AN ORDINANCE relating to transportation network company driver labor standards; establishing minimum labor and compensation standards for transportation network company drivers; establishing provision of or reimbursement for personal protective equipment to transportation network company drivers during the civil emergency declared on March 3, 2020; establishing notice, posting, and data requirements for transportation network companies; prescribing remedies and enforcement procedures; amending Section 3.15.000 of the Seattle Municipal Code; amending the title of Chapter 14.31 and Sections 6.208.020 and 14.31.010 of the Seattle Municipal Code; and adding a new Chapter 14.33 to the Seattle Municipal Code.
Count capital 1198762 relating to. The Transportation network companies driver. Labor. Standards, establishing minimum. Labor and compensation. Standards for transportation network company drivers. The committee recommends. The bill passed. Tremendous. Thank you so much, Madam Park. Councilmember Mesquita, as chair of the committee, you are recognized in order to provide the committee report. Thank you very much. Council President, Council colleagues, I am really honored to be bringing forward this piece of legislation with all of you today. The substitute legislation dealing with providing key labor protections and wage standards to taxi drivers passed out of the Finance and Housing Committee unanimously. And in addition to that, all of the Finance and Housing Committee colleagues are co-sponsors. Thank you. Vice-Chair Herbold, Council President Gonzales, Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Strauss. And I know this the enthusiasm for this piece of legislation is shared with other council colleagues as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if other people wanted to add their name, but I'm just so excited about this piece of legislation and the co-sponsors. I wanted to lift that piece up again and thank folks for your anticipated support today. This comes after many years of work, after five years of legislation, legislation attempting to provide basic standards for drivers in our city. We are finally making progress today. We are putting our values into law by making sure that their standards for workers who drive for Lyft and Uber and other transportation network companies that may come into the future, making sure people earn a basic minimum wage, making sure that their standards for workers to be able to take a rest when they're tired. This is critically important. When we heard testimony after testimony of people working 80 plus hours a week over the last few months. We've heard testimony of people not being able to afford their house or to be able to put food on the table for their family because they're just not even earning minimum wage. Today we are putting our values of wanting to lift up every worker and protect every worker in this city into action. Among many of the protections that we've been working on over the last few years. I'm exceptionally excited about the work to make sure that we are not treating these gig economy workers as separate, that we are creating a level playing field for all workers in this city. As a follow up to last year's legislation that provided deactivation rights to drivers this year, we heard from James Parrott and Michael Wright, who produced a study on trans TMC minimum wage compensation. This was a critical study that was really leading to our ability to take action this year. That study put into writing much of what we already knew, but it was imperative for us to be able to point back to this well researched body of work to make sure that we are putting action into place today. I want to thank the mayor's office for the work that they have done on this, in addition to the Office of Labor Standards. So thank you, Corinne Le Virus from Office of Labor Standards, Kyle Roth and Anthony Arriaga from the Mayor's Office for also your years of work on this. And as we mentioned before, the research that went into this was not just copy and paste from any other municipality. This was Seattle specific research that led to the policy decisions today and would not be possible without Korean, Apple and Amy or from central staff and several chief of staff in my office who put a ton of research and capacity and energy into plowing through the research that was provided to us and hearing directly from the testimony that was provided to put forward policy ideas that were well-founded, well researched, and were going to be meaningful for the community and specifically for the drivers. Really excited about the hard work that went into the legislation that is supported by the study, and that the legislation was developed in collaboration and with feedback from those who provided public testimony. The substitute version of the bill that we passed last week provides basic base wage standards for drivers, provides provides benefits like rest breaks and minimum fares. Transportation to consumers provides the opportunity to get compensated for cleaning time, at least 30 minutes for an eight hour period of driving, which is so critical not just for COVID, but for preventing the spread of diseases into the future as well. For those of us who sit on the Board of Health, we heard from direct from Director Zukin that this is not just COVID specific, that we will need to change our practices and norms around what cleanliness looks like in workplaces. But it is going to be the new normal and that is especially important, as we heard from the University of Washington researcher in close quarters in places like cars, which are the workplaces for taxi drivers, there's exceptionally important for those drivers to have clean workplaces and for them to be compensated for the time that it takes to clean their places of work, which is their cars. We're really excited about the protections that have been put into place here to have been able to learn from the experience out of. New York and fortunate to have learned from the legislation and to build not off of that, but to take lessons learned that freezes utilization rates to provide stability for taxi drivers. When this legislation is implemented, drivers will have basic standards that all other Seattle workers have fought so hard for and earned. And this