is different, but still protects the core workers that I see.

Now, you know, we're drawing a line somewhere.

And I think that we should be, my goal at least in setting policy is to be fairly permissive in drawing that line to try to capture as many of the hotel workers.

We may catch a few things that maybe it wasn't intended and we'll try to be as clever as we can to write that.

But I think it's important not to draw the line the other way where we lose a bunch of workers that should be protected and don't.

And I think, you know, one of the reasons I, how many meetings you've had, Council Member Skate, on this?

There's been a lot of conversations going on.

And I think we're getting to a point where I'm starting to feel like that line is becoming pretty clear.

And I think it's in a really good place.

It's probably not perfect, but I think it may be close to as good as we can do for now.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Yeah.

So I feel like on this particular definition, I feel like I keep traveling in a time machine backwards.

And so I would agree with Council Member O'Brien that I feel like we have drawn the line as close as I think and as definitive as I think we can to still give me the sense of confidence that this bill and the other three bills that have yet to be discussed are still providing the strongest protection that we can to this industry of workers.

And so I also cannot support the addition of and between one and two.

I do believe that that would be overly restrictive in terms of requiring coverage of businesses that both contract and lease or sublet space at the site of a hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose.

The reality is is that there are, you know, there's a way to work around that that would, you know, create a dynamic in my mind that would make it all too easy for hotels to contract a lot of hotel services out with third-party contractors and then craftily never sublease or lease or otherwise provide those third-party vendors and contractors with space at the hotel in order to avoid coverage of this body of legislation, and I worry that that is sort of an exception that swallows the rule.

And so I'm very worried about that, and for that reason can't support that particular proposal as made by Councilmember Bagshaw.

The second thing that I would say here, and Karina, maybe you can talk to this a little bit, is We don't have a definition in the legislation with regard to hotels purpose, but my understanding is that there are references available in the rulemaking process that define either hotel services or hotel purposes.

in a manner that would perhaps allay some of the concerns that Councilmember Bagshaw has articulated with regard to the example she provided in support of her oral, potential oral amendment to add and that relates to the type of businesses that would be reasonably considered to be providing a hotel purpose.

The window washing example is the example that Council Member Bekshaw provided.

My reading of some of the NICS codes and other types of definitions, including state statute, would not include that type of a business activity as being reasonably related to a hotel purpose.

So perhaps you can walk us through at the table a little bit more about sort of how the NICS code and other potential references allow us to look at hotel purposes.

I'm not saying that that's going to be the definitive answer, but I'm saying that that is illustrative and I think informative to at least my rationale and my thinking, and it might be helpful to other council members and the public as well.

I don't have those references before me, but thinking just based on memory of the NAICS industry code, it defines a hotel as a business that provides short-term lodging accommodations and then says that the hotel can also provide a range of guest services.

And then it goes and it describes some examples of what those guest services can be.

food services, beverage services, spa services, and it goes on and provides a long list.

To my memory, it doesn't include something like maintenance services, which is what I'm hearing you say with window washing and what is what I'm hearing Councilmember Gonzalez say is not fitting within her conceptualization of what a hotel's purpose is.

So I don't know the state statute, but I think one can think about what comprises guest services, what sorts of services directly benefit the guest, and one might posit that maybe window washing is indirect, that's more of a maintenance activity.

I was just going to say, just looking up the NAICS code really quickly, it talks about this industry in the context of the fact that the industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing short-term lodging in facilities known as hotels.

Great memory, Karina.

Motor hotels, resort hotels, and motels.

The establishments in this industry may offer food and beverage services, recreational services, conference rooms, and convention services, laundry services, parking, and other services.

So I think, again, I think there is an opportunity here to really rely on some of these industry codes that are standard and national to really address the, you know, dragnet argument that is being made by some folks in the industry in terms of types of businesses that could ostensibly be captured by this definition of ancillary businesses, which I have not found to be persuasive based on my understanding of how the NAICS codes are defining the hotel industry and hotel purpose.

And if I have an opportunity to look it up really quickly, I'll also look up the RCWs that define a little bit with more context as well, a hotel industry that that sort of align with what I have seen in the next codes.

I got good news.

Two pieces of good news.

All right.

One is on this piece of legislation on retention, we only have a substitute bill to consider today.

So that's the good news.

We don't have multiple amendments.

The other piece of good news is that this is probably the meatiest of the changes in the substitute bill.

And with that said, I would love to see if that has helped address some of the questions and then for us to move through some of the other potential changes to the substitute because we do have two other pieces of legislation to potentially consider today.

And I do appreciate working with you and you raising that.

And any final thoughts on this before we move on?

No, thank you.

I think that we're going to end up with a position where there's going to be people who are not quite happy with this.

I do want to acknowledge that in the last three months of going through it, that I believe progress is being made.

And Councilmember Gonzalez, I appreciate also you're looking at the definition from the industry itself.

Because that's what we're trying to do, is to protect the workers who are actually in the hotels, within the hotels, working and providing these guest services.

And if that's clear, and when we get into rulemaking, it's still, we're focused on caring for the workers within the hotel that are doing the work to provide the services to the guest.

I think that we've reached that equilibrium.

of that way, at least we know what we're talking about.

And I told you last night that I was grateful that we'd come as far as we had.

I'm going to support you in this.

I think if we can just make sure that we're clear that we are talking about a certain group of people and try not to extend out beyond the walls of the hotel, that can be handled in rulemaking.

I believe that we have reached a compromise.

Thank you.

And I think this conversation has been very helpful for legislative intent.

Council Member Pacheco, and then we're going to move on to the size.

So I just really want to quickly address the point by...

Council Member Harrell.

So last night I was reading just the ordinance, the initiative itself, and so, because I wanted to use that as my thought process in terms of guiding my decision making this morning.

And in it, it does state what voters supported was, it is appropriate and necessary to protect employees in the hotel industry.

Those who clean rooms, change the seats, and dice the vegetables.

I say dice the vegetables because I was kind of wrestling with hearing the concerns of restaurants and how we, and the ancillary business definition itself.

So it is with that in mind that I also, not necessarily supportive of including the and between the one and two.

That said, I do think it may be worth exploring the and where the three is so that it's a, we define it as it's a hotel business restaurant more specifically and targeted because I think that there's, I have some questions with regards to how we, Entrance within the hotel premises And whether hotel guests into the public and so I mean I'm hoping that through this discussion week as we continue to go through the ancillary business discussion that we can clarify what those what the interest is defined as, because I think that that's still, to me, a little bit vague.

And I want to make sure, as I kind of go through this process, that we can withstand both the legal scrutiny that I think is likely to come, and also that we're inclusive of as many workers as possible and trying to address the concerns that we hear broadly from communities as well as stakeholders and try to be as consistent to what voters approved, myself included.

And so with that in mind, I'm just trying to make sure that we kind of put that out there.

Thank you for the reminder of what was in the initiative.

And for those who diced the vegetables, we will continue the conversation.

It does sound like, especially with Council Member Bagshaw's last closing comments there, we can go ahead and move through the rest of the potential changes in the substitute here.

And it also speaks to some of the smaller businesses that you'll see exempted in the next amendment here.

And I just want to say, just for the record, She's not listening.

I was gonna talk to Councilman Bagshaw.

I was actually willing to support your language just because I was sitting here trying to struggle with the semicolon how it reads into it.

I probably have the least amount of confidence in the Office of Labor Standards' ability to do rulemaking that encompasses all of these concerns.

I've said it privately and I've said it publicly.

It's just based on my experience with OLS that I I have concerns about deferring any of this.

And I asked earlier at a hearing, I said, who are these businesses?

I don't know what, it's not window washing apparently, but what kinds of, I thought it would have been easy to compile, but apparently it's not.

So I could get a good look at what these ancillary businesses are.

The term ancillary businesses to me, I'm thinking a few restaurants, but I don't know what it included.

