Why all the controversy over Seattle’s annual minimum wage hike? And is Amazon’s return to work mandate a positive or negative?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the, oh my God, January 2025 version of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola. Hi, Erica.

[00:00:20] Hello. Happy New Year.

[00:00:22] Happy New Year to you and to political consultant Sandeep Kaushik.

[00:00:26] Hello, David.

[00:00:27] So on today's show, we're going to be talking about Seattle's minimum wage up to nearly $21 an hour now. We'll be taking a closer look at that and what it means for the city.

[00:00:36] I'm also going to be asking Sandeep and Erica what they have to say about the mother orca story, the biggest story in the city this year.

[00:00:43] And they're looking at me like just...

[00:00:45] Oh, we're really talking about that?

[00:00:46] Pissed about it.

[00:00:47] But first, Amazonians are returning to work full...

[00:00:50] We're looking at you with hatred.

[00:00:53] You thought I was joking, yeah.

[00:00:55] But first, Amazonians...

[00:00:56] We are?

[00:00:57] Yeah, exactly.

[00:00:58] But first, Amazonians returning to work full time.

[00:01:01] I want to read some headlines.

[00:01:02] New York Post, Seattle preps for traffic nightmare as 50,000 Amazon workers return to office full time.

[00:01:09] KUOW, culture building or cost cutting.

[00:01:12] Amazon's return to office order raises questions, comma, fears.

[00:01:16] And Cairo 7, Seattle Amazon workers begin return to office full time starting Thursday.

[00:01:22] So Cairo being the most neutral.

[00:01:26] New York Post worried about traffic.

[00:01:28] KUW worried about questions and fears.

[00:01:30] What about you, Erica?

[00:01:31] Do you have questions?

[00:01:32] Do you have fears?

[00:01:33] I mean, I think that the traffic angle captures one of the main criticisms that I've had about this whole idea of forcing everybody to go back to physical offices from Amazon to the city of Seattle.

[00:01:45] I mean, yeah, it's traffic.

[00:01:46] It's also time lost to the rest of life from, you know, sitting in traffic, sitting in your car or sitting on the bus to go to work unnecessarily in a lot of cases.

[00:01:57] And, you know, and it's traffic congestion.

[00:01:59] It's climate pollution.

[00:02:01] Stuff that we used to say that we cared about in the city of Seattle is kind of going out the window and, you know, in the interest of supporting downtown businesses and downtown revitalization.

[00:02:11] You know, so essentially forcing people to goose the economy downtown by forcing them back into the office.

[00:02:18] So I have a lot of questions, but I mostly have, you know, kind of concerns that I've talked about a number of times on this podcast.

[00:02:24] I just think that, you know, forcing people into a, you know, into a work style that doesn't fit every person is really counterproductive.

[00:02:34] Sandeep Kashuk, what do you think?

[00:02:36] Well, I think a few things.

[00:02:37] One, I think, you know, Amazon's not doing this, you know, to benefit downtown or benefit the city.

[00:02:43] I think they're doing it to benefit their own business, right?

[00:02:45] So I think their leadership has made a determination that having employees in the office five days a week will lead to greater productivity and, you know, make the company more, you know, stronger and more successful.

[00:02:58] And I think they're probably right about that.

[00:03:01] The second thing I will say here is I think the fact that Amazon can do this and have their employees come back five days a week in the face of some criticism and some blowback from some subset of their employees, I think makes the city look bad.

[00:03:14] I mean, the city with great fanfare, the mayor made an announcement, kind of underwhelming announcement earlier this year that city employees would have to come to work three days a week from the previous two day a week regime that had been imposed.

[00:03:29] And I think in light of Amazon saying people should be back five days a week, that looks pretty tepid.

[00:03:37] And the second thing I'll say is when we discussed that, when that happened, I got a couple of calls after that episode from city employees who told me that I had been too soft on, you know, I sort of made the argument, well, there's more collaboration and it becomes easier for workers to, you know, work together and be successful if they're in the office.

[00:03:58] And they said, no, the real reason to do it is because there's a bunch of people at the city who are using the stay at home stuff to just completely slack off.

[00:04:06] And a couple of people break in for a second.

[00:04:08] Yeah.

[00:04:09] I mean, I don't know what what level of city employees you're talking to.

[00:04:13] I'm assuming it's I mean, department levels, people in departments, people in departments.

[00:04:17] Yeah.

[00:04:18] And as a city hall reporter, I talk to people in departments all the time and, you know, not to stray too far from Amazon.

[00:04:25] But, you know, my reaction to what you said, it makes it makes the city look bad.

[00:04:29] I think it actually makes the city look reasonable.

[00:04:31] And Amazon, you know, is widely viewed in the general public as being quite unreasonable with these demands.

[00:04:37] I mean, and the evidence that it creates better productivity is Andy Jassy saying so.

[00:04:42] I mean, I think there is definitely very mixed evidence on, you know, on return to work, particularly on return to the office five days a week, as opposed to three days, which seems like a reasonable compromise.

[00:04:55] People from the city, though, that I've talked to have said, you know, it's it's virtually impossible right now to get an accommodation to work from home, particularly, you know, for people with ADA requests.

[00:05:07] It has been very hard to prove disabilities to the city, to their satisfaction.

[00:05:12] There is a real insistence on this, you know, culture of collaboration and that that only works well, you know, when you're sitting in side by side cubicles, as opposed to collaborating online using the modern tools that we have all had available to us for quite a number of years now.

[00:05:30] So I don't know. I just I think that, you know, spouting these kind of these corporate claims that that everybody just works better and, you know, people slack off when they're at home.

[00:05:39] Man, the biggest shock I ever had was when I worked in an office for a while in a regular job.

