Well, thank you so much for being here today.
Good morning, everyone.
We are here on a very exciting day where we get to carry forward with the intent of the voters.
Seventy-seven percent of voters voted to pass Initiative 124 to protect hotel workers.
Today we're here to continue those protections, to extend those protections even in the midst of litigation.
The initiative and its provisions have been upheld in the court, and after years of receiving basic protections, now those protections have been dialed back.
Initiative 124 and its protections are not fully implemented.
And so what we're here to say today is we're not going to wait.
We don't believe in delay.
And if you know anything about Seattle labor, we stand for innovation, we stand for leadership, we stand for creativity, and for upholding protections just like the will of the voters want it.
We've done this, from $15 an hour minimum wage to secure scheduling to Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, to protecting workers from harassment, intimidation, and injury.
to making sure people have health care and family leave.
We as Seattle, we were proud to pass Initiative 124. And today, as elected leaders and workers, we're proud to continue to champion those protections in legislation.
Our most vulnerable, hardworking hotel workers deserve these basic protections.
After six months of engagement with hotel workers, with the hoteliers, with Unite Here, Local 8, their union, hotel managers, the Washington Hospitality Association, and leadership from Councilmember Gonzalez, Mayor Durkin, the City Attorney's Office, and Office of Labor Standards, we today have four pieces of legislation that continue the protections of Initiative 124. I want to be very clear with folks.
Today is the beginning of a conversation.
This legislation is the base.
We believe in open, transparent dialogue, and that is what you will see from us over the next five to six weeks as we take feedback, as we hear from the community, both workers and managers, as we talk at large about how we can continue to extend these protections and improve the legislation.
Today marks the beginning.
We will have a public hearing next Tuesday and many opportunities to hear that feedback and amendments.
We may compromise on policy strategies, but we will not compromise on our goals, and that is to protect workers, especially the most vulnerable workers who work in our hotels, who are mostly women, people of color, many immigrant workers.
We're here to say we're extending these protections just like we would to any other industry, because these workers deserve that justice.
This is a worker justice issue, it's an economic justice issue, it's a gender justice issue, and it is a racial justice issue.
We cannot ignore that when we look at who's being covered by the protections of Initiative 124 and the protections now extended through these four pieces of legislation.
These aren't easy policy solutions.
If they were, they would be done right now.
But here we are, initiating this process to complete it by the summer.
We're really excited to be working together to craft these policies over the next few weeks.
And we know that by working together, the initiative, the will of the voters will be completed and will be carried out before the summer is over.
I'm very excited to introduce you to a handful of our workers that we've been working with, folks such as Lula Hale, a housekeeper and member of Unite Here Local 8. Give it up for Lula, who has also been working with us to craft this legislation.
My name is Lola Haile.
I am from East Africa, Eritrea, if you know this.
My name is Lola Haile.
I work at Edgewater Hotel.
I am from Africa, East Africa, Eritrea.
So I work, I'm here in Seattle over 20 years.
I worked a long time in a different hotel, Chrome Plaza Hotel, I worked.
So, the person is, I working over there, just working fine at the first, and later on, one person attacked me over there, the guest, you know, say he's working, he's working to the airline, Russia airline.
So, I knock the door, go clean his house, the room, so, Two guys opened the door, said they asked me, the other one said, I don't know, I don't need it.
The other one said, I want it, so make your mind.
So the other said, okay.
And the other one, he's gone.
So the other one stay in the room.
So are you going out, or do you want me to continue to do it?
He said, just you can do it, I stay in the bed.
Just only use one bed, only the other one don't make it.
I said, okay.
So I try, I sleep on his bed, I try to make the bed.
I'm not comfortable because my uniform is dressed.
He's behind my back.
He's sitting down in the bed.
But anyway, that's my job.
I have to do it.
So I'm doing everything, looking at my shoulder.
Because he's looking behind me, I don't like it.
So anyway, I'm doing it.
I go slow, slowly.
I'm going fast, fast, whatever.
I finish, and when I do my pillow, I put my pillow, I just my neck put it straight to put, and he come behind me, he grab me.
When he grab my heart.
I fighting, I hitting him like that, he go fell down to the other bed, whatever, he sitting down.
The reason is not because I'm strong, but he's drunk, that's why he's fainting the thing.
So my manager come in, for some reason she coming on time, she passing the thing, she see me, Lula, what are you doing?
Well, he attacked me, I'm fighting, I'm protecting myself.
So I hit on him, he's failed.
