Action Alert: Initiatives on the ballot this fall
On the ballot for City of Bellingham voters this fall are four initiatives that could greatly impact our business community. Generally, the initiatives cover landlord/tenant law, policing technology, labor unions and worker pay.
The Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors has voted to officially oppose No. 1 and No. 4.
The election will take place on Nov. 2, with ballots mailed Oct. 13. Accessible voting units also will be made available Oct. 13.
We at the Bellingham Chamber encourage each of you to read the initiatives and decide for yourself whether you will vote for or against them. Keep in mind that these are all-or-nothing situations. If the initiatives pass, there would be no way for the City Council to blot out or adjust certain parts of the law. The only way to adjust any part of it would be for voters to repeal it entirely or for a court to throw it out.
All the initiatives are important, but we wanted to take a closer look here at No. 4, which would require $4/hour hazard pay supplements, require two-weeks’ notice of work schedules for hourly employees, extra compensation for schedule changes without sufficient notice, and more.
We have a few thoughts on how the business community could be impacted by this plan, based on our reading of initiative:
- Included in the initiative is a mandated extra hour of pay for employees when shift changes aren’t made far enough in advance. Consider this scenario: An employee who is scheduled to work from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday is asked to move her shift back an hour, to 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., to accommodate an unforeseen circumstance with a fellow employee. In that scenario, the employer would need to pay the employee for an extra hour because of the change.
In addition, any employee who is sent home early would receive half-time for all scheduled hours that are not worked.
Just creating the system to track all of this would be painful and expensive for most employers — small businesses and nonprofits included.
- This initiative mandates that all hourly pay during a state of emergency be boosted by $4 per hour, at the employers’ expense. A state of emergency can be declared any time a jurisdiction is in search of federal funding to help with a difficult situation. The COVID-19 pandemic is an obvious example; Washington has been under emergency status for more than 550 days because of the pandemic. However, that’s not the only state of emergency to have taken place this year. Gov. Jay Inslee declared two statewide emergencies in July due to drought and fire, and a snowstorm or cold snap likely would result in another one.
For employees making $15 per hour, the hike would mean a 27% increase in pay throughout the emergency, a potentially crippling cost for employers.
Businesses with fewer than 30 employees would be required to pay a maximum of 14 days of hazard pay per year, but it’s likely that in an extended emergency situation, most businesses would need to raise salaries to match other companies’ hazard payments in order to retain employees.
And consider the potential cost for the area’s many nonprofits, which already operation on razor-thin margins to ensure that most of their donations and other funding goes to doing good in our community.
- The segments of the economy likely to feel most of the weight of these changes are the restaurant and hospitality sectors, which must adjust quickly to day-to-day changes among consumer attitudes and activities and would lose a great amount of flexibility under this initiative.
Closing thoughts:
- Overall, the changes proposed in this initiative would likely make it harder for our businesses to bounce back from the massive economic hits of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- There is the potential for major impact at City Hall. My best guess is that the city, one of the largest employers in the county, would need to pay an additional $125,000 per week just in hazard pay alone. That cost would be added to the burden of taxpayers in the city.
- This initiative as well as others will likely increase the cost for services, dining at restaurants, entertainment options, and other consumer expenses.
Here is a link to a resource sheet produced by the Washington Hospitality Association.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash