Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee Special Meeting 9/18/2018

Good afternoon.

Today is Tuesday, September 18th.

It is 12 p.m.

I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, Chair of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

And we are going, this is a special meeting of this committee.

We have five items on today's agenda.

We have several appointments, a reappointment.

We're gonna hear from our Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

an update on the Legal Defense Network.

And then lastly, we will hear from our Seattle Department of Human Resources for a presentation update on the Workforce Equity Accountability Report.

As usual, we'll go ahead and start with public comment.

Each individual who has signed up to speak on an item on today's agenda will be provided up to two minutes to provide us with testimony on a matter on today's agenda.

And we'll go ahead and get started.

Thank you, Councilmember Johnson, for joining me.

Sorry to be late.

No, you're fine.

First person, we only have one person signed up for public testimony, and that is Alex Zimmerman.

Hi.

My name Alex Zimmerman, and I'm president of Stand Up America.

I want to speak about immigration problem, what is IC.

More than 30 year ago, I come to America like political and religion refugee.

I'm a Jew and staying in political in Russia for all my life.

15 year I fighting with HGB to come to America, 15 year in this very risky business.

Situation what is we have right now here is absolutely absurd.

Seattle right now to me look like absolutely identical to German Nazi or Soviet communists, a pure fascist government.

It's exactly what is we have here.

Why?

Look at what's happened right now.

We have right now seven percentage of minority, Latina, brown, who represent by four council.

In each time, what is I go to council chamber for last year, I come every day.

I have eight trespasses.

for 900 days, and every time I come to council meeting, somebody trespass me because I have different opinion.

Guys, it's absolutely absurd by definition.

We have rise in social justice from 2004, and I, because I have different opinion, and I, because I am Jew, and because I belong to different group of people, you know what this mean, supposed to be have trespass because I'm against not legal immigration, I'm against fascism that is half Seattle, and I'm against this crook who sits in this chamber.

It don't have sense, guys.

We have 7 percentage of brown who control 85 percentage, 15 percentage yellow, and 60 percentage white.

It don't have sense, guys.

When we want something, Race is social justice equal.

We need to stop this fascism.

It's exactly what's happened.

Say hi, my dirty Fuhrer.

I don't know.

Okay.

That is the only person on today's agenda.

Is there anybody else who'd like to offer testimony that didn't have an opportunity to sign up?

All right, come on up.

Hi, my name is Sandy Restrepo.

I'm Executive Director of Colectiva Legal del Pueblo and I'm here to speak on behalf of the Legal Defense Fund Network.

We are one of the agencies that is working to provide legal services to folks that are in removal proceedings and because of the Legal Defense Network and the support of the City of Seattle in King County, we've been able to help hundreds of people that were able to navigate the deportation and removal proceeding system with the assistance of legal counsel.

We've been able to get folks released from the detention center that have been detained.

And we've also been able to be successful with asylum and cancellation of removal cases.

So we really urge the council to do the right thing and to keep this program on for as long as possible because we see more and more people that are affected by deportation and removal.

So thank you.

Thank you, Sandy.

Is there anyone else here?

Yeah, come on up.

And then Sandy, just before you leave, after we're done doing public testimony, I'll put this back up in front.

If you could sign up just for the record, that'd be great.

Thanks.

Please go ahead.

Yes.

Hi, my name is Rita Espinoza-Arguello.

I'm actually the attorney supervisor for Colectiva Legal del Pueblo.

Through the program, we've actually been able to stop the deportation of people who had previously come into the United States as refugees.

Actually, a couple of our clients have come from Russia, and they came in as refugees.

So when, in this particular cases, these were cases where the government had put erroneous charges against them.

And if it wasn't for us challenging those charges, they would have lost their green cards and they would have been deported.

And that shows, and these people in particular were detained.

So if, If there was not this legal defense fund network that has been helping people like that, that do not have either the money to hire other attorneys, who are unable to challenged the system in any kind of meaningful way, they would have lost their green cards, been separated from their families.

These were people that came when they were children and have been permanent residents their whole lives here.

And they would have been deported and would have been condemned to be detained if we had to try and keep fighting through appeals and all of that process.

We have also, through this program, we have been able to help people who, for example, U.S. citizens who have been affected because their husband or their wife has been detained or they're put into removal proceedings.

and this person's the breadwinner, and as a result, in some cases that we've seen, when a person has been put into detention and that person is a breadwinner, sometimes what this has meant for the family is that they have become homeless, they have had more medical ailments, they have needed more medical attention, and they have had to ask for assistance from the government and from local agencies to try to survive.

So the impact of helping the immigrants.

Your two minutes are up, so if you could just quickly wrap up, that'd be great.

Yeah, well, okay, so the final point is there is a greater impact apart from just the immigrants.

It is a whole community of people, including U.S. citizens, that are affected by this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, is there anyone else who didn't get a chance to sign up who wanted to offer us some public testimony this morning?

Okay, seeing no one, we'll go ahead and close out the public comment period, and we'll go ahead and move into our items of business.

If you are here for an appointment or reappointment to the Seattle Fire Code Advisory Board, I'd invite you to start making your way up to the table while Cody reads this item into the record.

I guess you're gonna read agenda items one through three.

Appointment one one three zero appointment of Amy Liu as members Seattle fire code advisory board for a term to three years from Council appointment from Council confirmation and appointment one one three one and one one three two reappointment of James our fair and ray and rushing as members Seattle fire code advisory board for terms to March 31st 2021 all for briefing discussion and possible vote I

Thank you, Cody.

Why don't we go ahead and start with introductions, and then I'll hand it over to you to kick us off.

You got it.

Great.

So just names.

We'll go down the line with names, and then we'll start with the presentations.

I'm Chief Pontus.

I'm the fire marshal with City of Seattle.

I'm Jim Fair.

I'm a member of the Fire Code Advisory Board and chairman of the board.

Amy Liu.

Nice to meet you all.

OK.

You want to kick us off, Marshall?

Do you want to just start off by introducing?

Absolutely.

I just want to thank you for having us, first of all.

I just want to say that I don't know how much knowledge you have of the Fire Court Advisory Board, or better known as the FCAP.

It's a group of 15 individuals along with my code coordinator and someone from my office that meet and they talk about code.

And these talks are a partnership.

They help us to decide the impacts of the codes.

Not only nationally, but also regionally, and of course in the city.

And so this is a great opportunity for us with the appointment, not only to appoint Amy Liu, but also acknowledge Jim Fair, who's been, this is his fourth term, and these are three year terms, so it's a very big commitment, and how much the fire department appreciates them.

Great.

So why don't we go down the line, and then, James, maybe you can give us a little introduction about yourself and why you want to be reappointed, and then we'll do the same for Amy.

Thank you.

I'm an architect by training, and this is my fourth term on the board.

And I just find the issues compelling and interesting and within, you know, my experience and knowledge.

And so I actually enjoy serving on the board because there's always challenges and always interesting issues to work through and to settle and solve.

Great.

Any questions for Mr. Fair?

OK.

Ms. Liu.

Hi.

My name is Amy Liu, and I'm a marine chemist here in the Puget Sound area.

And I have the opportunity to work with many different people in the maritime industry from small boat yards to large ship repair facilities.

And I am looking forward to serving on the FCAB to be able to facilitate communication between the different members of industry and the board to help out workers

Excellent so concise but very thorough So I noticed there are 15 members on this on the F cap is that correct and then It looks like there's all but one seat that is One seat appears to be vacant still looks I think we actually have to see three seats vacant.

Oh, okay the two of the public seats And then also the insurance industry is also got it.

So got it.

Okay.

We are advertising for those and looking for volunteers.

Okay Councilmember Johnson, you know, this is only just a purely satisfying my own curiosity.

I have never seen a resume that includes the words shipyard competent person in that order.

Can you tell me what a shipyard competent person is, Ms. Liu?

It's a very interesting job title.

Well, the ship repair industry is pretty small compared to other industries, so I don't expect people to know about all this terminology.

But a shipyard competent person is a safety individual who's a representative of the employer to maintain safe conditions.

in the job site.

So I, as a marine chemist, do fire and explosion prevention during the repairs.

And then we work in conjunction with that shipyard competent person to make sure that as the repair jobs go on, that everything is safe and whatnot.