So she called the security, telling him to stand up and finish the job.
I finished the job, doing whatever, and the security, when he go like this, the guy said again, he's ask me, excuse me, peace, you know?
I said, I look at him, what?
How much?
For what?
How much?
You want 1,000?
You want him to sleep with me?
I said, I shake my hand and do whatever.
I said, secretary, let's go out.
I go.
So my manager tell me, give me your comment.
She write it down, everything, what I did, everything I told her.
But nobody say nothing to me.
This guest is still around.
This guest is out.
Or this guest is come back.
I don't know.
Nobody give me answer.
What happened?
We did this like that.
Nobody care.
So I keep working, waiting, waiting, whatever I do, working, working, but nobody give me answer.
I'm not feel comfortable whatever airline coming over there, the Russian especially, they drunk all the time.
So I just quit.
I go and I work in another hotel.
Still we have union.
The job is still safety, but not any hotel is maybe look safety, but not all of them is safety.
We have something, always we have something.
Maybe it looks okay, but One of them is something happened.
Not only about the sexual harassment, a body fell down, you never know.
So this panic button is very, very important for us.
Important for me, especially now I work in the night.
Any hotel worker is very important, this panic button.
Because I'm not lying.
I'm Christian, I don't want to be lie.
This has happened.
This is supposed to, you guys, when you see this one, anybody believe in us and protecting us.
If we don't do this job, the hotel, who did?
We did.
We make money for them.
They pay us.
Of course, we pay our bill, you know?
And this hotel, another hotel I work, if this guest is coming back, we told you new.
If you decide you want to work or not, what should I let off when the guest come back?
I need the guests not to come back because I am the one losing the money, not the guests.
So don't give me this to decide if the guests coming don't work that day or if you want that day.
For what?
I am the one losing the money.
If I miss one day, yeah, my 40 hour is less money.
I need money, I need to pay my bill, I need to pay my everything, whatever from that hotel.
So please, the guests, if you do this kind thing, never come back to the hotel.
Never.
If you see us, if you hear us, believe in us.
So I hope you guys, whatever I said, you hear me.
Maybe another woman, they have the same issue, maybe they're scared, maybe they're ashamed, maybe they don't want something in the hotel, the manager's scared.
Nobody talk like that, whatever.
I have to.
Now I have union.
They protect me.
They can speak whatever.
They do everything.
That's why now I'm trying to do my best to every hotel employee.
I cannot keep it longer, zip my mouth.
I can speak.
Yeah.
After 20 years in Seattle, I worked all my life in hotel, different hotel.
Maybe I work, but I work.
This job I have, yeah, it's protection, look, protection, because we have union.
It looks okay, but still we need this I-24.
I need my panic button because I fall down and the drunk come in.
So what I'm going to do?
I work by myself.
Nobody in the hallway.
It's night.
I knock guest room if they ask me for something.
I don't know what the guest is.
Is he good or is he not good?
I don't know that.
Yeah, so please, if you hear this one, for anybody, hotel, woman, worker, we need this kind thing.
God helping us, God help you.
I hope you listen.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Lula.
So up next, we have Lisa Cruz, housekeeper and member of Unite Here Local 8, to talk about her experiences with healthcare and her work as a housekeeper.
Hi, I'm Lisa Cruz.
I'm working in an embassy suite, Pioneer Square.
Yeah, I really fight this I-124 because the insurance for me right now is really important, especially the health care.
Because I pay my health care every month for $230.
How can I afford that every month?
I have one kid.
I can't cover her because I pay more.
So I didn't go to my doctor necessary because I don't want to pay more.
That happened to me when I, this is my first experience to be housekeeping.
Before one year, I get injury on my wrist up to my shoulder.
My doctor told me I need a therapy.
And if I talk to my HR to get my light work, but I know that housekeeping doesn't have a light work.
I can't do my therapy because even I do my therapy, if I keep working hard, it's nothing.
That's why I can't do light working.
I have to work hard in a hotel to pay my insurance for every month.
And also, yeah, my shoulder now every night, it's worst thing.
I feel pain every night.
I just put the head back to make my, another day working.
So my daughter need insurance also.
I can't cover her because she get an asthma.
So I can't bring her the doctor necessary because I have to pay for her doctor.
She doesn't have insurance yet.
That's why I keep fighting for this I-124.
And also my hotel is not contract for the union yet.
Yeah, thank you very much for everybody.
Thank you so much, Lisa.
