Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers Rights Committee 2/7/2019

Good morning.

Today is Thursday, February 7th, 2019. I am Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

I am joined by Councilmember Bagshaw.

Thank you so much for being here this morning.

We will soon be joined by Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Herbold.

I want to thank all of you for being with us here today.

As many of you know, we've been celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Seattle General Strike.

And today we have an opportunity to hear a little bit more about the history, to also have a conversation about the current day issues.

We're going to have a presentation on the state of labor from the folks at the University of Washington, from the Washington State Labor Council, and the Martin Luther King County Labor Council.

And we will also follow it up with some potential action around a resolution related to misclassification and also protecting those who want to be independent contractors, allowing them to continue to be so.

But we are really excited about today.

So let's go ahead and get started with some public comment.

And I think the first person we have signed up, as per usual, is Alex Zimmerman.

If you could keep your comments directed to the agenda, that'd be great.

And you have two minutes, okay?

I think we're going to leave if he starts off with.

Hi, my lovely Fuhrer.

My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I want to speak about labor.

I think that's an agenda number four or five.

So America have unique situation with labor that has come from 19th century.

Yes.

And go for 100 years before 1980. And after this, 1980 totally destroy all labor, all unions.

And start with recognizing the government, together with corrupt, to the bones, labor, union bosses, most are criminals in this situation.

So for the last 20 years, approximately from 45 million, we come to approximately 15, 14 million people in this union, what we have right now, totally criminal unions.

I'll give you an example with Service International Union, what I remember for a few years about this.

10 years ago, for example, 15 years ago.

We make $10 million, not legal absolutely, and $4 million go for salary.

It's exactly what this union we have right now.

So how we can stop this degree of fascism and government together with local?

Right now, union come to fascism.

And I have proposition for many years in talking about better room in City Hall, one time per week, so people can come and talking about this honestly and openly without government restriction.

And you, Consul Mosquito, promised us this when we have elect you.

I remember this, you told the public so you will open a better room one day per week, for example, from nine to five, so everybody can go and talk and can be election forum honest too.

But you don't do this.

It's exactly what is we have problem with union now, because you before have worked for union.

So pardon.

When you lie, it's lie.

Or doing this, like you promised this.

This exactly what has happened.

This like a fascism come.

Thank you very much.

And the next person we have to sign up is Dustin Lambrow from Teamsters 117. Thanks for being here, Dustin.

Good morning.

How are you guys?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

Well, thank you, Chair Mosqueda and NIC Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk today about the misclassification resolution, and I want to thank Councilmember Herbold for working on that issue.

That is something that my union has worked on for a number of years.

The labor movement has worked on misclassification issues for years and years and years.

As you know, Councilmember Mosqueda, in your former life, and our And I appreciate the spirit of the resolution to try to figure out some strategies for the city to be able to address that issue into the future.

One of the things that I think sometimes gets lost when we think about how independent contractors and misclassification impacts the social fabric of this country is we often forget that Independent contractors don't contribute in the same way because of their legal status into the unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, the unemployment system.

for Social Security and Medicare.

And I appreciate that people want to have flexibility and be able to work whenever they want.

The reality is that at some point in the future, those issues are going to come to a head.

We've already seen a breakdown in the Social Security system and a solvency on Medicare into the future.

and I worry about the rise in independent contractors and what impact that's going to have on those systems.

So it's something to be aware of.

I appreciate the city taking a look at that issue and I appreciate your leadership on it because it is something that we're going to have to face across the entire country.

So thank you so much for your time today and appreciate you continuing on to look at that issue into the future.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Dustin.

We really look forward to working with you and talking more about this in our last item for the agenda today.

Also, thanks for your long-time advocacy around labor standards and misclassification.

Appreciate you being here.

That's all the folks that I had signed up to testify today.

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

Okay, well that will conclude our public testimony section of our agenda.

Let's move on to our first item on the agenda.

And Farideh, could you please read into the record items one through four?

Agenda item one, appointment of Andra Kranzler.

Agenda item number two, appointment of Elisha Anderson.

Agenda item three, appointment of Dana Barnett.

appointment number four, Emily Dills, and they're all appointments to Domestic Workers Standards Board for terms to February 28th, 2021. For possible discussion, vote.

Wonderful, thank you.

And can we please have Karina, Jeannie, Andrea, Elijah, Dana, and Emily join us at the table?

And if we do have any central staff too, they are welcome to come on up.

Hi, welcome, thank you.

And I want to say welcome, Council Member Juarez, thank you for joining us, and Council Member Herbold, excited to have you here.

Hope you heard some of the public testimony on the resolution as well, thank you.

Excellent.

Hi, Karina.

Hi.

Excellent.

So good to see you guys.

So just a little bit of context here.

Last year, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights was the biggest piece of labor legislation that I had a chance to work on with these incredible colleagues here.

We had probably six to seven months where we had domestic workers on our calendar every single day.

And it was really thanks to the work of folks at the table and in the audience and in the general community.

Folks like Kim England, folks at Working Washington, Casa Latina, SEIU 775, National Domestic Workers Alliance, National Employment Law Project, Seattle Nanny Network, April Lane's Housekeeping, Moms Rising, Hand in Hand.

And thanks so much to all of the area nannies and housekeepers, also the employers who came and testified and were part of building this piece of legislation together.

So here we are today.

And we are ready to move forward with creating the domestic workers standards board.

Today we are going to talk about some of the qualifications of the folks who are interested in serving on this board.

Very qualified because you helped us craft the legislation.

But also want to remind us what are some of the main pieces in the domestic workers The first was to enable us to earn at least a minimum wage, and this means for all domestic workers, including those who are classified as independent contractors as well.

Regardless of classification, domestic workers now have the right to earn a minimum wage in Seattle.

Number two, all domestic workers are entitled to a rest and meal break for long periods of work and make sure for those who are working at the same hiring entity.

Number three, we have guaranteed a right to privacy for workers who have passports or documentation or licenses that they were worried about being retained from various employers or hiring folks.

Now you have the right to protect your documents and make sure that when you do so, you're not actually retaliated against based on your documentation status.

And lastly, we protected against discrimination thanks to a companion ordinance worked on by Councilmember Herbold through her efforts and leadership as well.

So we also know that this was the first building block and the reason for having this board was to come up with some policy solutions for some of the other really complex issues that we know domestic workers and hiring entities really want.

We're talking about retirement and health care and sick and safe leave protections, things that we know workers need and that employers really want to be able to provide to their employees.

But we need the board to help us come up with those creative solutions for how to get there.

So we included the Domestic Workers Standard Board so that workers and employers and hiring entities could come together to figure out how we engage in those policy ideas and also the critical outreach that we have to do to make sure that people know about these new rights and protections.

So I'm really proud of the nominees that are coming forward today.

Why don't we allow each individual to introduce themselves and then we will ask you a few questions and maybe prod a little bit more.

Do you want to start over here and then we'll come that way?

Sure.

I am Emily Dills and I founded a company called Seattle Nanny Network Incorporated back in 1997. Do you want me to just do an introduction and carry around?

That's perfect.

And then we'll come back around to you.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Oh, I am Karina Bull.

I'm a policy manager at the Office of Labor Standards.

I'm here to help staff us today, right?

Pardon?

If you're here to help staff us, are you also going to be on the board?

That's right.

All right, great.

I'm Janae Chan.

I'm also at the Office of Labor Standards helping to staff the board.

Excellent.

Hi, I'm Andra Kranzler, and I am the program director at the Fair Work Center.

Hi.

I'm Elijah Anderson, and I run the largest Seattle area nannies group, and it's with several other folks.

And we've been working really hard the last few years to organize and get nannies educated on the rights and expectations.

So I'm really excited about this board.

Thank you, Elijah.

Hi, I'm Dana Barnett.

I work at the Washington State Bar Association as diversity inclusion specialist, but I'm here in my capacity as an employer.

So I live in Seattle with my preschooler and spouse, and we employ occasional nannies and also house cleaner.

Excellent.

Well, we're really excited you all are here.

We are so grateful for your time last year in helping us craft this legislation.

Just as a general opener, do you mind if we just ask you to elaborate a little bit more on what your interest is in this board, some of the big issues that you see yourself being engaged in, and why you want to serve, if you want to start, and then we'll go back around this way again.

My company for over two decades has been doing networking and education and outreach, so I feel that this is a fantastic opportunity to work on something that's very important.

The burden on the modern family today is really huge.

I feel that today more than ever they're financially responsible for both their children and their parents.

They're really under tremendous pressure.

We have an opportunity right now with this board to find a balance between the needs of the already burdened modern family and the domestic worker who we know, we all here agree that they deserve protections.

Families really depend on in-home care, but they don't want to wake up one day and find out that they've been over-regulated.

I'm very sensitive to that.

The standards will protect the family employer and the employee who rely on this private form of employment for their livelihood.

And I feel that if change is to be fair, every effort needs to be made to find common ground between the employer and the employee.

What I hope to contribute is my experience of 22 years of educating and empowering employers, connecting them with qualified employees, mediating conflict, and working toward developing systems of accountability and employee training requirements in the industry.

So if I have achieved my goal, it will be when the majority of our community feels that they're fairly represented, and I appreciate the opportunity to apply for the board.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Andra?

I'm really excited to be on this board.

I just got off the phone with my dad, and I'm a legacy of domestic workers.

So my great-grandparents were domestic workers in upstate New York.

My grandmother was a domestic worker, as well as she owned her own catering business.

But domestic work was how she paid for the family's basic needs.

She did that well into her late 70s.

And then I was a nanny.

I was a babysitter starting at an age that was too young to babysit.

And then nannied.

And my nanny families helped me pay for law school.

And I currently rent from one of my nanny families in a naturally occurring market weight housing.

So NANI is a really important piece of who I am and the type of advocate that I am.

I'm really excited to get to support my colleague Doris Garcia, who's leading the NANI collective for Working Washington.

I've already been able to participate in one of the meetings with the nannies.

They're really concerned about benefits, health care benefits, retirement.

They're concerned about advocacy and resources to navigate the personal and professional relationship that happens between the family and the nanny.

And then when something goes awry, being able to support.

the worker and maintaining the job and the relationship with the family, as referrals are a really important part of how nannies are successful and domestic workers in general.

We also will be working with the Seattle Domestic Workers Alliance, participating in a monthly meeting that's been ongoing.

We've been able to, Doris and I worked together to develop a bilingual domestic workers presentation that covers the basic laws that cover nannies and we are hoping to be able to share that resource.

And then in our Fair Work Center updated brochure for 2019, we have included the domestic workers.

So we are having that conversation.

We trained 30 community partners at the end of November and they all got the kind of precursor domestic workers have rights and we want you to be talking to people about them at the kickstart of 2019. So really honored and thankful and I'm excited to serve.

Thank you, Andra.

Andra, you live in District 2. Elijah, District 5, Council Member Juarez?

I'm from Tacoma.

I was in District 5. I recently moved to Tacoma.

OK, great.

District 5 roots.

District 5 roots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Still very important.

Yeah.

