Developed by Code for Seattle volunteers and Working Washington as a front-line education and enforcement tool for workers, the new "What's My Wage?" App steps workers through the questions they need to determine their wage this year and in the next few years under Seattle's $15 minimum wage law — and report any violations. The app is available now at whatsmywage.org.
The app is intentionally simple, asking only the questions necessary to find out how the wage law apples to you. There are also a few special features:
- A geolocation tie-in that lets you use the app from your workplace to verify whether your location is within the jurisdictional limits of Seattle.
- A crowdsourced database linking employers & chains to their number of employees, in order to determine what increases employees will see each year. If someone doesn't know if their employer is part of a company or chain with more than 500 employees nationally, they can report the question through the app. We'll find out, let them know — and add that employer to the database that powers What's My Wage. So the more people who use the app, the better it gets.
- An integrated system for workers to report cases of possible wage theft to Working Washington for follow up.
"The What's My Wage app is a valuable tool to help ensure our $15 minimum wage law becomes a reality for every worker in every workplace in the city," said Sejal Parikh, Executive Director of Working Washington. "Outreach and education are critical to enforcing the law successfully, and this app is part of that: a simple and powerful way for workers to understand how Seattle's minimum wage law applies to them and report violations — from their phones on the bus home from work, on break, or from a computer at the library."
Andrew "Peaches" Gall was the lead developer of the app. "I'm really excited and proud to be able to contribute my part to the effort to educate people about this amazing new law that we've passed here in Seattle," said Andrew. "It's been amazing to work with Working Washington to bring this fantastic tool into existence. It's truly exciting what we've done in Seattle and I hope it's the start of some big changes nationwide. Workers everywhere deserve a living wage. We can not continue the concentration of wealth and intellectual property at the top. We can not abide a new generation of robber barons. Instituting a living wage and the open source movement are two important ways that we're exercising our power as a community. The app we've built wouldn't be nearly as amazing as it is without the open source technologies that we've used to build it and because it's open source, other cities and jurisdictions can take what we've done and make it for themselves and make it better. Check out what we've done at: https://github.com/working-wa"
The roadmap for What's My Wage includes a Spanish translation, expanding the app to include information about more workplace rights, and developing ways to connect workers with organizations in their area. What's My Wage is an open-source Apache Cordova/Node.JS project with the source code on Github and the application hosted on Heroku. Version 1.0 of the app is available now at whatsmywage.org.
About the law:
Seattle's landmark minimum wage ordinance, signed into law by Mayor Murray less than a year ago and taking effect April 1st, will put a half-billion dollars into the pockets of Seattle's lowest-paid workers over the next decade. Workers at large companies and chains like McDonald's and Target get to $15/hour on January 1, 2017, and the wage adjusts for inflation every year after that. Smaller employers have more time to see the benefits of increased consumer demand, and in the end, every worker in the city phases in to a true inflation-adjusted citywide $15 minimum wage.
For more information about the law, see our app!
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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org