With legislation on committee agenda Tuesday that would establish pay floor, protect flexibility, and provide transparency for 40,000 people working in Seattle's gig economy...
Seattle could become first city in the country to eliminate sub-minimum wages for workers at DoorDash, Instacart, and across the gig economy
Seattle City council is taking a big step towards making the gig economy pay up: draft legislation to be discussed in committee would dramatically raise pay and provide other protections to 40,000 gig workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats who are currently paid subminimum wages and not protected by basic labor standards.
The PayUp policy under consideration Tuesday — which would raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency to gig workers in the city — is the result of months of stakeholder meetings championed by City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, as well as deep organizing & community engagement led by workers with Working Washington's PayUp campaign. Workers, community groups, and other supporters are expected to give public comment in support of the PayUp policy on Tuesday, ahead of the committee discussion.
Who: Seattle City Council — Public Safety & Human Services committee
What: Hear from workers and community supporters in public comment, then discuss draft PayUp policy to raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency to people working in the gig economy
When: 9:30 am — Tuesday, September 14, 2021
Where: City Council Public Safety Human Service Committee, live online on Seattle Channel
Workers leading the Pay Up campaign are available for interview before or after the hearing. Contact Sage Wilson at Working Washington to arrange — sage@workingwa.org.
Tuesday's hearing comes a year after workers with the PayUp campaign won emergency pandemic hazard pay & sick days laws — the only laws in the country to successfully move money from multibillion dollar gig companies to gig delivery workers. These laws are working: gig workers are receiving hazard pay, taking sick days when they're sick, and the city has won $5 million settlements for workers in those cases where compliance is lacking.
Now it's time for Council to address the rest of the gig economy, by advancing permanent policies that end what is effectively a subminimum wage for the thousands of other people in Seattle who rely on gig work, including people of color, immigrants, workers with disabilities, LGBTQ workers, and single parents. Workers and coalition supporters are calling for citywide labor standards that advance racial equity, improve public health, and meet workers' needs with new rules for the gig economy that:
Raise pay by establishing a pay floor for each job which guarantees workers make more than minimum wage after expenses, with tips on top.
Protect flexibility by ensuring gig workers can choose when to work and which jobs to accept, and protections against unwarranted deactivations.
Provide transparency by giving workers and customers clear information about prices and pay rates.
Organizational supporters of the Pay Up campaign include Al Noor Islamic Community Center; Amazon Employees for Climate Justice; Be: Seattle; Casa Latina; Civic Ventures; Complexiphy; Drivers Union; El Centro de la Raza; Fair Work Center; 43rd District Democrats, Kandelia; LGBTQ Allyship; National Employment Law Project; OneAmerica; People's Parity Project; Puget Sound Sage; Seattle Mutual Aid; Seattle Restaurants United; SEIU 6; SEIU 775; SEIU 925; SEIU Healthcare 1199NW; Somali Community Services; Teamsters 117; Transit Riders Union; Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance; and Working Washington.
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Contact: Sage Wilson, Working Washington: sage@workingwa.org
Working Washington is the voice for workers in our state. Working Washington fast food strikers sparked the fight that won Seattle’s first-in-the-nation $15 minimum wage. Working Washington baristas and fast food workers led the successful campaign for secure scheduling in Seattle, and our members across the state helped drive forward Initiative 1433 to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick days. We successfully drove Amazon to sever ties with the right-wing lobby group ALEC and improve conditions in their sweatshop warehouses, and got Starbucks to address inequities in their corporate parental leave policy. And we've continued to make history by organizing for the landmark statewide paid family leave law in 2017, winning the groundbreaking Seattle Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in summer 2018, leading the fight to restore overtime protections to salaried workers in 2019, and passing the nation's first hazard pay and paid sick days laws for gig workers last year. For more information, visit workingWA.org.