I mean, I still work in Seattle.

It's just it's very expensive to live here, which Yeah, I know.

But I'd love to go.

I'd love to go.

I mean, you hit so many awesome points.

My main thing is about finding ways to reach nannies and educate them on our, like, I mean, so many nannies get taken advantage of every day.

And despite so much organizing we've been doing over the last few years, we're still hearing horror stories every day about people being taken advantage of and not knowing their rights.

Tax time every year is, like, such a nightmare.

Because every year you hear, like, hey, my employer wants to 1099 me.

What does this mean?

And it's over and over and over again.

So just getting the word out there.

And this board, especially, is really exciting to me that we can work together on both sides and figure out how people can feel protected and educated.

Because everyone, including employers, I mean, often employers, they come into it for the first time with nannies who have been doing this for 20 years.

And it's a constant having to re-teach people.

And I think if we can come together and find a way that parents and nannies can have these resources and learn what the standards are.

Because right now it's such an unregulated industry and it's such an isolating work that it's hard for to get this word out.

That's why I'm really excited about getting us together.

Thank you very much Elijah.

Hello.

Hi.

So, yeah, thank you.

You live in Kirkland, is that right?

No, I live in Leschi.

Okay.

Central District.

All right.

Oh, well, that's great.

District 3?

Yeah, District 3.

So, I think it's District 3. District 3. So, yeah, my name's Dana, and I...

I mean, what other people have said, those things are really important to me.

That's part of why I'm here.

I personally have been involved in community organizing, social justice, racial equity work for a couple decades.

I'm older than I look.

And so in both New York, where I'm from, and Philadelphia for many years, moved here six years ago.

And for me, I think it's, I'm here in a capacity I'm not really used to of being an employer.

And so that's something where, you know, it's sort of an awkward position to find myself in as somebody who grew up kind of working class, lower middle class, who's worked for equity but hasn't really been on this side of it before.

Now I own a home in Seattle, you know, are able to afford to live here, and we don't have any family here also, so we need to use these different services, and we're able to afford those services.

So for me, it's figuring out how do I live my values in my own life, and how do I use my positionality in order to create more justice, and also connecting with people in similar positions to me, which I have had different networks of.

And so how do I, that I can help use this position that I'm in in order to create those networks for people and support for people who I think also want to live out their values but may not know how or may not really think of themselves as employers who have those responsibilities.

Or maybe they don't want to do it, but either way, you know, how to, I'd like to be able to help with that.

in communication with hand-in-hand and really excited about their work.

In 2006, I was there when I think the Domestic Workers Alliance first launched, and I was really excited about their work and have been following them for a long time.

So I'm just really excited to be able to be part of this.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Dana.

Before we open it up for questions, are there any other comments from our friends at Office of Labor Standards?

Yeah, well, we're so excited to be here at the table today.

And we are so ready to support the Workers' Standards Board and all of your efforts and to implement the labor standards portion of domestic worker rights and to partner with Seattle Office for Civil Rights for the protections against discrimination.

And we will hire two positions to assist with this work, a policy analyst and an engagement specialist who will work with both domestic workers and households and employers.

And currently, the policy analyst position is posted.

It closes February 19, and soon thereafter, we will post the engagement specialist.

You just want to get the word out there for folks who are interested.

And in the meantime, our policy analyst, Janae Jan, has been initiating all of the groundwork for the board, the rules, and the outreach.

So do you want to talk a bit about that?

Yeah, sure.

So we are really excited to work with you all, especially on the board.

I think one of the exciting parts about it is the potential to do really powerful work that not only supports our households who are supporting their families in the best way they know how, they're taking care of their kiddos and elders, but also our workers who are not only supporting their families, but also the household's families as well.

So we're really excited about that work and embarking on that journey with you.

As for the board, we know that we'll be meeting for the first time in March, so that's right around the corner.

So we're really excited to get all the members out in the table, all around the table.

So we'll work with you all in terms of orientation and getting things ready to rock and roll for this exciting work this next year or two years.

In terms of rulemaking, we will be starting that, so there'll be announcements soon.

The timeline we're getting kind of confirmed up right now.

And then in terms of outreach and engagement, we are on the ground putting things in order and starting collaborations, for instance, with the Office for Civil Rights and our community partners to try to get that off and running as soon as possible so the folks have the information they need in order to be successful with this work.

really excited about that.

So for our listening audience, please continue to pass along the word that we have two positions open and a policy analyst right now and soon an engagement specialist will be posted.

Very exciting.

So let's

Would you like to speak to the specific requirements of the job Just for the microphone broad yeah, okay broad brushstrokes well for the police policy analyst of that position will be focusing on supporting the board and drafting rules and any legislation if that comes out as a recommendation of the board, doing all of the research that needs to be done for these issues, and shepherding the board.

There's a lot of facilitation, there's some administrative onboarding, making sure everybody has the tools and the community that is needed to make this board successful.

So drafting, interpersonal skills, research, community building are all very important skills that are needed.

For the engagement specialist, that person also would need all of those skills, maybe less so of the drafting skills.

But creating outreach materials, finding ways to connect with both domestic workers and with the households and the employers, that job will entail a lot of on the ground efforts, really being out there.

in the community and connecting with folks and also working with our enforcement team to find ways to make the investigative process, if workers feel things aren't going as they should be, to make that successful for everyone that is involved and to encourage people to come forward and share what's going on in their particular situation.

So that position will have a lot of different moving pieces to it.

Well, let's open it up.

I know our colleagues here probably have some questions.

Council Member Herbold.

Actually, before we move on to the nominees, I did have a question about the outreach piece.

Sure.

I appreciated hearing that Office of Labor Standards is collaborating with the Office of Civil Rights as it relates to the outreach.

You know, as Council Member Mosqueda mentioned earlier, there's a separate ordinance that the Office of Civil Rights will be, is charged with enforcing, and that's prohibition against retaliation, discrimination, and harassment.

And I just, I appreciate that there's collaboration happening.

I just want to make sure that the outreach and education about those two laws is happening together and not siloed, because I just think it's very, it would be very confusing for workers to get two different pieces of information.

And so, just want to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah, and so our collaborative efforts are pretty new.

We met with, well, so background, both Corinne and I were from this Office for Civil Rights before we came to the OLS, so we're really excited to kind of go home, if you will.

So we were connecting with our colleagues at OCR very recently, so our brainstorm of ideas is pretty new, but there is a concerted effort to make sure that that message is uniform.

and that they don't have a million different folks coming in, although we will all be working on getting the word out about this.

So yes, to your point, I think it's really important that folks get one message and that we're both supporting each other and making sure that we're on the same page with those messages about our different offices.

Yeah, and not only, I think, Eliminating the confusion about getting multiple messages, knowing about one set of rights empowers people to exercise their rights under the Office of Labor Standards.

So people feel more empowered to exercise those rights if they know that they're protected against retaliation.

Thank you.

We are here in no small part because of my colleague here, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda.

that I appreciate the work and all who came to testify to help us shape what we're doing today.

So that said, I know that we're going to have our own work to do to get started here within the city.

I'm very interested in what the connection is with the state and with our legislators right now, because we know that the work that the city has done over the last decade, whether it's $15 an hour minimum wage or paid family leave, that it's really the beginning point for many others in the state who want to point back and say, well, this is what Seattle's doing, so here's what we can do statewide.

So Karina, maybe this is an area for you, or whether we're working with our Office of Intergovernment Relations.

I am very interested to make sure that the lessons that we learn here is something that we can also take statewide.

Thank you for that, and certainly this legislation is so groundbreaking in the fact that it covers both employees and independent contractors, so there's a lot to learn and a lot to share with it.

So thank you for that.

So we're really excited about the partnership at the state level.

We know that there's a number of conversations about how they, they being the state agencies for workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, the folks who are working on family leave and sick leave, they are very interested in working with this board as you all figure out potential strategies to make either an option for folks to pay in or how we may replicate some of these policies.

I think the ideal world, we would all be partnering at the state level because we want this type of policy to go statewide.

But I think your point is well taken, especially around health care and leave policies.

There's ongoing conversations at the state level, and Office of Intergovernmental Relationships is very keenly aware of our interests, especially on how we can create some protections through the state's workers' comp and unemployment insurance system.

There's not a clear answer yet, which is why we need all of your incredible brains.

Any questions for their incredible brains?

Council Member Juarez, anything?

Nope.

Okay.

Council Member Herbold?

I'm going to be coming back when we have a conversation about the reclass resolution, but I just wanted to come here especially to support the nomination and confirmation of Andre Kanzler.

As I think many folks know, she worked in my office for about a year and three quarters, and her focus has always been on working on behalf of folks who may not have access to power and bringing their lived experiences into the policymaking realm so that we can make sure that the decisions that we're making actually make people's lives better.

Before working in my office, I've been familiar with Andra's work long before that, and she has always brought those values, and I think she'll be a very wonderful addition to this board and show a lot of leadership.

She's blushing over there.

Yes, Council Member Moraes.

I don't have any questions of the appointees.

I don't know if you want me to say general words now or after you do the appointments.

We can, if you want us to wait, we can wait.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

You got the microphone.

Go for it.

I didn't know if you want to.

Okay.

Good.

So we worked a lot, and to your leadership, thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, many meetings on the domestic worker standards.

And I think you brought up a group from California as well, and a lot of material in the studies that we read, a lot of public comment.

And I've always been, you know, I'm always a little bit skeptical.

I want to make sure that things are done right and that they're upheld.

And I'm really going to be looking to this board for enforcement and for the education piece.

We're going to look to you as being the subject matters folks.

And Andre, I know you're an attorney, so I'm glad not that attorneys need to be everywhere.

And the reporting requirements, one of the things that I think Council Member Muscade and I talked about offline, too, is there a lot of the community members wanted a lot of things.

And some of it just legally just we couldn't do.

And some of it we're just going to need a board to staff us on that.

And I'm guessing you'll be working with legal on the things that we can push forward on.

And I'm not saying not to do anything because we think it might.

be challenged.

I think we should.

I think we should have those bold ideas.

And I don't, it's kind of sad that domestic worker standards and protecting people and enforcements has to be something, you know, labeled progressive.

I mean, it's basic.

It's gender based.

It has a history of being ignored and marginalized legally, socially in every way.

But I also am mindful that we want to be solid in our move forward in that, you know, sometimes I get a little annoyed when people scream, when do we want it?

We want it now.

Well, the world doesn't work like that.

Those of us that know that incrementally we move forward on all kinds of issues.

And so I'm hoping that this board is going to guide us and answer those questions and work with the policy folks.

I just don't want it to become just an enforcement mechanism.

That's important.

But I like the rulemaking.

I like the reporting requirements.

The education piece is really big.

There were so many really great juicy issues that we wanted to attack.

in the base legislation, but we knew that we couldn't because we knew we needed to establish this board with subject matter knowledge and then work with a real staff that is gonna be advising them and advising us as well.

So I'm looking, really looking forward that we do something more than robust, that we actually have something that's solid and we have a plan and we have a vision and we slowly march forward to that vision, that it isn't just gonna happen overnight.

