Category: Blog

New research conducted by the University of Washington in collaboration with Puget Sound Sage indicates that residents of South Park and Georgetown are likely exposed to higher levels of diesel exhaust than residents of the Beacon Hill and Queen Anne.  Within the two Duwamish Valley neighborhoods, pollution levels vary, even across small areas, and residents near busy roads and industrial areas face higher levels of diesel exhaust pollution.

The higher air pollution levels due were documented in the Diesel Exhaust Exposure in the Duwamish Study (DEEDS), which measured diesel exhaust in the port-adjacent neighborhoods of South Park and Georgetown. A large volume of traffic travels through these South Seattle communities is due to nearby highways, industry, train routes, and the Port of Seattle.

The study confirms what many residents already knew.  In our 2009 community surveys, Puget Sound Sage found that sixty percent of neighborhood residents believed pollution from commercial trucks affected the health of their families.  Long-term occupational exposures to high concentrations of diesel exhaust have been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular health problems as well as cancer.

Environmental health researchers in the UW School of Public Health collected data over a two-week period in summer 2012 and winter 2012-2013 on four primary pollutants that serve as markers of traffic-related air pollution, including 1-nitropyrene, nitrogen oxides, black carbon, and particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter. Researchers also compared this data to pollutants measured in residential sites in Queen Anne and Beacon Hill.

For the full report, please visit duwamishdiesel.org

*The mix of cities we highlighted above is a cross section of the estimated 400 municipalities[1] that have some form of inclusionary zoning.  This list was selected in an effort to demonstrate the diversity in population size and real estate development climate of U.S. cities with inclusionary policies.

As Danny Westneat points out in his Saturday column, corporate giants are rapidly beating the “blame Obamacare” drum to explain cutting part-timers off from health insurance coverage, but their rhetoric is as hollow as their sizable drum.

As we’ve been reporting on Sound Progress, retail giants have come forward with a wave of announcements that they are cutting part-time employees from health insurance coverage. What’s their leading reason for shifting the cost of providing health insurance for their employees onto the workers and health care exchanges? Obamacare made us do it!

Our study on Washington’s Changing Workforce revealed that service sector employers in Washington State have become increasingly dependent on part-time workers over the course of a decade, and at the same time have been cutting access health coverage for their employees. The trend began long before the finer details of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were known.

Our recent survey of grocery workers further demonstrated that area supercenter workers are subject to unstable and fluctuating schedules that leave them vulnerable to having their hours dropped below the threshold for their positions to be covered under the affordable care act employer mandate.

Westneat is on target with his characterization of the “blame Obamacare” rhetoric as little more than poor excuses. He points out:

In the central Puget Sound area, an estimated 8,000 of the 30,000 grocery store workers are part-timers. Currently, they get coverage if they work 16 hours or more, and pay about 20 to 30 percent of the monthly premium (the companies pay the rest).

The stores want to drop this coverage and make part-timers buy their own insurance in the state-run health exchange that opens this week as part of Obamacare. Home Depot is doing the same thing, as is Papa John’s Pizza and a number of retail chains.

This has led to denunciations of the new health reform for forcing companies to throw part-time workers off health care.

But is it? No. Howard Schultz is the proof.

Starbucks has upward of 100,000 part-time workers. Like the grocery stores, Starbucks gives health coverage to part-timers. But Schultz told them that under health-care reform: “Nothing is going to change. We are going to continue, as we have always done, to provide this benefit to you.”

What is going on here?

It could be that Howard Schultz is a bad businessman.

Or it could be that Obamacare is complex and confusing and so provides a convenient opportunity — an excuse — for companies to slash medical benefits and then blame the federal government. It could be they’re doing it because this is their big chance to shift more costs to the workers. And then, when some of those workers need subsidies, to further shift the costs to the taxpayers.

This week Seattle City Council took an important, but preliminary step to improve Seattle’s policy tools to build adequate affordable housing. Council plans to raise in-lieu fees developers pay in the downtown area that fund affordable housing in an effort to match fee increases passed for South Lake Union this spring.

Council hopes to encourage developers to build affordable housing in their buildings (sometimes called on-site) by raising the in-lieu fee to a level comparable with the cost of building affordable units.

Developers rarely, if ever, build affordable housing on-site.  Because the fees are too low, developers choose to pay the fee and move on, leaving a considerable gap in the available affordable housing stock in the city, particularly downtown.  Creating a program that results in actual affordable units included in market rate developments is critical to achieving Seattle’s incentive zoning program goals.

Seattle’s efforts to pass a strong inclusionary housing program are a direct response to four things:

1. Market rate development projects increase demand for affordable housing that needs to be mitigated.*
2. When local governments create significant value for developers through major infrastructure investments and allowable height increases the public deserves benefits in return, like affordable housing.
3. Building affordable housing alongside market-rate housing ensures more people have access to high opportunity neighborhoods and encourages mixed-income, diverse, inclusive communities. This goal is a direct response to historic exclusionary housing practices that have segregated American cities and regions by race and income.
4. Creating more housing opportunity in the urban core for the full income mix of Seattle workers means fewer people will need to drive into the city from far-flung suburbs.