So I was hoping to get, during the course of this work, a very good description of these businesses that are being affected, other than just generic, or is it part of the hotel's purpose or core purpose?

I was just trying to get a feel for them, see which ones we're trying to include.

So as we move forward through this, I'm hoping we could defer less to OLS for some rulemaking and more language in here to specify what our intent is.

I'll just leave it at that and prepare to go off.

As you heard, we have an opportunity to pull from the codes that Councilmember Gonzalez was reading from and the ones that you cited from memory, Karina, so we'll work on getting that circulated to folks in the next week.

Okay, great.

Also, councilmembers are always welcome to come up with their own definitions of hotel purpose if they wish to do so.

Oh, amendments?

So let's move on to the slides.

Chairman Skinner, I want to respond to Council Member Pacheco's sort of soft floating of the idea of adding an and between two and three, and I could not support that if it does come forward.

And the reason I cannot support it is, again, I feel like I'm going back in the time machine, is that adding an and to ancillary businesses would limit this particular definition and coverage of all of these laws to only food and beverage businesses.

That's how the language would read.

So it would say, any business that routinely contracts with the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel purpose, leases or sublets space at the site of the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose, and provides food and beverages to hotel guests and to the public with an entrance within the hotel premises.

So that means that all three of those factors and criteria would need to be present in order for an ancillary business to be covered, which would limit the definition of ancillary business, and again, the coverage of these protections to ancillary businesses that are limited to the food and beverage industry only.

So for that reason, I would not be able to support an and between two and three to the extent that it is proposed eventually.

So I'm going to say thank you to all of you for engaging with us on this.

I do think that as Council Member Bagshaw has mentioned, we have come a long way in our conversations on this and we will share with the full council the RCWs that were referenced so that folks can see how the industry themselves have defined hotel purpose.

I think that will be a helpful illustrative part of our conversation for next week.

This is really an effort to try to walk that fine line between various stakeholder feedback that we've received and to identify a strategy for us to move forward so that we feel that we are living the values that we've been talking about in terms of which entities are included and I think that Councilmember Gonzalez has spoken eloquently about the why you know we want to make sure that folks who are also coming to our city behave well in their rooms and also behave well and have the same protections including in this retention policy that we would expect in any city that our friends go to as residents of the city of Seattle.

We don't want people coming into the city and thinking, well, since this is part of the hotel, I can act and behave in certain ways.

We want this to be very clear in terms of our intention to protect workers.

in this arena.

So I'm going to ask us to go ahead and hear the rest of the potential amendments included in the job retention bill, because we have two other pieces to consider, and one of them that I'm excited for you to hear about, Council President, is on the size of the employees, because I think that will help advance our conversation specific to small business.

Yes, so as you just previewed, the next revision regards the size of ancillary hotel businesses that are covered by this legislation, and the size would be increased from a baseline or threshold of 20 employees worldwide to 50 or more employees worldwide, thereby creating an exemption for ancillary hotel businesses that have fewer than 50 employees worldwide.

Any comments, questions?

And I assume that's just a direct result of listening to communities, listening to small businesses, and realizing that there's a balance of trying to cover as many employees, but recognize some small businesses have certain unique struggles than others.

That's right.

I think that's right.

And also, I think it's in recognition of us trying to have harmony across the various pieces as well.

Next.

Good work.

The next revision is regarding employer records.

It doesn't add any records in this list.

However, it does give Office of Labor Standards the ability to add more records that they feel are material and necessary to effectuate the terms of this chapter of this legislation, recognizing that all rulemaking processes do involve stakeholder feedback and go through a public notice and comment period as well.

Any questions on that?

Okay, seeing none.

The next revision is in the Remedies section.

And this, in the Remedies section, there are actually two places where it's referenced that the Director of Office of Labor Standards may specify that civil penalties and fines can be made, paid to the aggrieved party, the employee, rather than paid to the city.

This often happens already in many of Office of Labor Standards settlement agreements, but The language in the law actually allows the director to impose that kind of payment of the civil penalty and fine to the employee in an order if it can't be settled.

And so it appears twice in the legislation, and in one place it says that the director can do this, and then in the second place it says that the director may specify that all civil penalties and fines are payable to the aggrieved party.

So it doesn't align, the two sentences don't match.

And so it seems wise to remove all so that they match and it allows the director to calibrate the allocation of civil penalties and fines.

So the director doesn't have to have all of the penalties and fines go to the aggrieved party.

It could be 50% go to the city and 50% go to the aggrieved party.

One of the reasons that it's so important to have some of these civil penalties and fines go to an employee who's been harmed by non-compliance is that for some of these requirements, there is no monetary compensation to the employee if it's not followed.

If there's no notice that an employer puts up saying business is changing hands, then the employee doesn't get anything for that.

The employer can get dinged and have to pay money to the city, but the employee gets nothing, yet their rights have been compromised.

Questions?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

I told you I had good news, that that first one was the biggest piece of the legislation.

The last revision is regarding the effective date, and it creates two effective dates.

They are both farther into the future than the last version, which was January 1st, 2020. The first one creates a delayed implementation for ancillary hotel businesses, that have between 50 and 250 employees, and that contract lease or sublease with the hotel as of the date that this legislation passes.

Those types of businesses will have until July 1st of 2025 to begin complying with this law.

All other businesses, including the very large ancillary hotel businesses that don't contract lease, that have more than 250 employees, the provisions will take effect July 1, 2020.

My understanding is Councilmember O'Brien and Councilmember Pacheco, you have worked on some of this language.

Did you want to comment on this at all?

Councilmember O'Brien.

You're giving me more credit than I deserve, but I do appreciate this addition.

I think it, you know, we recognize that the implications of this legislation will have impacts on businesses, including financial impacts.

And for businesses that are independent of hotels but are operating in hotels and are actually serving a function that we often see in a hotel, like a restaurant.

giving them some time to, you know, renegotiate a lease or renew a lease and allow for them to figure out the cost implications to their business and the process of doing that I think makes a lot of sense.

I can imagine scenarios where a restaurant may say, hey, I can't pay as much for rent because I'm spending more on my employees now.

And they would negotiate at the hotel.

And I think that's an intended consequence of this.

And I think having a, you know, this is only for businesses that are there today.

New business coming, be aware that these regulations are going to be in place.

So don't do that.

But it gives them the flexibility.

So I appreciate your inclusion on this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for raising it.

Any other council members want to speak on this?

Ditto.

Ditto, okay.

Short and sweet.

I appreciate you all raising this as well.

We understand that there may be existing contracts that are in the works.

We don't intend to try to tell folks that they need to renegotiate that.

And I think this is a very reasonable amendment that I believe has come from some of our small business partners as well.

So thank you for bringing it forward and happy to include it.

So the concept here was to try to include all of the various amendments that we have heard from folks and have been working on in conjunction with you all in one substitute for us to consider today.

Are there any other comments on the hotel job retention bill as a package?

Okay, seeing none.

All right.

Well, I should make an overall comment because I don't know if people are aware of one part of the OLL process relative to remedies and investigations and that is There's really no mediation process.

There's no mandatory mediation.

It's very adversarial.

And I talked to the hearing examiner.

Actually, the hearing examiner does not have the ability to mandate a mediation either.

It's not within his purview.

So I've asked the hearing examiner to possibly consider legislation, and we can consider legislation requiring mediation.

Because often, particularly for the smaller businesses, be on the eight ball, you got to settle this.

And sometimes they may not get all of the evidence against them.

And it's just very adversarial without trying to encourage all the parties to see if there's sometimes a mediation.

I'm not suggesting any change.

I just want council members to realize that process is very adversarial.

Sometimes I think unnecessarily adversarial when all the parties are trying to do the right thing.

And I know that you and I have had the chance to talk about this a little bit, and I think that it's helpful for you to raise the concerns that have been brought up.

I look forward to working with you on that process outside of this discussion, and I know that there's ongoing work that you'd like to see done.

So seeing that as a separate element of this, am I correct?

