AN ORDINANCE relating to gig workers in Seattle; establishing labor standards requirements for premium pay for gig workers working in Seattle; amending Sections 3.02.125 and 6.208.020 of the Seattle Municipal Code; declaring an emergency; and establishing an immediate effective date; all by a 3/4 vote of the City Council.
Agenda Item one Capital 119 789 related to gig workers in Seattle, establishing labor standards requirements for premium pay for gig workers working in Seattle and then U.S. 3.02. 125 and 6.208.020 of the settlements proposed declaring an emergency and establishing an immediate effective date all forced out of the city council. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I will move to pass Council Bill 119799. Is there a second? Thank you so much. It's been moved in second hand to pass the bill. Councilmember Lewis, as co-sponsor of this bill, you are recognized to address this item and I believe you have as a substitute version of the bill to move for our consideration before we take and comment on the underlying bill. So let's go through the procedural motion first and before we get to the substantive bill, which will be the substitute. So so I'll hand it over to you to put the substitute before us. Thank you so much, Madam President, for cueing that up. So I would ask then if item one from Council Bill 119799 can be read into the record. So item one has been read into the record and it starts earlier. I was like, I think we didn't just do that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. I moved past Council Bill 11 nine and you already did that. Sorry. You need to let me. Let me start a little further along for me. I'm sorry for. That's okay. You need to move to amend council 1119799 by substituting version for for version two. Yeah. Sorry. I'm down there now. I'm so. Yes. I moved to amend council bill 11 9799 by substituting Virgin for for version 2.8. In their second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded to substitute the bill. Councilmember Lewis, again, you are recognized in order to address the substitute version of the or the procedural fact of the substitute bill. Yes. So thank you so much for the opportunity here to address this. I know we've talked about this bill a couple of times over the last few weeks. The substitute version lowers the initial price that Councilmember Herbold and I had considered in terms of the premium pay number, which originally was $5 per delivery. Having consulted with our labor partners as well as the platforms in the space. We determined that a $2.50 per delivery still accomplished the goals of the premium pay in terms of compensating for time spent cleaning vehicles and acquiring PPE and sanitizer, as well as also making sure there was some consideration for the unique hazards that folks are facing during COVID. So for that reason, we made some of these changes. So there are substantive changes in the bill. There are also some technical changes that do not otherwise make considerable changes. A There's going to be other amendments addressing the fact that the substitute does not have a provision like some other versions of the bill have had, where the cost could potentially be partially passed through to consumers. So this substitute bill would allow folks to partially pass through some or all of the additional cost to consumers. And that's a discussion that we can have. I believe Casper Morales will be bringing forward an amendment to queue up that conversation, but otherwise those are the substantive changes. I don't know if Councilmember Herbold also has anything to add to that before we move forward on a vote to adopt the substitute. Councilmember Herbold, anything to add on the motion to consider the substitutes? No. I think Councilmember Lewis handled it well. I have nothing further that. Great. Thank you so much. Colleagues, any questions on the substitute version being proposed for consideration? Councilmember Salaam. Thank you. Needless to say that I support the legislation itself to require additional hazard pay to gig workers who sacrifice self-sacrifice. And labor is really one of the only things that has allowed many people to continue to have access to food and mobility during this COVID crisis. And these workers are doing so at great personal risk of infection, and often with very little common compensation from the multinational corporations that hire them, which have even been extremely stingy in giving them very basic protective equipment as well. However, what we are discussing now in this motion to place an amended version of the original bill is whether to substitute a new draft of the bill for the original and a strong. And I want you to say that I strongly prefer the original bill to this substitution, because the original bill is significantly stronger in many respects . First, the original bill protects both food delivery gig workers and TNT drivers, like those who drive for Uber and Lyft. The substitute, however, only protects food delivery workers. And I will, of course, be opposing any amendment that excludes any workers from these protections. I understand that some council members are arguing that this change is reasonable because they believe that the mayor will draft legislation in the future to cover dirty drivers. But that reason is totally insufficient. This is emergency legislation that already only requires hazard pay during the legally declared emergency. That ends when the emergency ends. If the so again, you know, we're talking