Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And any questions or comments. Okay. Those in favor of confirming these appointments, please vote i. I those oppose vote no. The motion carries the appointments are confirmed bills. Read the next committee report.
Speaker 6: The report of the Housing, Health, Energy and Work Workers Rights Committee Agenda Item 15 Council Bill 119374 An Ordinance relating to the Organization of City Government creating an Office of the Employee Ombud and adding sections 3.15.020. 3.15.022 and 3.15.024. To the Seattle Municipal Code. The committee recommends the bill pass as amended.
Speaker 0: Customer.
Speaker 2: Mesquita Thank you, Mr. President. Today marks a critical moment for the MeToo movement. When I ran for city council last year, it was at the same time that our social media streams were being flooded with stories of harassment, intimidation and assault. As someone who myself has also had to endure MeToo moments in the workplace, I committed to making sure that we acted on this within the first year. Within the first few meetings of the Housing, Health, Energy and Workers Rights Committee. We heard story after story from silence breakers, from frontline workers, from union members and representatives talking about how they want to not just a place to report incidences of harassment and retaliation, but ways in which we could prevent harassment and retaliation from ever occurring in the first place. Today, we take an important first step in making this action desired into law. This legislation is one step, one step in fulfilling a promise that all of our city employees have a place to go. A place to address incidences of intimidation and harassment. And to make sure that they can ask questions in a confidential place. I appreciate the work that has gone into this and thank the mayor for her work with our office and the frontline workers to make sure that we advance this legislation within a year. Here we have a place where we can hopefully address the mistrust of human resources, the mistrust of management, and the fear of retaliation. These were the top three incidences that were reported in the June 22nd, 2008 Memo to the Anti-Harassment Interdepartmental Task Force that worked on a survey to identify what the barriers were to reporting and underreporting . The quantitative data revealed several several patterns associated with workforce equity, disparate treatment and underreporting. And the qualitative data illuminated a deep and pervasive pattern of perceived and lack, perceived and real lack of safety and lack of knowledge about the complaint process. Today, we're making a step forward, and we're doing this because of the courageous work of frontline workers, the union members and the silence breakers who helped shape this legislation. These individual individuals participated in about an 8 to 9 month process with the interdepartmental task force who looked at various recommendations and looked at our internal data to see what we could do to make improvements to our system. The Citywide Task Force and the Citywide Focus Group, along with the recent Social Justice Employee Survey, found that workers in our system lack transparency. For a place to go lacked awareness of the reportable offenses, lacked a sense of trust that there would be accountability and urgency. Among the overarching themes and with the MeToo movement. We've already heard story after story about people coming forward, which was underscored by the recent social justice survey. It showed that, especially for women in the workforce here in Seattle and especially for women of color, there's been often a hidden and even tolerated way of dealing with inappropriate behavior . Many of us know that at best, allegations of harassment have been met with little consequences or often without action at all. Today, we are taking steps to address the consequences along this continuum. So whether it's an inappropriate comment on someone's clothing or appearance or inappropriate action or assault, we are taking action today to make sure that everyone knows where they can go, to ask questions and to deal with claims. It's not only individual behavior that we know needs to be changed. It's our systems that need to be changed. And when we were looking at the research and working with other entities that were trying to figure out how we addressed our outdated personnel policies and procedures, we came across many things that have been working well and things that need to be improved. Number one, we want to make sure that this isn't just a place to go to report incidents, but that we're looking at patterns for how we can improve our policies and practices and that we improve our training so that we have in-person trainings on a regular basis, not just at the point of orientation, but ongoing. And also look at things like not how it's just. Affecting the one individual. But if you're a bystander, how you can have trainings to prevent and influence that situation. And also conflict resolution, making sure that we have better ways to engage in conflict resolution so the incidents don't escalate. I want to applaud the members of the interdepartmental task force, if I may, Mr. President, and read their names into the record. This was a body that was developed at the with the mayor's leadership, and my office participated heavily. And I just want to thank some of the key members who participated Friday. Cuevas from my office participated. Adrian Thompson, who's in the audience today on behalf of the mayor's office, participated