Because that's just how life works.

So, thank you.

I'm really looking forward to working with you.

Are there any comments about that that folks would like to weigh in on?

I wanted to throw I neglected to mention when I talked earlier that I am a participant in the Washington State Child Care Collaborative Task Force and I just wanted yeah I feel that that and we are meeting every six weeks there in Olympia that work that I'm doing there complements the work here on the board very much because I'm trying to balance the needs of the workers which you all know that's really where my heart is It is having been a nanny and now having the nanny agency, but balancing that with the needs of the parents.

Great.

Emily, I would like, if I could ask that after this meeting, I'd like to talk to you about that and what's going on with the child care initiative in Olympia.

That is a major thing that, of course, Council Member Mosqueda and I are pushing on right now.

I'm going to be talking more about that at the end of our meeting, but I'd love to talk with you just to get caught up on it.

So I want to say thank you to Emily and Andra.

Welcome back home, Elijah and Dana.

Thank you.

It's great that you're willing to spend your time doing this with us.

I think really excited about this Labor Standards Board.

I was part of working with the workers on the Priority Hire Advisory Committee and the power of what those unemployed construction workers in the 98118 was able to do and the legacy that lives on in not just the city, but now the region.

Last year, I was able to participate in a regional funding proposal where the city, the county, and I think it was the port ponied up money to develop a workforce pipeline in partnership with Sound Transit.

I think when workers are mobilized and resourced, anything is possible.

And so I'm really just really excited to do this hard work.

And then I do supervise a colleague in Yakima, and we are having this conversation.

Doris was able to do a presentation with some workers in Yakima.

So I think we will be able to have the conversation as it leads to a statewide way and some low-hanging fruit kind of ways.

So looking forward to being that resource.

Thank you.

Before we wrap up, could you all just comment a little bit about what's the kind of number one issue that really excites you about this?

We talked a long list about various policy ideas given Councilmember Juarez's context of trying to weigh what's possible.

What is the one thing you're really looking forward to working on this year policy-wise?

I think the education of the in-home workers and the training.

I think if there were a way to require a certain level of training that it would elevate their standing as an employee and the care that the family would receive in the home.

Excellent, thank you.

I think just on the flip of that and making sure employers understand what it means to be an employer and good employers and then really excited about the portable benefits piece and the retaliation piece.

The fact that the SOCR is going to affirmatively be making sure that retaliation is addressed in real time I think is paramount to making this successful.

I mean, making sure that both nannies and employers understand what this job is like, and not just nannies and employers, but also all domestic workers.

You know, gardeners and house cleaners, and there's so many different parts where people, there's just so much, so many questions and unknowns, and people are just kind of guessing, and that's hurting everybody.

So we need to figure out how to bring everybody together so everybody knows what the standards are, and how to legally work harmoniously together.

Yeah, it's hard to choose everything everyone else said.

Again, going last means I have to always say that, but I agree with.

And I think for me already, I took part in a webinar I think last week about four employers about I can't remember what it was called, but it was through hand in hand.

I think it's like your home is a workplace.

My home is someone's workplace.

My home is a workplace.

And I already had so many ideas from that that I hadn't thought of before, so that's what I'm really excited about, because when first hearing about this ordinance, it was like, But how will that actually work?

And I know other people have that response.

And so to see the portable benefits, I think, as Aaliyah being created to see these different options, I'm really excited to think expansively and to come up with practical ways that we can put this into action.

Great.

That's excellent.

Well, seeing no more comments or questions, I would like to move the committee recommend passage of council appointments Emily Adilis, Dana Barnett, Elijah Anderson, and Andra Kratzler.

Good second.

Any further comments?

None.

All those in favor of the recommending passage of the appointments, vote aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

None.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you.

We will bring this information and recommendation to the full council on February 11th.

Really appreciate your time.

Thank you guys so much for your interest in serving on this board.

So sorry.

Thank you, Dana.

As we transition, do you mind reading into the record the fifth item of business?

Agenda item five, labor history for briefing and discussion.

So if we could please be joined at the table by our friends Connor Casey, labor archivist and from the labor archives at the University of Washington, James Gregory from the Williams Family Endowment, professor at the University of Washington, and I see President Larry Brown, and if you could join us at the table as well.

Larry Brown is in his now second month as president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

And we will also be joined by Nicole Grant, the executive secretary treasurer at the Martin Luther King County Labor Council.

Welcome to all of you to the table, and congratulations, Mr. President.

Good to see you at this table in your new role.

President Brown, nice to see you.

If we could have you guys introduce yourself for the record, and then we'll get started with the presentation.

And President Brown, if you want to kick us off with your name for the record, that'd be great.

My name's Larry Brown.

I'm president of the Washington State Labor Council.

Woo!

Madam Chair, members, my name is James Gregory.

Come on, James.

Just light on green light.

OK, right here on the stem.

One second.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Just to capture it for our incredibly large TV viewing audience.

My name is James Gregory.

I'm a professor of history at the University of Washington and former director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.

My name is Connor Casey, and I'm the director of the Labor Archives of Washington, which is at the UW Libraries.

And I'm a labor archivist.

I'm also vice president of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association.

Cool.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thanks for being here.

So we're really excited to have you guys here today.

Just by way of introduction, we have declared 2019 the year of labor history with this council fully supporting the resolution that was introduced at the city council last month.

We are now in our second day of commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Seattle's general strike that occurred 100 years ago today.

So it's really quite an honor to have this entire panel here today.

When folks were walking in, they may have seen that our Seattle City Council archivist also brought down some materials commemorating the 100-year Seattle General Strike, which is also outside.

I know you're going to be able to give us an incredible presentation today that will complement that, but folks in City Hall, around City Hall, please come by and take a look at that.

We'll have it down here for the next week or so.

Today, also, I want to acknowledge that your colleague, April Sims, now Secretary-Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council and I co-authored a piece in Crosscut commemorating the 100-year anniversary as well.

And April Sims, your colleague who won with you, she is the first African-American to hold this position.

I saw her give a speech and say that.

It was very impressive.

And we're really excited about hearing about labor history, but as I've been talking about, we're also talking about labor presente.

So when we're in community and we're at rallies, we say presente to like mean that we're here, we're physically here, we're present.

And so we're celebrating labor history, labor presente, and we're talking about the roles in which Labor has shaped this area in our region.

The state of labor, which is something that President Brown is going to speak to, and sort of what's on the horizon.

I also know that you're going to talk a little bit about not just celebrating the 100-year general strike, but we're talking about celebrating the 110-year anniversary of the Spokane free speech fight of 1909, the 100-year anniversary of the Centralia tragedy of 1919, and the 20 year celebration of the Battle in Seattle WTO, which I was there, were you there too?

Turtles and Teamsters, we were all out.

So there's a deep, deep presence of labor history here.

And also what we'll hear about from President Brown is the growing presence of the labor movement as well.

Excited to be able to lift up some of this history so that we all can continue to bring it into our daily conversations.

and it can inform our policy making in the current as well.

So why don't you get us kicked off and then we will hear from President Brown and Executive Secretary Grant when she gets here.

With your permission, I'd like to start with a short slideshow to commemorate the events that started 100 years and one day ago in 1919. The wonderful resolution the council endorsed shows the significance of this series of events 100 years ago today.

And there are, throughout this week, different commemorative activities.

But the starting point for thinking about what happened in Seattle is to realize that in some ways this set of events put Seattle on the map.

Before 1919, very few people outside of the region knew anything about the city.

As of February 1919, that changed, and ever since, The strength of organized labor and the fight for workers' rights has been anchored in Seattle in important ways.

So the context was World War I changed Seattle, created a boomtown environment that's pretty much like the boomtown of today.

Then, as now, a high-tech industry moved into town.

attracting tens of thousands of workers.

The demography was pretty similar, mostly young males, many of them highly skilled.

The difference is that the high-tech industry then was shipbuilding.

You can see in this picture some of the shipyards that ringed Elliott Bay.

attracting a workforce ultimately of about 35,000 shipbuilders.

Seattle had already been a strong union town and gained a reputation as one of the best cities for organized labor in the country.

This accelerated during the war.

In the context of the war, the Central Labor Council set out to create and Unions of all kinds including, and it was rare in those days, unions that represented mostly women.

This picture from the waitresses union shows that there were 500 waitresses organized and virtually every cafe and restaurant in town was a union shop.

Seattle was also the only city where the Central Labor Council published a daily newspaper, the Union Record, with a circulation of about 60,000, competed head-to-head with the Seattle Times, Seattle PI, and Seattle Star.

It was also a city with a strong left-wing radical movement.

The IWW had one of its strongest bases here, also many socialists.

And the left-wing presence helped sort of pull the Central Labor Council in progressive directions.

The war was a very complicated time.

Lots of new people, but wars are very disruptive, and in World War I, Part of the disruption came from the flu epidemic, the Spanish flu, that moved across the world and across the country, hitting Seattle pretty late.

So just months before the general strike, many, many people were suffering from the flu.

The casualty rate reached about 1,400 deaths in King County, and this Armistice Day Parade seemed to happen right in the middle of it and accelerated the spread of the flu.

So all this is prelude to the general strike, which begins in the shipyards just two months after the end of World War I. It had a lot to do with the inflation that people were experiencing, the high rents, the escalating costs.

The shipyards were run by the federal government under a special agency, and that federal agency set uniform wage rates for shipyards across the country, which disadvantaged the West Coast where costs were higher.

created a lot of tension.

There was a near strike in 1917 that ended only when the government seemed to promise that at the end of World War I, wages would be readjusted, collective bargaining would resume.

And that was the immediate problem that led to the general strike.

So when the shipyard workers expected to regain collective bargaining shortly after the end of the war, The government changed its mind and announced there would be no wage increases.

The many unions representing shipyard workers then met and decided to strike, and on January 22nd declared a walkout of all the shipyards.

Here we see Skinner and Eddy Corporation, which was the largest employer, located roughly across from where the football stadium is today, and the workers are walking out.

Very quickly, the shipyard unions then turned to the Central Labor Council, which at that time represented about 110 local unions.

I think it's now about 150, but 110 local unions all together about 60,000 workers in Seattle were unionized.

The old labor temple up on 6th and University near the convention center now, quite an impressive building.

It became the beehive, really almost the center of life in Seattle for about a week in February because the shipyard unions asked the Central Labor Council to support their strike by pledging to strike in turn, to go out on a sympathy strike.

And the leaders of the Central Labor Council then turned to the individual unions and said, meet with your members and decide and vote on whether to support this.

And one after another, the unions, ultimately 101 of the unions, voted to support the shipyard workers in a sympathy strike, which we now call the general strike.

And here is Jimmy Duncan, who now, he's had the role then that Nicole Grant has as leader of the Central Labor Council.

Is that what happened, Larry?

You were there?

I was.

I had hair back then.

So as the unions decided to go out, this became big news in Seattle, on February 2nd, the official vote

was taken and a strike committee was formed and the union record then declared in these bold headlines that 60,000 workers would go out on February 6th.