about the bare minimum. If the mayor does generate this legislation in time to go into effect on October 1st, which the Teamsters have told my office is the current schedule, it's very possible that these hazard pay restrictions would have expired by then anyway. So that would leave TNT drivers with having had no hazard pay protection. So the entire public health emergency, the official emergency, even if the official go with emergency, has not legally expired. This amendment would still leave TNT drivers without hazard pay for at least three and a half months. Additionally, I mean, that's based on the timeline we've heard. There's no guarantee that that even that timeline will be adhered to. Additionally, the substitute bill majorly reduces the hazard pay benefit available to gig workers. The original bill provided gig workers with $5 hazard pay per delivery plus $5 for each additional stop. This subsidy cuts that more than more than in half to $2.50 per delivery and only a dollar and $0.25 for additional stops. We should also remember that this legislation is in response to nationwide. The base legislation is in response to nationwide organizing of gig workers, including a courageous strike called by Instacart workers demanding $5 per delivery premium pay. Who opposes that? Who is demanding it to be reduced? I can only guess that the big delivery businesses have been putting pressure in the backrooms because we have not seen that in public comment. Gig workers are many of the essential workers that have made it possible for Seattleites to have food and be mobile during this public health crisis. And they have done so at great personal risk with extremely low wages while they are multinational bosses have raked in profits, indeed profiteer through the pandemic. I support the strongest possible hazard pay and do not support this amendment that would exclude taxi drivers and lower the pay. So I will be voting no on making the substitution, but I will of course be voting yes on the overall bill when we do that later. Okay. Thank you so much, Councilmember Swan. I see Councilmember Herbold has raise your hand, so I'm going to go ahead and recognize Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. I just want to note that as it relates to removing taxi drivers from from the bill in the in the substitute that Councilmember Lewis just spoke to, that was actually a request that we do that from the Teamsters. They they requested that we remove the the authorization of the hazard pay for their drivers. And then as it relates specifically to the different price point that was negotiated with working Washington, they recognize that there is a balance that is is necessary to strike and they do not want to see a reduction in use of the food delivery services in response to a price point that is too high. And so that is really the foundational thinking around, again, trying to trying to hit that hit that sweet spot between what the what the price point should be to compensate drivers for the time it takes to maintain the vehicles in a way that's consistent with public health standards, the and the the products necessary to do so. And, and also recognizing that this is working during this period of time is is indeed a hazard. So, again, I really appreciate having the opportunity to work with working Washington throughout this this process and leading up to the substitution. Thank you for that additional information. Councilmember Herbold, any other comments or questions on the substitute bill? Hearing and seeing none. I think we are ready to consider the substitute version unless. Councilmember Lewis, you have anything else to add? I do not, Madam President. Okay, great. Let's go ahead and I will have the clerk call the roll on the adoption of the substitute. Peterson I. Don't. Know. Strauss. I. Her bold eye, Juarez. I. Lewis. I. Morales. I. Macheda my never Gonzalez. I did it in favor. One opposed. I thank you so much. The substitute is adopted in version four of the bill is now before the council. So I will go ahead and now open up the floor for additional debate and comments on the bill as amended. And our colleagues, are there any other amendments? I know that Councilmember Morales you have a particular amendment. So perhaps what we should do is consider your amendment first and then we can have a conversation on the bill as amended. How does that sound? Sure. Okay, great. So I will hand it over to you, because my role is to make your motion to put Amendment One before the council. So I move that we amend Council Bill 119799 as presented on Amendment one on the agenda. It's great. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved to amend the bill and I will hand it over to Councilmember Morales to describe Amendment One. Thank you. Council President Gonzalez. So this amendment would prohibit the hiring entity from passing on charges, increasing grocery charges to consumers. We all know that the economic impacts of COVID are having really drastic effects on our families. And food security in particular was a problem in the city already. And we know that food insecurity is increasing, especially during this crisis. So this is really an attempt to. Decrease the risk of having customers who are relying on grocery delivery from from having that charge passed on to them. We want to make sure that we are protecting our vulnerable neighbors, our seniors, especially families with children, and anybody who is really at risk of food insecurity, so that they are so that this