and helped lead the discussions. Amy Bowles with the party and the Coalition for City Unions along with Andrea Ramirez, Andrea Shelley. Andy Liu. Davida Ingram. Evan Chin. Felicia Caldwell. Jane Park. Lee Calvert. Linda Elwood. Lauren Often. Mariko Lockhart. Mark Watson. Mary Keefe. Natalie Hunter. Sarah Butler. Steve Kovach, Tia Jones and Travis Taylor. These individuals put a tremendous amount of work into looking at researching, training, reporting mechanisms, policy and rule changes, workplace culture and anti-racist practices, and together work to identify 34 recommendations and 135 specific strategies. Today, we are acting on just one of those recommendations by creating the Office of the Employee Ombud working together with the front line workers, with the silence breakers, with unions, with the mayor's office. There are some key provisions that I want to underscore that are in the amended legislation in front of you. Number one, it was my priority that we made sure that this office was free from political influence, because we want to make sure that the mayor, the city council, any entity that has reporting authority, doesn't intervene in terms of personnel issues, investigations or remediations. We also made sure that there was a detailed implementation report back on how the CEO will maintain and communicate employee confidentiality. We wanted to make sure that people knew all of the remediation strategies, whether it was through the federal, state or city avenues and also through personal attorneys. We recommended in-person trainings be developed by looking at patterns of harassment or intimidation and looking at organizational and cultural shifts that were needed. We also made sure that the employee Ombud was working in coordination with the Employee Assistance Program so that there was appropriate emotional assistance and consultation for referrals. We're reviewing the current structure within this legislation throughout the year, next year and ongoing to make sure that we do have a place that fosters trust so that people go there to report harassment and discrimination, and that we have the best placement for creating a body that truly instills a sense of independence. We're requiring the Office of the Employee Ombud to provide all reports and data requested concurrently to the Mayor and City Council so we can all look at the same data and trends and recommendation at the same time. In this substitute bill, we also made it clear that the OIO is open for all employees, which is the priority that we know the Mayor had committed to early and we wanted to make sure that we were explicitly calling that out. We broaden the role of the OIO to make sure that people understand that this is a place to go to so that they can get advice, education and help navigating the often complex system, especially when individuals are in a moment of crisis. And we included legislation to make sure that the OIO had the ability to assist employees in understanding their options and the processes for how to contact their union and make sure that a union representative was with them or a trusted community partner or advocate. We also know that it's important that employees be able to go back and talk through the process with them. And this was really an opportunity for us to truly root this office in our commitment to race and social justice equity. Again, I applaud everyone involved for constantly making sure that this was a process in which we looked at the recommendations. But all of the comprehensive report in the anti-harassment inter departmental report that came out earlier this fall. So this is just the first step. We're also making sure that we're writing into this legislation that reports back to us recommendations for council's consideration. Don't just sit on a shelf. They don't gather dust that we respond within 120 days and and that we continue to look internally on what we need to do to hold ourselves accountable so that we're taking this step not just today and walking away, but recognizing and meeting all of the 34 recommendations is critical. I really am excited to have worked with the folks on the front line. Think again the mayor's office and her team for working with us as we enhance this legislation that came down and really appreciate the time in which folks have taken during the budget and post-budget to make sure that we got this right so that we could roll this out with those who've been affected by harassment, intimidation and retaliation at the table to make the final amendments to this legislation. With that, I want to just think this body for your past work on trying to address intimidation and harassment. And today we take an important and critical step forward and we know we will be back to continue the march.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilmember Shadow Councilmember Baxter.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Councilmember Mosquito.
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the lead on this. And I want to say thanks to the silence breakers, also to all of you who are in the audience today. It's made a huge difference to have you here time after time talking to us about what's important and why we need to move forward. I want to acknowledge that a lot of work has gone in here, and I understand that the position for the director is now open and that we're looking for the absolute perfect candidate to get going on this. So many thanks. And you have my support.
Speaker 0: Thank you.
Speaker 4: What's a whole list of employees that. Yes.
