A RESOLUTION requesting that the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, the Seattle Fire Department, and the City Budget Office include in the City’s contract for Basic Life Support Emergency Services provisions that provide to emergency medical technicians (EMTs) a prevailing wage and benefits comparable to other emergency workers employed in comparable cities and similar sectors in the City of Seattle; and requesting the departments to provide additional analysis, data, and information.
The report The City Council Agenda Item two Resolution 318 31 requesting the Department of Finance, Administrative Services and the Central Budget Office negotiate contract for Basic Life Support. Emergency Services. Casper Bagshaw. Correct. I'm sorry. It's me. Oh, I'm sorry. I know this kind of pushed your customers to want. I'm sorry. No. Thank you, President Harrell. First, I need to move to amend. So I'm going to. Just. Read that out and then talk about it. Yep. A move to amend resolution 31831 by substituting version two for version one a second. Okay. You want to that's been moved in second that the resolution be amended. We'd like to talk a little about this amendment, but. Okay. I can talk about the amendment and then I'll have points about the resolution. The substantive resolution. Just we're. Just. So just to explain the amended version, this is a result of the discussions with Councilman Mosquito's office and with all the EMTs themselves and the union representatives. And there was there were many versions flying around. So I got a mosquito and I brought all of it together. And this version, version two, incorporates all of those changes and it has gone through law review as well. Okay. So we could address what it means more in depth, but right now we're just voting on the amendment. So any questions about the amendment process here? I'm going to we're going to vote on it because have mosquitoes. You want to say something? Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to the program on this. I also want to acknowledge that this includes much of the hard work that Councilmember Gonzalez and I did prior to the weekend and spent a lot of time making sure that we had a good foundation. Minor tweaks this morning and late yesterday. So I think we're in a good place for this joint piece to move forward. Okay. So we're just going to do the procedural part of the amendment and then we could explain a little bit more. I think we're all sort of following the issue. So all those in favor of the amendment, please vote I. I oppose. The ayes have it. And I would like to address now the amended piece of legislation. And Councilmember SWAT. Thank you. As many of the MDs who spoke today indicated, this was this had come this resolution come to a vote to the city council last week. And I like them. I'm hoping that this will get voted in by the city council today. As everybody knows, our medical emergency medical technicians do or EMTs do vital lifesaving work in our community every day. They respond to assess, treat and transport people in all manner of emergencies, from psychiatric crises to car crashes to strokes. Last year, EMT has transported 43,000 times in Seattle. The emergency medical technicians that we're talking about who work for the private profit making company EMR, that the City of Seattle contracts with these MDs are members of Teamsters Local 763. I appreciate Les Brown, the representative of the Teamsters Local speaking, and I stand in solidarity with all of you as a member of the labor movement myself, as a rank and file member of the local teachers union, it's my honor to be standing with the Teamsters. The MDs work closely with and alongside the Seattle Fire Department, firefighters and medic one paramedics were employed by the city and are paid living wages and good benefits. We want all EMT to be making decent wages and benefits and for no one to be left behind. And as I clarified last time, I would like to clarify again, this is not the union's contract with AMR. This is the city of Seattle's service contract with AMR. And the city of Seattle has. And when I say city of Seattle, it means the mayor, the city council, the elected representatives of the city have a responsibility to make sure that all the workers get decent wages and benefits. As it happens, the current contract itself says that all EMT should get wages and benefits that are substantially equivalent to other workers who do similar work. But this contract provision is not being enforced. So despite that contract requirement, Seattle's EMT is working for AMR are paid fully 28% below. The starting pay for EMT is in comparable and even lower cost of living cities in California. And we want to make sure that this does not continue anymore, that the EMT are allowed to live a life in dignity. All workers should get to be live in dignity. But especially stark is the issue of the EMT who do life saving work for the rest of us every single day and are barely able to get by. At the current Seattle EMT wage, an emergency medical technician in Seattle would have to work more than 7075 hours every week without taking any vacation in order to be able to afford a typical one bedroom apartment in the Seattle King County area. According to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Worse yet, Seattle EMT that provided a substandard health care plan that forces many workers to forgo necessary health care. Imagine the irony of this. They are transporting and helping workers, people who are facing the most emergent health crises, and they themselves are not able to have decent healthcare. This cannot be. It's just not okay. Workers are reported, M.D.s are reported that some of their colleagues are homeless. Others rely on food banks and other community services. They are many of them are living in unstable housing conditions. We have heard from an EMT, Meghan Scherzinger, who's who tearfully testified at the press conference a couple of weeks ago that she has had to sell plasma many times just to make a rent. And we heard from other EMT today that there have been cases of suicides. So we are talking about a very about a very critical situation here. And I hope that we don't delay this any more and that we wrote this through. I wanted to make sure that everybody your tanks, the EMT themselves, it is very hard to fight for your own rights. I know through personal experience, it's easier to fight for somebody else's rights, as strange as it may sound. It needs a lot of you need a lot of courage to fight for yourself. And so I really applaud my fellow workers. The EMTs who have organized themselves in this group say save, save our EMT. And I appreciate all the workers who have worked with Jonathan and Dead and others in my office to make sure that we have a strong resolution. That by itself is not enough. But it is a huge victory to propel the movement forward. So I look forward to the vote here. And I also want to say, you know, as EMT has indicated today, AMR lobbyists have been doing the rounds and we've got letters from the AMR lobbyist Paul Berrent. I just want to make sure the public is clear about who this guy is. AMR lobbyist Paul Berrent, who has been the one writing to city council urging that we not move forward with the resolution and has been crying a river about AMR's finances. He is the former chair of the Washington State Democratic Party and has formed strategies. 