by KOMO Staff

SEATTLE – A new law designed to protect Seattle’s restaurant and retail employees went into effect Saturday.

The Secure Scheduling Law is designed to help hourly workers with erratic work schedules. The new law impacts more than 1000 businesses, including REI and Nordstrom.

The law mandates that employers post work schedules at least 14 days in advance.

It also decrees that employees have at least 10 hours off in-between shifts and give scheduling preference to employees with child and healthcare needs, as well as those who have educational requests.

For many retail employees, this is a big deal.

“I know my fiance is looking forward to it,” Parker Seanan, a local resident, said. “If she has to work a late shift and then early the next morning, she gets time-and-a-half, which is awesome.”

For other companies, such as Ivars, a Seattle-based seafood chain, the new law doesn’t change much.

Ivars President Bob Donegan says the company has always scheduled people with lots of time. He also says the restaurant’s hours of operation allow for lots of time off between shifts.

The ordinance only affects businesses with more than 500 employees, which some people say isn’t fair, pointing out that it ignores employees at smaller stores and restaurants.

for the video and or more information: komonews.com

New tax revenue

• $1.6 billion from an increase in the state property tax earmarked for education.

• $431.8 million from expansion of online sales-tax collections.

• $15.6 million from eliminating tax breaks on bottled water and extracted fuels.

New spending

• $1.8 billion added to public schools.

• $618 million for state-worker pay raises.

• $102 million to improve Washington’s troubled mental-health system.

• $75 million added to higher education.

• $25 million to expand early-childhood education.

• $6.3 million to create a new state Department of Children, Youth and Families.

• $4.6 million to fund a clean-air program that caps carbon emissions from a handful of businesses.

• $3.2 million to the Department of Corrections to hire records staffers and beef up its IT systems in the wake of a long-running mistaken release of prisoners.

resource: seattletimes.com

This weekend marks the halfway point through the year and even though we’ve still got a good six months ahead of us, I’m proud to say Working Washington has gotten enough done that we need to break out the bullet points.

So far in 2017, with your support:

• We kicked off the New Year by celebrating minimum wage increases in Seattle and across the state — and since then we’ve seen record-low unemployment, and job growth in all 39 counties.
• We helped stop anti-minimum wage fast food CEO Andy Puzder from getting appointed to be the U.S. Secretary of Labor.
• We organized, spoke out, and took action to make paid family leave one of the key issues in state politics this year, setting the stage for a potential breakthrough.
• We exposed the misleading practice of minimum wage surcharges.
• We updated our groundbreaking What’s my Wage app to help workers navigate the various minimum wage rates across the state.
• We re-launched the BossFeed Briefing, our weekly roundup of key news on workers rights & inequality.
• We helped lead a powerful protest in Yakima in defense of affordable healthcare.
• We launched a project to train workers to address health & safety issues on the job.
• We co-hosted a forum for Seattle mayoral candidates to make sure worker voices are part of the public debate.
• We grew our movement by more than 15,000 people.
• And just a couple days from now on July 1st, secure scheduling takes effect for thousands of Seattle food, coffee, and retail workers.

All that — and we’re only halfway through the year!

Click here to contribute $25 or whatever you can afford so we can build on that success and continue to break ground in the second half of the year. 

I feel good about what we’ve accomplished so far together. It’s almost enough that we could maybe get away with just sitting tight and phoning it in for the rest of the year.

But that’s not how Working Washington rolls. In the months ahead we are going to keep on getting it done and we’re going to make that list of bullet points grow even longer.

Here’s a sneak peek: We want to build a voice for workers in state politics with our first-ever statewide candidate endorsements. We want to roll out innovative new approaches to organizing workers in key industries. We want to build new partnerships across the state to address issues like housing, transportation, and immigration that affect workers’ lives when they’re not on the clock. And so much more.…

And yeah, that’s a lot to get done, but we’re already halfway there — and with your support we’ll make it. (I swear.)

You read our emails. (The good ones at least. 🙂 ) You take action when it’s needed. You support our work in all kinds of ways, and you’ve helped make all this happen. Now can you take the next step to build our movement by making a contribution today?

If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

Thanks for everything you do,
Sage, Working Washington

P.S. Woah, woah, living on a prayer.