what have we done

Thank you for being a part of making all this happen — and thank you for your continued support in the year ahead.

Here are ten huge things we accomplished together at Working Washington & Fair Work Center in 2019:

  1. Strippers organized to win a landmark safety & security law which provides panic buttons, protections against violent customers, and more — the first bill affecting strippers in WA state history that was actually initiated and supported by strippers.

  2. We launched the PayUp campaign and rapidly emerged as the national leaders on gig worker organizing, uniting more than 10,000 workers around three simple demands to reboot the gig economy with a pay floor of $15 + expenses, with tips on top, and pay transparency.

  3. And we got results: gig workers successfully transformed the pay policies of three multi-billion dollar corporations (Instacart, DoorDash, and Amazon Flex), re-establishing the basic norm that tips go to workers, not corporations. 

  4. Fair Work Center’s outreach & education team worked with dozens of community partners to train thousands of workers about their rights on the job and how to enforce them.

  5. We won the nation’s strongest overtime protections for underpaid & overworked salaried workers. When the state’s new overtime rules fully phase in, workers paid up to $70,000/year will get overtime pay when they work overtime hours, regardless of whether they’re salaried or hourly, and regardless of their job title.

  6. Our Domestic Workers Bill of Rights took effect and nannies in Seattle kick-started the nation’s first-ever domestic workers standards board, which gives workers a voice in shaping new standards for the industry.

  7. We held a powerful memorial & training in honor of Omar Gomez Lopez, a farmworker who was killed on the job last year, and built a robust community of Yakima Valley agricultural workers trained on health and safety.

  8. We initiated and led CAPE, a progressive political committee which took up the fight against Amazon’s effort to purchase the Seattle City Council in this year’s elections — and our candidates came out ahead in six of seven races.

  9. Our Fair Work Center legal clinic won a landmark $450,000 settlement for wage theft at Pyramid Alehouse and pursued cases that put a total of $1 million back in workers' pockets over the last year.

  10. And through it all, we made sure workers themselves were leading the conversation about workers' rights & the future of work by crashing the gates of the national media with stories in BuzzFeed, Vox, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Bloomberg, Newsweek, Fast Company, CBS News, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, NPR, the New York Times, and more.

Getting this all done means organizing workers one-to-one in communities across the state. It means lifting up workers' voices in the media and to policymakers. It means building big coalitions of supporters to get things done. 

And that takes resources. We know the billionaires and the giant corporations aren’t going to invest money in building worker power and taking on income inequality. The federal government isn’t going to do it either. That’s why we’re asking you. 

Click here to renew your support for Working Washington. Even $5 makes a difference to build our strength for the long haul.

And by the way — if you think we got a lot done this year, just wait for 2020.

Workers in our state are going to get access to paid family leave. The minimum wage will rise to at least $13.50/hour statewide, and higher in Seattle. And non-compete agreements will be eliminated for workers paid less than $100,000/year.

That’s not a hope. It's a promise. In fact, all of that happens on January 1st. 

Then starting on January 2nd we’re going to get to work to take secure scheduling statewide so food & retail workers have the predictability and flexibility they need. We’re going to win groundbreaking new rights for workers in the gig economy. We’re going to stand up to income inequality and take on corporate power. We’re going to enforce the rights we’ve won. And so much more.

Your support is a big part of the reason we accomplished everything we did this year. And your support can help us keep it up and keep on winning for workers.

Thank you for an incredibly successful 2019... with more in store for 2020.