assessment or this charge does not get passed on to them. And that's what we're doing here. Great. Thank you so much for that description, Councilmember Morales. Any questions or comments on Amendment One? Okay. Hearing none. We will go ahead and take a vote on Amendment One. So will the chief call the roll on the adoption of Amendment One? Peterson I. Do want. So I want. I thank you. Strauss. I traveled. I. Suarez. I. Lewis. I. Morales. I must get. I. President Gonzalez I nine in favor. Nine opposed. Thank you. The motion carries, the amendment is adopted and the bill, as amended, is now before the council. Are there any further comments on the bill as amended? Councilmember mosquito, followed by Councilmember Lewis. Thank you so much, Madam President. And thanks to the sponsors of this legislation comes from Herbold and Councilmember Lewis. Really exciting day for gig workers and actually just for our entire economy. As we know, gig workers have been left out of the basic protections that we have been. So. Proud of here in Washington State and in the city of Seattle to offer to W-2 employees, but make it basic labor standards for those who are classified as independent contractors are hard to legislate, especially for gig workers as the sponsors and this entire council knows. So I'm really excited about the piece of legislation in front of us. I think that there's much more work to be done for sure. Conversations of issues of misclassification and long term solutions for gig workers continue. But I know that we have to act with urgency. Right now. This crisis of. COVID has been telling us that we need to step up in an immediate way to provide these protections for gig workers and looking forward to working with all of you on those next steps. I know also that we are well aware that gig workers need additional protections, especially because of COVID. We get our groceries delivered, we get food delivered. We are, I think, in a crisis where many of us are depending on this portion of the economy even more heavily now. So I really think it's important that we're stepping up in an essential way for these essential workers to make sure that they're treated with the basic protections like premium pay and making sure that they have safety equipment. Being told that the unemployment rate is as high. Oh, I'm sorry. Workers are being told that that given how high the unemployment rate is, that, you know, some people are being told if you don't like it, then you don't have a job and you know, you don't have any other recourse. That's absolutely unacceptable. We want to make sure that all workers have these basic and basic protections that we provided to other sectors of our communities. So as workers are putting their their selves, their life at risk, their family's lives at risk by coming to work, they serve our communities. We need to lift them up and to make sure that these workers with. The basic protections they need. Thank you again to all of the. Folks. Who worked on this legislation. And thanks to the gig workers who every day take a risk to go to work. Appreciate the time. And I'm grateful that through this legislation, we're again making labor history and passing this. Legislation into law. Great. Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for those remarks. Councilmember Lewis. Thank you, Madam President. And I'll be I'll be really brief. And I think Councilmember Swan actually cued this up rather nicely. So I think I'm following on a theme that's already been introduced, but this truly does have to be a first step. And as Councilmember Maceda also alluded to as well, it is a temporary measure. You know, COVID someday will pass and this measure will pass. But we are still going to have massive inequities in this app based economy that has been mischaracterized as a gig economy, but really increasingly is the economy. This is increasingly a way that commerce and businesses transacted in our society. It's increasingly a space where workers are misclassified as independent contractors to justify justify paying them less and giving them fewer benefits. And it's going to be an area where we are going to definitely need to do more work. And I look forward to doing that under Councilmember Mosquito's leadership in the committee that covers workforce standards. And I know that a lot of our stakeholders in the community who I really had the pleasure of working with through this racial ladder at work in Washington and everyone over at work in Washington, Sage and the whole team there were great. I want to thank Camille Brown on my staff, who did an excellent job working with Councilmember Herbert's office to really shepherd this through over the course of a month with lots of back to back meetings and making sure we were reaching out to all the stakeholders. So just wanted to extend those. Thanks and we'll look forward to voting to get it over the finish line today. And thank you all for everything you did to make this a success. Thank you, Councilmember Lewis. Council members want. Thank you. As I mentioned before, I'm happy to vote yes on this bill requiring big business, big businesses to pay hazard pay to gig workers during the COVID crisis. And I agree with Councilmember Lewis that this is increasingly become the norm. It's not like we're talking about one small section of the economy. So many workers, and especially younger workers, are getting pushed into what's called the gig economy, those kinds of jobs where they are not recognized as employees. Gig