So the next couple of days were exciting and tense and much was going on.

The Central Labor, the Executive Committee of the Strike Committee set about to try to plan the whole strike.

What enterprises would be allowed to stay open?

Which ones would close?

What emergency services would be handled by the unions?

The Teamsters arranged to deliver supplies to hospitals.

Laundry workers were doing certain things for hospitals.

Some of the electrical workers were going out and others not.

The culinary unions.

waitresses, waiters, and cooks undertook to feed thousands and thousands of people in dining facilities across the city because all the restaurants and cafes were going to close.

So here is some of the excitement that strikers displayed in the days before.

And this is a picture of Anna Louise Strong, one of the editors of the Union Record.

On the other hand...

I do like that last sentence.

Go back that one slide.

It says, we do not need hysteria.

We do not need hysteria.

We need the iron march of labor.

Well, this is a very famous editorial she wrote.

It became very controversial.

As you can see, it pledges that there's quite a lot at stake.

And it was read by conservatives as being a call for revolution.

She says we're undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country.

a move which will lead no one knows where, and she went on and on and on with that, pledging that, you know, we may run things here, and some found this exhilarating and others frightening.

Authorities in the city initially tried to negotiate, and Mayor Ole Hanson was in and out of the labor temple trying to work things out.

But increasingly, certainly the business leaders were very upset about this.

One of the surprises from the standpoint of organized labor was that the Seattle Star, which had been a labor-friendly newspaper, came out militantly against the strike, as did in time Ole Hanson, who then undertook to deputize and arm volunteers, some of them returning war veterans.

So the scene was set for kind of a very complicated confrontation.

It's important to understand that this Labor movement did not represent the entire workforce of Seattle.

Like AFL unions across the country, they practiced what we call now Jim Crow unionism.

These were white-only unions.

Many of them had explicit racial exclusions in their charters.

And in Seattle, there was only one major union that had African-American members, and that was the Longshore Union.

For the rest, it was whites only and many of them white men only.

Japanese workers and the Japanese community, Japanese American community was the largest community of color at the time.

Japanese workers formed their own unions and had for years tried to cooperate with the AFL, with the Central Labor Council.

And as the strike was declared, the Japanese unions announced that they would support it.

And the Central Labor Council was thrilled by this news and said, well, you can now join us in the strike committee meetings.

But they also said Japanese unions could not vote.

So the exclusion.

very much remained in effect.

Professor Gregory, can I ask you to go back now two slides?

Next one there.

Stop before it's too late.

And if you see about the second paragraph, it isn't too late to avert the tragic results that are sure to come from its use.

I think that's what it, that last word there.

What tragic word were they threatening?

Because it looks to me like that is more of a threat than a prediction.

I think what the Seattle Star was worried about was that this was the start of a revolutionary moment and that the call for a general strike was going to cascade into violence and serious confrontations that then either turned the city into a violent confrontation or potentially created the momentum for a revolutionary movement, which the Seattle Star obviously found frightening.

The context of this was the Bolshevik Revolution had happened a year and a half before.

There were uprisings and revolutions in Germany and Hungary, the idea of communist or Bolshevik revolutions was in the air, and the IWW was hoping that this would be more than just a strike.

Most of the participants didn't feel that way, but the star was worried about that, and the mayor ultimately was worried about that.

On February 6th, the strike starts and the city shuts down.

The unions take responsibility for organizing essential services.

And here you can see pictures of one of the dining halls, probably at the Longshoreman's local with members of the waitresses' union serving.

What was remarkable is that the event was entirely peaceful.

And this became one of the great takeaways that the union movement would use for decades to come.

General strikes, big strikes in the 1800s had always turned to violence.

But the Central Labor Committee and the Strike Committee had carefully thought this through and knew that everything should be done to avoid provoking the police or any kind of violence.

So a contingent of returning war veterans called Labor War Veterans Guard, all decked out with white armbands, patrolled the streets and asked people to go home.

There were no marches, there were no rallies, there were no picket lines.

The streets were actually pretty empty through this strike on the advice and with the planning of the Central Labor Council.

And literally, the police arrested no one in the course of these six days.

It was entirely peaceful.

Earl George, I showed you his picture, the African American longshoreman before, later, remembered in this memorable quote, he said, you know, nothing moved but the tide.

And here's one of the few street scenes we have photographs of.

They're probably not strikers, they're probably, this is on day two.

waiting for the Seattle Star edition to be published.

The newsboys were not delivering the newspapers because they were on strike, so people who wanted to read one of the newspapers had to go downtown to the plant.

The mayor, however, despite the complete lack of provocation, the mayor was determined and decided on day two to issue a very threatening proclamation where he basically said, call off the strike by tomorrow morning or I will declare martial law.

and ask the federal government to run things in the city.

He didn't have the authority to do that, but the Attorney General had meanwhile sent in two battalions of U.S.

Army troops from Camp Lewis, and you can see in this picture they've taken up stations at the National Guard Armory then on Western Avenue.

The troops were never put into the streets.

They simply were there, but it helped, well, set a tone for things.

All of this was sort of beyond what the Central Labor Council had expected.

They didn't expect this fierce hostility and reaction from the mayor, and so the morale by the weekend started to deteriorate, and many of the unions played with the idea of going back to work and we're telling the Central Labor Council we got to call this off, this isn't working out.

So all through the weekend there were negotiations about ending the strike.

You can see the union record declaring on Sunday that the strike will continue.

But the next day, on Monday, the strike committee and the Central Labor Council met and decided, okay, this isn't working.

We will call things off as of Tuesday.

So the strike ends officially on the sixth day, February 11th.

after this sort of weekend.

When you say it wasn't working, I mean, it is impressive that 101 unions in solidarity went out on strike and people stayed on strike for six days.

Were you saying it wasn't working because people felt that level of intimidation, the political pressure to go back, and because the companies weren't even budging, or what was...

Because it seemed like it worked to a certain degree.

It did.

It was a remarkable event.

It was a historic event, the exercise of solidarity on this level.

So many different unions, so many different workers going out on strike, not for their own benefit, but simply to support their brothers in the shipyards.

It's just an amazing event and was understood and remembered that way for generations by people who had participated.

But the proximate goal of getting the federal government to negotiate with the shipyard unions was not working.

And that became clear.

And when the mayor and so many of the city establishment coming down in this very hard way, I think a lot of the unions just started to think, well, it's time to, we've done what we can, it's time to move on.

And I think that was the spirit behind calling it off.

The shipyard strike continued for months afterwards, but the sympathy strike, the other unions now backed away, not from their support for the shipyard workers, not with a feeling of defeat, but instead with a feeling that we've done what we can in this way at this time.

Which brings us to legacies, and I think I mentioned one of the legacies.

Seattle literally was on the map for the first time.

We've done studies of reporting in newspapers, and you can see that the New York Times barely knew Seattle existed before February.

And ever since, the New York Times has known that we exist.

So- It makes us legit then.

Never mind the natives that were here, the New York Times says you exist.

Yes, well we all know where power resides.

But in addition, it established a reputation of Seattle as a union town, as a town, where important things happened, as a town where working people could advance and do things that labor movements were not doing elsewhere, and as a city that would, from then on, for the next century, be understood to be at the forefront of what cities and labor movements mean in the United States.

So it's had this, very, very long legacy for our city.

It also set in place tools and tactics that organized labor would use.

There would be later general strikes that became possible only because of the peacefulness of this.

because this hadn't descended into violence.

So in the 1930s, there's a couple of general strikes that clearly remodeled the Central Labor Council of San Francisco, okayed a general strike because of the experience in Seattle.

They knew it could be managed, they knew it could be peaceful, and they thought it could be successful, and it was.

So just the lessons of this kind of coordination by a central labor council were very beneficial for the next century.

And the lesson of solidarity, and Madam Chair, your editorial this morning just nailed that, the lesson of solidarity, the thought that so many people, so many unions would stand up for each other, this principle of all for one,

Injury to one is an injury to all.

And an injury to one is an injury to all.

The display of that lived on in the memories of all the people who participated in the stories that union activists would tell for the generations to come right up to today.

That is very, very impressive.

Thank you so much for that overview, Professor Gregory.

One question, and then I know we're going to hear a little bit more from Connor Casey about how we have tried to correct some of that legacy of exclusion for various workers of color.

And that's really an important element that I'm hoping to hear from some of the work that you're going to talk about.

One question, though.

You brought up the parallel between the high tech industry of the early 1900s compared to the high tech industry of today.

Lots of people moving to Seattle.

Wanting good living wage jobs and wanting to raise their family here and work in that industry Can is there any and this is off the cuff?

So I'm sorry to put you on the spot.

Is there any lessons that you saw from the shipyard?

Builders the employers then about how they address the housing crisis that I assume they also saw at the time, we know that there was single room occupancy options then like we don't see today, but any lessons that you think that the early 1900s can help us apply in terms of employers and public policy makers working to address the housing influx or the housing need that comes with that type of influx of workers as well?

I wish.

No, it was a mess then, it's a mess now.

Rents escalated, there wasn't enough housing, people squeezed together.

That's so sad.

I was hoping you'd have something optimistic for us.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

And we will look forward to continuing to celebrate the 100 year anniversary with you throughout this entire year.

Connor Casey, thank you so much for being here with us.

And we know you have a presentation as well.

So thank you for walking us through that.

Sure.

Thank you for having me.

I wanted to tell you a little bit about the Labor Archives of Washington, which is actually a community archives that was started by the labor movement and the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.

It's a collaboration between Special Collections and the Bridges Center at UW.

There was already about 2,000 cubic feet, which is copy paper boxes, of existing collections that were at the University of Washington that related to this history.

For the first several years, we were entirely funded by the labor movement.

Now we have state funding.

And we're advised by a community advisory board that involves labor as well as labor academics and community members.

And that really speaks to why we, our activities are trying to document a much broader community and to be responsive to make sure that those stories that we know the general strike by, for example, those records are preserved today so that we can tell these stories in 100 years.

We have a whole host of different types of records, including organizational records, including the Washington State Labor Council, the Seattle Central Labor Council, a significant player in the strike, as well as a bunch of local labor unions.

We have a whole intersectional group of collections that I'm going to talk in just a second about.

both organized labor and the dimension of labor, and a whole range of different types of materials.

It could be picket signs, minute books.

We're starting to curate websites and social media content.

So one of the other things I'll talk about is oral history projects that we've been doing to make sure that we record history as it happens.

So more recent campaigns, such as the SeaTac Seattle and minimum wage fight campaigns.

I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the, we talked about some of the workers that were excluded from the labor movement during the era of the general strike.

Well, labor has learned and responded and incorporated, has increasingly tried to address that disparity.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about a couple of collections that we have that relate to workers of color.

women-led unions and those campaigns towards inclusion, as well as the SeaTac Seattle minimum wage campaign, which we did a major oral history project around.

These are just some of the collections that relate to some of the history I'm gonna talk about, which relates to African American men trying to get equal access to construction work jobs.