[00:05:46] And, you know, I'm sorry, but, you know, I am a very hard worker.

[00:05:50] I do work from home. I was shocked by how much just time was spent on bullshit in the middle of the day that was not productive.

[00:05:58] That was just pointless meetings that could have been an email that was just sitting around shitty chatting.

[00:06:04] And my impression of office culture is that, you know, it's very much not like this heads down.

[00:06:10] Everybody's just plowing in the same direction.

[00:06:12] It's a lot of opportunities for wasted time.

[00:06:14] So you have both. I mean, yes, you can slack off at home.

[00:06:17] You can slack off at the office.

[00:06:19] But yeah, I just don't I don't just don't buy this like this this corporate bullshit about if you're in the office, you're suddenly automatically productive.

[00:06:27] I do think that a lot of it seems to be very self-serving for managers for whom it's not clear what they do.

[00:06:32] They hold a lot of meetings that last for hours and hours and hours that are often not that productive.

[00:06:37] You kind of wonder, like, how much of that is driving this?

[00:06:40] Is that like in the absence of return to work, like, well, what am I even doing here?

[00:06:44] You know, like I can't hold as many virtual meetings.

[00:06:47] And so they have sort of an existential crisis among managers more than there is for employees.

[00:06:52] With employees, it seems like why can't you just measure their productivity?

[00:06:55] Presumably Amazon employees are producing certain numbers of widgets or city employees as well.

[00:07:00] Like, why can't that stuff just be measured differently in terms of output and coming up with sort of more creative ways to do that?

[00:07:06] So I totally, you know, I get the sort of return to work part time, but I don't I don't get the impulse to want everybody to return to work full time.

[00:07:14] But Sandeep, I'm sure that you because you like to go to your office every day, probably think it's a great idea.

[00:07:19] I do. And I do go to my office pretty much every day.

[00:07:22] And I started doing it pretty early in the pandemic when I was the only one when, you know, Pioneer Square really was the zombie apocalypse.

[00:07:29] And, you know, I think it was kind of around August of 2020, I was getting stir crazy at home.

[00:07:34] So I like being in the office setting.

[00:07:36] Psychologically, it puts me in a different headspace.

[00:07:38] And I'm much more productive when I'm in the office as opposed to being at home and having all these, you know, domestic distractions or whatever.

[00:07:46] That said, you know, I mean, there are potential compromises here, right?

[00:07:50] I mean, I really thought Maritza Rivera, right, Councilmember Maritza Rivera was right when the when the city did the three day a week announcement.

[00:07:59] She said that was underwhelming to her.

[00:08:02] She thought that a four day a week mandate for the city was the right compromise to strike.

[00:08:07] But based on what, Sandeep?

[00:08:08] Truly, like based on what?

[00:08:09] What was the evidence?

[00:08:11] It's the difference between five and three.

[00:08:13] Four is in the middle.

[00:08:14] Right.

[00:08:14] I mean, exactly.

[00:08:15] So it feels like a compromise.

[00:08:17] That's it.

[00:08:18] Right.

[00:08:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:08:19] Well, legislative staff right now at the city is coming back four days a week.

[00:08:23] Right.

[00:08:23] So that's that's council staff and stuff like that.

[00:08:26] And so it would have equalized that with with the rest of the city.

[00:08:30] But you're not giving you're not giving.

[00:08:32] I think there are real.

[00:08:33] But I think there are real negatives to, you know, most of the bureaucracy not being in the office and working from home in terms of accessibility.

[00:08:42] I think, as I said, I had a couple of people I know well and trust who work at the city and the departments who said.

[00:08:51] Not majorities, but there's minorities of staff who use the work from home mandate to basically fuck off and not work.

[00:08:59] Yeah.

[00:09:00] And I assume these are these management by any chance.

[00:09:02] No, no, they're not not not managed.

[00:09:05] These are, again, people in the departments, people who are like, I'm working and I kind of resent it that I'm doing the work.

[00:09:11] And there's a certain people in, you know, whatever.

[00:09:13] I'm not going to say the departments, but that are not carrying their weight and getting away with that.

[00:09:18] I think there are ways to measure that.

[00:09:20] And again, I just think it's it's almost comical to hear people say, oh, we can't communicate with each other.

[00:09:25] How can we possibly talk at the city of Seattle?

[00:09:28] You can talk by teams.

[00:09:29] You know, you can be slack.

[00:09:31] You can do that all a lot more easily than like getting up, going to another floor of the building, you know, finding the person, hoping they're in their cubicle, you know, talking to them and, you know, having some random chit chat in between.

[00:09:42] I mean, I mean, to me, that's actually a lot of wasted time if you're thinking of work as strictly a productivity thing.

[00:09:48] So, you know, I just I just think it's kind of comical to say, well, we have to have the physical water cooler.

[00:09:53] We have to have physical meetings, you know, like you said, Sandy, all day and David, like these these long ass meetings that managers love to call because it makes them feel important and like they're doing something when, you know, a lot of that shit really could happen by an email, you know, or a Slack message.

[00:10:10] And yeah, I just I.

[00:10:12] By the way, I wanted to announce all of our birthdays.

[00:10:15] We could just have a we could have a meeting right now where we talk about, you know, future future birthdays for the Seattle Nice team.

[00:10:21] Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:22] Exactly.

[00:10:24] Or like an icebreaker where we all talk about our favorite hobbies.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:29] How can we eat cake together unless we're in the office?

[00:10:33] It does.

[00:10:34] It does seem like aren't there some tasks where obviously, you know, somebody who's doing lab work or people who need to be super collaborative or, you know, complicated meetings.

[00:10:46] There are already.

[00:10:47] Yeah.

[00:10:48] But I mean, so there are meetings, but it seems like a lack of imagination and flexibility to basically say one size fits all for this.