Okay, great.

I would love for us to consider voting on the substitute bill here, again, with the recognition that the bill will remain in committee.

and that we will take it up for a potential final action next Thursday.

I'm seeing nods.

This is good.

Okay.

So with that, I'd like to move that the committee consider amending Council Bill 119. 9-5-5-6, is that correct, central staff?

Let's see.

Yes, 1-1-9-5-5-6.

1-1-9-5-5-6, with substitute Bill 1, version D.

Version D-4.

D-4.

Okay.

I move to amend Council Bill 119556 by substituting version D2 for version D4.

Second.

Are there any other comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

I abstain.

One.

Okay, great.

The bill is amended by a vote of 5-0 with one abstention.

All right, moving on.

Let's move on to our third agenda item, which has already been read into the record.

This is Council Bill 119554. And for folks who are following along, we have a chart on the screen that is substitute bill protecting hotel employees from injury version D-2 versus proposed version D-3.

So what we'll be walking through is the language included in version D-3 that will include various amendments for us to consider as a substitute bill.

OK.

If the chair is ready, I'd be happy to walk through that matrix.

The first issue, and again I just want to emphasize this is about protecting hotel employees from injury.

This is primarily about housekeeping and it sets workload limits and establishes new rates of pay for circumstances where house cleaners are cleaning square footage of hotel rooms that are in excess of that maximum square footage.

That's what's included in the substitute, yes.

There is another amendment that's going to follow that I won't speak to at this point.

Also five changes that are captured in this matrix.

None of them have anything to do with ancillary businesses because there are no ancillary businesses that are captured in this bill.

This is all about house cleaning and it's not about the other kinds of business activities that may be happening within the premises or providing services, et cetera.

So, the first row, which has to do with section 1427050E, is on page 6 of the bill, if you're following along in the bill itself.

On 815, this committee passed some language that clarified that But when housecleaning...

exceeds the maximum square footage, which was established at 5,000 square feet, they would be paid for three times their regular rate of pay, only for the amount of time that was spent on the floor space in excess of the 5,000 square feet.

The change in this bill is intended to clarify and better articulate that policy objective.

There isn't intended to be a change here, so it's a technical amendment.

As I mentioned, there is an amendment that may be offered that could affect the substitute, but the substitute itself just is supposed to be clarifying language.

If there are no questions, I'll move to the next one.

Any questions on rate of pay?

No.

Well, I think the one thing we raised yesterday is that the idea is that if you've just worked your 5,000 square feet, which by the way is a phenomenal amount of space for those of us who have ever had to to actually do cleanup on space.

But at the end of that day, if somebody says, you need to stay for a couple of extra hours, because we have more rooms, then they get paid triple time for those hours that they work over and above the 5,000 square feet.

That's correct.

Then the other thing we brought up yesterday, Council Member Mosqueda just stepped out, is that, let's say that we have worked five days in a row, done our 5,000 square feet, but that if we have an opt-in list where it's like an all call.

Anybody can be on that list.

And if an employer says, we've got more rooms to clean, somebody's on vacation or sick or whatever, that if you come back in on the sixth day, you're paid a time and a half, not a triple time.

And my understanding is that, Council Members, Ms. Skater, we're just talking about overtime.

And the example that you and I used yesterday is that if somebody, an individual works their 5,000 square feet for five days in a row, but chooses to work a sixth day because they're on an opt-in list, that on that sixth day, they're paid time and a half, not triple time.

So long as they are cleaning under 5,000 or up to 5,000 square feet, I think that would be true, unless the collective bargaining agreement provides some other multiplier, but the normal...

If they go beyond that 5,000 on the sixth day, they get triple time.

I was so thankful for your question yesterday because it made me look back into this.

So if I understand your question correctly, and I'm sorry I had to step out for a sec.

You're correct that on that sixth day if they're not working more than the square footage amount then the actual overtime if they've already worked 40 hours in that week would be time and a half just like it is at the state level.

So this doesn't change any of the state level policies.

I really appreciate you bringing that up.

It also sort of I think helps us and I'm not sure, Council Member Gonzalez, if you've had a chance to talk about this yet.

But I think it helps us frame up the difference between what we're talking about here versus overtime traditionally.

Overtime traditionally is have you worked more than 40 hours a week?

And so we're not doing anything to change that overtime policy.

It's time and a half if you have worked more than 40 hours in that week.

You're absolutely correct.

And I think that we should talk about the difference between that policy versus what we're trying to accomplish here.

So I'm happy to chime in here.

So I think it's important on this particular issue to really distinguish between overtime and what I see as the policy goal, which is to create a disincentive to assign excessive workloads that have negative health and safety impacts on hotel workers.

And so, you know, I think that this has been mischaracterized as overtime in the ordinary sense that we define overtime under state law and federal law.

And that's not exactly what we're talking about.

So this is really rate of pay for purposes of creating a disincentive to assign excessive workloads to an already overburdened sector of this workforce.

And so a way to do that, similar to what we have done in other labor standard laws, including secure scheduling and other areas, is to effectively come up with an enforcement structure or mechanism, tool, if you will, that effectively works as a penalty in the event that you do exceed, in this case, the 5,000 square foot assignment.

And so we are making a policy determination that that is one threshold in which we have made a determination that anything in excess of 5,000 would result in additional negative impact to the health and safety of this workforce.

And so I just, I want to move away from the conversation of like, this is over time.

I don't, you know, the bill doesn't actually say over time.

The original initiative didn't say over time.

It's just been suddenly characterized as over time.

And really what I think we're talking about here is, should there be, as a matter of policy, a financial penalty of sorts to disincentivize employers from assigning excessive workloads to employees.

to this particular workforce?

And for me, the answer to that question is, yes, there should be.

And the question is, where do we set those levers to create an effective disincentive to, again, prioritize and protect the health and safety, the physical and mental health and safety of this workforce?

So that's what I think is represented here.

We'll have a conversation after adoption of the substitute bill about whether that 5,000 square foot threshold is set at the right area.

As you just alluded to Council Member Bagshaw, 5,000 square feet is pretty significant.

A lot of work to do in a day.

A lot of work to do in a day.

So we'll have a conversation after we're done with this discussion about whether we set that at the right level based on some additional information.

Thank you.

Council Member Pacheco, did you have something?

No, I was just going to, just to build on Council Member Gonzalez's point.

Again, you know, last night I really took the time to reread the I-24 initiative and just thinking about what voters had sent us a directive to do, which was, you know, says again, bears repeating, appropriate and necessary to protect employees in the hotel industry.

So I'm encouraged that the discussion continues and that we're thinking about just 5,000 to, or is that, that's a lot of space, square space, 5,000 square feet.

And so I'm encouraged to just see the conversation continue, so I'll just leave it there.

That's a context question.

Again, I probably know the least about the industry, so.

Thanks for indulging me.

The 5,000 square feet, that's a heavy load for a day, for a worker to work in one day, and we're saying that's just, that's a really pushing limit, right?

That's not two days or three, that's the one day, correct?

It's in an eight-hour shift.

So the overtime piece that Customer Gonzalez was talking about, From a practical standpoint if they work if they do it in one day and it's eight hours Let's say right on the eight hours 5,000 feet boom.

Just just happen to be a Come out that way if they work two more hours that day, the three times the rate kicks in or no?

No.

She's saying no.

No.

That is overtime laws.

Overtime laws are triggered based on a 40-hour work week.

So if you work 41 hours, you are now in time and a half land.

language only applies in the event that the workload assigned to the worker exceeds 5,000 square feet, regardless of the number of total weekly hours which would be subject to state law.

So let me keep going.

So that's sort of helpful, but I'm still a little confused.

I appreciate your indulgence.

So if they work 5,000 square feet on one day, eight hours, but then on day two, no.

So if they're asked to work two more hours on that Monday, let's say it's Monday through Friday, if they're asked to work two more hours on that Monday, they've done 5,000 square feet, so they're tired and could be in pain.

But if they work two hours on that day, what are they paid?

If doing those two additional hours on Monday after they've cleaned 5,000 square feet, if they continue to perform room cleanings, they're going to be paid three times their normal hourly compensation for those two hours.

But what if they work six hours the next day, though?

So that's what I'm saying.

I thought it was I'm hearing it's 40 hours for the week, but if they work.

You don't know if they work 40 hours that week yet, because it's just Monday.

You can think of it as the clock resetting with every eight-hour shift or with every workday.

So they work 10 hours on Monday.

Maybe they'll get paid three times their normal hourly rate for two hours when they perform room cleanings beyond 5,000 square feet on that Monday.

Tuesday, you start all over again.

If you get to Saturday, they're on their sixth shift of the week, and they've worked 40 hours Monday through Friday.

Saturday's all overtime.

They're going to be getting time and a half for all hours that they work on Saturday.

If on Saturday they clean 5,000 square feet from eight to four, and then they clean an additional 2,000 square feet over two hours, they're going to be paid three times their overtime rate.

So if they make $20 an hour, their overtime rate is going to be.

$120 for the two extra hours.

Yeah, you did math way faster than I would.

It would be $30 an hour, right?

So they'd be paid three times $30 an hour, $90 an hour.

And if they do 5,000, in the industry, do some do 5,000 square feet in less than eight hours?

Is that a common practice?

Can you repeat the question?

Some could do 5,000 square feet below in less than eight hours.

Correct.

So then what happens to that employee if they did it in six hours for those remaining two hours?

Are they compensated three times or?

If they continue to clean more than 5,000 square feet, yes, they will be compensated additionally.

The idea is.

I know that, but three times?

Yes, correct.

So the trigger of Triple time is 5,000 square feet, regardless as to the hours.

That's right.

That's right.

Council Member Gonzalez was saying that it's really a separate issue from overtime.

It's not a question of how long, except how long are you working more than 5,000 square feet, even if that's all of your work is done in an eight hour day.

So one thing that I think would be helpful, and Councilmember Gonzalez is absolutely correct, the terms that we use matter.

And I think I have used overtime for shorthand when it was not necessarily overtime at all.

So the way that I'm trying to phrase this is injury prevention pay.

If you think of injury prevention pay as being three times the amount, that means that we are preventing injuries from occurring.

beyond that square footage amount.

It doesn't actually have to do with overtime because as you've talked about in the last committee, if people do want to sign up for overtime, there's a list that they can add their name to.

If they get called in for the sixth day and they're working more than 40 hours in that week, they will get one and a half time.

That's a good example on that Saturday they're coming in.

That's traditional overtime.

What we're talking about here is a very specific industry where we know that the manual labor of cleaning rooms has led to higher rates of back injury than coal miners and construction workers.

We are trying to find that right level to help prevent injury in the future and have a disincentive for folks.

So the way that I'm going to try and phrase it...

Look at all the policies.

I'm just trying to...

I get the reasons.

I was just trying to understand the mechanics, and that was if they worked 5,000 square feet in five hours, the next three is triple time.

That's the policy.

Okay.

I'm just trying to understand how this plays out.

And I'll just sort of bottom line it again, that it's like, this is not overtime.

So that's why it's important to not have this conversation in the context of attaching it to the number of hours.

The number of hours are only relevant for purposes of what are we multiplying the three by.

In the event that the 5,000 square feet is hit in two hours, in three hours, in five hours, in eight hours, the trigger is the number, the amount of square footage that is being cleaned, and then the amount of pay for that is calculated based on the number of additional hours it took to clean more than 5,000 square feet.

So if you remember, Initiative 124 has language very similar to what we see in Oakland and Long Beach, in that they had a injury prevention pay, I'm going to just use that term, that calculated for the entire day.

We had that originally to go back and calculate for the entire day for any work that was performed over that square footage amount, not because it was quote, unquote, overtime, but because it was supposed to be a deterrent from having to work that much square footage.

So Oakland, for example, has a 4,000 square foot limit.

If you work more, if you clean more than those 4,000 square footage, that's when your injury prevention pay kicks in and then they do the payment for one and a half times for the entire day.

So I get it, I get it.

I think from a practical standpoint that what's likely to occur is management of hotels will confine you to 5,000, you to 5,000, you to 5,000 regardless of the hours.

And people may not get the hours they want because they're not going to want to pay triple time.

So we're, I just think that the way, it may play out that way.

So I'm going to try to see how it plays out.

I'm all for, I don't want them working more than 5,000.

And if they, if an employer wants to pay for that, that's fine.

But I'm just trying to see the way it plays out for the safety of the worker.

So that's fine.

I just needed to know.

when it kicks in, because then it becomes a, it'd be interesting to see how it's managed from those making the management decisions.

Any other comments on that?

Okay, I believe we're on the first box, is that correct?

Okay.

I think I can move quickly through at least the next, well, I think I can move quickly through all the rest of them.

The second row, 1427.110, employee records, there's a technical error to catch up the list of records with the kinds of things that were inserted in the previous D2 version that was passed on 8-15, so I don't think there's, substantive issues here, but I can answer any questions if there are.

The third item, 1427.170A, Remedies.

Karina already talked through in the previous bill striking the word all to allow the director to calibrate the allocation of civil penalties and fines rather than it being all or none.

1427.170 paragraph E, also in remedies, merely corrects a clerical error where we didn't note the three times which was inserted in the previous version.

We've now made that correction.

And the last row is the effective date, 14-27-260.

This changes the effective date for the legislation to July 1, 2020, in lieu of what had been there previously, January 1, 2020, and that was based on input from OLS, who is telling us about the realistic time it would take to establish director's rules.

Any questions on that?

I do appreciate the more realistic timeframe for rulemaking, all of the conversations that we've had today.

We do recognize that this is a pattern that you will see in the various pieces of legislation that come before us to make sure that people have enough time to get those rules correct and that they hear from stakeholders.

Are there any other questions on version D3 as a whole?

Councilmember Baxhaw.

Just on the effective date here.

We've got July 1st, 2025 for businesses 50 to 250. Will we keep that July 1st, 2025?

And this will be July 1st, 2020.

So in this bill, there are no ancillary businesses, large or small, who are affected.

So for all employers, it ends up being the same effective date of July 1, 2020.

And just to be clear, this particular law applies just to hotels.

That's correct.

So one category of employer, one effective date, one set of protections.

Thank you, Council Member, Council President Harrell for being here.

Okay, so seeing no other questions, I'm going to go ahead and see if we can move to amend this.

I'd like to move to amend Council Bill 119554 by substituting version D2 for version D3.

Second.

Any other comments?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

None.

Abstentions?

None.

Great.

This bill has been amended to include version D3 as adopted and we will keep this in committee until next week with a vote of 4 to 0. All right, we have one more item for your consideration in this bill.

I'm sorry, it is still in our committee and we have not moved to item four yet.

So on version D3, we have an amendment that we'd like for folks to consider specific to the conversation we were just having about square footage.

And Central South, would you like to walk through what this amendment does and then potentially Council Member Gonzalez and I can speak to the suggested change here.

Yep, happy to do that.

This would change the definition of the term of art maximum floor space, essentially the cutoff for straight pay versus three times pay that you've just been discussing.

The amendment would change that maximum floor space amount to 4,500 square feet in lieu of 5,000 square feet.

So it would reduce the threshold where workers begin to be paid the three times rate of pay.

So I'd just love to hear the background on this.

It's the first time we've seen 4,500.

So since we've been talking about 5,000 and pointing back to the initiative, tell me how we moved just in the last 24 hours from 5,000 to 4,500.

Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw.

Council Member Gonzalez, did you want to tee up a conversation around this?

Sure.

I mean, I think what I spent some time doing is getting a better understanding of the other two jurisdictions that have laws in this space.

Those particular legislative structures include a 4,000 square foot threshold for the, in that case, time and a half rate of pay.