is about basic standards for all workers. This is about equity. This is about health. This is about safety. And if you know me, this is a convergence of everything I care about. Labor protections and public health is sort of the core core drivers for me in public policy. And I'm really excited that we were able to work with all of you to get this piece of legislation over the finish line. I've already said a bunch of thank you to all of the folks that have been working so hard to make this piece of legislation possible. But I do want to thank the city central staff again, Amy Gore and Karina Bull. Carina really led the efforts on this and Amy stepped in for a lot of the work in the summer months here. We also want to thank Councilmember O'Brien, who led this work when he was on council. And we know that this was really critical. And so I hope he's watching. And while he's doing something really fun, I hope he is watching and also proud of the work that he did to lead us to this point. I want to thank Lyft and the Rideshare Association and drive forward and Uber and the Fair Share Coalition, along with Martin Luther King County Labor Council and the Drivers Union with Teamsters 117. Thanks to Dustin, Will, Joshua and Leonard for all of your research and all of your your support as we really try to work with drivers to hear directly from them about what kind of impacts this legislation would have. This is not just about basic standards and protections for drivers, folks. This is truly about public health and safety for all of us in this community. When we have drivers who are tired or not able to have their rest breaks and the labor standards and the clean workplaces that they need, it impacts all of us, our health and safety, whether it's passengers in the car or pedestrians on the street or other drivers out on the roadways. This is truly a public health measure that's in front of us and the right thing to do for labor protections. Looking forward to having a piece of good news to pass on as we head into the fall cycle here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda. Are there any additional comments on the bill? Councilmember Morales, please. Yes, thank you. Council President. So my I will say that I am interested in co-sponsoring this legislation and so I am. Moving for that. You let me do that. I think that that is very nice. Thank you and well, welcome. I am hoping that the with the council president's permission, the clerks would add the Councilmember Morales name and anybody else that would like to be listed as the co-sponsors when the legislation gets added to the record. Okay. Yeah. In the future, if we can flag those kind of interests earlier on and it would be it would be helpful to dealing with the realities around the procedures that will be needed to to accommodate those kind of requests. So I'm going to have to I'm going to have to call on the clerks to provide me with some procedural guidance on how to accommodate additional requests for co-sponsorship on the record. Councilmember Huizar is familiar, essential to adequate concerns to this bill. The council members must make a request to the sponsor, which is coming together with the consent of customers. Together, a. Councilmember may be added as a. Co-Sponsor. Okay. So I just want to be clear that I don't have to make a motion, it's just a request. And then customer mosquitoes, the sponsor can assent to that on the ballot. Correct. All right. So Councilmember Morales has made the request and I believe I heard Councilmember Mosqueda said yes. Yes. Are there any other requests to be added as co-sponsors? Councilmember Solent has raised her hand. Please go ahead. Thank you, President Gonzalez. I did send a request to Councilmember Mosquito's office on Friday, I believe, to administer co-sponsorship. The clerk can do that. I would appreciate it. And I also had some comments. So whenever you feel. Why don't we go ahead and deal with your request to be added as a co-sponsor and then we can open it up for your comments. Councilmember Mosquito, you've gotten another request for co-sponsorship. Yes, happy to add. Thank you. Councilmember Swan, we did receive your request but wanted to make sure to do it in an open public meeting so there wasn't any concern. Happy to have you and thank you for adding your name. Great, great. So for the record, Councilmember Morales and councilmembers want to have an open session, added their names to be co-sponsors of this council bills. As members and let the floor is yours for comments. Thank you. And I'm Richard Countryman, mosquito and city clerk, adding the name from my office for Co-sponsorship. I'm proud to stand with Uber and Lyft drivers and their Teamsters union in supporting this legislation. Today's victory for drivers builds on their own courage, courageous and persistent and organized efforts in fighting mega-corporations and billionaires. The rideshare and taxi driver victories in New York and California. The $15 minimum wage victory, which began right here in SeaTac in Seattle. I especially want to recognize the drivers who for years have endured poverty conditions and abuse from the companies, and whose tenacity in organizing and really their approach towards solidarity that has brought us to this moment. And I have no doubt I'm going to leave out many names, but I still wanted to mention a few names. Peter Cool Lata and John Cleary. Many of the drivers who spoke to the public comment, the perhaps hundreds of drivers that my office has spoken to over the years. Thank you to all of you and your courage and persistence and especially your efforts at organizing, despite having obstacles thrown in your path is really inspiring and should be inspiring for all workers from the first year of our Socialist Council office in 2014. Socialist Alternative. Those community organizers in my office and I have worked with the drivers as they have organized and fought our basic dignity and rights against the billionaire. Executives of these companies will shamelessly exploit both drivers and customers, basically working class people on both sides taking 30% of driver income for themselves, and also harvesting data about both the drivers and the riders for their own private profit. Today's legislation is an important step forward in the