AN ORDINANCE establishing a task force on labor trafficking and economic exploitation and requiring a report with recommendations on the steps the county can take in addressing systematic issues related to labor trafficking and economic exploitation.
things. And hopefully we will not end up with needing a pogo stick to get over our roads. Thank you so much for being with us today. Okay. Our last item is a great item also, and this is a ordinance 2016 0431 is an ordinance establishing a task force on labor trafficking and economic exploitation and requiring a report with recommendations on the steps the county can take in addressing systematic issues related to the things. This was brought to us by our sponsor today that represented representative sorry Council Caldwell and the whole history there. And Mr. Curry, would you begin the briefing? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm Clifton Curry of Council Staff. Our materials today begin on page 473 of your packet with the staff report. In addition, what's been passed out prior to the meeting is a PowerPoint presentation related to labor trafficking and also a very good summary of all of the landmark Washington State accomplishments to prevent human trafficking . So it gives a good legislative history. And rather than spending a lot of time on the history, the the count, the state of Washington and the King County Council have shown a significant interest in issues related to human trafficking and recognizing that here are King County in the Pacific Northwest is a gateway to most of the rest of the world. We have very high population of immigrants moving through this area. Trade is regular. We have very much access between freeways, ports, one of the largest airports in the Pacific Northwest that we are can be seen as a hub for trafficking. The council, in following, along with the state legislature and the federal government, have recognized the seriousness of human trafficking and. Have taken a significant number of actions. Again. I point you to both the summaries and my staff report where there's a discussion of the history of the actions taken here in the Council. However, most of those actions have been directly related to human trafficking as it relates to the commercial sex, sexual exploitation, and especially in the area of sexual exploitation of minors. And the council has done a great deal working in that area, as have the communities in the Pacific Northwest. But one area that hasn't gotten the same level of review, at least at the county level, is human trafficking related to labor. And that's when individuals are. Well, I'm going to read the definition here. Victims of human trafficking include children who are involved in commercial sex trade. Adults age 18 or over who are coerced or deceived into commercial sex and anyone forced into different forms of labor or services such as domestic workers held at home or farm workers forced to labor against their will. And human trafficking is a federal agent. It is against the law at the federal level and at the state level with the concentration, primarily looking at the sexual exploitation, especially sexual exploitation of minors. Been very successful and several programs members have had briefings from the prosecutor's office and other programs. However, as the state has looked at labor trafficking and there's a recognition that there's several different options that have never been systematically reviewed in such a way as to look at, not just looking at the traditional providing services to victims and survivors of trafficking, providing education and so on, very similar to what happens in the arena of sexual exploitation. But there are also several policies and other efforts that both governments can take and business can take that have the impact of reducing the the number of people who are involved in labor trafficking, by changing procurement policies, looking at how education is done, the workplace, and looking at different forms of enforcement which has never been done systematically here at the county. This proposed ordinance which begins on has a striking amendment, and the striking amendment basically has been modified to update with a lot more input and so on. And I'll be talking, Madam Chair, to the striking amendment, which begins on 489 of your packet. This amendment would require that the executive convene a task force to assess and address the systematic issue of labor trafficking and economic exploitation in King County. The task force would have a fairly comprehensive membership. The full list is on page 490 of your packet today. The striking amendment would require that the executive for all members except the identified county officials, make the appointments to the task force by January 15, 2017, and that the executive notify the Council at least 30 days prior to appointment of who's being appointed so that you have an opportunity to look at those individuals and groups before the final appointment, which is the way things often happen. The task force would be charged with consulting with county departments, businesses, community groups to determine the effectiveness of the delivery of services to victims and survivors of labor trafficking and and economic exploitation. And have that group make recommendations to improve both the services and the policies within the county to both address in for government sector and for the private sector best practices. The amendment sets April one, 2017, as a deadline for the Task Force Task Force's first meeting, and it actually has an expiration date of June 1st, 2018, for the task force unless the Council takes action to extend that group. The amendment requires