And in that case, it includes time and a half pay for the entire hours as opposed to just the delta between the number of hours, additional hours that it would take to do more than 4,000 square feet.

We were at 5,000 square feet at the last time we met.

And I think that in looking at that 4,000 square foot Precedent that is set in in Long Beach and Oakland and then also looking at some additional Data related to the rates of injury in this particular industry.

I've been persuaded to End up somewhere in the middle between four thousand and five Thousand and so I want to thank staff for pulling together some of the data.

And I have a little bit of statistics here related to this particular question.

So just to start with, there's been some.

articles written on the national average hotel room sizes, because there's a lot of activity happening in hotels.

So the average hotel room size is 330 square feet.

There was an economic impact analysis done by the city of Long Beach in 2018. Hotel operators within the city of Long Beach indicated that housekeepers currently cleaned between 13 and 15 rooms per shift.

depending on the room size and whether the room is classified as stayover or checkout.

So that's 14, if we assume something between 13 and 15, an average of 14 rooms a day times 330 square feet, that's about 4,620 square feet.

And so that was something that sat with me in the last 24 hours in terms of evaluating the square footage threshold.

In addition, there was a 2010 American Journal of Industrial Medicine study on occupational injury disparities in the U.S. hotel industry that found that hotel employees have higher rates of occupational injury and sustain more severe injuries than most other service workers.

That injury rate was highest amongst housekeepers at 7.9%.

And amongst Latinx housekeepers, it is 10.6% rate of injury, which is a disproportionate impact.

The study found that hotel workers were nearly 40% more likely to be injured on the job than all other service sector workers.

And the study also focused on unionized hotel industry and called out the fact that injury rates would be much higher for a non-unionized field.

in the event of evaluation of those industries.

So again, in this study, 98%, it also emphasized that 98% of housekeepers of a total of 12,000 were female, with 35% of those being Latinx, 30% being black, and 27%.

identifying as Asians.

So you know one of I think it's really important for us to make sure that we acknowledge that that there's no question that there's a high rate of injury here.

The question is is that what threshold from a policy perspective we want to acknowledge is safer in this industry that would effectively reduce those injury rates as identified in that 2010 study.

In addition, Puget Sound SAGE also did a survey in 2016 that identified data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the injury rate for housekeeping, as Council Member Mosqueda has mentioned previously, is actually higher than both coal mining and building construction.

and that the percentage of housekeepers experiencing pain is more than three times the percentage of the general population that experiences back pain.

Impacts of these injuries include trouble sleeping, chronic pain, and interference with daily activities.

So again, I think, you know, if the first question is, is there a higher rate of injury in this industry for this sector of workers than other industries, I think the answer to that is yes.

And so then the question then becomes, where do we set the threshold to create a safer work environment and begin to reduce that higher injury rate that we see manifest itself within this particular industry.

So just doing the math.

That was the first question.

So then the second question for me was the math.

And that's when I, what led me to the 330 square foot average room size with sort of an assumption that about 14 rooms are clean today, leading me to 4620, which supported my position around 4,500.

So I would like to say we are all trying to figure out how we protect the workers, no question about this.

One thing I'm interested in is how do you make that determination it's at 4,500 or is it 4,620?

I mean somebody coming out with engineering, designing, design, The actual drawings, is somebody in there with a measuring tape?

I don't want to be silly about this, but I also don't want to put us in a situation where either one side or the other is saying, nah, it wasn't really 4,620, it was 4,500.

You're not getting paid extra today.

I'd like to hear more from all sides before I start making a decision about what the actual number is, whether it's reduced by 4,500 or 500 to 4,500.

Council Member Gonzalez, thank you for doing this research.

Once again, I just want to know how it's going to work out functionally.

Who's making those decisions?

But I think those concerns exist regardless of where we set the threshold.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that's why we have...

I mean, my understanding is that it will be up to the Office of Labor Standards in their rulemaking process to make a determination as to how that is going to be evaluated.

But I mean, whether it's 10,000 square feet or 100,000 square feet or one square foot, we're going to have that same complexity of understanding who's making the determination.

I hear you loud and clear.

I just like to know from a standpoint of the workers and from the hoteliers, how are they going to make those decisions?

And I'd like to hear from them prior to making a decision to reduce this 500 feet.

Great.

And, um, I have some comments on that too.

I think Council Member Pacheco, was I reading you correctly that you have some comments on that?

Sure.

I'll go first.

Okay.

Um, so, uh, appreciate the amendment.

Um, and I You know, given the fact that I try to check in with the diversity stakeholders as well, the only thing I can reference from this is just lived experience.

And I'm going to quote Council Member Mosqueda from numerous times how she says how your lived experiences will shape your decision-making process.

My mother, when I first saw the 5,000 square feet, my mother was a hotel worker.

So I thought, boy, that's a lot of square feet.

And a lot of bathrooms, depending upon how many units you're cleaning.

And so, you know, I'm comfortable with the 4,500 square feet.

I appreciate just the due diligence that you've done, Council Member Gonzalez.

So I'm okay with moving forward with 4,500 square feet, just because I know that that's a lot.

And I just know that firsthand, so.

So, I want to thank as well Sejal Parikh who's been doing some research into this for our offices and who really helped to dredge up these numbers when we looked at what was going on in Long Beach and in Oakland, and we have the references to the municipal codes here.

What you see is of one of the first lines in the legislation is that a hotel employee shall not be required to clean more rooms accounting for 4,000 square feet.

And so the question for us was why 4,000 square feet?

When we did the research and the data, as Councilmember Gonzalez has pointed to and said that the average number of rooms that are cleaned are between 13 to 15 rooms, 13,000, sorry, 13 rooms times 330 square feet is 4,290.

At 15 rooms at 330 square feet, it'd be 4,950.

So if our intent is to prevent injury, right, if we go back to the terminology we just used a minute ago about how can we prevent injury and that's the whole reason that we have three times pay for injury prevention pay, we want to prevent workers from getting to that threshold.

At the 5,000 square foot mark, we wouldn't actually be preventing people from getting to that square footage threshold where we see injuries created.

And I have some data on that councilmember misguided that at 5,000 square feet That's when injuries are most likely to occur.

I will double check on that I think that as we think about what's the average number of rooms That one individual can bear given the type of work that that is being conducted It's important for us to look at what is that average amount and how much more beyond that are people being asked to work and So, that's why the 13 to 15 rooms are really important as a threshold right now.

And given that the number of workers that we see with high rates of back injuries is occurring because of this average number of room, we wanted to set the threshold just slightly lower to actually prevent those types of injuries.

So, Councilwoman?

Yeah, I was just going to add that in response to Councilmember Baggio's question, I think that's why I went through the process of articulating and describing the 2010 study, so that's the American Journal of Industrial Medicine study, which is a peer-reviewed study that talks about what the status quo in the industry is as it relates to higher rates of occupational injury and for hotel workers and when you layer that particular data with the information we have from the economic impact analysis done in City of Long Beach in addition to some information related to just that national average hotel room size of being 330 square feet, I think you can draw the reasonable conclusion that there is a correlation, a reasonable correlation between the number of rooms cleaned and the rates of injury in specifically the square footage that is represented by the total number of rooms cleaned.

And so in my mind, when I'm able to just sort of cobble those pieces of information together and then do the math, that's what led me to believe that 4500 was a more reasonable threshold to at least create a shift in the status quo in the industry that would promote a lower rate of injury.

You know, I don't have a crystal ball.

I can't determine whether all of this is gonna magically happen and nobody's ever gonna experience rate of injury or have less rates of injury, but as a policy maker, this is the best information that I have available to me right now that will allow me the opportunity to make reasonable conclusions and inferences from the information that is available to us in this space.

But we don't have a direct longitudinal study specific to the city of Seattle that would provide you a clear, or me, a clear question around the data related to rates of injury in square footage.

Thank you.

appreciative of that and just recognize that this is forthcoming today.