Women in the trades who were trying to also get access to this during the affirmative action era.

and cannery worker unionism.

And as I'll show, there was a really robust kind of tapestry of overlapping organizations in the late 60s and early 70s that all fed one another.

And I think that many people don't know the relationship, how intersectional that organizing was, but also how unique a story Seattle has in relation to that.

I think that because of the way in which the groups supported one another, Seattle has a very unique intersectional organizing history that relates to this.

These are just some of the other ones that are also in CW Special Collections that relate to this history.

This is what I was talking about.

This is the whole network that I mapped out of these different organizations that happened in the late 60s, early 70s.

Yeah.

This is what the inside of my brain looked like when I was working.

How many Red Bulls were you into?

Well, where it lacks a design sense, I hope it makes up for it in trying to be, you know, an inclusive vision.

You can see that these dots are people that kind of connect these organizations.

There was already, from the time of the general strike, from the 30s, there was already this really robust, radical, and labor union tradition that was happening.

Let me ask you this.

Why does the Alaska Cannery Workers Association just end in 1973 and then there's a question mark?

Or does other people have a beginning and an end?

And some people just have a beginning.

Yeah, so the Cannery Workers Union was founded in the 30s.

It was originally called the Filipino Labor Union, and then later became Agricultural Cannery Workers and Agricultural Workers Local 7, which was heavily Filipino-American membership, also Asian-Americans.

During the time around the 60s and 70s, they were no longer being strong advocates in relation to cannery employers up in Alaska who maintained an ethically segregated workforce.

They had different labor conditions, different food, different housing conditions for European-American, Asian-American, and indigenous workers.

This is in the 70s.

So it was compared to the plantation system by one commenter.

The Alaska Cannery Workers Association was created by Asian American activists who pursued a civil rights lawsuit strategy against employers and some unions who weren't addressing these lawsuits.

And they continued to go on to form the Labor and Employment Law Office, which was a coalition between the United Farm Workers, the Alaska Cannery Workers, and the United Construction Workers, which I'll talk about in just a second.

So the murders there in 1981 in the Cannery Workers, are you going to touch on that?

Yes.

Can I just put a bookmark on this?

And I've asked permission from my council colleague.

At the end of this, I'd like to talk to you about the Cannery Workers building, which is down on 2nd and Main and has been completely falling apart and not occupied for 30 years.

And I've got some ideas, and I'd love to have your support.

So if you could come back to this.

Yeah, thank you.

And one thing I want to point out is, as I mentioned, the intersectional nature of this.

So what I'll talk about is the United Construction Workers Association.

Now, first, there was a contractor organizing campaign to get equal access to federal construction projects.

As part of the Model Cities program, there was a bunch of federal money pouring into Seattle and nationwide.

And there was a group of local African-American and minority contractors in the Central District who said, we want equal access to these jobs.

or, you know, work.

So that was in 1969. Tyree Scott was a prominent organizer in that, and once they brought lawsuits against five of the building trades unions for equal access to apprenticeship programs, because a mechanism to get into the building trades projects was apprenticeship programs.

So they got equal access to the contracts.

Tyree Scott then shifts over and founds the United Construction Workers Association so that they could advocate for workers to get access to the apprenticeship programs and they were able to create a pipeline for minority workers to also get under the federal construction projects.

So that happens in 60, the central contractors happen in 69, 70, the United Construction Workers Association is founded.

They do an interesting overlap between lawsuits and also direct action.

And so they're agitating to get access to the labor movement and they're also agitating to get access to jobs.

One really kind of interesting thing about their publication is that it's called No Separate Peace.

That shows that their scope was international and intersectional from the beginning.

The United Construction Workers is largely remembered as African American men, but it included Other minority men, although African-American men were the ones that were covered by this lawsuit that allowed them to be part of it.

It was called the Philadelphia Plan, and there was a local manifestation of a lawsuit that gave them access to these construction projects.

They also had African-American women that were part of this, and so they go on to march down the streets, This is actually from the City Archive, by the way.

And this model of them doing direct action and trying to get pipelines into building trade unions becomes the model for women in the trades as well.

And so what I'm gonna talk about here is a fight at Seattle's City Light where a group of radical women were able to articulate their rights and had a fight for equal rights within the utility.

So in 1973, there's a group of feminist socialist organizers led by Clara Fraser.

It's called Radical Women.

And she becomes the head.

She's a long-term lefty, becomes the head of this electrical trainee program at City Light, which is meant to be in Title IX compliance.

And so, a group of 10 women start to get trained to become electrical workers.

They also support, very quickly, a walkout by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 77, which happens.

Clara Fraser organizes some of these trainees.

They walk out as well, as well as office workers at City Light, and run afoul of the heavy-handed head of City Light, whose name is Gordon Dickerson, Dick, Vickery, Vickery.

And then what happens is they get...

Look at Nicole Grant right there.

Oh, yes.

Nicole wrote an article about this on the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project website.

It's really good.

And there's a forthcoming book about this.

There's going to be a book launch event called High Voltage Women at the Seattle Labor Temple on March 9th, all about this history.

One thing we've tried to do is to also collect new records around this.

So we brought in collections that relate to Clara Frazier, who I just mentioned, as well as Megan Cornish, who was one of the tradeswomen, and Heidi Durham, who's no longer alive but was another one of the trainees.

They experienced basically a pattern of intimidation by the superintendent of City Light, who, curtailed their program, which was going to originally be a certain course of time, was going to have a physical conditioning aspect.

He wound up ending it, and essentially winds up ending the program to make it go out of existence.

The intention of the program was to recruit For the beginning, the 10 women who would then continue to work at City Light, but it was supposed to be a pipeline so that other women would continue to do it, but because they weren't as compliant as Vickery would have liked, they wind up getting dismissed, essentially, at the end, except he retains two of them to make sure that it doesn't look like a discrimination.

Eventually, they very skillfully organize and articulate their case to the public and continue to bring their case against Seattle, it goes on for years, and eventually Clara Fraser is vindicated.

This is one of their press conferences that they called relating to this.

But you said she was vindicated, but she got a check for $409?

Well, I think that was $409,000 in back pay.

Nicole?

Oh, that's right.

Well, she winds up getting reinstituted and gets her job back after about seven years.

She also gets some back pay, and the electrical trainees, the women that are part of the program, get back pay as well.

This is an ongoing sort of thing that goes through the Civil Rights Commission, I think.

It goes on for years.

But they do wind up getting The other thing, so anyway, all these records that are at the Labor Archives, it's a really complex story of the ins and outs of it, but it's very well told in this new book, which is written by Ellie Ballew, in coordination with many of the tradeswomen activists and in coordination with radical women.

That's going to be a launch that's called High Voltage Women, and she does a great blow-by-blow account of this.

One of the other projects that we've done is to document more recent history.

Many of you all remember the minimum wage campaign in SeaTac and Seattle.

So one of the things that is a challenge in more recent history is how do you make sure that you bring these things in when people don't actually think of it as history?

It just happened a couple years ago.

So within the last couple years, we've done a collaborative joint with another person that's Bridges Chair, former Bridges Chair, Michael McCann.

We did a joint oral history project to make sure that we interviewed over 60 people.

This isn't just, this was heads of nonprofit organizations, politicians, rank and file trade union activists, labor union officers, many, I think at least three or four people in this room were interviewed as part of this project.

And so what this formed is an online archive where you can learn about the history of these campaigns.

And I think one of the reasons why we wanted to make sure we did that was because I think this was another campaign that was a particularly intersectional moment.

So it's an instance where many of the unions that were involved didn't hope to organize workers at the airport, for example, but essentially wound up legislating a union contract so that people could benefit.

And it wasn't just minimum wage, as many of you must be aware of.

It was also sick days and certain policies where if a vendor went out of business in the airport, they would have to get a union staff again.

And one other aspect was you can't hire a bunch of workers without giving other people the option to work full time if they wanted to.

And of course, it played out differently in Seattle.

And understanding the difference between Seattle and SeaTac is important because they were related but different campaigns.

And of course, this is where we get the phrase 15. Now, this is in Seattle, in SeaTac, was where we get this whole sweep of 15 as a minimum wage magic number nationwide.

So once again, Seattle leads the way like it did in the era of the general strike.

This is what the web archive looks like.

All of these are also transcribed.

I would invite you to take a look at our digital collections portal, which has sort of topical chunks relating to this, including the general strike, including Alaska Cannery Workers Union and Filipino-American cannery workers organizing.

The WTO protests are also part of our digital collections portal, as well as this oral history project that I'm talking about.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about this.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

I am very, very happy that you were able to give us this context.

There's a few slides that we had in an earlier presentation as well that I'm wondering if you both can maybe just comment on before we open it up to our elected leaders of the labor movement here locally.

Could you talk a little bit about the farm worker movement?

I know that there was a slide on that.

The cannery workers and some more information about the WTO efforts as well.

And Frida, oh sorry, we're just going to pull up the presentation that had the additional slides in it as well.

So if you don't mind just providing a little bit of context on that, that would be super helpful.

Sure, you expect me to remember back then?

So, as Connor was talking about, and with that wonderful slide that shows the linkage between so many different organizations and movements in the 60s and 70s, and the intersectionality, that he mentions is really quite remarkable because most cities, the different communities of color didn't cooperate quite the same way they did here, and organized labor in many cities was oppositional, and as it was here, the construction trades were blocking access for apprentices of color, but so much of what what was going on did involve these, you know, kind of wonderful alliances that turned out to benefit everyone.

So one of the elements in this had to do with farm worker organizing.

The United Farm Workers was based in California, born in California, but very early activists from the Yakima Valley linked up with UFW.

They weren't officially part of UFW for quite a number of years, but they set up farm worker co-ops and they organized a strike in, I think it was 1971. And the UFW in turn was connected to the Chicano movement organizing in Seattle and especially on the University of Washington campus.

So the young people from the valley were going to classes at UW and then organizing in the community here as well as going back and forth to create a quite vibrant movement in a state that had a tiny Latino population.

In fact, Washington then gained an important reputation for exactly this kind of activism.

And the lawyers at Lilo and the UCWA were linked pretty tightly with UFW and then also with the cannery workers.

So it's this really kind of vibrant and exciting multiracial left-wing activism around unions very late 60s and early 70s.

Can I speak to the archival record relating to that?

It was very clear when we started that there wasn't history of the farm workers movement in UW Special Collections.

And when you know that there's important history out there, and the collections don't look like the communities that you're trying to represent, that's a significant gap that you need to try to address.

So one of the things we've done is bring in collections of more recent farmworker activism, including the 1987 to 1995 campaign for a contract at Chateau Saint-Michel, which was the first time farmworkers got a contract.

Only unionized wine, everybody, in Washington State, Chateau Saint-Michel.

Yeah, still, yeah.

And so Rosalinda Guillen, who was the chief organizer in that campaign, donated her papers several years ago.

We have her collection, which relates to that, and we've also digitized a lot of that stuff around that.

And then more recently, we brought in the records of Familias Unidas por Justicia, which is the Skagit County Farm Workers Organization, who boycotted Sukuma Brothers Berries.