that the executive support the efforts of the task force with staffing and neither resources. And the Executive is also required to prepare a report based on the work of the task force. That includes, among a variety of things, a list of governmental agencies that currently interact with potential victims of labor trafficking, an analysis of laws, a review of county ordinances, rules and practices that could be changed. Analysts analysis of how current labor experiment practices leave workers. Verbal identification of existing best practices. An analysis of support services provided to the victims and survivors. And recommendations for strategies to prevent the incidents within the county of labor trafficking and economic exploitation. To improve the delivery of services to victims and survivors. To provide better education for businesses on current domestic and international labor laws. Education for workers of their rights. And to increase community awareness of labor trafficking and economic exploitation. The expectation is the report would also include an implementation plan for any recommendations that could be implemented by the county and a description of how the report's recommendations will align with other regional and local human trafficking efforts. With a recognition that for those task forces and groups, for example, the county's. Commercially Sexually Exploited Minors workgroup, there wouldn't be duplication of effort and there would be a coordination of recommendations. The executives report would be due to the Council in December of 2017. The proposed ordinance, as modified by the striking amendment, would continue the county's work on human and human trafficking and expand that the traditional view of sexual exploitation and move it into the realms of labor trafficking. Following very similar models that the county has used elsewhere to look at not just county wide issues that affect government and labor and local businesses, but also groups in the county such as the Immigrants and Refugees Task Force that have worked with similar groups and individuals. And Madam Chair, if the no questions for me on the striking amendment, there's a panel this morning to talk about the issues related with labor trafficking and the importance of this issue. And if you would like to hear from the panel now and then, I would be available afterwards for discussion related to the striking amendment. So the panel can be come up. That'll be great. I'm sure there'll be some questions first before the panel. I have some questions, too, but we'll start with Councilmember Balducci. I want to start with a bit of a process question, because I have a very large number of questions about this proposal, starting with where's the data and ending with where's the fiscal node, where is the law enforcement community? Where's the executive? This is a very big ask, and I'm really concerned that I don't see any detail behind it at all. So I think having a discussion today about the issue of labor trafficking and the problem I think is a really good start. But I feel like there's steps to go before we're ready to adopt a particular approach. I just want to just lay that out on the table because I didn't hear or see any of my questions answered today. Councilmember Kobus. Madam Chair, if that's all right with you, I could give a little bit about how they find sure they'll be fine working on for a long time to get to this point. I in fact, we began working on this proposal last February here when I started at the County Council the month before, and with the tremendous work on the part of my staff or a Toshihiko Hasegawa, we are here today with, I think, a very solid proposal. And among all that we did to prepare for the day was to meet with community organizations last February and March. I get a considerable amount of feedback in terms of what the needs are, what would be the best ways to address these needs, what the county could do, given the the significant amount of work that had has been done on sex trafficking. We've worked with the prosecutor's office, with the sheriff's office, with many departments and agencies in the executive branch here, including, I'd say, over the last couple of months, every week or every other week, we've been in meetings, we've met with our budget chair and we've really come up with something that we think makes a lot of sense . Now, I'd also like you to keep in mind that the work on human trafficking more generally, but labor trafficking specifically has been going on at the state level for a long time. And in fact, starting in 1995, when three Filipina American women were murdered here at the courthouse. So those were Suzanna Ramrod Blackwell, Phoebe designed and Veronica Loretta and Susanna was eight months pregnant when her husband murdered her self and the other two women who were there to help her here at the courthouse. And it was Emma Kotecki who was here today, who I believe brought the information to Velma, the lawyer, Representative Velma Valeria at the time, and the Filipino community rallied together to make sure that we in the legislature knew and understood what was happening, something called human trafficking, which we didn't know much about at that time. Representative Valeria led the efforts in the legislature, and we also have with us current State Senator Bob Hasegawa, who this year had legislation of his past that dealt with labor trafficking terms being added and. A lot. There have been about 40 laws enacted in our state where the number one state in the country. But we have a lot more to do, and mainly that has to do with labor trafficking. The public is more aware of sex trafficking also very, very important. I