That seems like an incredibly important background for us to have in fire code advisory board, where our intention is to try to keep people safe.

So thank you for that explanation.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

We have all the, just for the viewing public, we get all of your appointment packets well in advance of today's committee.

So a lot of times we, all of the time, we just look at the stuff in the background.

And so we appreciate your willingness to be with us at the table and to answer any potential questions and just to let us and the viewing public know who you are before you serve.

So we just want to thank you for your willingness to be here and for your willingness to serve in this capacity.

It's a really important advisory board that I think is one of the ones that probably doesn't get as much attention as some of the others, but we certainly appreciate all the efforts that you make to keep our buildings and our community safe.

Okay, if there are no other questions or discussion, I am going to move that the committee recommend the City Council confirm appointments 1130 through 1132. Second.

Okay, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, there are no nos and no abstentions, so the committee will recommend that the City Council confirm.

appointments 1130 through 1132 with a unanimous vote.

That confirmation will be considered this Monday, September, whatever that day is. 24th.

And you are not required to attend a full council.

I expect that it will go through without an issue.

So thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah, of course.

Okay, Cody, can you read agenda item 4 into the record, which is an update on the Legal Defense Network?

And if you are here to make a presentation on the Legal Defense Network, I'd invite you to join us at the table.

Agenda item 4, Legal Defense Network update for briefing and discussion.

Good morning.

Good afternoon, council members.

Good morning.

Or I guess it's afternoon.

I keep saying morning.

We'll go ahead and start with introductions, and then we'll dig into the presentation.

I'm sorry that I threw you off of your roller.

Oh, it's OK.

Usually we sit here with you in the morning, so this is a little bit of a change for us, too.

I'm Ku.

I'm the director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

And I'm Catherine Cortez.

I'm the Finance and Operations Manager for the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and I've been working on the Legal Defense Network.

All right.

So we're really pleased to present to you today the results of the new Legal Defense Network that the city has partnered with King County to create and launched last year.

Seattle is among a small number of municipalities that have made these investments, and it's consistent with The mayor's point of view, which is reflected in also the mayor's office work with council to stand up for Seattle's progressive values during these challenging times.

And so what we wanted to do, and you are veterans at this now because we have appeared before you before, we wanted to start with a brief description of our program, our office model.

Oh, I'm responsible for clicking the arrow.

There we go.

And before Trump, Our three rails included civic engagement and citizenship, language access, and English as a second language, because all of those three things really improve the economic mobility and self-sufficiency of immigrant refugee families.

Since Mr. Trump was elected, we have added protecting residents and workers, because we're under a period of unprecedented attacks and deportation efforts, and the Legal Defense Network is a component of that framework.

Our immigrant integration spectrum, and here this is really an illustration of where the LDN, as we have shortened it, sits.

And really, even though we've situated it at the beginning of the spectrum, where a person who is here without authorization has a long journey to travel, towards full integration, as you can see, becoming a lawful permanent resident, a U.S. citizen, a registered voter, active voter that rises to leadership levels and in the city that can be reflected on participation in committees and advisory boards, et cetera.

The LDN actually serves a much broader spectrum of folks because now even U.S. citizens are subject to deportation under these new changes to federal immigration policy.

And we have a number of examples.

Some of those are played out already in the news reports, some of which our staff have tracked.

In a recent case, that naturalization application, During an interview for a client, the officer of USCIS asked the client to prove the wedding that they had.

And so they were asked to provide a list of every guest with the contact information, which is unprecedented.

And these are the kind of things that we're beginning to see in this new environment.

So even US citizens, lawful permanent residents are not safe.

This slide here just...

really makes the business case for why we need an LDN for the Seattle residents and workers and people generally in the King County region in our partnership with King County.

We already knew prior to the establishment of the Legal Defense Network that demand for legal services exceeded capacity of legal service providers.

And some of that is reflected in the reality that immigration is a civil matter, and as such, people who are in these cases are not entitled to an attorney, as with criminal matters.

So they either have to find legal representation or pay it for themselves.

And many of the situations people have to do without legal representation, and the results of those, as mentioned during the public comment period, can be devastating.

So what we have here is a comparison from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2017. What that means in political terms is you have a whole year of Obama, the last year of immigration policies under the Obama administration, and about nine months of immigration policy under the Trump administration.

As you know, the federal fiscal calendar runs from October to September.

And so in the fiscal year 2017, there's about three months of President Obama and nine months of President Trump.

But it's enough of a snapshot for us to have a comparison of what it has been like under these new federal policies.

And what we see is for the Seattle area of responsibility, which includes the states of Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, a 25% increase in total arrests.

a 209% increase in total non-criminal arrests.

And this number reflects what Seattle is seeing as a national trend.

And if you can believe it, some cities like Miami and Philadelphia have an even higher percentage increase than what we're seeing here for the Seattle AOR.

We're also seeing a 117% increase in the change in total removals and a 29% increase in the change in total non-criminal removals.

The increase in the non-criminal arrests and non-criminal removals is something that we're seeing as a change from the previous administration, largely because of the executive order under Trump that has now given ICE much broader discretion to make these kinds of decisions.

May I?

Yes.

Can I just reinforce how scary all of this is?

Sure.

I mean, it is.

I'm not going to talk very much about this because I am fearful for a friend of mine who was born in Japan, is adopted by residents here in the United States.

His dad served in one of the internment camps during World War II.

is an American in every way, shape, or sense of the form, but because he was not born here, is a legal permanent resident, has six young kids, and his wife is scared to death that he is one day going to be one of those non-criminal removals.

And they are doing everything they can to contemplate him becoming a citizen, but concerned that even doing something like that raises your head up just enough that people pay attention.

It is terrifying.

So I'm sorry to bring us to that point, but I feel compelled to talk about this because sometimes I think we can sort of live in our liberal bubble here in the city of Seattle and assume that We're far enough away from the other Washington to be removed from this, but these statistics so much prove the opposite, and the lived experience of people that I know proves the opposite, and it is terrifying.

Yeah.

Cou, maybe you want to talk a little bit about the, no, I think you brought up, thank you for sharing that, and I think, It is an experience that a lot of people are having in this space where I think OIRA has done a very good job of talking about the importance of becoming a citizen because citizenship is the ultimate protection in this space.

It is clear through these statistics, and we're not outliers in terms of the national data, that even legal permanent resident status is, it used to be that being an LPR give you a sense of security and safety here.

And it's now under this administration becoming clear that that's not the case.

This morning, the Trump administration announced statistics or sort of caps around asylum numbers that are incredibly low.

And I think it's like the lowest rate of asylum and refugee status granted since 1982 or something like that.

And so we are, again, statuses that have historically been granted to immigrants that are consistent with federal law around asylee status, refugee status, and adoptee statuses are now all, I think, at risk.

So I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit about the uniqueness of the status of adoptees from foreign countries, and if you wanna sort of talk a little bit about that or add any texture to that component of the work that we may or may not be doing here.

Yeah, I think what you're addressing is that it used to feel a little bit more clear cut that if you were eligible to become a citizen, there was a pathway, right?

And now we advise that people actually seek legal advice if there's, any sense of complication to their situation.

And an example that we have about U.S. citizens now, the USCIS is going back and looking at cases where, and charges that applications were done fraudulently.

So there's a news report down in Texas about midwives who had created birth certificates.

And all those people who thought that they were born and had U.S. citizenship, are now being approached and their citizenship is being challenged by our federal government.

And so it just underscores for us the need of legal services across the spectrum and that because these are simple matters, it's an equity issue for us to be able to provide the services for people who can't afford them.

Yeah, I would just add to that that USCIS has also been instituting a new policy or getting ready to implement a policy where if somebody's application, for example, for asylum is unsuccessful, that they will issue a notice to appear automatically for somebody who could then be put into removal proceedings.

So that's clearly a chilling effect on people who want to do the right thing and come forward and become fully integrated members of our communities.

Thank you.

Given the information that's come out from the federal administration that individuals who may have used services that are legally available to them, like Apple Health for Kids, which is available to all children in the state regardless of citizenship, like food stamps, like free and reduced meals at school, Many of us have spent years trying to get people to enroll in programs so that there's more economic stability for all families, including those who may be in mixed status families and who have lawfully permanent children, citizen children, or not.