And so we're continuing to work with them to bring in more collections.

So we're addressing those gaps in that history and continuing to build the collection so that we can understand it better.

And we're going to keep partnering with them, trying to bring in more records.

Excellent, thank you.

And then just two slides ahead will get us to the slide on the cannery workers.

And if you'd like to add any additional context to the comments you made earlier about Cindy Domingo and Selma Domingo, I know that they're part of your archives as well.

And then Council Member Bagshaw kind of teed up something that she also wants to bring for present day.

Sure.

Sure.

You might remember the Alaska Cannery Workers Association we mentioned.

So these two reform activists, Silme Domingo and Jean Viernes, were kind of student activists who created that organization to be an advocacy organization, but they wind up creating a rank and file committee that takes over office within the Canary Workers Union reinvigorating its leftists.

Some of the strident advocacy that had happened during the 30s and 40s had been a little bit depleted because of the purges of the Cold War and so they brought the kind of enthusiasm and energy of the new left as well as the Asian American rights movement into the union.

There is a sort of a deposed group of union officers, including this guy named Tony Baruso, who was the head of the union, who is kind of connected to local thugs and vice and gambling racket that is going on.

And he's also friends with Marcos.

Ferdinand Marcos was the dictator of the Philippines who was strongly anti-labor and anti-radical.

Domingo Inverness, in addition to being leaders in their union, are also leaders in the KDP, which is a Filipino-American diaspora organization that's trying to advocate for deposing Marcos.

And one of the things they do is bring to the longshore union convention.

The cannery workers are affiliated with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which is a progressive union with a long history of militant labor stands and a history of taking stands against dictatorships, including refusing to load scrap iron during World War II or leading up to World War II to wartime Japan, because they know it's going to come back in the form of bombs.

They also eventually refused to load cargo for apartheid South Africa and refused to do it in some instances after Allende is deposed in Chile.

So they decided to see if they could get the International Union to refuse to load cargo for the Marcos dictatorship on the West Coast, which would have been extremely disastrous for the Philippines and his regime.

Because of this, he winds up paying, in cahoots with Peruso, who was the former head of the Cannery Workers Union, somebody to assassinate them.

And so he kills them in their Pioneer Square office in 1981. And through a long, convoluted investigation, it's proven that he was the one who did it, and that Marcos was the one who was responsible.

This is the first time a foreign dictator is found criminally culpable in a US court of law.

So this happens in the 90s, and eventually, Marcos is already dead at this point, but the estate is held responsible for it.

So this is part of the collections that we have.

Thank you.

Council Member Baxter.

Thank you.

So this is, at this point, to say that it is not fully baked is an understatement, but I have an idea and a proposal that could build on this.

Down on 2nd and Main is the old cannery building, and it has been left to just fall apart for the last 30 years.

I've recently talked with the owner of that building.

His name is Ron Amundson.

He is willing and interested to build.

We've rezoned down there so it can go up to 100 feet.

The idea of having affordable housing for people, whether it's studios or one bedrooms.

I mean, of course, if you could make it multifamily, fabulous.

But in the meantime, it's a quarter of a block, so it's not a big parcel of property.

But my objective, and he said that he would be interested in working with us to really highlight what happened at that site.

and to be able to acknowledge the murders, but the value of the cannery workers.

You know, he's talking about photographs, I think I'm talking a little bit more, but the idea that we all could work together.

in a way that could get that rebuilt.

There are a couple of problems with it right now.

First of all, it's 30 years old and it's falling apart, but we have received word that our fire department is saying it's a dangerous building, we gotta do something.

Pioneer Square Association is really interested to make sure that when that building is rebuilt, it's done in a way that blends in with Pioneer Square.

So you can't just mow it down put up a parking lot, right?

We really want to rebuild.

So I'd love to be able to work with the owner, work with you, to think about what that could look like.

Right now, the major problem I've got is around historical preservation.

There are two walls of this building remaining.

The rest of it has collapsed.

But there are some that say we've got to preserve those walls.

Our owner currently is telling me it's way too expensive to do that.

So I'm working the problem right now, but I just want to bring this to your attention, how great it could be to be able to have at that site something that really acknowledges the history here and provides affordable housing in a connection that is so close to light rail and transit.

So that's my pitch.

I don't know where it's going yet.

I just want to bring it to your attention.

I think there's some opportunities.

I love that.

And it's a really good way to honor our labor history as we think about how we house folks and respond to today's need for workers today.

Speaking of workers today, thank you so much.

I think we're going to transition to the present day labor presentation.

That context is so very helpful.

Very excited to have newly elected President Larry Brown and Executive Secretary Nicole Grant with us today to give us a flavor of the state of labor.

And we really do want to do this every year at the beginning of the year just to honor the workers who make this city run.

So, President Brown, why don't you give us an update on the state of labor?

And again, welcome to the committee in your new role.

Well, thank you very much, Councilmember, Chairperson Muscata, and thank you for the congratulations as well.

And I really appreciate the historical perspective.

When you're navigating a boat, and I know Councilmember Bagshaw knows something about this, you have to look behind you to see where your wake is to know the direction you're traveling.

But I want to talk about the future and where we are today.

As president of Washington State Labor Council, I represent the largest labor organization in Washington state with more than 600 labor union organizations and approximately 550,000 unionized workers under the Washington State Labor Council.

A hundred years after what's been called labor's most spectacular revolt, I'm here to report that unions in Seattle and across Washington state are strong and getting stronger.

Our state is bucking national trends and more and more working people are seeing the real value of joining together in unions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of union members in Washington State grew by more than 65,000 members last year.

That's more than a 10% increase.

There are now an estimated 649,000 union members here in the state.

which represents almost 20%, 19.8% of the state's workforce.

That makes us number three in the nation for union density, right behind Hawaii and New York, and we plan on making number one soon.

This is great news for union members because that same Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that union wages are 22% higher than non-union wages.

For example, full-time union members make more than $54,000 per year on average here in Washington State, which is about $10,000 more than non-union workers.

That's the power of joining together.

with your co-workers to negotiate a fair return for the work you provide.

And that's the power of solidarity.

When organized workers are fed up with unfair treatment, as they did in 1919, or low pay, They can walk off the job just like they did 100 years ago.

In the past year, public school teachers and support staff across the state, heavy construction equipment operators in western Washington, and school bus drivers in Seattle have all gone on strike, and all of them have achieved important gains.

In many other cases, as with the Westin hotel workers, the University of Washington academic student employees, and AMR's emergency medical technicians, the very threat of a strike helped to win good contracts with wage increases and better benefits.

The truth is, the increase in Washington's union membership is great news for all workers because we know that union and non-union benefit.

We fight for and win labor standards and protections that benefit everyone, just as we did in Seattle in the last few years.

Washington's labor movement led the charge for raising the state's minimum wage, allowing all workers to earn paid sick leave and historic new family and medical leave benefits, just to name a few.

The national fight for 15 originated right here in SeaTac and Seattle.

Unions and advocates for quality public schools, affordable healthcare for all, and workforce training and development for the next generation of workers.

Unions have protected and strengthened the state's social safety nets for workers injured on the job and laid off workers through no fault of their own.

We have partnered with community organizations to fight for immigration rights, racial justice, and environmental protections, and against discrimination of all kinds.

What's remarkable, though, is that unions in Washington state have achieved these gains despite strong national headwinds.

Weak, outdated federal labor laws make it way too hard for workers to join a union in this country.

A multi-billion dollar union avoidance industry advises corporations to flout or ignore laws intended to protect the freedom to choose a union.

They do so because the penalties for breaking these laws are far cheaper than having to raise the wages and benefits.

That's why at the national level, union membership has dropped over the last few decades.

And that decline precisely mirrors the steady decline in American middle class.

Wealth inequality is now at a level not seen since the Gilded Age.

It's not because unions aren't popular.

Gallup approval ratings of unions have risen to 62% while just 30% disapprove of unions.

About half of the non-union workers surveyed say that they would join a union right now if they could, which is significantly higher than it was just a mere couple decades ago.

But conservative politicians with their campaigns, bankrolled by billionaire industrialists like the Koch brothers, have succeeded in discouraging unionization through so-called right-to-work laws, and the conservative majority in the U.S.

Supreme Court continues to issue anti-union decisions.

After last year's Janus decision, which forces public employee unions to provide services to non-union members for free, Many were predicting the end of organized labor.

Ah, not so.

But instead, here in Washington, we are growing.

We've doubled down on internal organizing.

We've reengaged our members to make sure they understand the importance of sticking together and keeping their union strong.

And I think our membership growth in Washington shows that we are succeeding at that.

So 100 years later in Seattle and throughout Washington, the struggle continues for the working class to get a greater share of the wealth that they create.

And despite serious headwinds from this century's corporate bosses and political opponents, our state's unions are winning important victories for the people of our state.

Thank you.

What's that?

Absolutely.

I'm really glad that you brought up the Janus case because I was gonna bring it up anyway But so are you saying that that that hasn't impacted or what has been the response of unions?

I know that there's been a lot of challenges for unions, especially in the area of tech and how What that has done in that industry, but then this Janus thing was like another blow So heavy is it too early to tell what the impact would be from that case?

I

Well, I believe that the evidence so far since the Janus decision has proven that our unions are fully engaging with the members, our public sector unions, to create a stronger relationship.

I do believe that it comes at a cost though, which is maybe doing some of the community work that resources are being devoted to this re-engagement with members.

We'll see in the long run.

We will continue the work in the community around racial and social justice.

as well as environmental justice.

But we are fully engaging our members in the public sector.

But you haven't seen like a mass exodus of city employees leaving.

I see Dustin shaking his head no back behind you.

That is exactly the case.

Our members are sticking with the union.

That's what I wanted to know.

Our unions are sticking with their members.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Larry, it has been a pleasure working with you and Nicole over the years that I've been in this seat.

But prior to my being here in the prosecuting attorney's office, one of the first project labor agreements was drafted, and I was drafting it with a number of your predecessors at that time for Harborview Hospital.

And it became a model.

And I just want to acknowledge what great partners that our labor friends have been.

And I'm so appreciative because every time that you or Nicole or Dave Fry both before you stood up, I mean, you were strong representing your members.

And at the same time, you were helping solve problems in ways that made things happen.

I just want to acknowledge that.

All of the workers, the women and men who worked on the tunnel as an example, the seawall, oftentimes they didn't get the recognition that they deserved.

Yet, because of the really strong relations that you helped, I think, put your arms around and steer, we've made amazing progress with construction projects that could have been delayed for years but weren't.

And I just want to acknowledge that.

And with your work around the apprenticeship programs and internship programs, how critical that is for back to race and social justice.

And I was speaking to a woman yesterday who was actually offering pre-apprenticeship training at one of her programs.

So it's getting people through high school, but with a vocational focus that they've got the math skills that they need to actually join a trade and not have to go back and start from scratch.

I just really want to say thank you both for your friendship and your partnership.

that one of the great values that our unions bring every day is that focus on workforce training, excellence, high quality standards that make unions and the work they do stand apart.