It's the first time I've heard it.

I want to talk with both the folks that are represented and the hoteliers themselves, so I will abstain from voting on this part today.

But I do want to acknowledge we're doing the best that we can here, trying to find a point where people are protected and at the same time, you know, if you're trying to avoid all injuries, we don't do this work, right?

So we want to come up with something that's reasonable and that we can point to and say, yes, this is where we want to end up.

So I will want to do a little more research on it.

And I want to thank you for doing that and for bringing it forward, and we'll take another look at it.

Thank you, Councilmember Baxshaw, and thanks to all of you for engaging in the conversation on this amendment.

With the notice of an abstention, which I appreciate, I'm still going to go ahead and move forward.

I'd love to amend the substitute version D that we just adopted by amending substitute version D with amendment 2. Second.

Any additional comments?

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

One.

Great.

So the amendment to version D3, which is amendment two, has passed by a vote of three to zero with one abstention.

And we will again keep this legislation as amended in our committee for conversation next Thursday as well.

great okay we have one more item and folks we are just running about 10 minutes late I'm wondering can we keep you here as we walk through this next item yes all right go ahead central staff thank you for moving us on to the last and final bill for our consideration we have one substitute version for us to walk through and then three potential amendments

So this is Council Bill 119557, hotel safety protections.

This is version D5, which has revisions from the last version that was passed D3 on August 15th.

There are a number of revisions here.

The good news is that there's already been discussion of some of them at the table during the job retention ordinance.

Okay, so first, ancillary hotel business.

There is a revised definition that reflects the same definition that was already discussed when the job retention bill was under consideration.

Okay.

The next change regards the definition of physical injury.

bodily injury, bodily harm.

These are terms that were in the definition of violent or harassing conduct in the previous version.

Those terms are no longer in the revised definition of violent or harassing conduct.

So there is no need to define them.

So they have been removed.

On this one, I just want to say a special thank you again to the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and the King County Prosecutor's Office for some of their helpful feedback on the framing and the language here.

Next is a revised definition of violent or harassing conduct, which provides more distinct parameters around what these words mean.

And now to determine what constitutes that kind of conduct, folks will look to the revised Code of Washington for the specific terms of assault, harassment, sexual contact without consent, both are defined separately, and indecent exposure.

Okay.

Next is employer coverage.

This again creates a different threshold number of employees for ancillary hotel businesses.

In the previous versions of this law, there was a definition of ancillary hotel business.

There was no threshold number of employees for coverage.

This version creates a threshold of 50 or more employees worldwide.

Next regards panic buttons.

This is a shift and previously all employers, hotel employers, ancillary hotel businesses were responsible for providing panic buttons.

In this version, hotel employers are responsible for directly providing panic buttons to hotel employees who are assigned to work in a guest room or deliver items to a guest room.

As far as ancillary hotel businesses are concerned, hotel employers are providing access to a panic button for those employees.

So the short of it is that the ancillary hotel businesses are not responsible for providing that panic button.

It's the hotel employer.

One might imagine that there's a food delivery employee coming to deliver something to a room, they go to the front desk, they pick up their panic button, and then they go to the room.

The hotel employer is also responsible for responding to an activated panic button.

And all employers, ancillary hotel business and hotel employers, are responsible for not taking adverse action against an employee for actually using that panic button.

Everyone needs to feel very comfortable with actually using it.

There's some additional language to define what, adverse actions when those types of behaviors are prohibited by the employer.

That includes an other emergency in the employee's presence and also for ceasing work and leaving the area of perceived danger to await assistance.

So changes that encourage use of the panic button without fear of retaliation by the ancillary hotel business or the hotel employer.

Do I recall that we had language in there that says we have access to, that these are made available to people, but there's not a requirement that somebody carry it?

Correct.

It is phrased as hotel employer shall provide access.

So as long as they are immediately available, the hotel employer has done their part.

Okay.

Thank you.

And the ancillary hotel business is still responsible for displaying the posters so that their employees know what their rights are to get a panic button.

So that certainly is something that ancillary businesses will need to do.

Next is a revision to the signage portion of this law.

Hotels are required to install a sign in the back of guest room doors, alerting guests to the protections of this law.

Hotels have already put up a sign that alerts guests to 1425. And so this law will have a different citation.

It will be 1426. This revision recognizes that hotels have already spent time, energy, and funding on installing those signs.

So if they already have a sign that references 1425 instead of 1426, that is okay, provided that when the hotel goes and updates those signs, they need to make sure that 1426 is cited on it.

Okay.

Next regards the employer's requirement to develop a policy against violent and harassing conduct by guests.

And there is a requirement for the employer to distribute that policy to guests upon check-ins.

This simply identifies that the OLS director, through rulemaking, can identify other means for the employer to give the policy to guests in special circumstances other than check-in.

Especially if they're not, if a guest is not interacting with an employee upon check-in, if there's another method of doing that.

Okay.

We have five pages left in about a few minutes.

You got this.

All right.

We are all eager to get through this, so I know that I'm here until 1230, if folks can see.

Employer requirements for guests who are accused of violent or harassing conduct.

Employers are required to take necessary steps.

That's just a language change from immediate preventative action.

At the minimum, employers previously were required to discontinue in-room guest services.

The language has been modified to not assign employees to work in that guest room or make deliveries to the guest room.

An additional provision that employers may assign employees to enter a guest room to conduct a safety check with some conditional language that would only take place when the circumstances are appropriate for that kind of room entry.

Employees who would go into the room for a safety check would be in a team and they could decline that assignment if they wanted to.

I want to take a quick second to thank the Hotel Association for the suggestion as well.

We want to make sure that people do feel like they have the freedom and flexibility to do these wellness checks which we know occur.

We heard one example for instance came after the shooting in Las Vegas and we want to make sure that this is a provision that is clearly called out and appreciate their engagement with us on drafting this amendment.

Next revision is for employer requirements for the employee who was the alleged victim of guest misconduct.

It has already been established in the previous version that the employer needs to reassign the employee to a different work area.

And additional language adds that this would only happen upon the employee's request or consent to empower the employee to be a participant in the reassignment process and also to make sure that any reassignment is equivalent or better than where they were already working.

So again, going towards reducing retaliation against the employee.

and also recognizing the importance of the employee participating in this reassignment.

Some word changes, the employee is going to be receiving a copy of the notice that was provided to the guest.

And yeah, and then the other changes to that section are purely technical.

but we're still on that section.

Okay, employers are required to provide employees up to 16 hours of paid time.

There is new language clarifying that this paid time is in addition to any time that is provided pursuant to state laws for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

And that would be in addition to PSST as well, which incorporates that paid time.

Additional language that permits employers to require reasonable notice of an employee's intent to take the paid time.

So they actually let management know I am taking this paid time rather than perhaps what might be interpreted as a no call, no show.

However, there are still conditions in here that respect the employee's privacies.

The employer will not inquire about the paid time except as provided by any forthcoming rules at Office of Labor Standards.

The last change in this section is that Office of Labor Standards will establish a memorandum of understanding with a particular kind of community organization to provide access to a community advocate.

So I'll unpack that a bit.

The idea of a community advocate was in the previous version of this called a support advocate.

It has a new name that better reflects what this person will do.

Community advocates are already known for providing confidential services to folks who reach out to them.

Community advocate helps employees who have an allegation that might not rise to the level of a crime victim advocate that's required under state law, and they also can help the employee navigate their rights under this particular hotel legislation.

An OLS would be entering into an agreement with a community-based victims advocacy program with confidential advocacy services to go ahead and provide access to this community advocate 24-7.

So seven days a week, all hours of the day.

And this revision helps set the criteria for how OLS is going to go ahead and make this service available.

Under the notice and posting section, there is a new right to make sure that OLS's poster also includes the right to report violent or harassing conduct by a guest toward an employee.

So a fundamental right, we made sure that it was added to the list of notice of rights on the poster.

In the employer records section, there are a number of additions that reflect some of the changes that have been made to the law.

