1. Amending his legislative proposal last week to meet the demands of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, mayor Ed Murray has added what’s known as a “private right of action” to the proposed labor standards rule governing enforcement of the city’s new $15 wage laws.

Murray, under pressure from business, had initially not included the right, which workers’ advocates and labor lawyers say is key to protecting workers against wage theft. Of course, anyone can sue if they believe their employer isn’t paying them the mandated wage, but including a private right of action gives workers better protections by creating damages and covering attorneys’ fees. By adding damages—a fine on the delinquent employer—the right of action adds teeth to the city’s new $15 wage law; otherwise, a shady employer would merely have to pay up rather than pay extra. Second, by covering lawyers’ fees, attorneys are more likely to take the cases on behalf of low-wage workers who otherwise might not be able to pay.

UFCW political director Sarah Cherin sent Murray a letter in July when her union was concerned that Murray was acceding to business demands to leave out the right.

Cherin wrote:

Let’s be clear, not including private right of action in your recommendations to council is protecting businesses that have broken the law from being held accountable in a court of law. The truth is, the primary reason why employers are so opposed to private right of action is simply that this enforcement strategy holds wrongdoers accountable. Private right of action helps to ensure that all businesses in Seattle are held to the same standard. What are the motives behind passing some of the most important labor standards in the country and then not giving workers the tools to actually hold corporations accountable when they violate the law? Any enforcement law that does not include private right of action will allow those businesses that are breaking the law off the hook, and strip thousands of Seattle’s most vulnerable workers of the rights and pay that they deserve.

During our candidate interviews last month, Murray’s former legal counsel, Lorena González, who’s running for the at-large Position Nine seat, told us that any city wage enforcement law had to come with a private right of action. González said: “I think having a private right of action is absolutely critical. Making sure our penalties and remedies actually have teeth. It’s unclear to me whether or not he’ll [the mayor will] be supportive of a private right of action.”

Council president Tim Burgess, also up for election, told us he wouldn’t pass the legislation without the rule: “I think we will almost certainly have some form of right of action. And it will either come in the mayor’s legislation or the council will consider adding that. I told the business community, I want to be consistent in Seattle with federal and state law, and both federal and state law have that right. What the scope is remains to be seen. But at the end of the day, it will be there in some form.” 

2. Speaking of Burgess, council member Tom Rasmussen joined port commissioner Courtney Gregoire and Mayor Murray in ridiculing council member Kshama Sawant for taking credit for improving workers’ conditions at the port by providing better bathroom access. (Sawant, who brought up the bathroom issue earlier this month, during discussion of a separate joint city/port deal for freight road maintenance, patted herself on the back when council passed the “heavy haul” infrastructure legislation on Monday, saying her initial no vote on the road bill forced the port’s hand on the bathroom controversy. Both Gregoire and Murray told me yesterday that the bathroom issue had always been a contingent part of the freight deal, and Sawant was about four months late to the issue. The council passed the bill unanimously this week.)

I guess her city hall colleagues are annoyed that Sawant is likely to win next month’s election? Because it appears to be open season on Sawant: Transportation committee chair Rasmussen added his two cents, telling me yesterday, “She didn’t do a damn thing,” adding that he wasn’t going to pass the freight legislation without the bathroom deal all along, and that he tasked council president Tim Burgess with working “quietly, behind the scenes” with the port to come to an agreement, “which Tim did.”

As for Sawant, Rasmussen said, “It’s audacious that she would take credit. It’s BS that she did anything. What did she do? She voted no. Is that leadership?”

Asked for a comment from Sawant, city council spokeswoman Dana Robinson Slote simply said Sawant was taking credit for voting no at the committee level to flag the bathroom deal; Mike O’Brien also voted no at the committee level. Robinson Slote added: “Sawant has long supported the Teamsters’ efforts for the rights of the port truckers.”

Watch Sawant's speech Monday at the 40:13 mark.

3. Here’s some proof that the mayor’s housing affordability recommendations (known as HALA, for his Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda committee) actually did constitute a "grand bargain."

Calling themselves Seattle for Everyone, an unprecedented crew of cosigners sent a letter to the council yesterday supporting the mayor’s HALA deal. The deal puts a fee on all commercial development citywide (a commercial "linkage fee") for affordable housing—which will now be mandatory, either at about six percent of all new residential developments or as a "fee in lieu," which will go to a housing fund.

As a trade-off, developers get a default upzone on all new commercial and residential development.

The letter includes unprecedented  signatures from social justice groups such as Puget Sound Sage, the Downtown Emergency Services Center, El Centro de la Raza, and the  Washington Low Income Housing Alliance side-by-side with business and developer interests such as the Seattle chamber, the Downtown Seattle Association, Vulcan, SMR Architects, downtown developer Greg Smith, and Schemata.

Several nonprofit housing groups such as Capitol Hill Housing and Compass Housing Alliance along with city greens like Sightline, the Sierra Club, Futurewise, Transportation Choices Coalition, and Seattle Subway also signed.