Category: Blog

By Nicole Vallestero-Keenan and Coco Chandi

How much you make is tied to race and gender. According to findings posted last week in The Atlantic, labor statistics show that the US workforce is stratified by race and gender. This is no newsflash to women and people of color, but the statistics below should be at the center of Seattle’s living wage debate.

Why the disparity shown in the graph? It’s partly a function of who works in what sector of the economy. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the article shows that your race has a significant influence on the kind of job you have. Blacks, who make up 11% of the workforce, represent 33% of home health aides and 25% of security guards and drivers. Latinos, who account for 15% of the workforce, represent 44% of grounds maintenance workers and 43% maids and housecleaners. Asians account for only 5% of the workforce, but represent 60% of personal appearance workers (nail salons, hairdressers, etc).

The bottom line: job sectors heavily represented by people of color and women pay lower wages. However, in SeaTac voters recently approved an industry specific living wage of $15 an hour and the measure itself shows a path forward to addressing inequity across industries.

SeaTac’s Proposition 1 covers jobs that are disproportionately held by people of color: security guards, janitors, service workers, cabin cleaners and housecleaners at hotels. When implemented, the living wage will provide a $15 dollar wage floor, paid sick leave, and job security for over 6,000 workers in the City of SeaTac .

Not only will workers in these industries earn living wages, but the measure will also boost local economic activity, bring more business to local (many people of color-owned) businesses, and create more jobs in the region. Living wage requirements don’t just help tackle income inequality, they are a powerful tool to address race and gender pay gaps.

Last week a proposal to up-zone building heights near Mt. Baker Station ignited controversy when it made a last minute appearance on the agenda for the council’s Planning, Land Use and Sustainability Committee just before the holiday.

Opponents accused the city of attempting to suddenly ram the proposal through without due community process, and claimed the up-zone would increase crime in North Rainier.

However, Community representatives are not uniformly against the proposal. Puget Sound Sage is a founding partner of Seattle’s South Communities Organizing for Racial/Regional Equity (CORE) which submitted comments to DPD over the summer supporting the proposed up-zone, and advocating for increased investment beyond zoning to street and safety improvements.

South CORE’s efforts resulted in more funding for transportation investments and allowed communities more time to weigh-in on the North Rainier rezone process.

The South CORE alliance represents multiracial and ethnic communities rooted in South Seattle and South King County who believe that in order for transit oriented development to result in racial justice, social equity must be at the center of all planning decisions.

While the delayed timeline was not South CORE’s aim, they will use the time to encourage City Council to improve transit service, accessibility and safety and access to good jobs around the station area.

The testimony submitted in August maintained that:

“Overall, we believe the proposed zoning changes fit with the long-term vision for the North Rainier/Mt. Baker area. We are encouraged by the City’s decision to use the Seattle mixed zone to retain light industrial businesses in Southeast Seattle, such as the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company.  Maintaining and growing living wage jobs close to transit and urban areas is critical to ensuring communities of color and working families can afford to live in transit rich neighborhoods and benefit from new investment.

Passing this rezone is only the first step to building an equitable transit-oriented neighborhood. While the proposed rezone sets the boundaries for how North Rainier/Mount Baker will develop, the North Rainier/Mt. Baker area needs a significant amount of investment beyond zoning before our City’s vision for a thriving, and diverse community can be realized.”

Click here to read the full comments.

Just last week the final tally came in on SeaTac’s proposition 1.  The “ayes” have it.

So the sky must be falling, right?  Afterall, opponents of the biggest campaign the City of SeaTac has ever seen have been claiming for months that businesses would close shop, employees would lose their jobs, and airlines would move their business away from SeaTac.

Wrong. Despite these claims, business appears to be booming at SeaTac airport.

Rather than moving business away from SeaTac, some are making new investments.  In fact, Delta Airlines is making moves to expand business at SeaTac airport.  On election day, with a pending victory for living wages at SeaTac Airport, Delta Airlines announced, their plans to expand the Seattle market by adding 8 new daily non-stop flights, and a summer seasonal flight to Alaska. Demonstrating that with living wages, SeaTac Airport will grow as an international hub.

Are we seeing businesses close inside the airport?  Well, it looks like the opposite is happening for concessionaires inside the airport.  Just last week, the Port of Seattle announced that they are opening 4 new duty free stores, which plan to hire roughly 85 new employees.

Currently, Proposition 1 will cover roughly 6300 workers, but it looks like with these new shops and expanded flights, there will be even more living wage jobs at SeaTac Airport.