would appreciate that we hear the panel. And if you can accept that a whole lot of background work has been done on this and we are, of course, continuing to look at what the fiscal issues are, the challenges. But we're thinking about on the order of $25,000 to get this taskforce implemented. And we'll let the panel talk. Thank you. Well, Councilmember. And I'm sorry to basically want to say something. Thank you. And I apologize for jumping in, but I have to go due to our conflict. And I'm very sad because I want to hear this panel. Then I will watch it later. I'm pleased to join as a co-sponsor with Councilmember Cowell's of the legislation, and I have at times participated in the existing Csac task force here , which is oriented and aimed at kind of children in this issue area. Before I came to the council, I was somewhat active with the American Bar Association, and they have done really tremendous amount of work in this area and have a number of recommendations, which I hope as we invest in this work here at the county, we will look at one of which is maybe a shift away from the focus on criminalization, which we should do, but more to support of victims. And I think that that will be a place that the county can play an important role in giving the kinds of services that we do here in addition to the criminal prosecutorial work . But I wanted to just let you know that I'm sorry. I have to go. I really appreciate you being here. I think this is very good work. I think it could integrate well with our new Office of Immigrants and Refugees. And there is a proposal in the budget to have a staffer there which might be able to assist with some of this work. And I'm excited that hopefully this will pass out and I'll certainly be supporting it. But I'm excited to see the work that this task force of its convening does in terms of its recommendations and then how the county can carry out on a local role. Our support services for the city of Seattle and King County, as you all know, is, I think one of the top five cities in the country because of our early report status, at least it used to be, and some of the work we were doing at the ABA. And so this is very important work and I'm happy to support Councilmember Caldwell's leadership on it and I appreciate your being here. So a couple of things before we get started. On line 23, the three people were murdered. And so at the King County Courthouse, I didn't think that was human trafficking. I thought that was a domestic violence case. Cliff. Now you want to answer that? Somebody says you know the answer to that. Actually, initially started we also viewed it initially as a domestic violence case. But when we look at the issue of migrant brides, it had the definition of human trafficking where they're forced out of their country because there are no economic opportunities for them. They are brought here thinking that there are going to be economic opportunities. And then there was a study that was done at the University of Washington, which. Called the issue of these migrant brides or mail order bride as a bride trafficking. Okay. So last time we were told certain terms are pejorative and certain terms aren't. Yes. So is bride trafficking, except it is not accepted. What is the correct terminology? Correct terminology that we are currently using as migrant brides. Migrant brides. Okay. Migrant marriages. Okay. Is that as explicit as saying the other terms of the term seem like it's a little bit more so says the flavor of this is not a good idea. Or migrant brides doesn't sound quite as intense. Anyway. All right. Whatever the right word is. I was just surprised to see that in here. That that was that. And then I like to say that I was in the legislature when I'm a first brought this to us in the late nineties and we're like, What? What is this? So I'd like to thank you for your leadership on this all these years. It's great. Thank you. So that. Would you like to begin? Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Velma Gloria and members of that council. Thank you for hearing this particular legislation. I wanted to particularly say thank you to council member Kimiko Wells for her leadership and for her staff to pursue this issue. When we first introduced the Bill of Human Trafficking or to make human trafficking a crime on the state level, it was with the intention of having it be more inclusive. It wasn't just to study or to address the issue of sex trafficking, but to also include labor. And now, as I travel the world, it would hopefully include organ trafficking under the international trade agreements. What we have done, actually, it's commodify human beings so that human trafficking has not become part of the globalization process. This ordinance will allow us to take a look and play an important role in studying and looking at the issue of labor trafficking and economic exploitation and hopefully look forward to possible solutions. The issue of funding this task force. I hope that the Council will find some money, $25,000. I don't think it's that great of a request to get the task force started. And we really encourage that. You support this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and council member. I would like to thank everybody that Velma did bring this excellent PowerPoint. It's not time to have it shown, unfortunately, but I think I would encourage you to take a look at it. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. And there's also another sheet of the member state accomplishments, too, that goes back o 2000 to that's here for the record, too. Also, I want to point out, because they know, as we've discussed this many times, we are one of the number one states. Partly because we are on the circuit or on the West Coast, but also because we are very aware of this. And so when we have had concerted efforts of doing targeted arrests, we've had a lot of them because our police are doing such a good job of targeting. So I know the last time we talked about this that several different people were concerned that it made them sound bad as opposed to the fact that they're really on top of this and doing a good job. So we're glad they're making a lot of arrests. We just wish that there weren't arrests to be made, which is a little different. Would you like to see for us? Yes, thank you. And my name is John White. And I want to echo from a representative on The Voice gratitude for hearing this issue today. And I'm here to speak on behalf of Doctors Sutapa Basu at the Women's Center at University of Washington. Human trafficking, specifically, labor trafficking, is a prominent human rights abuse that touches all corners of our world, including the people in this room. The International Labor Organization estimates that 21 million people are victims of forced labor around the globe. Over 75% of them are victims of labor trafficking and are exploited in industries such as agriculture, construction, domestic service, fishing, manufacturing and more. Living in a global economy means that decisions we make here at a local level impact workers in King County, but also around the world. The 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, where nearly 1200 people died from a building collapse, included workers making garments for big brands that do business in King County. Locally procured goods are also at risk, for example, in the Bangladesh tasering fashion factory fire that killed 112 workers. The New York Times traced their supply chains back to Apparel Commission to the U.S. military, given the widespread worker exploitation worldwide and the potential connection to our local economy. We in King County can move towards preventing instances of labor trafficking and economic exploitation by examining our labor and procurement practices and identify areas that are vulnerable. For example, manufacturing of goods and services such as apparel and electronics, along with our construction workforce, are areas known to be prone to labor trafficking. And in 2015, 60% of the King County spending went to goods and services and 12% to construction. Government and public agencies have tremendous power in prevention, particularly through procurement. Our preliminary research through our preliminary research, we have learned that there are many cities, counties and states that have passed and implemented various ethical sourcing and sweat free ordinances that we can unpack and learn from. This task force will allow our county to take leadership on this issue and look at our own procurement practices and vendor supply chains and engage our community to collaboratively identify and support meaningful action items to take a stance against labor trafficking. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for. My name is Dr. Mar Bretman with businesses ending slavery and trafficking. And thank you so much, Councilmember Caldwell's, for proposing this legislation. And thank you for hearing us today. I am here to support the founding of a task force. We know that labor trafficking not only is being driven by products and services that we're buying overseas, we also know that it's happening here in Washington State. We don't yet know the prevalence or scope of what's happening in Washington state. And I think that's one of the things that this task force needs to work on and help us to understand better. But according to recent research, the prevalence could be quite high. A study out of San Diego focused on one small population of undocumented Spanish speaking immigrants. We know that documented Spanish speaking, documented immigrants in Washington state are also subject to labor trafficking. But in that specific population studied in San Diego, they found that one half experienced some form of employment violation. 27% of those classified as trafficking violations. 15% of workers experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse and or threats. 20% experienced deprivation, including things like food deprivation, sleep deprivation. And there were also several were forbidden to leave their leave their place of work. 24% were denied pay. The top industries in which this happened were construction, cleaning, landscaping, food processing in restaurants and manufacturing. So in King County, which seeks justice and equity for all people, we need to understand what is happening in our county to our most vulnerable populations and how we can uphold the rights of those populations. So I am very supportive of founding this task force because we do need to begin working on this issue as a county. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I want to apologize. I do have to leave to go to another meeting. And I really am sorry. I wish this meeting had gone faster and I could have listened to everything. And as I said at the beginning, I'm learning about this issue. Our report just didn't have any real data behind it. It had a lot of generic general statements in it. It's a very large task force. There are seven county departments that are asked to participate in a short period of time. I'm concerned about the cost. I'm not at all unsupportive. I'm very supportive. I understand that there's an issue. I understand our status as a port city makes us particularly susceptible to this kind of this kind of problem. And there's been a lot of effort, and I and I don't want to in any way send a message that it's not an important issue to address. I want to understand what exactly it is we're proposing to do and whether this is the best approach to do it. I also, by the way, am very, very appreciative of Councilmember Caldwell's efforts and her comments. I really look forward to learning more about what she has learned because, again, it is not here today. This is called a new to me. So I'm hoping that we can have this back one more time for a little bit more information. That's all I'm asking. And I, too, will go back and watch the the playback of everybody else's comments that I won't be able to stay to here today. Thank you for your report, Madam Chair. Just. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Member. I appreciate your remarks a lot, but I think what you're doing is really pointing out to the need for creation of this task force. We do not have all the data that are needed where King County. King County is the economic engine of the state of Washington versus Puget Sound. But talking with the prosecutors and sheriff's office, I worked on this for a long time. There is ample information that trafficking takes place here. Labor trafficking is not as visible to people as the sex trafficking, but it is present, there's no doubt about that . But what one of the main reasons we want to have this taskforce is to be able to determine what the incidence and the prevalence are. So thanks. Thank you very much. Would you like to begin? Sure. Hi, I'm Nicole Valastro King, and I'm the executive director of the Fair Work Center based in Seattle, but also King County. And I just want to echo all of the incredible words said before me and the leadership of the people talking before us. I actually didn't come to this work thinking about trafficking. I came to this work thinking about wages and workers. And, you know, I sat on the Seattle Task Force for the $15 minimum wage campaign. And during that time, it became abundantly clear that we needed more resources for workers when their rights are violated. I had a number of people come to me and say, You know, Fifteen's great, but I'm not getting minimum wage right now. And so we're like, Oh, well, there's a real need for community supported enforcement. And so we founded the Fair Work Center to train workers about their rights at work and then also provide legal services. And now we're one of the only part of the King County Bar Association, the only neighborhood clinic that is devoted to employment services, even though at the state level, similarly, a civil legal aid study done by the Supreme Court showed that employment issues is one of the top five issues that people in our state have. That's a problem that people in our state are facing, and it's not one of the top five services available to them. So there's a really big need for services for workers. Anyway, we're doing this, we're training workers about their rights and then all of a sudden we get more and more people who've been trafficked coming in. And, you know, we were just like, we just wanted to make sure you were getting paid the right wage. And what we're finding is that there's such a strong relationship between labor trafficking and workplaces that violate other rights. So if they violate health, health and safety code and then also are violating minimum wage, often there's an element of coercion that happens for the people we serve. They're told, you know, well, if you report us, we're going to report you to ICE. Or if you report us, you know, like I actually we had a worker come in whose employer threatened to murder her child if they're reporting them. So it's it sounds like over the top. But if you recently moved to this country, you don't have a network or a safety net to support you. It's something that's really real and happens. And I so support this task force because, you know, we came at it from another angle and we're finding that it's such a bigger problem than we could have ever imagined. Thank you. So thank you. Is there a phone number that people could call? I'm sorry. I didn't see you there. Did you disappear or you're not? I'm. I'm so sorry. Your angle. I didn't see you at all, so please proceed. And I'm happy to answer that question as well. So my name is Robert Pizer, and I'm the executive director of Seattle Against Slavery. I just want to echo the background and like work that's been done on this issue for nearly 20 years now, looking broadly at the issue of human trafficking, just to put some specific examples to what this looks like in King County in the past few years, we had a 14 year old who was brought into this country with the promise of education, but instead in Kent and Federal Way was forced to work in a factory. She was making pastries and chocolates that went out in restaurants and grocery stores, and she wasn't given any wages. She was put under threat of violence and forced debt on her and her family and spent years in that environment, as well as cleaning the house of the people who she was being trafficked by. We had a woman who was a mother who was threatened with the murder of her children if she did not take care of the house and the children of King County residents. And she was in that situation for years. We had a South Asian man who was working in a restaurant and he was told he would be deported. And what we know from the Tacoma detention center is that we have trafficking victims and survivors who are being. Report it. Who have been residents of King County. Before there was commercial, commercially, sexually exploited children task force. People said, well, how do we know how much of this is really going on? We don't have the numbers and we don't have the data. But two years into that process, we have the