Excellent.

And welcome, Executive Secretary Treasurer Nicole Grant.

Good to see you.

Thank you for providing us with the state of labor in Seattle.

Yes, and I want to use this opportunity of being at the 100 year anniversary of the 1919 Seattle General Strike to talk a little bit about strikes in the modern sense and our modern Seattle-King County economy.

And then just talk a little bit about unions and broadly the worker power movement.

in the Seattle-King County economy today.

So I think I'll start talking a little bit about strikes that we've seen in our area in the last few years, because I want to acknowledge these workers.

It is the biggest sacrifice that a worker can make.

I mean, besides perhaps the sacrifice of their life that too many workers unfortunately make in Washington State every year.

But in terms of consciously, knowingly taking a risk to your employment and your standing and your career is a pretty brave move.

And so I wanted to just name some of the unions and workers that have done that recently.

As Larry mentioned, there is an unprecedented construction boom happening as our economy broadly booms in King County.

And both the cement truck drivers, and the heavy equipment operators in the last year have gone on strike for better working conditions, better safety, and to have a real piece of the economic pie to really stake their claim that we're the ones who build these buildings materially, hourly.

with their bodies, at the expense of their bodies, so that we can have things like skyscrapers full of profitable companies that hire thousands of people, so that we can have brilliant infrastructure and big recreational facilities.

They don't erupt from the earth like mushrooms.

They're built.

And those were the workers from Teamsters, 174. and operating engineers, local 302. And in both cases, those workers took tremendous risk because they are at will, you know, and a construction company can drop anybody they want whenever they want.

And because you don't get paid when you're on strike, you know, and everybody has a mortgage.

And if they're lucky, they also have tuition payments for their kids going to college.

Another workforce that I'd like to acknowledge is the pink-collar workers in the insurance industry.

Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueda's union, OPEIU Local 8, which is a largely woman membership union, went on strike recently over very low pay and threats to their control over their day and their work life at WPAS, which is an insurance administrator in Mercer Island.

They struck for weeks.

They had 10 workers fired by the company in retaliation for striking.

And through their solidarity with each other, And through the union movement's solidarity with OPEIU Local 8, they were able to get improvements in their contract and get some justice for the workers that risked it and that paid the price.

Who represents the teachers at University of Washington?

That's a great question.

I heard a bunch of stories this morning on KOW, the college that are striking, the professors that are striking.

Yeah, that's right.

So there is a recently approved strike sanction to WOOFC, which is the State Employees Union, Local 1488. This is a union that represents I would say over 1,000.

I don't want to get it too wrong, but over 1,000 workers at the UW that do everything from janitorial services to plumbing maintenance.

And that union, along with the largest union at the University of Washington, SEIU Local 925, and then a very prominent academic union, that I was going to mention because they just went on strike at the University of Washington is a UAW Local 4121. And that union led a one-day strike in the university over the summer.

And it was a special strike.

It was a special bargaining session because they really put forward their members' human interests.

And so in addition to a wage increase to respond to housing costs, they had a fight to stop sexual assault and harassment over academic workers because academia and the sciences is actually the second highest area of sexual harassment and assault in the national economy.

And it's not a well-told story because it's not Hollywood and it's not politics.

their members, female members of that union had grappled very seriously with sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination in the workplace.

And that was one of the issues that they struck over, was to define a training program to stop sexual harassment and assault that they would create and administer.

So it was very woman worker centric.

And they also struck for transgender worker health care.

The University of Washington was being slow and difficult about good inclusive health care for trans workers.

The last issue was mental health access.

And I think as we see an increase in rates of suicide and addiction in the United States, for a union to step out and fight for their workers' access to mental health therapy is something that we're really gonna see catch on.

And it was something they struck over.

Yeah, and in addition, the other strikes I want to mention are workers that, you know, are in a very precarious situation because of their...

Well, basically, I want to acknowledge the drivers who were taxi drivers and also TNC drivers and the actions that they took at SeaTac Airport.

Last year, there are workers that come from Africa, from South Asia, from the Middle East, who are derided by racism by the President of the United States.

And these workers often work for a sub-minimum wage.

And national labor law isn't always set up to protect them.

And Teamsters 117 and the App-Based Drivers Association rose to the occasion with their members and supported a work stoppage at SeaTac to finally break a logjam about what their experience was going to be like and how the Port of Seattle would support them in their careers.

So between these drivers, our first student bus drivers, which is a largely woman and people of color-led union that went on strike, our Tukwila Education Association and Tacoma Education Association teachers and educators, I think it's been seen that workers are the primary productive creative force in our society and that there just literally are no Boeing aircraft.

There is no shipping industry.

There are no electricians.

There is no driving.

There are no schools.

There is no health care without workers.

And when they risk so much to go on strike, what they're proving to every single worker, whether they have a union or not, is the value of their work and their intrinsic power in our society as the person that provides all those valuable services that we take for granted.

So, last thing I want to say is that in 2019, in Seattle, Washington, that unions are for everybody and that worker power is for everybody.

And I wanted to give just my deepest thanks to all of the city council members for the work that you have done supporting domestic workers who are organizing for worker power, for all that you have done for TNC drivers who are organizing for worker power, and for all you've done to support project labor agreements and labor harmony agreements is our city grows to say that as we come up, the workers will come up.

Thank you for educating us on those, the labor peace agreements.

I appreciate your help and your phone calls.

Community workforce agreements.

I don't think we've mentioned that.

I think that is a critical addition to all of the things that we are doing and making sure people that haven't had opportunities before now have opportunities.

So thank you.

Any other comments?

Thank you both so much for the State of Labor.

Thank you both so much for the history of labor.

We do hope that this entire presentation makes it into your archives because we think that this is an excellent way to not only commemorate where we've come from but where we're headed with unions and labor movement and I love that you ended with the message to all workers Labor is for everyone and unions are for everyone.

Thank you guys so much.

And we will move on to our last item of business, which is how we are going to continue to expand labor protections to all workers, including those who may be misclassified.

Thank you so much for joining us.

If you could read into the record item number six and as we do that Thank you so much Dan for being with us and Dan eaters at the table and anyone else who?

Councilmember Herbold is also coming here.

We have Marty Garfinkel.

You're welcome to come and we also know that you're there if you Want to stay there.

You're welcome to come up here though.

You're our fearless leader in Office of Labor Standards

Agenda item number six, a resolution 31863 relating to misclassification of workers as independent contractors when they should be designated as employees.

For a briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, Farideh.

Welcome, Dan.

Thank you.

Dan Eder, Deputy Director of Council of Central Staff.

Excellent.

And thank you for joining us, Marty.

Marty Garfinkel, Office of Labor.

wonderful thanks and welcome back Councilmember Herbold.

We wanted to just give Deanna a second to introduce the potential resolution in front of us just by way of reference a little over a year ago Councilmember Herbold and I were talking and one of the things that she mentioned was her deep desire to make sure that we continue to advance labor protections especially for those who may be misclassified, and ensure that our labor standards are applying for all workers.

As we know, misclassification, as you've heard earlier today and throughout the last year, affects many of the workers in traditional industries, such as home care workers, janitors, construction, restaurant workers, and the service industry.

And it has also been an issue that we've been grappling with as we talk about the gig economy as well and delivery drivers.

Many workers are inappropriately classified as independent contractors, even though they truly are employees by all other definitions.

And we want to make sure that they have workers' compensation and other financial obligations.

that they are due to receive so that they are truly being classified correctly and not just being classified as independent contractors to avoid certain taxes.

We also know that there's certain workers that are truly independent contractors.

We heard from many of the workers who are domestic workers, who have started their own businesses, who have many clients of their own, and workers such as retail, I'm sorry, such as real estate agents and others who we know are independent contractors, like hairdressers, for example, who own their booth and they have true independent contractor parameters around the type of work that they do.

So while we recognize independent contractors will always have a place in our economy, we also want to make sure that those who are being misclassified truly do have the protections.

So I think it's important that we have this conversation about how to look at those distinctions, recognize where there's bona fide independent contractors and respect that work, while also ensuring that all workers have access to worker protections.

Council Member Herbold, anything else to say before Dan introduces the legislation?

I could, just real quickly.

I really appreciate your remembering that I identified this early in your term as a legacy issue that was important to me as the former chair of the Committee with Oversight on Labor Issues.

I think as the gig economy permeates more and more different types of jobs, and more and more people turn towards gig economy employment, this is incredibly important and I really, it's almost like we planned this.

I really appreciate that we're hearing this today, the day that we heard about Seattle's history in the labor struggle and also the day that we appointed the Domestic Workers Advisory Board.

These issues are all interconnected because we do have such a strong labor history as being on the vanguard of labor rights and fair working conditions.

And what continuously disturbs me is that as the gig economy becomes larger and larger, it actually becomes a model of work that is designed to circumvent all the laws that we have been on the vanguard of getting passed.

So I think this is really important.

And I also know there's a conversation within labor about how to tackle these issues.

Do we do like we've done with the domestic workers legislation?

Do we attack it industry by industry?

Or do we try to deal with it holistically and argue the misclassification argument that many of these people that are being called contractors are actually employees.

I think until we have a way to deal with it holistically, I think it's completely appropriate that we deal with it industry by industry.

And I'm really excited about the work that's happening in the state legislature this year.

And I think our interest in this issue will be, I think, well-received in the conversations that are going on in the state legislature about this very issue.

Thanks.

And Director Garfinkel, I know you're here just for questions if there are any.

Dan, why don't we have you go ahead and walk us through the resolution.

Happy to do that.

As you've just been discussing, Resolution 31863 is related to misclassifications of some workers as independent contractors.

The resolution includes several requests of the Office of Labor Standards and of the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

Specifically, the resolution establishes four asks of the Office of Labor Standards first.

One, propose policy solutions to help address the misclassification of some workers.

Two, develop enforcement strategies and subject matter expertise for the city to resolve misclassification inquiries and complaints.

Three, coordinate with the Advisory Commission to develop the outreach and education strategies to inform workers and employers about proposed policy solutions.

And four, develop potential strategies to mitigate adverse impacts of a recent Supreme Court decision.

The resolution also requests that the Labor Standards Advisory Commission develop a work program about issues related to misclassification.

And finally, the resolution requests that the Office of Labor Standards submit written semi-annual reports and presentations memorializing its progress.

And just I think an important clarification is the first report isn't due until the third quarter, is that correct?

Yes.

And that was intentionally designed because we don't know what's going to happen in the state legislature this year and we really want the work of LSAC and the Office of Labor Standards to be informed by what happens in the state legislature this year.

I also want to add that This resolution was brought to LSAC back in August and folks are excited to work on the issues.

And do you want to talk a little bit about the amendment as well?

happy to do that.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to it or should I summarize it?

How would you like to handle it?

It's pretty straightforward.

