Giant Silicon Valley app companies like Instacart and DoorDash are mobilizing here in Seattle to DEFUND workers' ability to enforce our rights in the workplace.
Read MoreOnline Voter Registration Deadline is Today!
The deadline for online voter registration is today! If you haven’t registered yet or aren’t sure about your status, you can easily get that done or verify it here. After today, you can register in person only through election day, Nov 7th.
If you aren’t sure you’re eligible to vote, check this resource. Did you know that youth ages 16-17 can sign up as a future voter and be automatically registered as soon as they qualify? Share this with someone excited to vote in the next round!
Voting is essential to making sure worker voices are heard, and best believe big business is being loud and clear this cycle, cozying up with candidates who put down worker policies. So make sure you’re registered & ready to do your part!
(Plus the worker endorsement board worked very hard selecting the candidates who will have our backs in their next terms. Don’t let their time & effort interrogating politicians go to waste.)
Instacart is Lying
Seattle gig workers are advocating for a 10 cent fee that app companies should pay to fund enforcement of workers rights – like a minimum pay standard and prevention of unjust deactivations – when apps try to violate those rights. Which they do. Constantly.
Instacart emailed all of its Seattle customers to tell them that this fee is an illegal tax on groceries.
The truth is, the legislation specifically exempts groceries.
Instacart’s real beef with this fee is that they don’t want to pay ten cents to protect workers.
Instacart is pretending it’s concerned about working families. But it didn’t seem all that concerned about working people it spent years fighting in court to avoid paying workers pandemic hazard pay.
And it definitely wasn’t worried about working people when it hit a profit of $428 million in 2022 by adding its own delivery fee, service fee, busy pricing free, customer pricing fee, and item pricing fee to orders.
Don’t let Instacart lie to you.
The company has never had working people’s backs and it’s not going to start now. (And by the way: we wouldn’t need this fee if Instacart and other app companies would stop breaking the law.)
2024 Washington State Minimum Wage Increase
Effective January 1st, 2024, the state of Washington is getting a minimum wage increase. The new number - $16.28 an hour. About half of what we need to earn to afford a one bedroom apartment in this state.
The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries re-evaluates minimum wage based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index every year and adjusts accordingly. This year’s adjustment is a 3.4% increase.
Washington currently has the highest state-level minimum wage in the country. The federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 - a rate WA surpassed nearly two decades ago.
Not being paid correctly? Washington L&I investigates wage-payment complaints submitted online, by mail, or in person.
Announcing our first round of endorsed candidates!
This year, an endorsement board of restaurant workers, domestic workers, and gig workers – all of whom are active leaders in campaigns to organize their industries with their coworkers – came together to pick the candidates who will most effectively and reliably fight alongside us.
Read MoreTukwila workers win a big pay raise in a landslide
It wasn’t even close. On election night, 82% of voters in Tukwila approved a $3/hour raise to the city’s minimum wage.
Read MoreEnding "hazard pay" is a crisis for gig workers who earn $2 a job
The official COVID emergency period may have ended, but for gig workers, this change is a crisis of its own. We’re facing extreme financial instability, and even with hazard pay we’ve found ourselves unable to pay our bills. For many of us, losing hazard pay means having to put in 70-80 hours of work a week, facing homelessness, or going without essential medical care. Workers fought hard to win a permanent pay standard that will go into effect at the end of 2023. But the reality is that until it’s implemented, ending hazard pay means a huge pay cut with no accountability for gig companies.
Read MoreWho Workers Want in 2022 — Our General Election Endorsements
This fall, we’re excited to endorse the following 9 candidates for elected office across WA.
Read MoreHow accurate are employer predictions about the impacts of the minimum wage?
Spoiler alert: the sky remains aloft.
Read MoreDanielle Alvarado testimony before the U.S. House Select Committee on Economic Disparity & Fairness in Growth
“Today, our Seattle minimum wage is $10 higher than the federal, and the movement that started here has spread nationwide. Over the past decade, we’ve increased wages by more than $150 billion dollars for 26 million workers across the country.
Our victories in Washington aren’t just about what we’ve won, but who has benefitted. We have taken on some of the most deeply entrenched and racist labor standards exclusions in federal law. In Seattle, nannies and house cleaners passed the first municipal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to establish basic protections like minimum pay and breaks. And this year, for the first time, Washington farmworkers are earning overtime. These victories are chipping away at an economic system that for too long has trapped workers of color at the bottom.”
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