[00:10:54] I mean, that just seems obvious to me.

[00:10:55] Yeah, I agree.

[00:10:56] But you've got to have basic standards that are consistent, right?

[00:11:01] I mean, if you're setting as the basic standard, the one that you happen to like.

[00:11:05] Like, and, you know, and I think David and I are saying, you know, I mean, I happen to like working from home.

[00:11:11] I don't think that should be the standard for you because you obviously are more productive at the office and you find home distracting.

[00:11:18] I think people have, I mean, I've said this before, and so I feel like a broken record, but people have lots of different work styles.

[00:11:22] There's introverts, there's extroverts, there's people that waste more time at the office.

[00:11:26] There's people that waste more time at home.

[00:11:27] And I just think that, you know, that saying that the one size fits all is the one that, you know, that you, Sandeep, happen to find most productive for yourself is a little revealing.

[00:11:37] I mean, do you acknowledge that some people actually are more productive in different styles of working?

[00:11:44] Totally.

[00:11:44] And if I thought the city could, you know, manage something like that in an effective way and kind of have a flexible system where people who are productive at home can work at home and people, you know, who, you know, need to be more managed, you know, have to be in the office.

[00:12:02] I don't think the city can fucking pull that off.

[00:12:04] Well, the city has been pulling that off.

[00:12:06] And I think it will lead to like a human resources nightmare if they try to.

[00:12:10] But the city has been doing that.

[00:12:11] I mean, you have workplace accommodations that you ask for and you make the case and you get them or you don't.

[00:12:17] But right now, I mean, as you were saying at the beginning of this, people are complaining they're not getting them, you know, because anyway, the whole thing sounds like a recipe for conflict and lawsuits and, you know, feelings of differential treatment and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:12:37] If you said some have to return.

[00:12:39] Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:41] Some three days.

[00:12:42] That was already happening during COVID.

[00:12:44] During COVID, there were conflicts that I wrote about and that turned into labor conflicts that, you know, were resolved one way or another, not always to everybody's satisfaction, but it was a conflict.

[00:12:55] I mean, there's always going to be a conflict when some people have different circumstances that they're required to work under.

[00:13:01] And, you know, and they worked through that and resolved it.

[00:13:04] I think it can be resolved.

[00:13:05] I don't think that the resolution is everybody come into work.

[00:13:08] And if you, you know, happen to live outside Seattle in places not accessible by transit, perhaps if you moved it somewhere during COVID thinking that, you know, you were going to be able to work from home.

[00:13:17] You should have to add an extra two hours to your work day every day for a commute that you didn't used to have.

[00:13:22] I mean, it's lost time.

[00:13:24] And I think people, you know, learned and are maybe now forgetting that that time has value.

[00:13:30] And the idea that, like, we should just give up two hours of our day every day or whatever it may be, you know, an hour and a half, three hours to sit in traffic or sit on a bus.

[00:13:41] You know, I think people began to question that pretty strongly during COVID.

[00:13:44] So I don't know.

[00:13:45] I, you know, I would love for it to become a labor dispute now because I do think that we need to talk about, you know, what our time is worth.

[00:13:52] I do wonder what impact this is going to have on my commute.

[00:13:55] I mean, I will say one of the great things about downtown emptying out is that my commute got cut in half, right?

[00:14:00] My commute from Phinney Ridge down 99 is now, it's 17 minutes to work for me when it used to be more like 35 back when 99 used to be backed up and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:14:12] So I do wonder whether this Amazon thing is going to have some impact there and maybe just out of sheer self-interest.

[00:14:18] I'll change my mind about this if my, you know, commute suddenly turns into a nightmare.

[00:14:22] But I do think if you want to bring it back to the kind of broader implications of this move by Amazon, one, obviously it has the potential to significantly benefit downtown revitalization, right?

[00:14:40] Which has been coming back very, very slowly from the pandemic.

[00:14:44] I mean, some sectors have really bounced back kind of almost fully hotel bookings, tourism, stuff like that has been going like gangbusters.

[00:14:52] But, you know, downtown foot traffic, the last stats I saw from the Downtown Seattle Association said we just cracked 60% of the pre-pandemic traffic.

[00:15:03] And you can tell downtown kind of, you know, is pretty, pretty empty feeling and kind of lame right now.

[00:15:10] The vibrancy is gone.

[00:15:12] The dynamism and stuff like that is gone.

[00:15:13] So to the extent that this helps bring some of that back and help support small businesses and restaurants and things like that, that's a good thing, right?

[00:15:21] And again, it's Amazon leading the way here, not the city on this, which I don't think puts the city in a good light.

[00:15:27] If downtown revitalization is such a priority, why aren't they prioritizing it?

[00:15:32] City employees that I talked to, and again, I mean, any set of city employees is going to be self-selecting that contacts either of us.

[00:15:39] But, you know, but the city employees that I've talked to have said, you know, I don't want to spend a whole bunch of money.

[00:15:45] Like I was saving money during COVID.

[00:15:47] I don't want to spend a whole bunch of money every single day downtown.

[00:15:49] Like to, you know, to sort of make downtown revitalization dependent upon city workers, some of whom, you know, are not paid that much money.

[00:15:59] Spending money every day at lunch is kind of a, you know, it's a bet that people don't really like being involved in.

[00:16:05] I mean, maybe some people are eager to start spending money downtown every day and they, you know, they love helping the economy in that way.

[00:16:12] But I'm willing to bet that most people like saving money.

[00:16:15] Plus, if you hire like a contractor or whatever, they charge for their commuting time.

[00:16:19] It's not free.

[00:16:21] You know, if somebody's got to commute two hours to your work site, they're going to charge for that.