It's striking out the current section 4, which makes reference to a body of work that we're switching out for a more appropriate task in the new Section 4. So we're taking out a legal analysis of a Washington State Supreme Court case decision and inserting a review of a study that has been that the Washington State Legislature has charged the Department of Commerce in delivering in June, and that study was a result of a governor's appropriation in the budget last year, and it's focused on addressing the question of how many independent contractors there are and what their needs are.

And Councilmember Herbold, do you have extra copies of that?

Great, thank you.

I really appreciate your weighing in.

Any other comments or questions?

Please, and make sure that little button is turned on on your mic, right up here on the stem.

There you go.

Before discussing misclassification, may I just say I really appreciate the focus today on Seattle's proud union history.

Before coming to the Office of Labor Standards, I spent my entire career in the union movement.

and work on worker interests and worker protection.

So it's thrilling to me to see the time that you folks devoted to this.

And I thought the presentation was terrific.

I also, on the misclassification, I appreciate the attention and the light that is being shined on this issue.

It's an issue that I've been concerned about for a long time and have worked on in various litigation issues.

And I think it is a very serious problem that affects many, many workers.

And as the council members have mentioned, particularly with the gig economy, it's an exploding problem.

I mean, the 20th century saw a lot of blood, sweat, and tears spent in trying to create a safety net and protections for workers.

that was based on a premise of employment status.

And unfortunately, there are many employers who are taking advantage of legal loopholes to rip that social safety net out from under many, many workers.

And that's not only unfair to workers, it's also unfair to employers who play by the rules.

And the only other thing I'll say is that LSAC is already working on this.

We've already been working on this.

We have a subcommittee of LSAC that's on misclassification.

And we're looking very closely and watching very closely what's happening at the state.

And I'm hopeful that the state will take on this issue because it's a statewide issue.

And like many issues, you'd like to see statewide solutions when possible.

When not possible, we may have to take it up here.

And the problem, of course, and we can talk more about this, is that the tests that are currently used give great opportunity for mischief because they're extremely difficult to apply, which causes not only misclassification, but also causes confusion because It is difficult for employees and employers sometimes to know whether a particular person is an employee or an independent contractor because the test is a multi-factor test.

No one factor is more important than any other factor.

The courts have struggled with those tests.

And the state effort right now is an attempt to simplify, which we would welcome.

Council Member Morris.

You forgot my name.

No, no, I didn't.

I want to ask you a question.

Thank you.

I know you've done a lot of work in this field well before you showed up here in city government.

So when we talk about misclassification, what are the grossest examples in the 21st century of misclassification that you know?

I mean just a few so we can kind of frame the narrative moving forward because I know people go on and on about the gig economy and I know we're all struggling with that, but just what is a good example of that?

Even without the gig economy, a big area of misclassification is delivery drivers.

I spent 10 years working on a lawsuit against FedEx, and FedEx has a very sophisticated system, I would say, of misclassification.

There are many court cases that have found that now, after many years, that FedEx did misclassify its workers.

And what misclassified as and they should have been classified as full-time employees.

Yeah, so these are folks who drive Delivery trucks and it's not just FedEx.

There are other delivery companies that do this.

They own that they are required to own the truck.

They're required to Carry their own health insurance if they can afford it.

They're paid on a piece rate basis, but in many cases cannot do any other work with that truck while they're performing services for their employer.

And they are called independent contractors.

And so they don't have workers' comp, they don't have the whole array of the social insurance that is designed to protect workers.

They're independent contractors.

Is that what we also saw on the tech side, when people were not classified as workers but as part-time, therefore they weren't given sick leave or any other protections that a worker would have?

Correct.

They're not given any of those things.

All of our worker protection laws assume employment status.

Okay.

And that's why, I would say, except for the Domestic Worker Ordinance, which is very advanced in looking at work, the functions performed as opposed to employment status.

We're saying all, you know, the law that you all pass says if you perform a certain type of work, you should get the minimum wage, and you don't have to worry about the employment status, which is one of a number of different ways that policymakers have attempted to confront the problem.

So what are we confronted with now when you said there are employers who have been very good at finding loopholes?

Well, the state one effort is what is being considered at the state legislature, which is modeled on what other states have done.

I don't remember the exact number, but there's quite a few states that have what's called an ABC test, and it's essentially a presumption of employment status, which with a much more simplified test of what the employer must show in order to demonstrate that the person isn't is an independent contractor.

It kind of puts the shoe on the foot of the employer saying, we're going to assume these folks are employees unless you can show A, B, and C.

Kind of like the IRS that everything's income unless you can show us it isn't.

Exactly.

Great.

And that would help a great deal.

It is complicated.

There are folks who don't want to be employees, and they're having that debate now, as I understand it, in Olympia.

But it can be worked out.

It's been worked out in other states, and I'm hopeful that we'll see some progress in Olympia.

Thank you.

Council Member Bragg.

Thank you.

Marty, thank you for that.

I'm really interested in what is going on in Olympia, and I know it's just early days, but if you could keep an eye on that.

Specifically, last year when we were looking at family leave or sick leave that people could pay into some kind of an account that would be comparable to a health care workers comp program.

Even if you were an independent contractor, perhaps you didn't have a job that year, but you were functioning as best you could to scrap things together.

I'm very interested about the portability of that.

I think that we've got some examples from Rhode Island and New Jersey that have been successful.

If you just keep your eyes on that for us and keep us informed, I really want to see what we can do as a state.

Thank you.

And I just want to name the two state bills that deal specifically with this issue.

They are two bills, one in the Senate, one in the House.

It creates the Fair, I'm sorry, the Employee Fair Classification Act.

One is Senate Bill 5513. The other one is House Bill 1515. And they, as the director explained, they defined independent contractor for purposes of the Employee Fair Classification Act, and establishes the same definition for purposes of minimum wage, unemployment insurance, industrial insurance, and other employment laws.

So again, creating some certainty around the definition of what an employee is as opposed to what a contractor is for purposes of getting our good state labor laws.

Before I introduce the amendment, I just want to, there's been an Amazon employee who's been corresponding with me for the last couple years, and I just want to share, you've heard me read this, I read this in New York, I just want to share an excerpt from the most recent email.

This person writes, when I wrote to you last year, Amazon only allowed those in the Prime Now division to work a total of 24 hours a week.

Then, once a week, all the shifts are posted, and the employees could sign up for them.

As there are always more employees than shifts available, it was always difficult to get more than one or two shifts over the entire week.

Amazon's all about change, and boy, there have been changes.

Now, shifts are announced at random times and days.

Most are for the next day or two.

And to get even one shift, one must be online at the website 24-7.

When shifts are announced, they are signed up for in less than a minute.

And so, you know, we talk a lot about innovation and how important it is to innovate.

But when innovation, you know, turns our working environment, it's not a good future.

It's a scary dystopian future.

And I don't think it's the direction we want to go in.

And I really appreciate OLS's work in this area.

So I think the sponsor of this resolution for working with us and with the office of labor standards and for her leadership on this Before we consider the resolution just a little bit of context as well I think is super helpful to put this in context with what's happening at the state level because obviously We're going to watch that conversation closely.

But what's really exciting about this is you're asking folks who are sitting at the Labor Standards Advisory Committee, who very much like our earlier conversation, include the voices of employers and employees, or in the case where we have misclassified workers, organizations who are working with those who've been misclassified potentially.

to come up with the strategies together.

And so this is really an in-Seattle, internal-looking discussion in coordination with our members on the Labor Standards Advisory Committee to give us some recommendations, looking at some national examples, and then to come back to us.

So it's a really good series of steps that you've outlined here that, regardless of the conversations at the national level, state level, give us a chance to chart a path forward in our city here.

So with that, would you like to introduce the resolution amendment?

Sure.

I'd like to move Amendment 1 to Resolution 31863. Second.

Any comments?

All in favor, vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None?

OK, great.

The amendment to the resolution hangs.

Would you like to move the resolution?

Why don't you do it, because I don't have a number in front of me.

OK.

I'd like to move the committee recommends passage of Resolution 31863A.

Second.

All in favor, vote aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Great.

Thank you very much for bringing this forward.

We will bring this forward to full council for consideration on February 11th.

Thank you, Director Gruffinkel.

Thank you very much, Dan, for joining us at the table.

And with that, I think we have gotten through our marathon labor history and labor presente.

Council Member Baxter, for the good of the order.

Thank you very much.

And I want to acknowledge the work that all four of us here at the table have done around encouraging child care and child care in this building or in another city building within a short radius.

And there was an article this morning in Seattle Times, it's Thursday, February 7th, and I do want to acknowledge the mayor's office.

Thank you to Leslie Brinson and Anthony Oriama and others.

Calvin Goings, who joined us yesterday to talk about this, but what we know is that the problem of having downtown licensed good childcare, it's extreme and it's worsening across the county.

This article, and I'm going to assume the numbers are right, I haven't verified, that in King County that the number of licensed facilities has fallen in the past five years.

leaving 1,939 providers for parents to wrestle over.

So with the increase, and Councilmember Johnson brought this up last night, you know, in just the few years that he has been on the council, that we have seen in the city of Seattle over 100,000 people move here for jobs, many of them people who have young families, and my goal here is for us to set up a childcare facility, acknowledging that it's not cheap, but to do it in this city hall as a, really a reflection of the need and the fact that we have many people who would use it.

So to the extent that, again, signaling to the mayor's office executive as partners that I don't know what the incentives are to do this work for other employers, We know that there's something like a 25% federal tax credit on child care facilities.

This article points out that in other states there are 100% tax credits, and they pointed to Georgia for doing this work.

So I want to say that I know we've been looking at this building, and people have said, well, The coffee cart area is too small, but I'm looking at, well, what if we did infant care in one space?

We're looking at L2, which is not utilized 100% of the time, potential for the one to fours.

I just believe that this is something we can do.

I know we're going to have to buckle our seatbelt because there's a million reasons in the world not to do it, but there is all the best reason to do it, and that's that we need to increase the supply.

So, thank you that you've been working with me, my budget buddy on this, and I know that Council Member Wards, it's something that you support as well.

So, we'll see if we can't move it this year.

Let me just add this.

Yes, thank you, Council Member Skaggs, because, you know, everyone's talking about transit-oriented development, transit-oriented housing, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So, we have made a big push in the north and that there should be transit-oriented childcare.

that that is not just an amenity.

And when we talk to for-profit and non-profit developers, a sweetener on the RFP should have a box there, that if you are going to providing pre-K or childcare, that those are incentives, like you were asking about incentives, that you get extra points on your RFP for providing that.

And that is what we've been talking about in our charrettes at Northgate Light Rail, and we will certainly keep pushing that at the 130th stop as well.

Love this.

I could talk about this stuff all day.

Let's do that.

Let's adjourn.

I think we are going to go ahead and adjourn.

I just want to thank everybody for their participation today in our meeting.

We went about 15 minutes over.

Thank you for being here with us.

Our next meeting will be on February 21st at 9.30 a.m.

We are finalizing the agenda, and we will get that information out to you soon.

Really appreciate you, my two colleagues on the Labor Committee today.

Focus.

We will see you in two weeks.

And thank you, Farideh, for helping staff us throughout the day.

See everybody later.