Notably, also, there is the removal of records related to allegations or incidents of violent or harassing conduct by guests.

The records are, for the most part, focusing on the employer's response to a situation when an employee or someone has reported guest misconduct.

So employers do need to keep a record of their written policy against violent or harassing conduct.

Employers need to keep a record of the written notice that is providing to the guest and to the employee when conduct is reported.

And let's see, another, the standard term that the OLS director can issue rules requiring additional records to help implement the law.

And notably, something that was added last time, not making sure that employers knew that they were not required to keep identifying information of a guest alleged to have engaged in this misconduct.

This revision goes further to say that employers shall not include identifying information of guests alleged to have engaged in this misconduct in terms of how they're keeping records to show compliance with this law.

At last I think that's really important because we've had a lot of questions about lists and retention of records and stuff And this makes it explicitly clear that we're not creating lists councilmember gonzalez Oh, I thought you were I um Yeah, so we have um, I think collectively as a group done a lot of uh thinking about this particular issue and and I think that the policy motivation here is to really make sure that we are staying focused on what actions the employer has taken to comply with the spirit of the law and the language of the law.

And so I think these are reasonable modifications to the language to, again, stay laser focused on what the employer has done to comply with the law, setting aside the issue of the personal identification of the guest that was accused.

And so really, I think we still have maintained the integrity of the intent of Initiative 124 in this space, while also creating a reasonable pathway forward that will allay or has allayed some of the constitutional concerns that were being expressed by the ACLU of Washington and others.

And I know that ACLU of Washington is engaged very closely with both of our offices and appreciate staff time in having those many, many, many, many conversations and just earlier this afternoon, just 10 minutes ago, we received a letter from the ACLU of Washington reacting to and providing us additional feedback to this section in particular of the council bill and the substitute bill specifically, and wanted to just take a moment to read the relevant parts from that memo with the chair's permission.

Yes, please go ahead.

So after having looked at the substitute bill, the ACLU of Washington wrote to the committee copying other council members that their concerns have been addressed.

So they wrote, quote, we have greatly appreciated your ongoing engagement and invitation to us to provide input on potential amendments.

Based on the most recent draft of a possible amendment that we have seen, we believe our concerns have been addressed and are happy to support passage of this ordinance.

They go on to specifically address the components of the substitute bill that are responsive to the request.

I won't read all of it because it's quite lengthy, but it is effectively the portions that Karina outlined in terms of being stricken in the substitute version.

So I'm really happy that we were able to both stay true to the intent of Initiative 124 and our collective intent to protect workers in this space from this type of behavior while also balancing the need for constitutional protections for those individuals who have not had the opportunity to have a full vetting of potential incidents and allegations.

I think we're in a good place, and I'm really happy that we've been able to dig in and want to commend you, Chair Mosqueda, and your staff in particular for all the tremendous work that you've done to get us here.

Thank you.

Thank you, and a huge appreciation for Sejal Parikh.

who's been engaged with Allison Holcomb and Eric Gonzalez and their director of public policy as well.

So very excited to see this.

I'll just read one more line.

It says, we applaud the council's recognition of the serious need for improvements for protection for health and safety workers, the health and safety of hotel workers who are typically women and often people of color.

We support, we strongly support and appreciate your leadership on this important issue.

So that's a huge congratulations to this entire committee and full council as well because we've constantly been engaged in asking questions about how we can get to yes, our favorite phrase.

And I really appreciate them sending this clarification over.

So, thank you for reading that.

Timing could not be better.

Timing could not be better.

12 o'clock 6 p.m.

today.

Exactly.

I know you have one more page and then.

Yeah.

Very quickly on employer records, there is additional language saying that employers shall maintain the confidentiality of all of these records and limit access to management and human resources staff.

Moving on to the enforcement section, there's already been discussion of how the director can specify that any amount of civil penalties and fines are due to the aggrieved party rather than just to the city.

There was language that was added back in regarding a cap on fines.

It was taken out in the last version.

Now it's back.

And as is reflective throughout all of this legislation, the fines on penalties have been doubled.

Last, the effective date reflects the same concept that happened with job retention ordinance where the date is pushed forward to July 1 for most employers.

There is even further into the future effective date July 1, 2025 for ancillary hotel businesses that have between 50 and 250 employees and that contract with the hotel.

So that is all of the substantive suggested amendments to Council Bill 119557. The suggestion here would be that we take any additional questions on this and then potentially consider a vote on this striker bill or the substitute version and then there's potentially three additional amendments that we would entertain if the council members are interested in amending the striker bill.

So are there any other questions on the substitute that we just described today?

Okay, seeing none, thank you, Karina, for walking us through that, and Central Staff for your very comprehensive memo on this.

Again, thanks to all the stakeholders, including ACLU, One America, REWA, the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, and King County Prosecutor's Office for specifically engaging with us on this legislation.

and to unite here and the Hotel Association folks who provided us with feedback as well.

I would like to move to amend Council Bill 119557 by substituting version D2 for version D5 that we just walked through.

It's been seconded.

Any additional comments or questions?

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

None.

Great.

So the underlying bill has been substituted by a vote of four to zero.

We do have three potential amendments, and I believe Councilmember Bagshaw The first amendment that we would be willing to entertain is an amendment from you, Amendment 2. Are you still interested in discussing that?

Oh, I think now that we've received word from ACLU that they're happy with the direction that we're going, that it's really, I think it's been addressed.

Okay, excellent.

Well, thank you for your work to continue to elevate those issues as well.

And I'm really, really happy that we got to a resolution on the issues you've been calling out.

The next amendment that we have is Amendment 2 from Councilmember Pacheco.

Councilmember Pacheco, I believe you have handed out copies of the amendment that we have here.

Would you like to speak to it first or would you like central staff to comment?

Sure.

Go ahead.

So just given, again, the interest of what I was trying to interpret from what voters had given us, I just thought 14 days doubling, giving more flexibility to the individual that's been impacted and affected by an incident would mean more time, whether that's to consult with an advocate, an attorney, or law enforcement.

And so I wanted to provide a little bit more flexibility, understanding that Sometimes seven days may be a little bit difficult to take two days to see someone.

And so I wanted to expand that to include 14 days.

And I really appreciate you bringing this forward from the protection of workers and the experience of people who have been in situations like that.

We know that, as you've said, it takes time for people to come forward sometimes and process what's happened to them.

The amendment, as I understand it, that you propose doesn't change the amount of hours that an individual can take to access these services, but the time window in which they have to access it.

We're keeping true to that 16 hours, but they can take that time within a two-week period.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay, excellent.

Council Central staff any additional comments on that?

Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I appreciate this amendment that is intended to provide an employee additional time to claim their 16 hours of paid time under this particular legislation.

I just want to be really clear that this only applies to those 16 hours of paid time that are awarded under this particular council bill, but would not prevent or prohibit or otherwise restrict or limit the employee's ability to still do a police report contact.

counselors, contact lawyers.

This is just related to the period of time in which the employee has to claim those 16 hours of paid time as opposed to changing any substantive rights that the employee might have to otherwise pursue either criminal or civil remedies available to him or her under existing state and city laws.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay.

I think Council Member Pacheco said something slightly different than that and I just want to make really clear that this is not changing those substantive rights and so it's not that if you don't do it within two weeks you've lost all remedies available to you.

It's only as it relates to the 16 hours of paid time for this particular bill.

Correct.

And sometimes I forget that I'm in the table full of attorneys, so I have to be diligent.

At least two.

And so, but correct.

The intent is just, it's to provide more flexibility.

Excellent.

And I know we have just a few more minutes, about five more minutes until folks have to disappear.

I'm going with you, I think, to our next meeting.

The other thing I wanted to clarify is that we have received really helpful feedback from the Employer side as well that just like we do a sick and safe leave we want to make sure that Notification is being provided as soon as possible to the employer if any of these 16 hours and it's up to 16 hours They don't have to take the full 16 But if any time is being taken to access the rights guaranteed under this section that they provide notification to the employer so that people do know that they need to Advise their employer that they're taking this time and that was included in this draft as well.