Now that Proposition 1 has passed, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of who will see a wage boost and better standards.  In our previous post, we highlighted that only companies that meet a size and employee threshold are covered.  Over the past nine months, we have obtained data on employer sizes from the Port of Seattle, Hoovers, King County property data, the Puget Sound Book of Lists and union organizers to compile our estimates of who is covered.  Below you’ll find our projected list of workplaces where living wage requirements should kick in on January 1^st, 2014.

Note that the list is meant to be a guide, not a definitive answer to whether a particular company is covered or not.  For example, we may over-estimated employment for firms on the edge of Proposition 1’s threshold, and included them when they are not actually covered. Or companies may have grown or shrunk since we made our estimate.  But, most of the employers listed below are well above the thresholds and we are confident that they are covered. (The lists below are ordered by largest to smallest.)

Rental Car Agencies (and their contractors)

There are approximately 16 rental car agencies (and companies contracted to provide those agencies services) operating in SeaTac.  Below are seven that we estimate have more than 100 vehicles and 25 or more workers in SeaTac.

National

Hertz

Golden Gate of Orlando

GCA Services Group

Avis Budget Group

Enterprise Rent a Car

Advantage

Hotels

Hotels or motels with over 100 rooms and more than 30 non-managerial employees will be covered by Proposition 1.  Below are two lists – one for hotels that we project meet both criteria and one for hotels that meet the room requirement but may or may not meet the employee threshold.

The following hotels are primarily the big ones on International Blvd, near SeaTac Airport.  We know the number of rooms at each hotel from King County Assessor’s information.  From other analysis, we estimate that they all have 30 or more employees.

Hotel	Rooms
DoubleTree Hilton	850
Marriott	459
Hilton Seattle Airport	396
Holiday Inn	260
Clarion Hotel	214
Radisson	204
Red Lion	144
Cedar Brook Lodge	102
Hampton Inn	218
Holiday Inn Express	171
Ramada	156

The hotels below meet the room number requirement, but may or may not meet the 30 worker threshold.  We cannot confirm that these are covered by Prop 1 and did not include them in our prior estimates of the number of firms covered or workers affected.

Hotel	Rooms
Sleep Inn	105
Fairfield Inn	147
Red Roof Inn	152
La Quita Inn	143
Coast Gateway	143
Best Western	140
Hampton Inn 2	130
Comfort Inn	119
Super 8	119
Motel 6	109
Quality Inn	104

On-Airport Transportation Employers

There are hundreds of businesses that do business at the airport:  however, only a relatively small number related to air travel passengers and cargo are specifically covered by the initiative.   The list below includes companies that provide services defined in Proposition 1 and which we estimate have 25 or more employees at Sea-Tac Airport.

Menzies Aviation Group

Federal Express Corp

Bags Inc

Airserv

DAL Global Services

Swissport US

Flight Services & Systems

Huntleigh/ICTS

Prime Flight

Aircraft Service Intl

Worldwide Flt Svcs

Intergrated Airline SVCS

World Service Co

Prospect

Swissport Cargo SVCS

InterCruises

Aviation Safeguards

Hanjin Global

Swissport Fueling Inc

Matheson Postal SVCS

Menzies Aviation Cargo

Note that we estimated the size of these on-airport companies based on Port of Seattle security badge data obtained in January 2013.

Institutional Food Service or Retail Employers

These employers provide food service in public facilities, corporate cafeterias and meeting facilities.    The list below includes companies operating at Sea-Tac Airport that we estimate have a minimum of ten or more non-managerial or non-supervisory employees.  Note that many individual stores at Sea-Tac Airport are actually operated by HMS Host and Hudson News Group, so will not show up on the list.  These two companies account for nearly two-thirds of all workers in this category.

HMS Host

Hudson News Group

Concourse Concessions LLC

Concessions Intl

Filo Foods LLC

Massage Bar Inc

Latrelles Express Inc

Qdoba Rest Company

Beechers

Food Systems Unlimited

VIP Hospitality

Fireworks LLC

Butter London

SeaTac Bar Group

Ivars Inc

Pallino Pastaria

Sodexo Magin

Exofficio

Dilettantes Mocha Bar

Travelex Currency Services

Body Shop

Vino Volo

In a recent Seattle Times article, the co-owners of an airport Quiznos also projected that their company will hiring more workers and may be covered soon.