We know that hotel workers have higher rates of injury than coal miners and those in building construction trades, and hotel workers have three times the amount of back injuries than those of the general population, according to a report from 2016. This is exactly why we need to make sure that we have more health care provided.
I want to now introduce someone who needs no introduction, my friend and colleague, Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, who also chairs the Committee on Gender Equity.
This is a gender equity issue.
Thank you for your leadership on this and your co-sponsorship of this effort.
So thank you Councilmember Mosqueda.
It's a pleasure to once again find ourselves working together on such an important issue for women, for immigrants, and for workers across the city.
I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this bill when this initiative was first being developed.
I was one of the few council members on the city council who spoke up loudly and clearly that this is an obvious policy choice for us as a city and for us as policymakers.
It is the right thing to do to protect vulnerable workers in our city from the conditions that you heard Lula and Lisa describe to you.
It is unjust to expect these workers to walk into and tolerate intolerable working conditions.
Which one of us expects to walk in to a room with a lock and be subjected to unwanted touching with no consequences for the person who did the touching?
None of us deserve that behavior.
And I think it's time for us to ask ourselves the question of why we as a society have decided that it's okay for these women and the hundreds of women they represent that aren't here with us today to tolerate that behavior.
It is wrong.
We have an option before us as a city council and as a city to fulfill the will of the voters who spoke loudly and clearly in November of 2016 that said yes This class of workers deserve protection from sexual assault and harassment in the workplace.
This body of workers deserve the right to access affordable, quality health care.
This group of workers deserves to be able to determine when the workload is so significant that they now can't pick up their child when they go home at night.
This is really the core of this policy.
And I know that this is the beginning of the conversation, but I want to challenge us not to lose sight of those core principles to deliver on the promise that we made to these workers overwhelmingly in November of 2016 to first and foremost protect their health and their safety.
and their dignity and respect in the workplace.
That is what the challenge is before us.
And for those who still have concerns about some of the policies that we've laid out to begin this conversation, I want to remind you all that that is really our challenge here.
Let's stay focused on the population, on the people, on the moms, on the aunts, on the grandmas, that we are really trying to help with this legislation.
And everything else will come along with it.
So I am excited to kick off this conversation today.
I know we are going to have a busy flurry of six weeks coming down the pipeline for us, but I'm committed, along with Council Member Mosqueda, to get this legislation across the finish line and in front of full council before the end of this summer and certainly before we begin our budget process.
So I am looking forward to getting to work, continuing to rolling up our sleeves after a six-month pre-policy-making process.
It is time for us to say no to delay and to say yes to action and get something passed.
So thank you again.
You'll hear more from us at committee at noon.
We will have more workers there.
We will have folks from industry, obviously, and we will have a robust discussion.
Happy to take questions as well.
All right, so there's a few provisions that we're outlining here.
Much of this actually follows what you see in Initiative 124. basic protections against harassment, intimidation, and assault, basic protections for health care to be high quality for the workers.
We want to also ensure worker retention, and we are also making sure that this is an implementable policy.
One of the things that you just mentioned was the panic buttons, for example.
We know that at the state level, they pass a piece of legislation requiring the panic buttons.
Frankly, that wouldn't have happened without the leadership of Unite Here Local 8, the hotel workers themselves, and this initiative passing.
But what happened is that many of those panic buttons just sound an alarm that no one's required to respond to.
It doesn't show you which room the attack is actually happening in.
So we want there to be a response to the issues that come up.
So it gets a little bit more into the details for us so that we can actually have follow through on some of these components.
There's four pieces of legislation.
We're going to go through each one of those in the meeting today.
And we also have staff on hand to walk through the details of the policy brief.
And we have a memo for you.
It's only 12 pages.
But we're happy to share that with the press as well.
I think it's fair to say that this is a complex set of policies.
So complex, in fact, that we've had to address all of the policy concerns in four different sets of bills.
So we do have staff available to get into the nitty-gritty details.
But I think, again, the concepts here are about making sure that hotel workers who are put in very vulnerable positions because they go into somebody's room that is locked, that is rented to that individual person, they are put in very precarious situations.
So what does it mean to make sure that we have an enforceable, implementable law that protects these workers from sexual assault and harassment and other unwanted touching, while also making sure that we address that hotel workers have unique work needs related to how many rooms they're required to clean, and what number of hours per day per shift, and how that damages their body given that this is a physically demanding type of work.
Also, because of those injuries, we need to acknowledge that there is a need, a significant need, for access to affordable, quality health care.