workers deliver groceries, drive for Uber and Lyft, and do many other essential jobs to our society. These are jobs like any other, except they are marked with the legal fiction that they are a one person small business rather than a worker and a corporation. The result of this legal fiction is that workers are suddenly no longer protected by workers as gig workers, as workers, and by being classified as gig workers, in fact. Big business even avoid Seattle's minimum wage by classifying its workers at big workers, which is particularly important for the hazard pay bill we're voting on now. It is totally unjust, and it is a clear example of how, under capitalism, the working class must continually organize and struggle to avoid falling even further behind. As I mentioned two weeks ago, when council was voting on extending the paid sick and safe leave to gig workers 100 years ago, when workers could legally form no workers could legally form unions in this country, but courageously they did it anyway, often having to defend their picket lines against physical attack, in fact, by the police and by private forces. In the 1920s, the U.S. military was even deployed to bomb the picket lines of striking miners. It was through these courageous struggles that workers won the decent contracts that formed the so-called middle class for at least a section of American society. For two generations, they won labor law protections and they won the right to organize a union. Since then, however, for decades, big business has been attempting to claw back every gain workers had fought for and won. Wealth inequality has ballooned. An estimated one out of five workers in the U.S. is now classified as an independent contractor, e.g. gig worker. Ultimately gig workers will need to unionize with or without the legal permission to do so. Just like workers in the past, because we only have the power in the workplace when we get organized to fight for it, we will need to rebuild the fighting labor movement that overcame legal, physical and political obstacles in the last century to establish the union workers, the unions and workers can rely on today. Today's premium pay legislation is extremely temporary, but in approving it, the city council is making an important statement, and I'm happy to support the legislation to extend basic and save time to gig workers also. And finally, I want to raise the caution around enforcement that I had spoken to when this legislation was first discussed in a briefing council briefing, I think, a week ago. Seattle's Office of Labor Standards is empowered to enforce these workers rights. But because so many big businesses engage in wage theft, the Office of Labor Standards has a serious backlog. If your boss steals from you, it takes many months to even get the money you're owed. And we've seen how ruthless giant corporations like Uber can be in disregarding workers rights. The Office of Labor Standards is currently. Understand the mayor is instituted a hiring freeze, claiming that there is not the budget to adequately staff the department because of COVID related budget shortfalls. This is an example of austerity, but like any other austerity, these budget shortfalls are not automatic. If Mayor Durkan And if the political establishment were willing to tax big business, the city could raise the revenue to stop this austerity and create a public jobs program, not only to build social housing and on Green New Deal programs, but also to enhance the stuff that we would need to actually fully enforce labor law. Gig workers deserve to be protected with their rights, and that means this legislation is an important part of it. And we also need to end the austerity and the inadequate staffing at the Office of Labor Standards. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Swan, are there any other council members who wish to make comments on the bill? Councilmember Herbold, please. Thank you. I just want to flag that we have a process and a product keyed up for the taxi drivers for minimum compensation. I think it's really important that the conversation that we've had around hazard pay also lead to a conversation around minimum compensation for the the drivers who deliver groceries and meals from restaurants. I think there was a lot of a lot of interest in seeing whether or not the the worker advocates and workers could get to a place with the the apps where they had some agreement on what not only what those conversations might look like, but what the what the product might be. But unfortunately, we didn't get there. But I am confident that those conversations will continue and we'll do everything I can in my role as a as a council member to support those conversations, because it is critically important that that folks who are doing this work that we can see right now in this in the state of emergency , how how critical it is. It's critically important that these folks receive some form of minimum compensation as well. Councilmember Herbold, are there any other questions or comments on the bill? Okay. Hearing, then I will ask that the curtain call on the passage of the bill as amended. Peterson I. Want. I Strauss i verbal. I. Juarez. I do is i. Morales i. I. President Gonzalez i. Nine in favor and unopposed. Thank you. The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. And I'd ask that the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf. Okay, colleagues, let's move into agenda item two. Will the clerk please read agenda item to into the record?