Okay, so

Great.

Can you just talk a little bit on process here?

So let's assume the worst happens.

Do we have any language anywhere in our current legislation or amendments about encouraging the employee to tell the employer immediately?

about what's gone on.

Where are we now with that language?

That's exactly what I was just speaking to.

Do you mind just offering that clarification because that was a very helpful idea that came from the hotel industry as well.

There is reasonable notice that's in the legislation now.

The employee must prove, if I'm understanding the question correctly.

You know, something horrible happens to an employee.

How are we encouraging that reporting so that the employee tells the employer, as promptly as possible that something's happened.

Dan, you were in the meeting that we had yesterday where we discussed the need for notification as early as possible.

Can you speak to where that's at?

Yeah, the bill provides that the employer is not allowed to ask about or inquire into the specifics of what kind of consultations the employee may have made with a support person of one stripe or another.

I'm sorry, just for the time that the incident happens, how are we encouraging the employee to let the employer know?

Exactly.

Yes, I was just getting to the, so whereas the employer is not allowed to ask about that kind of thing, the employee is supposed to give reasonable notice to the employer that they are going to be taking the 16 hours of time or up to that amount of time?

I still, just roll back to the incident itself.

So if something horrible happens at midnight, how are we encouraging the employee to let the employer know about the incident itself?

Not aftermath as far as consultation or getting assistance, but just to let the employer know that something's happened.

So I think that's up to the employee to decide.

I don't think that, to my recollection, the bill doesn't require that such notification happen if an employee decides that he or she doesn't want to let Anyone in the world know that's something that the employee is allowed to do.

But specific to being able to access any of these 16 hours, there is language that we clarified in the legislation so that an employer does know if the, tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.

they're going to take two hours to call their, the resource support person that's been referred to them, that the employer has notification.

That's a very reasonable request.

Can you point to us where that's at in the legislation?

I think I've heard from them multiple times that the language is reasonable notice.

Correct.

And so it will be subject to interpretation as to what is reasonable and what is not.

You know, 365 days after the event, probably not reasonable.

But I don't think that I'm hearing from Council Central staff that there's any other language besides reasonable notice.

Two things, there's two reports here, two kinds of notice.

The first kind of notice is to the employer that this really bad thing happened, the guest misconduct.

There's, to my knowledge, no- And then there's the paid time.

Right, and then there's the paid time.

There's no language in the ordinance that says that that notice of guest misconduct has to happen within a certain time frame.

The next period of notice is if it has been reported, then notice of I want to use my paid time.

And so what's been added to the legislation is reasonable notice.

OLS can help define what that is.

And maybe they'll look to paid sick and safe time for a foundation from which to build on for that reasonable notice.

And that was my intent.

When we passed initiative 1433 on sick and safe leave, we had a robust conversation with worker advocates and business advocates to try to figure out what that reasonable notice was so that if someone was taking their sick or safe leave, there was ample notice when possible given to the employer.

However, when you think about an incident like this or getting sick or having an accident, you don't often get a heads up.

And so we wanted to make sure that there was a little bit of flexibility, but they did that in rulemaking at LNI.

and our intent is to try to mirror that here.

10 of the bill.

It's under section 1426-090, subparagraph A, and then item number five.

Employers may require employees to provide reasonable notice of intent to take paid time provided for in the relevant subsection, but employers shall make no inquiries about the up to 16 hours of paid time referenced in that subsection, except this may be provided in director's rules.

So thank you for finding that for us.

I know you did that very quickly.

A needle in a haystack given our copious amounts of work here.

I'm going to go ahead and ask for the council committee here to consider Council Member Pacheco's amendment, which is amendment number three.

And I'd love to amend version D5 that we just voted on with amendment three.

Second.

Excellent.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any other additional comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor of amending version D5 with amendment 3, please say aye.

Aye.

No opposition.

No abstentions.

So that amendment has been included by a vote of 4 to 0. And Councilmember Bagshaw, thank you so much for being here.

I have one more amendment.

Which I'm it's totally fine if you leave we have it's a helpful amendment for some of our smaller businesses And I will be in our meeting and momentarily Council central staff We have one last amendment that comes from councilmember Gonzalez and myself on the implementation for small businesses And buddy, they do we have that handed out as well Okay And this is related to the employer coverage and effective date.

Central staff, would you like to walk through this for us?

Yeah, so there's two places in the bill where this amendment would be seen.

It's in the employer coverage section and in the effective date section.

The amendment would cover all ancillary hotel businesses regardless of employee size by removing the threshold coverage requirement of 50 or more employees worldwide.

And it would create a single implementation date of July 1, 2020. by removing the delayed implementation date for certain ancillary hotel businesses.

So this takes the proposed legislation back to where it was in D3.

So in my perspective, and Council Member Gonzalez, please feel free to chime in.

I would consider this a technical amendment.

I think that what we had done was borrowed the language from the previous bill when we looked at the implementation date for some of our smallest businesses as it related to retention.

And we had copied and pasted it when we all know, as Council Member Pacheco has mentioned, that every employee should have these protections under the law and we want to make sure that we're not phasing in this type of protection whether it's somebody accessing the new 16 hours or whether it's their ability to come forward and express what's happened to them.

We think that these protections for workers in terms of safety and freedom from harassment and intimidation should be in place from the very beginning.

Any additional comments on that?

So it's kind of a cleanup legislation a cleanup amendment.

I would say councilmember Pacheco any comments or questions on that No, okay Any additional clarification from staff?

Okay, great.

I would like to move that we amend amended version D5 to include amendment 4. Second.

Any additional questions or comments?

Seeing none, all of those in favor of including amendment D4 into amended version of D5, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

None.

Abstentions?

None.

That gets us through this third piece of legislation.

It is four minutes after 1230 and I appreciate you all staying here.

We have these three pieces of legislation that have now been amended.

This will be considered the base for those three pieces of legislation.

We will keep those in committee.

Our next committee meeting is going to be on September 19th at 9 a.m.

And we will take up the health care bill in addition to these three after we consider amendments to the health care bill and ideally pass them out as a full package.

It's been really great working with all of you.

Thank you for your amendments that you brought forward today and thank you for your co-sponsorship of these efforts.

We will convene again at 9 a.m.

on September 19th.

and we look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Yes, Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Muscat.

I just wanted to, for...

I'm sorry, can I just clarify something?

I said September 19th.

I meant September 12th.

My mistake.

That's okay.

What I was gonna say is just for the sake of the knowledge of the public, we had a conversation earlier today with Council Central staff in which We indicated the possibility that for that September 12th committee hearing, there might be sort of an omnibus cleanup bill if Council Central staff has enough bandwidth to get to it that will be technical in nature, that will focus on things like word consistency, grammar, other quality control things.

I don't want folks to be startled if they see sort of a new set of amendments that they've never seen before and are wondering if they're going to be substantive changes that that omnibus bill would be intended to be just a technical cleanup, make sure that the quality control has been in place since we've been spending most of our time focused on the substantive policy issues and language related to that and not as much time on doing the ordinary quality control checks.

So just wanted folks to be aware that that might be something that comes forward if there is time from Council Central staff.

Did I appropriately characterize that?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we will have a long list of thank yous as we get into the final passage of those four pieces of legislation.

I want to thank both of you again and specifically we've talked about our staff doing a tremendous amount of work.

Thank you to Breonna Thomas.

from your staff, Council Member Gonzalez, for her work on this as well, and for all of the LAs for engaging with us, and your office too, Council Member Pacheco, for working with us on these various amendments.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Central staff, we really appreciate you working over the next week with us on various considerations to the healthcare bill, and if there are any cleanup pieces on these pieces before we vote them out next week, appreciate that in advance.

So thank you, and with that, today's meeting is adjourned.