What I think Councilmember Johnson and the Chair have described has been true of many families and I'm interested to know how you, how the office is getting information out about additional support that we can be providing to folks given the news about the federal administration prosecuting people for accessing services that they're lawfully eligible to access to maintain enrollment in healthcare and food programs, for example.

Yeah, it's a really tough one because what we're hearing is that people are self-withdrawing from programs.

There was a Seattle Times story not that long ago, even a CNN story that drew on an example in Seattle.

So we've got a long educational effort to try to figure that out.

And what we're waiting on right now is the release of the public charge rules.

And we believe, we were hearing that that might be as soon as this Friday.

There's been a lot of kind of drum rolling about it.

But this week might be the week that we actually see the public charge rule published in the Federal Register.

And then that would put in place a series of things that could help us talk about it in more concrete terms, including some of the examples that you've given that if they're eligible, We encourage people to access those benefits.

And then there's discussion about lawsuits and other legal strategies to try to stall or delay or strike down these new provisions.

I would add that our partners in the Legal Defense Network are some of our best allies on this because they're looking at individual cases, they're hearing from people who are getting notices and so on, and they can talk to us about the families and the individuals who are affected.

And that feeds back into the information that we have that we can really clarify what is happening on the ground because sometimes there's a disjuncture between what's initially announced as a policy or what people are talking about as potentially a policy and what's actually happening in the cases.

So it's really important for us to be able to continue to work and get information shared back and forth without violating the privacy, the attorney-client privilege of any of these participants.

I mean, I think on this point, I think it's just really important for us to make sure that the language of the enabling ordinance for this funding continues to be flexible enough to allow us to be nimble and responsive to some of these emerging issues.

I think the language is designed to be flexible to allow us sort of a broad, ability to be able to invest in different types of strategies that are really going to make an impact in terms of folks who may need legal services in the removal context.

I think that's a really good point because the landscape is constantly shifting and there's no saying what the new challenge will be next month, right?

And so it's a, I think it's a smart way to think about how we are being responsive and delivering on our values of good government.

Yeah, and having sort of that That feedback loop that Catherine was talking about with service providers who were existing funding, I think is a critical component of being able to understand how we need to be nimble in this space to ensure that we're maximizing and leveraging limited taxpayer dollars in the way that is gonna create the greatest impact.

Thank you.

I think that that's very helpful.

I'm optimistic to know that the information is coming out on Friday and it sounds like you have a work plan in place to work with these key partners who I see behind you nodding in agreement that it's going to take trusted partners to make sure people know that they should still enroll in Apple health for kids and free and reduced meals and food stamps and WIC and you name it, these programs were created for economic stability for all residents.

And, you know, many of us have fought really hard to make sure that we're expanding programs here in our state and in our city so that it's not eligibility determined by citizenship that we're making these services available to more working families.

So thank you for that.

And maybe we can do a quick update.

when you do get the information on Friday so that we have a better sense on how to push that information out.

They've been in draft form for some time now, months, and Seattle is one of the cities that had a meeting with the Federal Office of Management and Budget and made known our concerns.

A number of other cities have met with OMB, and once the rules are published in the Federal Register, then there is a public comment period, which we intend to do.

And it's unclear how long that period will be.

It could be anywhere from 30 to 60 or 90 days.

Our sense and what we're hearing is that the Trump administration really wants to get this done before the midterms.

And so there's a political motivation behind this too.

And when the public comment period expires, our understanding is that's when legal strategies can kick in.

Yeah, I mean my sense is that those same political motivations will have their fingerprints all over the actual published rules in the register, so I don't, I suspect that they will not address in any sort of meaningful way concerns that the city of Seattle has expressed to OMB that I'm sure other like-minded cities have also expressed to OMB.

So I think we need to be prepared for an evaluation of those rules and we need to be prepared to educate folks who are going to be impacted negatively by those rules because it, you know, we have to make a decision as to whether how much we want to encourage people to sign up for these programs if they're going to feed directly into ICE enforcement.

Definitely do that.

So this is a quick mention about the purpose.

As you already know, it's to provide legal advice and representation to low-income King County residents and Seattle workers in immigration proceedings.

The city of Seattle invested a million of one-time funding, and King County invested $550,000 in one-time funding.

And I understand that part of the deliberations about the LDN's future are taking place now.

So the next slide we hear just have a few stories of who are we serving through this program.

So I'll call out just a couple here.

A Salvadoran mother of five US citizens detained earlier this year and now released on an ICE bond.

A Congolese mother and her two-year-old son from a family targeted for politically based persecution now granted asylum relief.

You heard during the public comment period about Russian residents, and these are all stories from the legal service providers, and these are actual cases that have been represented by LDN money.

And what strikes me about this is that these stories in no way reflect the narrative, the divisive and harmful narrative, I should say, that Trump has been pushing out about immigrants being criminals.

And so let's be real, these are folks who are struggling and the legal services that they're providing are helping them to continue to be residents and provide for their families.

And Catherine's gonna take over to explain what our current model is.

Yeah, so this program, of course, is new.

So we worked with the providers that were given awards in order to figure out what would be the best way to make sure that people were able to find out about the program and then move smoothly through.

So the program addresses both detained and non-detained adults and minors, typically unaccompanied minors, who typically are not detained, but maybe we have one minor who is detained in the program now.

So in the initial phase, there's an outreach and then an eligibility determination, a screening.

And that is done by a number of organizations that are community navigators that are reaching out to different demographic communities within our greater King County and Seattle area.

And then they determine whether the person either lives or works in Seattle or lives in King County, and if the person is a low-income person, meaning 200% of federal poverty level or below.

That's done by the community navigators and by the legal services providers directly during that first phase.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has a contract with the federal government for a legal orientation program at the Northwest Detention Center, so they provide that screening for people who are detained.

And then the screening of minors is typically done there, taken in through the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

And our contractor there, KIND, works with them, not funded by the Legal Defense Network, for the initial screening to make contact.

would use legal defense network screening to provide legal services.

So those legal services begin with intake and evaluation determining what is the status of the person and what is their form of relief that they might be able to pursue.

And we leave a lot of discretion to our legal services partners to determine which are the cases that make sense to pursue or which ones might be able to be just legal advice so somebody could defend themselves or go through proceedings on themselves or ones that are not likely to be able to be resolved.

And then they have targets for the number of intakes that they do and then also the number of cases that they represent that they then are reporting to us each month on how they're making their way towards those targets.

And then we're able to take the aggregate information without having people's personal information in order to understand are we reaching a variety of different people, are we, you know, what is the case status and so on in that way.

So the next slide shows a little bit about who it is that we have funded.

So as you can see, by far, the bulk of the money goes into the legal service provision itself.

And then we have a little bit over $100,000 that we designated for community navigators to ensure that it wasn't just people who already understand and haven't a knowledge of how to access legal services or what legal services are available from nonprofits in the community, but also those who might not yet know or who might be newly at risk because of changes in the rules from the federal government.

So we have some numbers now from we began delivering services in October of 2017 and through July of this year we are on target to achieve both our screening targets and our intake and direct representation targets.

We're actually ahead of that.

We have found that while our legal services providers have tried to some degree to parcel those out so that they can continue to take intakes throughout the program, two of our legal services providers, Kind and Colectiva, as subcontractor to Northwest Immigrant Rights Project or NORP, have reached their capacity and so currently while they continue to prosecute the cases that they've been working or provide defense on the cases that they've already taken on and they continue to be part of Legal Defense Network and understand, you know, discussing cases and policies and so on, only NERP is still able to take cases additional cases with legal defense network funding.

And we know that the demand continues to be very high, very strong as the year continues.

Of the people who are receiving direct representation, you can see it's 261 to date.

There's shown here the top five forms of relief that are being pursued.

And you can see juvenile status is a very high one there.

The U visa, of course, is for people who are victims of abuse and other violence.

So moving on to just our demographics generally, we have 62 countries of origin that are represented.

And you can see the distribution by region there as well.

We have found that emerging changes, again, in policy, for example, temporary protective status decisions, when that's terminated, that's led to bumps in some of what we see represented here.

And I'll say about these statistics, we're still learning about whether they track with cases overall who's in our program.

We find that they generally do, but it's dynamic because of these changes within what we're seeing, who's getting picked up.