[00:16:24] So fine, if Amazon and the city want people to have to commute two hours, then how about that?

[00:16:30] Like pay them to do it.

[00:16:31] I think people would feel a lot better about it if they got their hourly wage to commute.

[00:16:34] And, you know, then the city has to pay for the bad traffic because it's the government's fault that we have bad traffic.

[00:16:41] Same with Amazon because they should be paying more in taxes to help solve our traffic problems.

[00:16:46] You should raise that with Andy Jassy, David.

[00:16:52] I'm sure they'll be real popular.

[00:16:53] Well, hey, I want to ask about the minimum wage in about 30 seconds.

[00:16:57] But first, I just wanted to note much to your disappointment that the biggest story for our region is definitely not Amazon.

[00:17:04] It's not the minimum wage.

[00:17:05] It's this grieving mother orca who's now carrying around a second dead calf that apparently weighs something like 300 pounds.

[00:17:13] So my question for both of you is, do you expect that the Seattle City Council is going to issue some sort of resolution this month indicating how deeply saddened they are by this story?

[00:17:25] Well, I think Sarah Nelson has made it clear that she thinks resolutions are pointless.

[00:17:29] So I'm going to bet on – and I kind of agree with her to a large extent.

[00:17:37] So I'm betting no.

[00:17:38] Yeah.

[00:17:39] No.

[00:17:40] No, they're not going to – I'm not even sure the previous council would have issued a resolution on something.

[00:17:47] And that's saying something because they would have issued a resolution at the drop of a hat, right?

[00:17:52] But it's not political enough for them.

[00:17:54] It's not progressive enough for them that some orca calf died.

[00:17:57] So they probably wouldn't have done a resolution about it.

[00:17:59] But yeah, I will say this.

[00:18:03] I have completely, completely ignored the dead orca calf story, David, until you're forcing me to talk about it.

[00:18:11] Like, yes, I'm sure it's a big story.

[00:18:13] I'm sure people care about it.

[00:18:15] Biggest.

[00:18:16] It's terrible tragedy.

[00:18:18] Orca calf died.

[00:18:20] Mom orca is grieving.

[00:18:22] It's just so weird that she's showing this mourning ritual.

[00:18:25] Anyway, Seattle's minimum wage.

[00:18:28] Now $20.76 per hour as of January 1st.

[00:18:34] Omari Salisbury has a story about Jackson's Catfish Corner closing.

[00:18:38] The owner citing the minimum wage increase is a factor in that decision.

[00:18:41] There's another one about a waffle shop shutting its doors in West Seattle.

[00:18:46] These are anecdotes.

[00:18:47] But, you know, small businesses are facing all kinds of issues, rising costs that have nothing to do with this one.

[00:18:55] You know, for eggs and everything else, the stuff that really drove this last election.

[00:19:00] And this might be the tipping point for some of these small businesses in Seattle.

[00:19:04] On the other hand, obviously, the city is united pretty much in supporting this minimum wage increase.

[00:19:09] So what's there to say about this?

[00:19:12] Erica C. Barnett.

[00:19:13] Yeah, I mean, I have not read the details of Jackson's Catfish Corner closing.

[00:19:20] But, I mean, that's, you know, terrible news for the neighborhood.

[00:19:23] I think that whenever businesses close, we see stories in which they attribute meaning to that or cause.

[00:19:30] And during COVID, it was, you know, oh, it's all the crime.

[00:19:33] It's, you know, it's the broken windows, etc.

[00:19:36] And now it's the minimum wage increase, it seems, for some businesses.

[00:19:39] I mean, I think that, you know, restaurants are very, very risky businesses.

[00:19:44] I mean, something, you know, like, I mean, some huge percentage of them closed within the first five years.

[00:19:48] And, you know, the fact is, this minimum wage increase has been coming since it passed, I believe, 10 years ago.

[00:19:56] And, you know, so the idea was that it would slowly, you know, increases with inflation and that the tip credit that certain businesses receive.

[00:20:04] So if your workers receive tips from customers, you could pay them less than the minimum wage.

[00:20:09] That's going away.

[00:20:10] And I think that's a good thing.

[00:20:12] So, I mean, I do think that, you know, we'll see what the impact is.

[00:20:17] It's been going up for 10 years now.

[00:20:19] And this is something that businesses have had plenty of time to plan for.

[00:20:23] And so I know Sandeep disagrees with me.

[00:20:25] But I do think that the ability of a worker to make, you know, something, I mean, certainly not a living wage, but something akin to a wage where you can live in the Seattle area is a really valuable thing and something that we value as a city.

[00:20:40] And that's why we passed this increase 10 years ago.

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[00:21:33] Yeah, I don't disagree or I only disagree partially here.

[00:21:37] But I think we should back up here a second and just explain exactly, you know, what the policy issue here is.

[00:21:43] Right.

[00:21:43] So the minimum wage agreement, Seattle was the first big city in the country to adopt a $15 minimum wage deal.

[00:21:50] And as part of that deal, right, which was made through very careful, you know, extensive, difficult, complicated negotiations back at the time under previous mayor Ed Murray.

[00:22:02] The agreement was that there would be two tiers or two tracks and larger businesses, 500 or more employees would pay a higher wage and that there would be this either for tip credit or benefits.

[00:22:14] If you gave health care smaller businesses with less than 500 employees would the wage would go up at a lower rate.

[00:22:21] But that at 10 years out, they were meant to reconcile.

[00:22:25] Right.

[00:22:25] And so now we're at that 10-year point.

[00:22:28] Unfortunately, what's happened over that time is the delta between the two tiers has risen to a pretty significant extent.

[00:22:34] It's about $3.50 an hour.

[00:22:37] Right.