long fight for driver rights. It raises driver pay for the first time, accounting for the actual time that drivers are working, the true costs of maintaining and cleaning their vehicles, and the fact that drivers also need and deserve health and retirement benefits. This legislation will be a model for drivers in other cities, and yet it is not nearly enough. Even with these new compensation rates, drivers will still not be paid enough to live in Seattle today, with average rents in Seattle over $2,000 a month, and with corporate landlords snapping up and gentrifying entire neighborhoods in our city, it's becoming nearly impossible for drivers, most of whom are from working class immigrant communities to live in Seattle. They are being forced to commute longer and longer distances just to get into the city where most of the ride rides are. That's why, in addition to raising fees for workers such as these drivers, it is important that we build a fight for rent control without loopholes, further expansion of taxes on big business like the Amazon tax that we just want to find permanently affordable social housing and expanding tenants rights fully and most immediately a cancelation of rent, mortgage and utility payments for those who have been hit majorly by loss of income or loss of job in the pandemic and the recession. So many drivers, as with other workers, have lost income due to this pandemic and the recession. And we know that the current eviction moratorium is crucial, and that was fought for by workers and renters themselves, and it's providing crucial protection. But we know it is only putting off the coming eviction tsunami, as even many mainstream newspapers have reported. So I really urge the drivers, the Teamsters Union and all of the supporters to join my office, the tenants union of Washington State and the renters rights movement in demanding that rent and mortgages be accounted for workers who have lost income due to COVID. We also know the fight against Uber and Lyft executives does not end today. In fact, it should escalate based on this really important step forward. The executives will doubtless fight this legislation in court. They may even try to force a referendum. Just look at what these really billionaires are doing in California by. They poured in a record $181 million to try and repeal AB five, the new state law that gives drivers additional rights, including collective bargaining rights. The Los Angeles Times columnist recently noted in relation to the fight in California, quote, What's really at stake here? The quest for profit, unquote. So we should be under no illusions. These companies are in the business to make money and exploit both customers and their drivers, not to help either. So I just wanted to send a message of congratulations to all the drivers and to let them know that our office is ready to do whatever it takes to help continue this struggle. And also, once again, a message of congratulations and solidarity to the Teamsters Union and the entire labor movement in defeating the corporate challenge. And good luck to defeating the corporate challenge that we know will come after today's vote. Thank you. So much. Council members want. Are there any additional comments on the bill? Councilmember Herbert, please. Thank you so much. Just a few more notes to add of congratulations. Of course, I want to congratulate Councilman Mascara for her her staff's work on bringing this legislation forward. Really appreciate your your leadership. The fact that we are all interested in co-sponsorship is an indication of how this legislation is really history making. It's been in the in the making for a long time. And according to studies that have been done, this legislation will increase wages for drivers by 30%. I really appreciate as well all of the workers who have engaged in this conversation by meeting with me in my office hours and as well as sending us a petition from drivers with over 1600 signatures for increasing the per mile rate, providing transparency and fairness on company commissions, and raising the minimum pay per trip to $5. I want to just address some of the concerns that I've heard about this legislation, that somehow there's something wrong with legislation that benefits full time workers with a livable wage. For decades, cities across the country have regulated the total number of, for instance, taxi medallions and licenses available specifically in the name of protecting worker earnings. This is no different, and we should continue to do so. Flooding the market with drivers pushes down the cost to the customer, but it does so at the expense of workers. This is much like other gig businesses as well, where the costs of providing the service are passed on to the workers in the form of reduced earnings and benefits. In this case, taxes are repackaged services that have been historically provided. But it seems to be cheaper because the businesses have hired their workers as consultants, and at the end of the day, the workers lose out. They pay more taxes. They don't have benefits and are not subject to the minimum wage. Our efforts here in Seattle indicate that we are not going to allow contract workers in our city to be treated this way. I hope in the future we can work on similar legislation for other drivers drivers who do not move people but move goods such as delivery drivers of of packages as well as delivery drivers of of meals and food. I really, again, appreciate the work of Councilman Mosqueda in collaboration with the Teamsters and drivers throughout throughout the city. And really, I am proud to have been able to have the opportunity to participate in the deliberation on this legislation . Thank you. Any Councilmember herbals. Are there any additional comments on the bill? Hearing no additional comments on the bill. I will go ahead and close out debate and ask the clerk to please call the roll on the passage of the bill. Morales. Yes. Macheda Yes. Petersen Yes. So what? Yes. Strauss Yes. Herbold Yes. Juarez. I. Lewis. Yes. President Gonzalez. Yes. Nine in favor and opposed. Thank you. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the court please affix my signature to the legislation? Okay, folks, item number 17, will the clerk please read the short title of item 17 into the record?