We have a bill that addresses that as well.
And lastly, we want to make sure that we're addressing what kind of businesses are going to be included and covered in this, and that is also part of this complex set of four bills.
Would either of you respond to the criticism that the legislation puts an undue burden on some of the small independent businesses that also might be on the hotel property like a flower shop?
So I think that's one of the things that we're going to be discussing here.
We've tried to carefully acknowledge that at the city of Seattle, we have historically in our labor standards policies acknowledged that there can be harm, unintended harm, done to small businesses.
So we have tried to draw the line at a place where we think it's consistent with other labor standards that we have at the city of Seattle in order to hold those small businesses harmless.
But the situation is that if you are working in a hotel And you are putting your workers in a situation where they are going to be in those vulnerable positions.
They deserve to be protected.
And a lease shouldn't terminate that right to protection for these workers.
And I don't know if you want to add anything.
Yeah, sure.
I think that's absolutely correct.
The one other thing I would add is We have carefully, at this point, drawn the line at 50 employees or less.
It's considered a small business.
We recognize that Flower Shop might not have 50 employees.
The other thing that's important, though, is we want to make sure that if anybody goes onto the property, they're also protected from that same harassment, intimidation, assault.
So if somebody flies into our great city, visits one of our wonderful hotels because of the wonderful workers there, we don't want anybody to think that they can get away with harassment and intimidation in the room.
at that flower shop or in the restaurant so it's important on that property people understand that they have a responsibility to act appropriately and that's part of the reason that we feel like if it's on the property it's part of the core business we will continue to have those discussions but those small businesses i want folks to know we have drawn a line two more questions so it goes so far as to say how many hours they can work how many rooms they can do what kind of health care a hotel needs to provide i mean some people might say that's kind of far-reaching
I mean, what would you say to that?
In response to that, I think the voters, 77% of the voters, said this is absolutely the right thing we should do.
In fact, the initiative included those ancillary businesses.
The initiative included the square footage.
The initiative included the protections, not just for those going into rooms, but other places on the property.
What we've done here is tried to stay true to the initiative and also respond to some of the issues we've heard come up in post-implementation.
What the voters wanted was protection for these workers.
What the voters said by 77 percent of the vote was that they wanted the protections that we would expect in any other industry to apply to this same unique workplace situation.
So I think the voters have already said this is absolutely the appropriate thing to do and we've heard so far thank you for continuing this effort even while litigation continues.
And I would just add to that that I think you know that that's a common Concern that we heard in the context of when we were negotiating $15 minimum wage, when we were negotiating paid sick and safe time, we were negotiating secure scheduling.
I mean, you name your labor standard.
This is an area where it is of better interest for employers to not have regulation than to have regulation.
We have heard that the voters say, and policymakers agree with the voters, that this is an area that deserves some regulation for the protection of a vulnerable worker population, and that's what this suite of bills represents.
Anything else?
The statewide issue did end up in the courts.
Do you have any fear of this ending up in the courts?
She's the attorney, so I'll give you my layman.
I would say this.
The conversation in the court has not been around the merits of the policy.
The conversation in the court has been around single subject issue, which was challenged in CTAC, challenged in Initiative 1433, and we, being those who were advocating for workers, prevailed.
It was labor standards in 1433, for example, that was minimum wage and sick leave.
Here the question is around single subject issue again.
The question has never been around the merits of the policy.
All of the issues that we've talked about, healthcare, protections for workers against retaliation, protection against toxic work environments, and heavy workloads have never been in question and that's exactly what the voters wanted when they passed initiative 124. So we're excited to continue those labor protections even as the conversation continues.
And I would just add that we live in a very litigious society in a world, and it wouldn't be unusual for someone to think that this merits a lawsuit.
And I think what's important here for both the workers and for others is that we are crafting this policy in a way that we think is absolutely defensible should legal action occur.
And we are ready to continue the fight in the courts to defend this policy and these policy choices.
So what we're trying to do here is move away from a technical argument that has been made thus far that has really embroiled the implementation of this policy for the benefit of workers.
And let's just get to the merits of the argument.
This is the merits of the argument.
And we get a chance now to defend the merits of a case and our policy choices in an open, transparent court and in open, transparent chambers we'll be discussing and debating these policy choices.
So we'll see you at noon and Council Chambers and there's also footage of the many opportunities that we've had to hear from workers and hotel industry that is online and look forward to seeing you all upstairs.
Thank you everybody.