Seattle council leaves grocery store hazard pay in place indefinitely

Cashless convenience store “Amazon Go” Seattle, Washington, USA, on Monday, February 24, 2020. Photographer: Chona Kasinger / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Seattle City Council has chosen to keep its risk wage for grocery store workers at $ 4 an hour indefinitely.

During a council meeting on Monday, Councilor Teresa Mosqueda made it clear that the decision to postpone the vote to lift the risk payment obligation is necessary due to the ongoing COVID emergency. She emphasized that the dangerous wage decided in January of this year is still limited in time.

Seattle City Council is delaying raising the danger money for grocery workers

“We continued our efforts to postpone changing this requirement because we wanted to make sure we were getting the latest public health data and we wanted to make sure we did this in front of the entire council to make sure that” it gave a transparent process to address the ongoing COVID emergency, “said Mosqueda. “I am still very much committed to ensuring that this is a temporary hazard wage designed to compensate for the extra risk food workers take on a daily basis.”

“That bill was tight,” Mosqueda continued. “This calculation was not about the total compensation of the workers. Today’s motion to postpone the vote is postponing that amendment indefinitely so that we have more time to make sure we take into account the latest public health information when considering how to address the stability of our hospital systems and risk exposure. We will resume once we continue to look at the public health data and have more stability in the region on COVID. “

Councilor Alex Pedersen also made it clear that the vote on the lifting of the requirement will be postponed indefinitely, but that it will “possibly” be withdrawn.

“Grocers who may be concerned about the dangerous goods payment should know that just because the application is held indefinitely doesn’t mean it won’t come back,” Pedersen said. “It’s just not practical for it to come back every couple of weeks when we’re in the middle of the Delta variant. I hear the concerns of the grocers and also support what the workers are going through. That will be made up at some point. “

Council member Kshama Sawant made it clear that from her point of view there are clear ideological lines of conflict surrounding the decision to postpone the vote. She criticized Councilor Pedersen for mentioning employers in the discussion about dangerous wages.

“I disagree with Councilor Pedersen presenting the food companies’ false arguments as being on par with the problems faced by food workers and the victims they made, particularly during the pandemic,” Sawant said. “I believe that whatever the workers could win, in this case the dangerous goods reimbursement, should be kept. As an elected employee representative, I would never be able to vote for the abolition of this wage bill, neither now nor in many years. “