[00:22:37] The differential between what big businesses were paying as a minimum wage and what small businesses were paying.

[00:22:41] And where I disagree a little bit is I just think this is another example that makes the city look bad because I think this was a pretty easily.

[00:22:50] No, I don't know whether easily, but this was a very solvable problem.

[00:22:54] In a way that maintains the original minimum wage deal, which I think was landmark legislation and I fully support.

[00:23:01] Which is that I think if there had been a conversation between labor and some of the representatives of small business, you could have taken that $3.50 delta and, you know, broken it down.

[00:23:15] So it happened, say, over three years for the smallest businesses for, let's say, actual restaurants with 75 or fewer employees.

[00:23:24] And, okay, if jumping your minimum wage by that much in one year in one fell swoop is a real problem and it's creating a shock, let's just come to a deal where we'll reconcile the two tracks but have it happen a little more gradually.

[00:23:40] I think that was an achievable outcome that could have happened here.

[00:23:44] It didn't happen in part because I think we didn't have the right kind of leadership from the city on this.

[00:23:50] And I do think now we're at risk of seeing a bunch of small businesses shut down and say we can't handle the shock of raising our minimum wage this much.

[00:23:59] And it's kind of discrediting.

[00:24:00] I mean, I think that, you know, eventually, you know, as a business, just like you have to pay the cost of, you know, materials, eggs, as David said, like just stuff costs more.

[00:24:13] You don't get to say, I don't really want to pay what eggs cost.

[00:24:16] I mean, you can.

[00:24:17] You can close down and go into a different kind of business.

[00:24:20] But, you know, and I don't mean to be heartless.

[00:24:22] You know, my parents were in food service for a long time.

[00:24:25] They owned a bagel store, you know, and it is a very low margin business.

[00:24:28] I totally get it.

[00:24:29] But the fact is that, you know, you're talking about workers who have been waiting for 10 years in that, you know, whole swaths of Seattle's economy to get the same minimum wage that everybody else gets.

[00:24:43] And, you know, I think that spreading it out over three years is not going to make that big of a difference in terms of businesses saying that they had to close because they had to pay their workers enough to live on.

[00:24:53] And, you know, like I said, I'm sympathetic to the restaurant owners side of things.

[00:24:57] My parents were restaurant owners.

[00:24:59] But, you know, I just think this is the law and eventually you got to follow it.

[00:25:04] And I don't think adding two more years is going to lessen the blow that much.

[00:25:08] The one thing that's frustrated me about the minimum wage argument from the very beginning is how dishonest people are about it.

[00:25:15] And I'm somebody who totally supports an increase in the minimum wage.

[00:25:18] It's probably not high enough even now.

[00:25:20] But we should be honest about what the impacts can be.

[00:25:23] So when the first hike came into being, there was a University of Washington story commissioned by the city council that showed that it might be causing some workers to lose hours, especially.

[00:25:36] And then there was a follow-up study saying that it would affect low-skilled, low-wage workers were losing hours.

[00:25:42] In other words, what was happening was businesses were adjusting to the minimum wage by cutting the number of hours for low-wage, low-skilled workers.

[00:25:51] But overall, the minimum wage has been a huge success here, even if that was a bit of a blip early on.

[00:25:56] But my God, you couldn't find a single person on the Seattle City Council to even admit that that study had any merit.

[00:26:01] And if anything, the mayor's office under Ed Murray sort of conspired with this Berkeley Economics Institute to demonstrate that, no, no, you know, minimum wage can only be good.

[00:26:12] It can only be good.

[00:26:13] We can never have any bad news about it.

[00:26:15] And so that's been one of my frustrations from the very beginning about it is we can have the minimum wage increase if it's hurting low-wage, low-skilled workers in some way.

[00:26:23] Well, let's come up with a policy to also help them because we're a progressive city.

[00:26:27] And fast-forwarding to the present, the point that I kind of want to make, too, is it may well mean that this is the tipping point for some small businesses, that we're putting them over the edge.

[00:26:37] As Erica said, there's all these other things.

[00:26:40] There's all these other factors.

[00:26:41] And Omari's reporting points to that.

[00:26:43] But if small businesses are being hurt by this, well, what is the city doing to try to help them, to try to assist them?

[00:26:50] Is there anything you can do?

[00:26:51] Acknowledging that, look, workers still aren't making enough.

[00:26:53] It's not even a living wage if you're making the current Seattle minimum, which is, you know, the highest in the country for major cities.

[00:27:02] So that's my question.

[00:27:03] If we're going to design progressive policy that's going to help workers and not hurt small businesses, let's have an honest conversation about it.

[00:27:10] But progressives and even people like Tim Burgess or whatever, so-called centrists at that time couldn't admit that there could be any problem with the minimum wage whatsoever.

[00:27:19] Why not design progressive policy that acknowledges conflicting data or at least the possibility that there's some negative consequences to the minimum wage for some people and then say, okay, how do we fix that?

[00:27:29] How do we solve that problem?

[00:27:30] So that's my question for both of you is why can't we have a more honest dialogue about the minimum wage in a city like Seattle and not be such children about it?

[00:27:38] Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, it will not surprise you to learn that I don't agree with the premise of that question.

[00:27:44] First of all, the thing that I was breaking in on and apologies, but I don't believe that there's such a thing as low skilled workers.

[00:27:50] I don't think that restaurant workers are low skill.

[00:27:53] I know you're not trying to imply anything negative, but I just, that term.

[00:27:56] It was a classification that they were using in their study.

[00:27:59] It's not a.

[00:27:59] Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:00] No, I know.

[00:28:00] I know.

[00:28:01] But there's definitely like a discussion about that term that's happening right now in the world that I think is a good thing that, you know, that these are actually like highly skilled jobs, which gets to, you know, the concept that they should be paid, you know, as high skilled jobs.