360 also takes credit for killing the Amazon tax, which would have built more affordable housing. So this is this is a nefarious source. So we have to make sure that the city council stands with the workers and not with the corporation that is making profits and yet keeping its workers from being able to live a life in dignity. And if this resolution does pass today, as I said, this represents a huge victory for the MTA and the workers who have been organizing with them. I should mention that healthcare workers and unions have stood solidly with the MTA. We've had SEIU 1199 Northwest Washington, 8488 vote unions that represent nurses and other staff at the Harborview Emergency Hospital, where they interact with the MTA on a daily basis, and they know the work that the MTA do. But we've also had incredible support from Certified Medical Assistance, many of them young women at the local Planned Parenthood clinics who are members of the U.S., CWA Local 21. So kudos to all the healthcare workers standing in solidarity with the EMT. I hope the City Council also shows that it is actually going to stand with the MDs and a message of the MTA. If this is a if this resolution goes through, it will be a historic victory for you, but it will not be the end of the road. We will need to continue organizing. So let's build on the momentum that we are able to win today. Okay. So we have a resolution that's been properly amended. We will be ready to vote unless there are some other comments. A few of my colleagues would like to make and I could wait for councilmember skaters like say a few words. Norm Well, thank you, Mr. President. I think that there's one thing I want to clarify. We took this last week to actually listen to the workers to incorporate additional protections. And I think that both the folks who've sponsored the amendments today, myself, Councilmember Gonzales, council members, Solent, we have actually created strength in this legislation because of all of your work. We have made sure that we're including language around health care and mental health protections, recognizing the trauma that workers see on a daily basis and wanting to make sure you have your health and mental health care protected. We have made sure that we're sending a clear message that a final contract that our city negotiates with Amara come back to this body so that we can see those provisions are upheld. We are making sure that there's greater oversight in terms of the contract and that we're living our values. And we're also making sure that the city require future contracts to retain workers so that if there's any changes, that there can be similar wages, benefits and jobs, so that if there's any switch in the future, workers can maintain employment. We're really excited about these protections today, and these came directly from conversations with workers themselves, from the conversations that the labor movement has had about making sure that we stand up and protect those who are the most vulnerable, and that we do so, especially for those who are caring for the most vulnerable. I want to thank the union members, the rank and file folks, union leaders. Thank you to the president who came forward to Chief Scoggins and the EMT for sharing your stories today over the last week and for your tough negotiations. We understand that this, as the councilmember said, is not a contract that we are amending between AMA and the union. But yet being clear in our perspective as a city what we value and what we want to see in any contractor. We also want to make sure that we strike the right balance so that we have clear follow up steps that are necessary to make sure that we can fulfill our values here that you see laid out. And I'll be working with the chair, Chuck Gonzalez, who oversees public safety to make sure that the next steps are very clear. And we recognize that there's additional barriers to making sure that we are protecting those who are caring for our most vulnerable. We care about workplace sustainability, which is something we'll be discussing in our committee this upcoming meeting on Thursday. We want to make sure that those who are providing care for our most vulnerable, whether you're picking up folks in the street or whether you are caring for folks and helping to place them into a new home that everyone can afford to live in the city that they are working and helping those to stay in the city . We want you to be able to have a good living wage job as well. So thank you again for bringing this resolution forward. Council members want thank you to Councilmember Gonzales for your work on it with our team over the weekend. Looking forward to working with you on that next steps. And thank you all for your continued activism and making sure that we hear your voice. Thank you. Councilmember Mesquita, Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. I just wanted to make two quick points. When I met with the Teamsters on Friday, they identified that a tangible. Deliverable. For their union would be an answer to what areas Seattle uses as an objective measure to determine whether Amar'e or any other vendor is meeting its obligations under Article 7.5 of the RFP. That relates. Specifically to. The requirement that wages be comparable to the prevailing wage in other cities. We know that other cities in the West Coast range from a starting wage of eight, $8.09 to as high as $22. Whereas Seattle, Amar'e, it starts at. 1554. So I just want to uplift the fact that Section five of this resolution specifically asks, in consideration of the Teamsters request, that the executive provide us with information that basically. Lets us know who. Their what cities they are considering as the other comparable living prevailing wage cities. The other point I wanted to make is that I recognize that Amar'e has not received a rate increase on Medicaid reimbursements from the state of Washington since 2000. For Medicaid transports are reimbursed at a fixed rate of approximately 135 per transport. That is very, very low and I have connected with the Director of our Office of Inter-Governmental Relations to see that we highlight this issue in our legislative agenda that we use to. Lobby. Olympia and our legislators to address legislatively in this legislative session coming up. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Herbold. Case closed remarks by Councilor Swan and I think we'll be prepared to vote. I just wanted to share with the public that, you know, when we fight we do win. Already the MDC won something that the that a union approached the mayor about. And the mayor has sent a letter to the union. And that was the issue of the Seattle Police Department's use of IMR to transport arrestees to King County jails. And the EMT have been, you know, talking about this as an unfairness. I see the MDs nodding. Well, congratulations on a victory that you've already won, because you've got the letter from the mayor that says that that practice will stop and they will figure out other alternative means of transportation. And it says, Chief Bratton, I have agreed to discontinue the use of transporting detained suspects and arrested individuals who have no medical needs for the county's correctional facility. So congratulations on that. Congratulations and advance on what I think is going to be a unanimously voted resolution. Let's keep fighting for the next steps. Let's make sure you all win of our contract and a life with dignity as all the workers deserve. Okay. Those in favor of adopting the resolution as amended. Please vote i. I those opposed vote no. The motion carries a resolution is adopted. Same. The next agenda item into the record.