data on hundreds of victims and survivors. We have convictions of hundreds of men who have been trying to buy children for sex. And I think what we see is that the survivors of human trafficking, the foreign nationals in Washington state, there's more labor trafficking survivors attempting to access services than sex trafficking survivors among foreign nationals. So even though we don't have the numbers at this point, task forces like the one that's proposed in this legislation are key. They are the point where all of these community stakeholders come together, where we make decisions about what public awareness do we need to be doing and what's effective. What services need to be available to survivors of trafficking. And what training for King County employees needs to happen? Because right now the city of Seattle is getting training for their employees on how to identify labor trafficking. And the 13,000 employees of King County aren't getting that same training. So I think this task force has a tremendous opportunity to really reshape what it looks like for people who might be at risk of labor trafficking in King County and what the rest of the state and the country needs to do about the issue of labor trafficking and the number. If someone were identified as being a labor trafficking victim or survivor who needed services is 8883737888. And that will connect them directly with both law enforcement and service providers here in King County and around the state. Okay. So you said it in a really good way for us to remember. It's eight, eight, eight on both ends. And then in the middle is 3737. Okay. So 883737888. So you don't have to be identified. You can identify yourself. And even if you have concerns about what's happening to me, they could call me or a friend. Or if you're a service provider, who has someone come in who tells you a story and you say, I don't know what the services who are are that are available for this person. You can call that number and get technical assistance. Okay, great. And then one of the other things that would be good to have, as we talked about this years ago, and I don't know if we ever got it finished, but we asked to get information not only on what businesses can do, but what can we as a citizen do. And one of the things they told me was when I go get my nails done, look at the picture on the wall with the license and see if that picture matches that person or the description matches the person that's actually doing this so that we can see whether or not. So suggestions like that that all of us can do, I think are really important. So because the time I think what we're going to do is ask for some more things. Cliff, where you find out from Seattle what their training is to see if we can borrow. And we also put up a study that we did two, three, four years ago and find out where we are on that study. And then I think that the executive has put literally millions of dollars new into ESG. So out of that millions of dollars, I'm sure we can find 20,000. So that's not the part that's bothering me at all. So I would also like to know what the average age of the person being trafficked is so that maybe we can look at some basic manifestos for kids money to see if any of those would qualify. And then we'll carry this to another meeting and make sure all that members have the information they need. But I think the sheriff and the prosecutor should be here also and the other groups that are impacted with doing this to see what their timeframes are. So we will get you a date. It will be either end of November, beginning of December, but we'll get you a date before the end of the year and we'll have all that information. Councilmember Thank you, Madam Chair. I might also suggest that we. Mr. CURRY We do some work to compare this proposal to work that has been done in the past, and I'm not sure whether it's continuing INS sexual exploitation in sport through the sheriff's. Department as well. That would be very helpful to know and know that and then. Make sure that. We're not duplicating. And everything is complementary. Not duplicating or that we don't come up with the same outcomes that we had in the last report. You know, let's find out where we got in the last report and make sure that all those things are happening, too. So, yes, Councilman Gomez, for clarification, very much appreciate your holding this briefing. Are you saying for late November, early December, to come back to the Senate to revisit this proposal? Jordan in Spain should be prepared to vote for it. Terrific. And I would again like to acknowledge that we have Senator Hasegawa here, who has been particularly involved with these related issues of wage theft and the underground economy that does exist, that takes away revenue from our tax base when we do not have full reporting and compliance with the law. So thank you all on my behalf for visiting here. And I hope that Dr. Brennan and will be able to share more as well about what she actually does in working with businesses and corporations here in Cancun. She's done amazing work over many years and in a variety of different formats. So we thank you for all your work on this. I did have an opportunity once to see somebody who had been deprived of food for a very long amount of time, and it was the first time I'd ever seen that depth of food deprivation, and it was really frightening to me. So anyway, thank you. It's hard to believe anybody in this county, although that event happened in my very own city. So I know what happens in this county and it should never happen this county. So thank you very much. We will see you again. So thank you so much. And with anything else, this meeting is adjourned.