[00:28:15] So that's part of the sort of premise that I don't agree with that, you know, that we should just be paying people as little as possible.

[00:28:22] That's not a premise.

[00:28:23] That's just a, that's just a class.

[00:28:24] You could call it, it's a rose by any other name.

[00:28:26] If you want to tell me that there's a, there's been an advance where we're, we don't want to, you know, insult people by saying that digging ditches is low skilled work.

[00:28:33] I didn't realize that.

[00:28:34] And I completely agree with you, but it's not relevant to the validity or invalidity of the study.

[00:28:39] People digging ditches are not tip workers, which I think, which I think is kind of what we're talking about in the context of the Seattle minimum wage debate right now.

[00:28:45] Not in the context of that study.

[00:28:47] That was just about low wage.

[00:28:47] I haven't seen that study.

[00:28:48] Yeah.

[00:28:49] Yeah.

[00:28:49] Well, there you go.

[00:28:49] That's a good, you know, you hadn't even seen the study.

[00:28:53] You don't even know what I'm talking about.

[00:28:54] There you go.

[00:28:54] Well, I mean, I understand.

[00:28:55] The study of the minimum wage commission by the city.

[00:28:57] Yeah.

[00:28:57] I'm very aware of the concept that the minimum wage is harmful because I read about it all the time.

[00:29:01] I mean, these, all these stories that happened today, you know, as we're recording on Saturday, this minimum wage is about to go into effect.

[00:29:08] All the stories are about the negative impact.

[00:29:10] So the other part of the premise that I really disagree with is that we are not having a conversation about that.

[00:29:15] I feel like that's the only conversation we're having is how is this going to harm small businesses?

[00:29:19] And I think that the city council, you know, and the mayor, I mean, sure, we could have more pro-business policies, I suppose, in the city.

[00:29:27] I'm not sure what you're proposing, David, other than, you know, that we should be talking about it in a more honest way.

[00:29:33] But you're asking us to say what the city should do to, you know, to have a more honest conversation about the minimum wage.

[00:29:40] And I'm just saying, I think that there has been a conversation about the negative impacts of the minimum wage.

[00:29:44] I don't agree that people are acting like children and there hasn't been any discussion at all.

[00:29:49] I mean, this is a huge debate.

[00:29:50] The fact that this passed was kind of a miracle.

[00:29:53] There was not an honest conversation about that University of Washington study at all at the time.

[00:29:59] And you're right, you're right.

[00:30:01] There are a lot of stories talking about these small businesses closing.

[00:30:04] I don't see the city doing anything about it, but there's a lot of news coverage of it.

[00:30:08] And I think the reason is, is because, you know, there's a consensus.

[00:30:12] Look, we want to raise the minimum wage.

[00:30:13] That's that.

[00:30:14] Yeah.

[00:30:14] So a couple of things.

[00:30:15] One, I remember when that study came out, it was a one-year study that showed that...

[00:30:20] Multi-year.

[00:30:21] Well, it was the first reporting a year out was when they first reported where they said wages went up and hours went down, right?

[00:30:32] And so that it was kind of a wash for a certain set of workers.

[00:30:36] And you're right that the mayor's office did go to DEFCON 1 and responding to it and trying to, you know, completely discredit this University of Washington study.

[00:30:43] Anyway, leave that aside.

[00:30:44] That the city had commissioned.

[00:30:46] That the city had commissioned.

[00:30:46] Yeah, but I mean, I think we're focusing on this one study in a weird, obsessive way.

[00:30:50] Like, I think we can look at the broader picture now in retrospect.

[00:30:53] Yes, which is a point I want to make here because I have talked to two small business owners that were part of this 500 and under tier who have told me that absorbing a $3, you know, plus increase all at once is going to be really significant.

[00:31:10] And the way they're going to handle it is up till now, they've been offering health care for their employees and subsidizing health care for their employees.

[00:31:18] And they're going to cut the health care, right?

[00:31:20] Because they used to get credit for that under the old system.

[00:31:23] That's going away and they're getting, you know, their labor costs are getting increased by 15, 20 percent, whatever it is.

[00:31:29] And the way to handle that.

[00:31:30] So that's not, that's an unintended consequence and not a good outcome from this.

[00:31:35] And again, I think with some smart, you know, thinking and proactive thinking, this could have been avoided.

[00:31:45] Some of these negative consequences could have been avoided.

[00:31:48] Right.

[00:31:48] And well, and I will really quickly, let me, I will criticize too here, you know, the Hospitality Association, right, which represents the restaurants in Seattle.

[00:31:58] I don't think they handled this very well as it was coming up.

[00:32:01] They were concerned about it, but rather than reaching out to labor and having that conversation, they sort of went to a council member, you know, Joy Hollingsworth and cooked up legislation to make the two tiers permanent, which is something that politically was never going to fly.

[00:32:16] But without any kind of preliminary conversation or work to try to figure out how do we fix these problems?

[00:32:22] David, to your point, they sort of just tried to kind of do a power play with the new council to jam it through.

[00:32:27] And they blew up in their face and that legislation got withdrawn within a week.

[00:32:30] Right. And and it kind of poisoned the well and made it impossible then to kind of have a conversation about how do we address some of these kind of nuances with the policy that we could that we conceivably could have fixed.

[00:32:42] But I think ultimately there are things that can't be fixed, meaning like this is a higher minimum wage.

[00:32:48] You know, you could go operate a business in a state like Texas where, you know, somewhere where the minimum wage is $2.12 an hour for restaurant workers.

[00:32:57] And, you know, and you'd save a shit ton of money.

[00:33:00] I mean, and so at a certain point, yes, there are unfortunately tradeoffs and the people that are going to run restaurants, you know, may not be the same people.

[00:33:06] And that is that is unfortunate.

[00:33:08] I don't know how much the city can do.

[00:33:10] I mean, without money.

[00:33:12] I mean, if the city were to, say, decide to invest in subsidizing health care for, you know, for restaurant workers who don't have health care or, you know, or the county.

[00:33:21] I mean, there are ways to address some of these financial problems, but ultimately they are financial problems.

[00:33:26] I mean, you can't fix the problem of, you know, it's more expensive to pay people more by just saying, well, we'll keep pushing it ever later.

[00:33:36] You know, the date when you're going to have to finally just pay people more.

[00:33:39] And so, I mean, if you want to find a fix, it has to be a fix that involves, you know, subsidizing some of these costs.

[00:33:47] And I just don't see that happening right now in this current economy, in the current political environment.

[00:33:52] I don't see, you know, the city council and mayor saying, let's subsidize health care for workers who are, you know, not provided by their employers or, you know, who work in a certain industry.

[00:34:00] I mean, there's just, you know, there's no magical solution.

[00:34:03] It's just a policy solution, you know, that that's going to please both sides and that's going to, you know, work out as well for both sides.

[00:34:11] So, I mean, that's just, you know, David, to your point, I mean, I like what I don't know what I mean, having a discussion about it and acknowledging this study.

[00:34:19] I don't know what that really looks like in terms of actual impactful policy.

[00:34:25] No, I don't know. I don't know either.

[00:34:26] And my point is, you know, I'm not an expert on how you fix these things.

[00:34:30] And it's not my job either.

[00:34:31] It's the job of people that we pay very high salaries at the city to solve these things.

[00:34:34] And you're right.

[00:34:35] Some of these things can't be solved.

[00:34:36] And there are trade-offs and sometimes it's just going to mean small businesses are going to close.

[00:34:41] But I did a story a few years ago, you know, about a guy in the CID.

[00:34:46] I'm forgetting the name of the restaurant.

[00:34:48] But, you know, he was basically saying he would, in theory, have to raise the price of a bowl of pho from like $8 a bowl or something like to $15 a bowl,

[00:34:56] which nowadays is probably $15 a really good deal.

[00:34:59] But in those days, that was pretty outrageous.

[00:35:00] And he was saying it's kind of a bummer because for his customers, that's kind of Seattle's comfort food.

[00:35:05] And raising the price of things, you know, affects our experience and our financial experience of living in cities.

[00:35:12] So there's a consequence not just for small businesses, but also for low-income folks for whom going out to eat becomes more and more of a luxury the more we raise these costs.

[00:35:21] So it's another, you know, a thing that just needs to be part of the conversation.

[00:35:25] Plus, like living in a city, a big part of what makes cities cool isn't just the McDonald's and the Starbucks, the other companies that can absorb these kinds of costs.

[00:35:33] It's all these small businesses that have much lower efficiencies and economies of scale.

[00:35:38] And so it's harder for them.

[00:35:39] I think we all agree that wages need to go up.

[00:35:42] And having a higher minimum wage is something that Seattleites should be proud of.

[00:35:45] I mean, the national minimum wage is ridiculously low.

[00:35:48] Oh, and it's a part of what is, you know, destroying America basically is wage and income inequality.

[00:35:55] And so we're trying to address that in this city.

[00:35:57] It's just a question of like, you know, do we have to be so freaking propagandistic about it where we can't acknowledge the multiplicity of the sort of problems that we need to try to solve?

[00:36:06] Yeah, and I don't know who we is in that.

[00:36:07] I mean, I totally hear you.

[00:36:09] I gave the example from a few years ago.

[00:36:11] And if you don't like it, there's no.

[00:36:12] I'll give you an example.

[00:36:14] Let me give you an example of who we is.

[00:36:17] So right after, obviously, I just criticized the Hospitality Association for the way they handled putting this legislation forward through Councilmember Hollingsworth.

[00:36:24] That lasted six days before she pulled it because there was a huge blow up about it.

[00:36:28] But in the wake of that, if you all remember, the mayor said he was going to convene a conversation about how to address this problem.

[00:36:36] And he brought together the restaurant folks as well as, you know, folks from labor.

[00:36:43] And my understanding is that that that group had one single meeting that started off on the wrong foot.

[00:36:53] And, you know, the mayor just basically threw in the towel and that was it.

[00:36:58] They didn't have a single other meeting after that.

[00:37:00] And so it does seem to me like that's a missed opportunity.

[00:37:03] Well, I mean, that's that's sort of a, you know, a little bit par for the course for these groups that the mayor convenes in general.

[00:37:10] I think, you know, a lot of them have kind of petered out.

[00:37:13] You know, you're always talking about fentanyl.

[00:37:15] There's an example.

[00:37:16] But I agree with you on that one.

[00:37:17] Yeah.

[00:37:18] I mean, but I do think that I do think that, you know, we are in terms of the media that people actually consume as opposed to, you know, reports and internal conversations, you know, on the seventh and second floors of City Hall.

[00:37:30] I think that we are overbalanced.

[00:37:32] And I notice this all the time because I read a lot about food.

[00:37:35] I think we are way overbalanced in the direction of, oh, my God, this like wonderful business is closing.

[00:37:40] And isn't it terrible?

[00:37:41] And here's the latest political thing that happened that is to blame.

[00:37:44] I think that we don't read very often.

[00:37:47] And I'm always looking for this because I'm always looking for like new places to go out.

[00:37:50] We don't read very often about the businesses that come in to replace those businesses.

[00:37:53] And there is, you know, I mean, there is we have a wealth of new restaurants opening right now all over the city of Seattle.

[00:38:00] And we don't hear about that.