So for example, there tend to be fewer females who are put into removal proceedings historically because perhaps because a lot of times those females were seen as caregivers and that distinction is becoming less prominent so that we're seeing that more females are being picked up as well.

I think, did you have a question, Council Member Mosqueda?

So on this slide that we're on right now, can you remind me, do we have information about the demographics of income?

Everyone who's eligible for this program is, so of that 569 people who've received legal advice or representation is under 200% of poverty.

But we don't break it down between 100, 150, 200. Okay.

And then on the previous slide, given the dates that are reflected here, perhaps it's not reflective of the individuals that were served, but wasn't there just an announcement made that the federal administration has decided to change its approach towards serving those who are survivors of domestic violence?

I see nods behind you.

So I guess what I would be interested in as we go forward, how that decision may impact our ability to serve folks.

And I don't know all the details, but I'm wondering if at some point we can get more information about how that decision may impact this population that we previously served, and if it's raising any barriers for us in the future, and then maybe what alternatives exist.

I think this gets back to a previous point, which is building a model that's responsive.

And in this model that Catherine just outlined, we rely on the decision and the expertise of the lawyers about which cases have the best chance of winning and which cases to take on.

And we expect that to hold true and that serve us well, even as the landscape changes.

Yes, I think we designed this model in a way that really...

I think it would still be, I think, worth, I think your point is, how do we loop back that we either have enough discretion or not too much, or that we're still even within that model of discretion, able to identify where there might be gaps to figure out if there's a different approach that we could take.

Did I understand your concern correctly?

Okay.

So what have we learned?

There's a lot of things that we've learned in these first 10 months.

One is that outreach continues to be something that we need to work on.

And we have a situation in Washington state where there are smaller number of legal service providers than in other states.

So a lot of community members know that they can go directly to NERP or Colectiva or KIND.

And so it's really tested our first assumption of the community navigator model.

And so we need to revisit what that looks like should there be a continuing LDM.

Language access, as you saw, 62 countries, that presents a significant challenge in terms of being able to represent people at every step of the case spectrum, from eligibility, screening, to intakes, to direct representation in court.

And so we're continuing to look for ways that leverage what already exists within organizations, but also build on what is clearly a growing need for interpreters and other language services.

And then legal services, this is kind of a duh thing, but I thought it would be, you know, really important just to even put the obvious on the board, which is given the current climate, we're going to see continuing need in the foreseeable future for legal services.

So, of course, this is the Legal Defense Network, and so you might be surprised to see some of these other pieces here, mental health services, case management, and resource referrals, but we continue to hear from our partners that these are the services that are needed to keep people stable and to be able to participate in their own defense.

About half of the cases our partners report that say that there's some need for either a mental health evaluation in order to help them make their case about staying or even just to keep them engaged in the process to make sure that somebody is able to testify, make a statement against their own removal.

And so that can be ongoing services, but it's certainly the need for evaluations in detention and elsewhere for people, a population that of course is highly traumatized in some cases and under a great deal of stress.

Post-conviction relief is something that we've seen a greater need for because Trump no longer honors agreements that we have with other nations that refugees from those countries who have been in the US for a long time and who have been adjudicated for whatever criminal behavior that they may have had in the past, just as a permanent resident or a citizen would be in our country, was not previously subject to return to their country, a country which they perhaps have never spent any appreciable time in.

Now those agreements are not being honored, so people need to revisit their criminal histories and be able to get post-conviction relief in order to be able to proceed with fighting their removal proceedings.

Case management and resource referrals do include all kinds of things.

For example, housing stability.

This is a highly vulnerable population that really struggles to be able to continue to, while they're in court proceedings, be able to live their lives, continue to be productive working members of our communities, and to be able to raise their children and so on.

And so those resource referrals are something that aren't typically able to be funded, but we see this as the opportunity to at least encounter those people and see how they can be connected to other resources in our community.

And so the outlook after this one-time funding expires at the end of this year is a partnership with King County.

They have announced that some of the investments through the seniors, veterans, and human services levy will go towards immigrant legal services.

It's not clear to us how much at this point.

I think they're in the midst of deliberating these decisions.

But the money is there for the life of the levy from 2019 to 2023. And capacity and scale, there's growing need and the level of investment that we need is going to need to at least try to, if we're not able to, then our best attempt at meeting those needs.

And then lastly...

Could I just add to that, Ku?

One of the things that we need to consider as this goes on is that these cases don't end in a few months.

Often they last two or three years.

So as we're working with our legal services providers, they're typically committed once they start representing somebody, it would take a withdrawal that the immigration court judge would have to allow for them to withdraw from the case.

So they're expecting to continue on serving and representing these folks for these long procedures.

So as we continue, if we were to continue to invest in this program, we would have to do that with the knowledge that our partners are continuing to hold the cases that they currently have and then would need to add capacity if they were to add new cases.

And the Seattle, the leadership role that we've played in this region and being the first to establish immigrant legal services, We've inspired other municipalities.

Tacoma comes as an example.

And then the state itself, this last legislative session, approved a million dollars, actually 1.3.

The governor later added another $300,000 for a legal defense fund for the statewide services.

And the entirety of that contract went to NERP.

So that's kind of...

Didn't the Port of Seattle do something recently?

I thought I heard that Commissioner Kalkins is rolling up something or rolled out something.

They just had a press conference yesterday with One America and World Relief where they announced a citizenship campaign under a campaign called New Americans Campaign.

And it is a partnership between the three entities to promote citizenship.

And there will be PSAs from Commissioner Gregoire and Commissioner Calkins.

played at terminals and I think the international terminals and then World Relief staff would be able to access gates with refugee arrivals to help them get to baggage and figure out where their bags are and those kinds of things that as you can imagine can be a little bit scary.

Yeah.

On the capacity and scale point, this will be like the thank you questions piece.

I think that's where my biggest concern is, is that we have some wonderful legal service provider organizations that qualify for funding from the city to provide these services and to be part of legal defense network.

But I think we have to have a, a really transparent, honest conversation with our legal services community about how we're going to address the capacity issues related to relative to the need in the community for these services and sort of figuring out how to take this to scale is, I think that's going to be our challenge for the next year.

So do you have any initial thoughts on how to approach that particular issue?

Not at the moment, but I can say that where we're at in terms of capacity for legal services sits along a broad spectrum.

There are a lot of organizations.

that want to be able to provide legal services, but their first step is getting accreditation, for example, from the Office of Legal Assistance Programs.

It's a DOJ function, U.S.

Department of Justice function.

And then that's, to me, it sits along a parallel track with organizations who have a staff attorney that can provide the kind of case assistance that we're seeing with established organizations like NERP Colectiva more newly in the few years, and Kind is another very established organization.

And we're hearing from organizations like the West African Community Council, which just brought on a staff attorney recently.

that I'm pretty sure would want to respond to an RFP from the city about legal defense resources.

So the effort is there, it just takes a long time for organizations to go through these steps to a place where they can be responsive to an RFP.

I don't know if you have anything else to Catherine.

I would only say that, of course, you know, we're always trying to be a good partner to different size organizations and know that having some clarity to them about what we're able to support and that they will be able to have discretion spending, it allows them to make the investments to do hiring and so on, knowing that the city will be there as a partner to them.

And then the only other thing I would add is capacity building has just never been something that municipalities are good at, both because of the constraints of our contracting models and that we have performance measures that we have to demonstrate and are sometimes on the front pages of the Seattle Times.

And so bringing those things together can be a challenge.

And though we recognize that there is a desire, we also have to balance it with these accountabilities that taxpayers expect of us.

Any other questions or comments, colleagues?

Thank you.

Well, thank you both for the update.

I think this update is timely considering we're about to embark on our budget process and we only have funding for this program through the end of the year.

I did have an opportunity to meet with Mayor Dorgan this morning and heard some promising news about the future of legal defense networks.

I'm excited about that and excited to continue to work with you all and Mayor Durkin on resolving any lingering issues related to how King County will continue to be a partner in this work.

And for those legal service providers who are in the audience, I want to give you all a special thank you for being here.

for really being the ones who are delivering the service and looping back information to us to make sure that we're still getting it right and that we continue to improve on the model to make sure that you all are able to use the dollars in the way that is most flexible and most beneficial to those that we're asking you to help.

I know that some of these cases can be some of the harder ones, and so I really sincerely appreciate all the work you all are doing.

It's not easy work, and it oftentimes feels like we are constantly working against the tide.

So I really appreciate you all continuing to do the good work.

It really makes a huge difference for these 261 people and their families to be able to continue to stay here.

So thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We'll talk soon.

Okay, we are going to move on to our last agenda item, which is the Workforce Equity Accountability Report update.

So if you are here to speak on this agenda item, I invite you to join us at the table while Cody reads it into the record.

Agenda item five, Workforce Equity Accountability Report update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Cody.

I almost didn't recognize you with your hair.

It's so long.

That's a compliment, by the way.

Hello.

a full table.

So we'll go ahead and start with a round of introductions.

And then, Cody, who's going to kick us off?

Are we going to hand it all?

OK.

I wasn't sure if, Patricia, you wanted to make some contextual comments before we got started.

if you'd like me to.

Yeah, so why don't we do that?

Why don't we do a round of introductions, and then Patricia, you can give us some sort of context setting, and then we'll go ahead and dig into the presentation.

Great.

Patricia Lee, Council of Central Staff.

Felicia Caldwell, Workforce Equity Director, Department of Human Resources.

Bailey Hinckley, Workforce Equity Program Manager at CHR.

And relatively new mom.

Yes.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

Joseph Russell, Economics and Revenue Team, City Budget Office.

Andrea Ramirez, Equity Training and Leadership Development Advisor within SDHR.

I'm Lauren O'Tone.

I'm the Strategic Advisor on Gender Justice in the Office for Civil Rights.

Sean Van Eyck, Professional and Technical Employees, Local 17.

Amy Bowles, Professional and Technical Employees, Local 17. I was also a member of the Anti-Harassment IDT.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Great.

Thank you so much for being here.

OK, Patricia, you want to remind us of why we're doing this update?

Anything else you'd like to add?

Absolutely.

This has been a long, long journey, long road and a combination of many efforts that the council has been interested both in seeing how the city can best serve its employees through their human service, human resource services, how to improve the both pay and opportunities for women and people of color in the city, how to make sure we look at our services, our programs within the city and our employees with the racial and social justice equity lens, and how to look at the benefits that would best serve employees as they come to work every day and try to serve the people of Seattle.

So I know there's been a gender justice project.

There's been a workforce equity project.

There's been a pay equity issue.

There's been work on apprenticeship.

And I think this has all been brought together in one strategic plan that the council has asked for an annual update on.

Thank you, Patricia.

All right, OK.

And with that, I want to do just a really quick background.

We'll talk about data analysis results and then an update on the workforce equity strategies.

So background really quickly is that with the Race and Social Justice Initiative in 2004, there was created a Workforce Equity Planning and Advisory Committee in 2009 to address workforce equity issues, as opposed to the RSJ, which was more externally focused.

That initial group resulted in some changes to some of the personnel rules.

And then in July 2016, after the gender pay equity study in the first paid parental leave was granted, The Seattle Department of Human Resources with the Seattle Office of Civil Rights created the Workforce Equity Strategic Plan.

And that was both in combination with the mayor's office and council.

And the plan committed to SDHR delivering an annual update report.

which is where we are today.

And just a really quick review of how that plan came into place, we reviewed 11 employers that led on workforce equity, we held 18 listening sessions with over 250 employees, we had an employee survey that had more than 4,400 responses, and we did leadership interviews with the executive office, council, department heads, and labor.

We came up with a definition of workforce equity, which you see here.

And I want to go over it just a little bit, because when we came up with the definition, we did not talk about how we were defining some of these terms.

We talk about when the workforce is inclusive of people of color.

We start with that because we lead with race in the city with the RSJ initiative and also include other marginalized and underrepresented groups.

The rate representative of the greater Seattle area we defined as King County.

There were a couple of reasons for that and that is the reality of people of color moving out of the city.

and that we wanted to capture a greater Seattle area.

Our employees live outside the city.

Some of the services that we provide are to people who are not residents of the city of Seattle.

So we use that larger group.

And then we talked about at all levels of city employment.

And we did not discuss how we would look at all levels of city employment.

And we will give you a couple of slides about that in just a minute.

And then we talked about where the definition of how we would measure success, the second half of that, which talks about attraction, selection, participation, and retention.

And we looked at ways to measure that.

Attraction, of course, being recruitment, selection, the hiring process.

Participation includes everything.

Promotions, performance management, coaching, development, mentoring, all of those kinds of things.

And then retention, of course, the people we want to keep.

because they do a good job.

And then in the next four slides, we're going to have Joe Russell give you some information about our baseline results for the statistics.

Sure.

Thanks, Felicia.

So I'm going to walk us through the next four slides, which are all graphs.

They are our attempt to put some measurement around the workforce equity definition that Felicia just outlined.

So and again, this is meant to be something of a baseline for the first.

This is our first annual update.

So this is meant to be baseline statistics, kind of a high level barometer or report card on where we stand now as a city.

particularly with reference to the first half of the definition, the representation of groups at all levels of the city.

So the first slide here, slide five, is showing us just a binary race breakout of the city.

So it is just people of color, white.

And it is showing, so on the left, you'll see, and this is the format that all four of these graphs will take, but on the left you'll see the overall city workforce, broken out by POC and white.

And then you see the top 25% of supervisors.

And then you'll see on the far right the top 25% of wage earners.

So when we say all levels, we've broken that in two different lenses, we're calling them, supervisors and wage earners.

What the takeaway from this slide is that we are representative of people of color in the overall workforce.

And you can note that by seeing that we are on the far left, 39.4% POC as a workforce.

And you can see those horizontal bars there.

We have included the city of Seattle as just the city proper as that dotted horizontal.

We've also included the King County as that solid bar horizontal.

And as Felicia said, we have defined our sort of goalpost, if you will, as the county for the reasons she outlined.

And so on the far left, you can see we are as a city, 39.4% people of color.

That is greater than the county, which is 37.8% people of color.

But however, at the top levels of employment, we are underrepresenting under representative of people of color.

So you can see that we are, the top level of supervisors is 33.4% people of color, and the top level of wage earners is 31% people of color.

So I should, and then, Moving forward to the next slide, this one is a little busier because what we've done is essentially broken down that POC bar into the different race categories, the seven race categories that we can see within our HR database system.

And I've added a call out here just to help you synthesize some of the takeaways here that we can see that actually Hispanics are the, of all the race categories, Hispanics are the most underrepresented at the city overall.

and at the highest levels of city employment.

So Hispanics are 9.3% of the King County population, but, for example, just 4.2% of the top level of wage earners.

And so you can see we've, again, included the mark for each race category, the mark for King County's representation, and the mark for the city of Seattle as that small circle.

And, Joe, can you explain the representation as opposed to affirmative action stats?

Yes, so Felicia wants me to note here that this is a little bit different than measuring utilization of a locally available labor force, which is something the city has done recently.

In March 2015, we contracted with DCI consultants to do a measurement of pay equity and utilization of locally available labor pools.

This is a bit of a higher level view, saying that instead of looking just at are we representative of locally available labor pools, we would like to be representative of the city overall at these sort of broad categories of the levels of our workforce.

So that means that regardless of whether or not these ethnic or racial demographics are.

part of the specific labor pool, we're still comparing the numbers of our employees and the demographics of those employees to just the general population as opposed to a labor sector.

Correct.

So for example, we may be representative of the locally available labor pool of attorneys in Seattle, for example.

But what we're saying is that- That's not necessarily something to aspire to.

Exactly.

What the workforce equity initiative is saying is that those locally available labor pools are representative of barriers to opportunity in general.

Because there's barriers to education and other reasons that those labor pools are not representative of the overall population.

So we're saying that we should aspire, and this is aspirational obviously, but we're saying that we should aspire to something greater as a city than just being representative of the locally available labor pools.

that do reflect those historical barriers.

So I do want to note that.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Johnson.

Joe, I appreciate that these are baseline results which we're going to use to evaluate our performance in future years, but I just want to make sure that I understand what is probably the craziest bar chart that I've ever witnessed.

There's a lot there, yeah.

This is intense.

I'm going to try, as a pretty OK data nerd, to make sure that I got this right.

So I'm going to pick on one of our categories.

So if you look sort of horizontally across the bar charts, two or more races is sort of the, I'm going to call it kind of a dark gray color.

Yeah, the far right.