Parking Lots and Garages

Parking lots and garages with over 100 spaces and over 25 employees are covered by the initiative.  (This excludes parking lots at stores and smaller parking garages in the city of SeaTac.)  We estimate that three parking companies, operating six facilities, meet both the employee and the employer threshold.  Other parking lots in SeaTac have more than 100 spaces, but likely fewer than 25 employees.

Doug Fox Airport Parking

Masterpark

Wally Park

Ground Transportation/Shuttle Firms

Shuttle and bus service providers that own ten or more shuttles, vans and busses, and employ more than 25 non-managerial employees in SeaTac are covered by Proposition 1. Although many companies run shuttle services to the airport, from around the Puget Sound and from Eastern Washington, only one operates primarily in King County – Shuttle Express.  (Other companies may or may not be covered based on how their fleet and number of employees are counted.)

Washington State Senators will be holding a work session today on their latest transportation proposal.  The legislature was called back into a special legislative session by Governor Jay Inslee .  The proposal, from the GOP-led majority coalition, could be voted on by the legislature by the end of the week.

The Senate package will disproportionately impact people with lower incomes, immigrants, refugees and people of color.  It would do this in two ways: 1. It will result in cuts to transit services that people with lower incomes rely on, and 2. It will take funds away from toxic clean-up projects that affect the public health.

Despite raising revenue for transportation, the package would still lead to cuts to King County Metro that threaten transit access for low income communities. Service cuts are detrimental to those for whom public transit is their primary source of transportation to get to jobs, schools, day cares, and grocery stores. These residents are most likely to be people of color and low wage workers.

The proposal will also weaken environmental laws necessary to address public health concerns in communities near toxic waste sites. The Senate proposal diverts $280 million away from a toxic waste clean-up fund to the direct benefit of oil and gas corporations.

The diversion of funds comes at the direct expense of waterways like the Duwamish River. Residents of the Duwamish Valley are predominately low wage workers and people of color. A recent study has already demonstrated that Duwamish Valley residents face disproportionate diesel exhaust pollution. Failing to clean up toxic sites will compound and prolong the environmental hazards which place the health of lower income households at risk.

The package is essentially a doubling down on a failed transportation system that doesn’t adequately provide for transportation alternatives. The $12 billion package will spend less than 2% on alternatives to cars. For more information about their proposal view the proposal’s bills and balance sheet.

The Senate work session will take place on Thursday at 1:30pm in Olympia, Senate Hearing Rm 4 in the J.A. Cherberg Building; Olympia, WA. They will be taking public comments between 1:30-5:30pm.

SeaTac’s Proposition 1 established an early lead on election night, which is very likely to hold as the last ballots are counted. Although a recount is likely and a legal challenge from opponents is already in the works, the initiative has succeeded and will ultimately prevail because of a campaign that was able to demonstrate living wage jobs are not only good for workers, but good for the local/regional economy.

The initiative is poised to win having faced opposition from a campaign of politically powerful corporate interests. The opposition campaign was funded by Alaska Airlines, the National Restaurant Association, the American Car Rental Association and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Foundation. These national corporate interests threw both their money and their weight into this local election.

Three things were core to the campaign to win the SeaTac Good Jobs Initiative:

Sound Research that Showed the Initiative Would Lead to Economic Growth. Economic impact analysis showed how worker spending will multiply under the initaitve, resulting in up to $54 million of increased income for the region and more than 400 new local jobs. It also showed how an increase in earnings and spending will mean more revenue for local governments to pay for improved infrastructure such as schools, parks and public safety.

The analysis authored by Howard Greenwich and Nicole Vallestero Keenan was front page news in the Seattle Times and shifted the debate over the economic impacts of the policy.

Support from Small Businesses. Despite a powerful corporate campaign that attempted to paint the initiative has harmful to small business (the policy included an exemption for small businesses) local businesses publicly backed the initiative. Don Liberty, owner of the Bull Pen Bar and Grill was a key spokesperson in favor of the initiative. Puget Sound Sage engaged local small business owners, including Don, to demonstrate why they supported workforce requirements and paid fair wages to their employees.

Support from Faith Communities. SeaTac is a small city where personal relationships matter, and support from a trusted friend, teacher, minister or neighbor, business owner will sway votes. Even before the initiative campaign began local ministers, imams and community groups convened by Sage organizers were coming together to support living wage jobs at SeaTac Airport.

Rev. Jan Bolerjack of Riverton Park United Methodist Church, became a critical voice for the campaign and a media star. Her story about how airport workers come to her church’s food bank wearing their airport uniforms became the moral story of Proposition 1 for SeaTac voters.