[00:38:01] I mean, you would think from just reading the media reports on restaurants and just the restaurant business in Seattle that, you know, there are vast neighborhoods that are just bereft of any small businesses.

[00:38:14] And, you know, if you if you go through Ballard, it's just, you know, tumbleweeds and cracked concrete, empty streets, empty sidewalks.

[00:38:22] And that's not true.

[00:38:23] I mean, Ballard is booming.

[00:38:25] Many of Seattle's business districts are booming.

[00:38:28] There's a lot of new businesses opening up in the CID, David.

[00:38:31] I mean, and I know you know this, but like there are we don't hear about those.

[00:38:34] You have to just go and often discover them on your own because you only hear the bad stories.

[00:38:38] And so, I mean, I just I think we are overbalanced in the in the sky is falling direction when it comes to, you know, minimum wage, labor protections, all kinds of things that business owners blame for crime for for, you know, shutting down.

[00:38:54] I agree that Seattle isn't dying.

[00:38:56] Right. And that whole Seattle is dying narrative.

[00:38:59] And, you know, woe is us and everything's, you know, falling apart and going to hell is, you know, does not fit the reality that we are a successful,

[00:39:08] increasingly affluent, you know, tech, knowledge economy city with lots and lots of people who have a high quality of life.

[00:39:17] And, you know, I gave up on on a restaurant line last night for a new restaurant.

[00:39:22] That's like a cheap restaurant.

[00:39:23] I mean, it's not a fancy place on Capitol Hill because it was like, oh, shit, like this.

[00:39:28] This restaurant is small.

[00:39:29] It's packed and we're going to be here for an hour.

[00:39:31] So we went somewhere else.

[00:39:32] Right. So so that Seattle is not dying.

[00:39:35] That is all.

[00:39:35] I agree with you on that.

[00:39:36] I will say, though, you're not going to like.

[00:39:39] Like, I do think there is a.

[00:39:43] Progressive blind spot about how the whole suite of sort of progressive policies has increased the cost of living in Seattle.

[00:39:54] Right. Like prices are high and cost of living is high.

[00:39:58] The biggest driver is housing and that's driven by lack of supply.

[00:40:01] So that's that's let's put that aside for a minute.

[00:40:03] But I think all of the kind of labor wage protections and stuff and for affluent people in the city, that's no sweat.

[00:40:11] Right. You know, if you're making, you know, 350 grand a year in your household and you're living in a nice house, you can afford to pay $15 for a bowl of thought.

[00:40:20] Right. Or whatever. Right.

[00:40:21] It's not that not not that big a deal.

[00:40:23] And it's a good thing.

[00:40:25] But but for lower income people, that high cost of living does have a consequence.

[00:40:30] We saw that nationally in the frickin election of Trump.

[00:40:33] Right. Like the that inflation and cost of living issues, you know, has been creating a kind of working class backlash against Democrats.

[00:40:42] Right. So there's some of that kind of churning under the surface in Seattle, I think, as well, that doesn't really get acknowledged as much as it should.

[00:40:50] But for sure. I mean, you praise the price of things and things cost more.

[00:40:53] I think, you know, I don't think you have to make three hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.

[00:40:57] I mean, I can afford a bowl of fun. It's fifteen dollars.

[00:41:00] But like but but but I think you do pretty well, though, Erica.

[00:41:03] I mean, I'm not taking it all the cashier money, man.

[00:41:08] Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:41:10] And by the way, thanks, everybody, for donating.

[00:41:13] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:15] But but but I absolutely agree.

[00:41:16] I mean, there's you know, I eat out at cheap places in Seattle.

[00:41:19] I don't go to the fancy places and like a fancy place, you know, it's not really a fancy place.

[00:41:24] It's like just a regular place where, you know, food, you know, plate of usually fairly subpar food in the city costs thirty two dollars.

[00:41:33] You know. Yeah, I don't. So I'm not out there spending money and I make way more than the minimum wage.

[00:41:37] But, you know, as we've all said, I mean, so, yes, I agree.

[00:41:40] I think that, you know, the cost of living in Seattle is outrageous.

[00:41:43] The cost to go out to eat is astonishing compared to, you know, much better food cities like New York.

[00:41:52] But at the same time, and you're talking about it being unaffordable for low wage people.

[00:41:57] But the topic here is making low wage people less low wage.

[00:42:01] And so I think that, you know, cumulatively, yes, all the costs, you know, the cost of rent for restaurants, you know, just everything adds up to make everything more expensive.

[00:42:10] I think the minimum wage we can set aside to some extent and say, you know, these are our values and this is important.

[00:42:17] And so people, you know, making twenty three dollars an hour or whatever is, you know, is something that we think is a reasonable floor.

[00:42:25] And then, yes, all those other problems.

[00:42:26] I mean, there are many, many factors going into that fifteen dollar bill of pho.

[00:42:31] All right. Well, go eat some pho, Seattle Nice listeners.

[00:42:35] It's a good day for it.

[00:42:36] If anybody knows where to get cheaper pho, please lay in and tell us.

[00:42:44] Yeah.

[00:42:45] Canada, surprisingly, everything is more expensive in Canada.

[00:42:49] But with the lower, I think the last time I looked, Canadian dollars, like 68 cents to the U.S. dollars.

[00:42:55] So unfortunately, the drive up there is going to cost you quite a bowl of pho, I'm guessing, is cheaper than here than in Seattle.

[00:43:04] OK, that's it for another edition of Seattle Nice.

[00:43:07] She's Erica C. Barnett.

[00:43:09] He's Sandeep Kashuk.

[00:43:10] I'm David Hyde.

[00:43:11] Our editor is Quinn Waller.

[00:43:13] And happy twenty twenty five, everybody.