And what the circle, the open circle dot is the percentage of people within the city of Seattle that the census identifies are two or more races, so 5.6%.

The bar below that, the dark blue sort of short bar, the Tetris kind of looking, Tetris?

No, what's the paddle?

Yeah, something like that.

5.1% as reported by the census of the percentage of people within King County that are two or more races.

And then 3.3% of our city employees Identify as two or more races correct, and then we move down those bar charts and the percentage of people that represent as having been born with two or more races in King County and Seattle doesn't change, so those open circles and the dotted line don't change, but the numbers of supervisors and wage earners change and that number gets lower.

So what we're trying to say there is we have work to do in each of those three categories to at least get up to what you defined as sort of our target goal, which is the percentage of in King County as sort of our goal and objective.

We have work to do in this category and it looks like in almost every category across the board in order to get to our goal.

Yeah, we tried to kind of call out on the right there with a couple of text bullets what the larger takeaways are.

So Hispanics were the most underrepresented across the city and at the highest levels of our workforce.

But we also call out that Asians and those reporting multiple races are also underrepresented at top levels of supervisors particularly.

The report itself goes into a little more, goes into some data tables that do try to break out the statistical significance of some of these differences.

And so I would encourage you to take a look at the text there that does put it into words.

I realize this is a lot of data to look at on one chart.

So we do break it out in sort of high level takeaways in the report.

But it does look like we've done a good job of recruiting and retaining black or African American employees vis-a-vis our goals and objectives.

So if there's a positive story here, it's that the city's recruitment and retention.

Sure, yeah, we are very well represented with black or African American population.

And some of this is just historical legacies of what our labor force looks like.

For example, Hispanics are a relatively newer It's a very fast growing demographic in King County.

It is the fastest growing demographic over the last decade.

So that has something to do with why we're under representative of Hispanics in our larger area.

Because we are a relatively older and longer tenured labor force with a relatively low turnover rate.

And so we are going to be somewhat slow reacting to changing demographics in our area.

So that is partly the explanation.

So.

So I'm going to take a slightly different take on the summary that she just provided to Council Member Johnson, because I think it's true for this slide and the slide that's coming on page seven.

While I think the chart makes it clear that our problem isn't necessarily retaining individuals and promoting them, I think what we see is that the problem is at the point of hire.

And we haven't, and tell me if you think this is wrong or you disagree, that we haven't done an intentional effort to try to make sure that along the wage scale and at every point of hire that we are actively recruiting folks to fill roles that could be more reflective of the community.

That's just a slightly different take on what you just said, which was that we're doing an okay job at retaining.

Our workforce doesn't turn over very often.

But when it does, it doesn't appear to me that we're doing, active outreach and and promoting of positions to underrepresented communities and obviously we all have I 200 we all have to we all have to my men and The restraints that have been put on us, but I that is my take from the slides that I see so feel free to agree Yeah, please

So I think that at some level you are correct, that we have not done the best job of actually going out and recruiting specific groups at very specific levels.

Part of that is the way we have kept the data in the past, prior to this, with the Affirmative Action Plan, it was either an overall, here are the four or, I'm sorry, six groups that Affirmative Action fell into.

And so you had a really broad category and not a lot to pinpoint where you were at.

Or you had it split out by classifications, which meant it was thousands of lines that you're looking at.

I think part of our reason for doing this was to say, OK, we are now able to truly focus on where we think there are issues.

And therefore, what kind of plans can we put in place to go out and do some more targeted recruitment?

While it's true that the Latinx community may be growing faster in the Seattle area and King County, when I look back at the affirmative action stats that we last did, which were now 20 months ago worth of data, there was still significant underrepresentations or underutilizations in Latinx populations.

So it is in fact a situation where we have departments who go out and recruit versus a citywide recruitment and a lot of that disperse effort means that you're either going after the same people or there's not someone in your department who is even dedicated to recruitment and so some of that was also not happening.

Part of what we're trying to do in this is one of the strategies is targeted recruitment.

It is bringing all those recruiters together to talk about how we as a city can go out and recruit better.

And recognizing what those different areas are that we really need to target.

I appreciate that.

I think that will probably fold into much of what we would like to focus on, which is what is the systemic citywide approach to all these issues.

Amy mentioned her work on the IDT, and I think what we saw there, too, is the response in departments completely varied depending on who was in charge and what values individuals brought.

That's not a system-wide approach.

It's not a public policy solution.

So I appreciate you bringing it back to that and look forward to working with you on not just promotion and retention, but outreach and recruitment.

Absolutely.

The other thing I would just say, since I have the mic, if I might, Madam Chair, is in every one of these slides where we're looking at the top 25% of wage earners, obviously we see disparities there.

And we shouldn't, we should take a moment to pause and reflect on those disparities.

I think it would even be more grave if we looked at the top 10% or the top 5%, which I think might be a more reflective analysis of the type of disparities that we have along race and ethnicity lines.

And I assume that data is available.

If we could have that pulled at a later date, that would be much appreciated.

I'm not sure if you can hear me.

keep it from being overwhelming.

But, because we do, the report shows.

You always use your fancy data terms.

Deciles.

Fours instead of tenths.

Four levels.

To make it even easier.

Thank you.

We split the workforce into four levels instead of 10 levels to keep it sort of digestible.

But you're right, we may see different results if we took the top 10% instead of the top 25%.

Sean, did you want to add something?

Yeah, I would just add that I'd be curious to know if we could slice the data based on base salary versus overtime.

Because we see an inequity in the way overtime is allocated in various departments.

Is this just base salary or overtime?

This is base salary.

This is just base salary.

Okay, so that's helpful to know.

Right, this is not all of it.

Do we have the data sliced based on overtime?

It has been asked, Seattle Times has written an article kind of around this topic of overtime and how demographically it splits out.

So we have taken a look at that.

We haven't formally presented those, but we have sliced up that data at one point, yeah.

It isn't put into charts or anything like this as yet.

And sometimes we ask for the data without police and fire and city light because they tend to skew it.

So you can run it both with those three departments and then without it.

Skew it wider?

because they are probably the top wage earners, so that when you do a salary run, you sometimes skew your salaries because of City Light and SPD and SFD.

I think what you're saying, just to be really clear, is that it skews the citywide numbers, but that doesn't mean that we aren't looking at disparities and trends within those departments.

Right, but you might want to see in those three largest departments who your top, what happens when you take the top 25% of that department.

Right, got it.

Is that clear, Joe?

I have two more graphs to get through here, and I do want to turn it back to Felicia.

This next slide is binary gender, male, female.

does approach some of what Patricia just mentioned.

The overall, you can see again, the far left is the overall labor force.

You can see that we are very under representative of women and this does have to do with our largest departments having overwhelmingly male workforces, mostly due to the occupations being overwhelmingly male occupations.

So our largest five departments are collectively about 30.7% female.

If you take all the other smaller departments after that, it's basically at parity, which doesn't mean that every department is is at parity, but collectively they are about 50-50.

So that suggests why we have an overall gender imbalance.

You can see going from left to right, the middle bar shows you, again, the top 25% of supervisors.

And that shows you that, not surprisingly, women are underrepresented relative to the county in that level of our labor force.

We've added the red dash to show you that they are somewhat underrepresented in that top level of supervisors, even relative to their overall representation in the labor force.

And the same is true among wage earners.

You can see that women are 33.8% of the top quartile of wage earners.

And again, that's under representative of the county, but also slightly lower than the 38.6% of all employees that they make up.

Thank you madam chair, I'd be interested in hearing the Any thoughts or summary from the folks who are from PTE?

Especially because yes, we we recognize that Seattle City Light does have disparity in terms of number of individuals hired who are identifying as male versus female, but I think that that's part of the Problem that we haven't yet addressed how to get more representation into these good living wage jobs and so I have city light in my Department my committee and part of what I'm very interested in especially with the hiring of a new general manager is is how we get greater representation into these line workers, line work positions that are good living wage jobs that maybe historically had been seen as more dominated by male workers.

But I think this is part of the issue.

So I don't know if you have any additional comments, if we might ask them specifically to the comment that was made or the second bullet here.

Maybe it's not surprising, but it is still a problem, is it not?

So maybe before we have you all answer that question, you can explain to the viewing public what PTE is and maybe just talk about sort of part of the reason I wanted you all at the table is because you are the union that represents a significant sector, you know, significant number of our City of Seattle employees, so perhaps just give a little introduction to the viewing public about who PTE is and who you all represent, and then we can dive into the specific question.

Sounds great.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today and to join you all at the table to have this very important discussion.

Professional and Technical Employees Local 17, PTE 17 for short, represents 9,000 public sector employees in the state of Washington as well as the city of Portland.

And we up in the city of Seattle represent almost 3,000 employees.

and professional and technical classifications.

And I personally, as a union representative, represent about 700 members in Seattle City Light, and also a handful of other members throughout other departments at the city.

And Sean Van Eyck, who is sitting to my right, is also a union representative at PTE Local 17, and he also represents members in SDOT, SDCI, and other departments throughout the city.

So the circumstances at Seattle City Light also caused me great concern, and I was thinking about some of the points that Councilmember Mosqueda just raised.

And although it may not be surprising, we are just at the precipice of starting to address and try to remedy this issue and try to make Seattle City Light, for example, be a place where women and people of color not only feel safe once they are employed at Seattle City Light, bring out issues about harassment and discrimination, but also feel like they have promotional opportunities and professional development opportunities to go into supervisory positions if that's what they so choose and want to do.

And frontline is also definitely something that is lacking representation of women and people of color.

And Labor at PT Local 17, we are looking forward to further partnerships with the City of Seattle and with SDHR to try to really problem solve in a creative fashion, a collaborative fashion on how to address these issues.

Do you want to add anything else, Sean?

No, I think she stated it as well as I could.

Probably better.

Smart move, Sean.

Okay, did that get your, okay.

Let's go ahead and through.

So our last.

And feel free to chime in whenever you want.

Thank you.

Yes, please.

Our last graph shows a cross section of race and gender.

So we've created four groupings essentially.

The light blue shows women of color.

The dark blue is men of color.

The light green is white women and the dark green is white men.

So what this shows is essentially the takeaways here are that women again are underrepresented in the overall labor force and we can see that here and actually white women are the most underrepresented in the overall labor force.

But really, as you move from left to right, you can see that it is women of color who are the most underrepresented at the highest levels of our labor force.

So you can see that in how the light green bar, which is white women, ticks upward slightly as you move from left to right.

So that suggests that white women are actually slightly more likely to be found in the top levels of employment than anywhere else.

in the city, whereas women of color are least likely to be found in those top levels of employment.

So you can see that, for example, the light blue bars are significantly below the regional representation as you move from supervisors and then even more so with wage earners.

So that, unless there's questions there, that wraps up our look at our kind of baseline statistics on where we stand with representation in the city relative to the larger population.

And so I'll turn it back to Felicia to say a little bit more about what the Workforce Equity Initiative is doing about this.

Great.

Any additional questions about that?

Okay.

I think obviously the same concerns that we've been talking about exist and layer onto that one.

But I appreciate understanding at least where we're at now as a baseline.

It really, I think, provides us an opportunity to diagnose and identify strategies to be able to move forward and improve those numbers and reverse some of the trends.

Felicia?

Okay, so just really briefly, when we put together the plan, there were platform strategies that primarily mean culture change and workforce investment strategies that we tried to do strategies that help the most amount of people as possible, even though some of it is somewhat targeted.

So strategies that were resourced in 2017, and I'm just going to quickly tell you where we are in these.

The training to reduce bias in employment decisions, part one has been completed.

Part two is being worked on now to actually provide to all supervisors and managers and anyone who is connected with the hiring process in the city which will be rolled out next year with people who have been trained citywide to have race-based conversations because we want to make sure that they can handle some of these conversations.

The E3 performance management system at this point in time has been launched and is being utilized by 2,800 employees.

What we've learned from that so far, which has been really interesting, is that using the cornerstone system and being able to track this, we have found that for the categories of does not meet expectations or fully performing, there is really no difference in race in terms of how people are being rated.

But when it comes to exceeds expectation, whites and Asians are rated, about 20% of whites and 20% of Asians are being rated at the exceeds expectation.

All other people of color are ranging between 8% and 10%.

When you think about that and what that means for promotions, that there may be issues.

We don't know yet.

We have not gone back and crossed those with who's actually rating them or any of those things.

But this was surprising information that we were able to see right away by using our new system.

So we hope to roll that out to more people in the city in the coming two years.

Consolidated Human Resources, we've kind of taken that offline from the Workforce Equity Plan and saying that's a different report and it will be made to council later in the year, as I understand, because we're still trying to figure out what we're doing with that.

Having said that, there are 14 departments who receive full HR services from SDHR.

And we've had many examples of success in that.

But as I said, we are currently reassessing those strategies.

The Workforce Equity Program Manager, that was a resourced position.

And with the intent of working on leadership expectations and accountability plan, which the Workforce Equity Planning and Advisory Committee has been doing, we've had two or three versions of it.

Actually, we're probably up to 20 versions at this point.

But we actually had it adopted by Multnomah County in Oregon, although we have not adopted it yet at the city.

They thought it was great.

And then, of course, working with all of the council resolution items.

And so, we will talk a little bit more about that on another page.

For the workforce investment strategies that were resourced paid parental leave, we've had 384 employees use this, 27% female, 73% male as of March 2018. Probably not what we expected initially.

And I should get on the paid parental leave paper only I so the caveat for that is You have to remember that most of the people who make sure they coded correctly are the general fund departments who need to get the money from the Hired, what's the name of it?

I'm losing the word.

Hiring behind them when they're gone.

Backfill.

Backfill.

So if you're in a department that actually has permit fees or rate payers, since they're not going to get any money, they're probably not as careful to make sure.

And they may also not do backfills as often.

So fire is a department that always has to do backfills because people aren't there.

So they spend a lot of money, and we see a lot of them in the data.

Anything else?

I mean, I think on this point, I'm just gonna chime in here, is that, you know, I don't think that it's a bad trend to see more men using paid parental leave, and so I don't want to create the impression that, you know, there's an issue with utilization because all of the literature does talk about how encouraging all genders to utilize paid parental leave and in fact having those who identify as male using paid parental leave actually, for whatever reason, normalizes it and creates a culture within the workplace that then encourages more women to use paid parental leave.

So I think it's trending in the way that signals to me will begin to see some cultural shifts in that number.

No, I'm sorry if I implied that it was a bad thing.

I did not think it was a bad thing.

We were just kind of surprised when we first got the numbers.

You were surprised that it was so large.

Yeah, such a big gap.

If I could ask just a really quick question.

I'm wondering if there's any breakout in this data set because there's a drawdown component to accessing those last four weeks.

If there's an interplay between the demographics data we're seeing here and that drawdown component or this is just capturing anyone who grabs the first eight weeks.

The report does break out 2016 versus 2017 because the drawdown component of parental leave didn't become active until 2017. And so by separating those two years, you can kind of see potentially what effect that had.

We don't call that out per se, but that's the reason that we actually separated the data into those two years.

So you could kind of see how things change.

And that's in the report?

That is in the report, yes.

Do you know where in the report is?

Because it's like 156 pages.

Yeah, most of those tables are in the appendix, and I.

Is it figure 35?

Parental leave used by department 2016 events.

Figure 36, paid parental leave used by department 2017 events.

Let's see.

I am now looking at appendix I.

Page 118?

There is one table in the body of the report, and that may be what, okay, yeah.

So if you're looking all the way in the appendix, page 118 is figure 34, and that is paid parental leave statistics, and you can see that we have it broken out by 2016 events and 2017 events.

And so 2017 was the beginning of the additional four-week policy that allowed for four more weeks, but it was on the condition of having leave balances for sick and vacation below a certain level.

So that's the drawdown component that you were referring to.

So you can see them broken out there.

I would have to stare at this for another minute to give you any high-level takeaways, but that is the relevant table I would look at.

So page 118.

Correct.

Of the report.

Okay.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I apologize I don't have the full report in front of me.

Can you remind us if in the investment strategies you also looked at child care, the affordability of child care, flexible schedules, remote working, any of those types of investments?

So I can, yes, there are some that we did not continue to pursue.

Childcare was one of them.

It did not rate very high on the survey results from our employees.

And so in terms of strategizing and the limited resources that the city has in prioritizing, we did not pursue childcare affordability in the initial strategic.

