The Olympia City Council will hear a proposal to raise the minimum wage in the city to at least $20.29 and adopt a Workers’ Bill of Rights after three council members voiced their support in a recent Finance Committee meeting.
The proposal will be discussed in a study session on Tuesday, Oct. 22. If ultimately approved, it would be about $4 more than the Washington state minimum wage, which is set to rise to $16.66 per hour on Jan. 1, 2025.
Spokesperson Kellie Purce Braseth said the council will look at what other cities are doing on the topic and will discuss a community engagement process and timeline. There won’t be a public comment opportunity at this meeting.
The Finance Committee will have a special meeting Monday, Oct. 7, to discuss the proposal more as well.
Senior Planner Stacey Ray presented the Bill of Rights to the committee originally in August. It was written by Michael Hines, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367, and Rachelle Martin, president of the Thurston Lewis Mason Central Labor Council.
The two wrote that wages have not kept up with the rising cost of living.
“MIT calculates that a living wage in Olympia is $24/hr for a single adult working full-time, or $41/hr to support one child and one adult,” the Bill of Rights reads. “Worse still, most of the big retail, grocery, and food service corporations are adopting a “flexible” employment model, meaning fewer and fewer full-time positions.”
The labor groups organized a summit in July that was attended by nearly 100 people, according to the Bill of Rights. During the event, workers spoke about how difficult it is to survive in the local economy.
Ray told the Finance Committee the conversation around Olympia having a livable minimum wage began in 2015 when council member Jim Cooper put forward a policy framework for the council to work from.
Post-pandemic, Economic Development director Mike Reid formed Olympia Strong, which helped city officials better understand issues community members are facing, including housing instability, increased cost of living, limited mobility, affordable housing, workforce issues and more.
“The priority is to look at addressing minimum wage in between now and the end of the year, and then maybe in the first quarter of next year, is to maybe take up further conversation around other items that are in the proposed Workers’ Bill of Rights,” Ray said.
What does the Workers’ Bill of Rights call for?
▪ Minimum wage increase : The first item on the Bill of Rights is a minimum wage increase to $20.29 with inflation. That amount is the standard set for large employers by King County, according to the document, and it’s scheduled to rise with inflation every year.
Hines and Martin wrote that anything less than this standard fails to meet workers’ needs.
Small and medium-sized businesses would have a 3 to 6-year phase-in period.
▪ Work hours : The Bill of Rights calls for workers to get enough hours for a livable paycheck alongside the minimum wage increase. It says that before hiring additional workers, employers must offer existing employees up to full-time work. It also calls for guaranteed access to full-time jobs for most employees at large national grocery chains.
▪ Stable work schedules : Workers are also asking that employers provide good-faith estimates of work hours at the time of hiring, including anticipated weekly shifts. And employees have a right to a 14-days notice for schedules. The Bill of Rights says employees would have the right to refuse on-call shifts requested by their employer after the 14-day notice.
The Bill of Rights also calls for predictability pay for schedule changes after the 14-day notice. That means employees would be paid 50% of their wages for any hours cut and would be paid time-and-a-half for on-call shifts or additional hours.
Employees would also have the right to refuse shifts without a minimum of 10 hours of rest between them. If an employee accepts shifts that have less than 10 hours between them, they will be paid time-and-a-half for work during the 10-hour rest period.
The Bill of Rights would also explicitly give workers the right to request changes to their schedules and require employers to make a good faith effort to meet those requests.
▪ Safe workplaces : Under safe workplaces, the Bill of Rights calls for large retail employers to adopt a workplace violence prevention policy that identifies specific factors that put their workers at risk, and how to prevent violence.
Large employers would have to provide annual training for employees on de-escalation tactics, live-action shooter drills, emergency procedures, use of panic buttons and more. There’s also a call for all retail employers with more than 500 employees nationwide to install panic buttons or offer wearable or mobile phone-based panic buttons.
▪ Protection against unjust termination : The Bill of Rights calls for universal just cause protections against termination, which means employers can only discipline or discharge employees after a fair process and for legitimate, provable reasons.
Employers would be prohibited from disciplining or firing workers based on lawful off-the-job use of cannabis without proof of intoxication at work.
How will it be enforced?
According to the Bill of Rights, when employees take legal action for violations of their workplace rights, the burden of proof is on the employer.
It calls for the strengthening of private right of action and the creation of stiffer penalties for employers found to be in violation of local labor laws.
The Bill of Rights calls for the introduction of fee shifting to ensure attorneys will take on credible cases for workers, regardless of their ability to pay out-of-pocket. And it calls for the Olympia City Council to formally request the state to take action, or work toward establishing a municipal Office of Labor Standards, to crack down on widespread wage theft and enforce local labor laws.
Council comments
Council members Lisa Parshley, Jim Cooper and Clark Gilman serve on the Finance Committee. Cooper said he’s excited about the proposal and believes the city should start with the $20.29 proposal and see if it gets pushed any further.
“How can we help people keep from feeling like they need to live somewhere else when they work downtown or work at the mall or work at the auto mall or anywhere in our community,” he said. “And so I think it makes sense, I’d love to see us move on minimum wage aggressively, if we can actually pull that off.”
Committee chair and council member Lisa Parshley said she’d love to see the minimum wage effort move quickly, and it’s not really even a discussion point to her. She said it’s not just about the rising cost of living anymore, but about self sufficiency.
“It’s not just about rent,” she said. “I just got an article that said all health care in the state of Washington is going up 10% in 2025 which is just another bill to people who can’t afford it, especially if your business takes it out of your salary.”
Cooper said he works with a number of organizations nationally in his day job, and it surprises him how many states are still at the $7.25 minimum wage level.
“It’s criminal; no one can live off that anywhere in the United States,” he said. “It’s really hard.”
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