Raising the in-lieu fee is a common sense action needed to meet these goals. If the in-lieu fee remains too low, developers will understandably continue to pay a low fee rather than build affordable units in their projects.

Council’s action this week is preliminary.  When you consider past research on the question and compare Seattle to other cities, (look for this comparison soon on Sound Progress) the results suggest that the in-lieu fee will still be too low to make on-site construction of affordable units attractive to developers. Over the next six months, City Council and the Mayor’s office will learn from national and local experts in an effort to build a program that results in a significant number affordable units and real inclusion.

* Upon re-reading this post, I want to clarify this statement:  by market rate development, I mean commercial development that fosters new low-wage jobs (20% in the downtown area according to a recent City study), in turn requiring new affordable units it the region.

Today Puget Sound Sage released a new report examining the economic impact of SeaTac’s living wage initiative, Proposition 1.

According to the analysis, worker spending will multiply, resulting in up to $54 million of increased income for the region and more than 400 new local jobs. This increase in earnings and spending will mean more revenue for local governments to pay for improved infrastructure such as schools, parks and public safety.

Prop 1 will result in up to $54 million of increased income

Proposition 1 will have large and positive effects on household income in the region and direct benefits to the residents of the city of SeaTac. The key findings of the Puget Sound Sage report include:

• Over six thousand workers will receive an average wage increase of $3.97, or about a 36 percent boost.
• Covered workers would see earnings rise from an average of $17,700 to $24,000 per year. Workers will spend their increased earnings at local businesses, restaurants and stores.
• The paycheck boost along with worker spending will result in a total of $54 million in increased household throughout the region.
• 15-20 percent of this household income boost will be received by SeaTac residents, resulting in increased revenues for small businesses and the City.
• Wage increases under Proposition 1 could be absorbed by marginal price increases between .5 percent and 1.5 percent for the customers of covered businesses.
• The majority (68 percent) of revenues enjoyed by covered employers comes from visitors to the region, resulting in a net economic gain.

A copy of the full report is available here.

Last week Trader Joe’s announced it would drop employees working under 30 hours a week from health insurance coverage, counting on the public health care exchange to pick up the cost of covering its workers.

This low-road labor strategy will shift the cost of providing health coverage to their workers to public institutions in the form of medical entitlement programs, the state health care exchange and public health programs.

Essentially, tax-payers will pick up the tab.

Trader Joe’s joins Home Depot in announcing they plan to exploit loopholes in the Affordable Care Act by cutting part-time worker coverage.

The employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act was supposed to go into effect this year; however the Obama administration delayed its implementation to give employers more time to come into conformity with new IRS rules. Rather than seeking ways to meet the requirements many corporations, especially those in the low wage food service, grocery and retail sector, are instead finding new ways to get around the law.

Local Grocery Retailers Threaten to Follow Suit

Here is the bad news for the Puget Sound region. Trader Joess is not the only employer in the region cutting off access to health care for low wage workers. Recent negotiations between the region’s United Food and Commercial Workers union (Locals 21 and 367) and the large national grocery chains (Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons) have seen proposals by the grocery retail industry to cut employer based health care for any workers who fall below the 30 hour full-time threshold.

But cutting health coverage for employees below the federal 30 hours/week requirement is just one move in a series retail chains have designed to shift the cost of covering their workers onto taxpayers. Recent Puget Sound Sage research has found that:

• Private sector employers in Washington are increasingly pushing employees into contingent work (part-time, temporary or contract.) The number of people working part-time involuntarily because they cannot find full-time work has more than doubled over the last decade. The grocery, food service retail sectors where jobs tend to pay low wages are among the sectors most reliant on part-time workers.
• Grocery and Retail employers are using fluctuating schedules “short-shift” workers. In our survey of grocery and retail supercenter workers a majority (57%) of respondents reported that their employers fluctuated their work hours by as much as 10 hours from week to week. Because IRS rules have allowed long “look back” periods to determine an employee’s status as above or below the 30-hour requirement, employers can avoid the mandate by keeping a worker’s hours at an average just below the requirement over the course of a year.
• Grocery and retail service sector employers have been steadily raising eligibility requirements for PT employees to qualify for health insurance. Cost sharing is also increasingly pricing many workers out of coverage due to high premiums, deductibles and maximum out of pocket costs. Grocery retailers not constrained by collective bargaining contracts are requiring workers in the Puget Sound region to pay up to a third of their gross earnings on premiums and qualified medical expenses.

In addition, next week Puget Sound Sage will be releasing a policy briefing showing how grocery and retail supercenters are forcing their workers to work without pay and off-the-clock.