Just gonna make a little editorial note on that.

As we think about creating more representative workforce, both in terms of race and ethnicity and gender, And as we look at the aging workforce in Seattle, this is definitely a priority area that I know a lot of us on council share We have the most expensive child care in the country in Seattle so this is definitely an issue that I think both relates to recruitment and retention and promotion I guess I'm not surprised that it didn't rate so high.

If we think about who we want to recruit and the type of workforce that we hope is reflective of our community, I know it would be representative among that type of broader analysis.

So, in the future, I think it's one of the major issues we'll be looking at.

So, I mean, I think when we initially looked at what to prioritize You know me well enough to know that I was pushing for child care in the beginning.

And unfortunately, we had limited resources at the time.

And it became clear to us that paid parental and family leave was a higher priority for our existing workforce in terms of benefits that they wanted to see come to fruition right away.

And it doesn't mean that we are going to let go of the realities of childcare access and needs for perhaps a smaller portion of our existing workforce because our existing workforce skews male and We know that women are the ones who carry the greater burden of childcare and being the primary care provider in their families, but also because our workforce, more importantly, skews very old.

No offense, no offense to all of our lovely City of Seattle employees, but they are not childbearing age, most of them.

But I think that your point around recruitment and how this could play into improving upon our ability to be competitive, attractive employer, particularly as we continue to compete with other comparable cities who are very competitive right now in a lot of these areas.

I think it is absolutely an important thing to bring up again and evaluate again as part of The city of Seattle's desire to continue to be competitive within this market in various labor markets.

Councilmember Johnson?

Just another echoing in support of that comment and interested in adding one more small thing to the list of Projects to be considered for the future madam chair, and that's allowance for expansion of our employee benefits to include in vitro fertilization some of the most heart-wrenching emails that I get from existing city staff members are around that particular part of their lives where they may be struggling to have children and There are frustration that many of their friends, colleagues, and, you know, friends of friends work in places where IVF is either fully covered or at least partially covered, but we are not a city that allows for that as part of our benefits package is something that I hear from folks.

that would be interested in us pursuing as part of our next round of strategies.

Sean, did you have something to add?

Yeah, just to follow up on that.

I actually am one of the labor partners on the health care committee that manages our health care fund.

And last month, as we do every year, we review existing coverage and vote to change, make changes to that.

And we have historically had the lowest options with a lifetime cap of $2,000 for treatment for infertility.

And it's focused primarily on diagnosing underlying medical conditions that lead to that.

We did just vote to increase that to a Tier 2 for 2019 that will expand the, it'll raise the lifetime cap to $10,000 and will offer an expanded range of treatments.

We had on the table a third option which was the top tier that was presented that included in vitro and fertilization, but we did not vote to go there this year, partly because unlike last year, the rate increase, last year's rate increase was only 2%, or a little less than 2%.

This year, the rate increase jumped to 15%, and so we were being fiscally conservative with our approach, but it'll definitely be something that'll be brought back to the floor next year.

Thank you.

Okay, we have five minutes.

Okay, in five minutes.

So Paid Family Care Leave, we've had 156 employees use this, 64% female, 36% male as of March, which shouldn't be surprising.

Employment Pathways, that included the green jobs.

That Employment Pathways IDT has recommendations due at the end of this year, and so they will be presenting at the end of this year their recommendations for going forward.

Of course, they've been looking at entry-level jobs, city resource training programs, ways to promote upward mobility and success, and not only green jobs, but other jobs within the city and a number of other things.

And I won't go into that long list because they're going to have another full report.

A little later.

Additional strategies, of course, the anti-harassment IDT.

We are, at this point, basically working with the mayor's office to look at what is going to be the work plan out of those recommendations.

There were many, many recommendations.

The workforce equity metrics analysis, you saw the beginning of that, and then we are trying to do some other things in the rest of this year and next year to put together more information, especially the part that has to do with what does inclusion look like, what does participation look like, and how will we get at that.

Some of those are in exit and engagement surveys for employees.

There's a number of different things that we're going to be looking at as we go forward.

Interactive web portal, just quickly.

That's being discussed in Citywide Leave Administration Committee.

That is the ability for an employee to go online and try to figure out what benefits they have available to them if they have a life event that they would need benefits for.

Targeted recruitment, we talked a little bit about that already.

Increased access to training.

We've increased our subscriptions to lynda.com, which is an online training program.

from 739 in 2016 to 3,681 in 2018. And we do have a list of the classes that most people seem interested in, but that's in the report.

And leadership development programs, we're running a new city leadership academy starting this month.

And also, we have something called Emerging Leaders that are for...

individual contributors, which is an overwhelmingly positive program based on what the employees have told us.

We've had 232 participants through there, 51% people of color, 30 field staff is 40% which we targeted, you know, to make sure we could get the field staffs because too many of our trainings happen in a tower and field staff can't get to it.

It's working.

The people are coming back and saying they're moving.

getting into higher level positions, those kinds of things.

Police and fire entry higher level.

Just really quickly, this year we did, for the first time, a video exam for fire instead of a written exam because the written exam had disparate impact.

And so we moved to this video exam and they are just now finishing, I think, the oral boards.

There was no disparate impact found in the entire process to date.

up through the oral boards, which is really good because that was the whole reason we did this, is to make sure that that was the case.

So we are seeing some successes from that already.

They have not yet hired police and fire, I mean, police hiring.

They are showing more diversity, both in people of color and in females over the trend over the last five years.

Nowhere near where we want to be, but we are moving.

And that's basically all of police, that's the police department themselves just doing some better recruitment.

That's great.

Gender justice, want to quickly tell them?

Yeah, I wrote down a lot of things, but I think I'll just focus on a couple points.

So a lot of what we do is we provide training, education, and by we, I mostly mean I.

We advise on issues pertaining to gender, sexism, and gender identity.

We advise departments on an as-needed basis.

This has ranged from conversations on using gender-neutral language to helping departments navigate gender transition plans.

to facilitating conversations on how patriarchy shows up in our offices, in our workplaces, in our institutions, how that impacts the policies that we make, things like that.

So really broad range of things related to gender equity.

And then I wanted to highlight the city's guidance on gender identity because I think that it's something that has actually started having a lot more impact than I think we imagined.

So one, the city's guidance on gender identity was co-created by SDHR and OCR, and it provides a rubric on, serves as a rubric on creating more welcoming spaces for gender diverse people in your workplaces, but it also provides guidance on how to create a transition plan for somebody who is transitioning gender on the job.

And so this is something that's currently being utilized by our city departments and I think to great success.

And this is something that I get phone calls about from jurisdictions across the country asking for more resources, asking for advice, asking for what our experience has been with it so far.

And this ranges from, you know, phone calls from police departments in small towns in Indiana saying that they have a transitioning officer and they want to make sure that they handle it well.

So that's been really successful.

What we're looking forward to continuing doing is developing more training.

We currently have training for frontline city staff that talks about creating a more affirming and safe space for our gender diverse community members.

But we are also working on and are in the final stages of making training for our city staff so that they know how to welcome their gender diverse co-workers and colleagues and for departments to understand how to better create affirming and inclusive workplaces.

So really looking forward to that and building out this program.

I'll stop because...

I know there's a lot to say on that project and it certainly merits more time for discussion.

I've been really interested in hearing a full report on the gender justice project in particular in my committee and I think last time I asked for it you were on extended vacation or leave or something or other, and then it sort of fell off the radar.

But I am very much interested in having you come back to committee to present on this issue.

This is our last committee hearing for now until December, so maybe we'll invite you back in December to join us and give us a deeper dive on the work that you've been doing, because I think it's really innovative and model-setting work that you all are doing, and it's certainly worth an entire briefing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lauren.

I know that we're out of time and the next slide is just a list of all of the things that we are working on at this point and if you have any questions, well most of them I covered anyway, so if you have any questions at all just let us know and we'll get answers for you.

Well, I want to thank you all for being with us.

I'm sorry that we got compressed here.

Partly our doing since we were asking you with a lot of questions.

But I want to thank you all for being with us today and for continuing to work on this really important issue of our workforce equity and we look forward to continuing to seeing partnership between the council and SDHR and certainly with representatives of our labor unions who represent so many of our workers.

So thank you all for being with us.

That is the last item on our agenda and we are now adjourned.

Thank you.