Speaker 1: That's. Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's correct. Run for president.
Speaker 0: Well.
Speaker 2: Mr. President. Yeah. If I may. Thank you for mentioning that, because it is within the acknowledgments section and I should have read the full acknowledgment section into the record. And, Mr. President, if I may.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 2: Do. It says to the Silence Breakers the Coalition of Affinity Groups against racial harassment. The reason social justice affiliates. Reason social justice change teams and employee affinity groups and all the city employees for advancing change. I really want to appreciate you for calling that out and thank you again.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 0: Customer. So what would you like to say? A few words.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Now I will be voting yes on this legislation to create an Office of Employment. But because it offers an avenue for City of Seattle, workers facing harassment or discrimination in the workplace to get information about how to file complaints. It is important to caution, however, that offices like this ultimately reflect the power dynamic in society. For example, human resources department around the world claim to represent workers, but in reality, they represent the institution against the workers. The real job the real job of our department is to prevent workers from suing the company or institution. And I've spoken to a number of workers in the city of Seattle who have for years been fighting against racial discrimination, as you said, and also sexual discrimination and harassment. And they will tell you that they repeatedly have that experience with H.R. departments, as was also fully reported in Crosscut and other publications. So we know that this is happening in Seattle. And my fear is that because there is a political establishment that determines the political course of action in the city, that the office ultimately will not be independent of the mayor and the majority politicians that will be hiring the officer to do the work in the legislation, the director of the Office of Employment, but reports directly to the mayor's office. She hires them and she has the power to fire them if their reports are embarrassing to her political ambitions. And I know that there are certain criteria that may help mitigate that. But at the end of the day, I think it is still not a I'm not going to solve the problem. Fundamentally, the office is not empowered to seek remedies, only to advise workers what their options are and retain records and statistics. This is absolutely important and it's a positive step, although it does not solve the harassment and discrimination itself that is faced by city workers. And and we have to be clear, the only reason this office has been created has been the courageous action of city workers, as you mentioned, the Coalition of Employees Against Racial Discrimination and Harassment , who have worked for years, the Seattle Silence Breakers in the city of Seattle, a coalition of unions, many whose representatives are here in this in the chambers today. And it really should be noted the kind of personal courage it takes, especially women, women and people of color, to come and speak about what actually happened to them, as opposed to talking about the problem in the abstract, which is much easier than, you know, talking about actual incidents of harassment. So I really commend all the workers in the city of Seattle who have spoken up about it. Please be in touch with my office on any difficulties that you might face. And I hope that flowing from this step forward, we can actually go towards an independently elected office to deal with sexual horror and other types of harassment and discrimination, not only at the city of Seattle, but for all of Seattle's workers.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilor Swan, any further comments? Kaspersky there we read each like this.
Speaker 2: So I just want to say thank you once again. We had probably four or five times that we had the Silence Breakers Coalition for City Unions, various entities who were working on the front line. Again, thanks to the Coalition of affinity groups against racial harassment, the recent social justice affiliates and the reason social justice change teams along with the silence breakers who've come and told their stories. This is, as I mentioned, just the first step. And I would encourage folks to take a look, especially on page six, where we have built in here a key provision, which is to make sure that our city council continues to look at recommended changes needed to accomplish these recommendations, including the independence and structure of not just the OIO, but the new investigation unit. We would be remiss if we were to walk out of here and pat ourselves on the back because this is just step one and this is a long time coming. But we will definitely see, I think, improvements in the system if we hold ourselves accountable to implement this office as it has been amended by the front line workers and making sure that we have an important and historic first step today. So not just for changing individual behaviors, but for changing our actual cultural norms and expectations so that every workplace is free from harassment and intimidation. And with that, I just thank you once again for all of your work and know we'll be back at this for the next steps.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And I want to thank you for your leadership comes from a skater and all of the the advocates and organizations. Thank you. It's my honor to vote on this legislation. Having said that, please call the roll on the passage of the bill.
Speaker 1: MOSQUERA. Hi. O'BRIEN All.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So why don't I. Begala Johnson, President Herrell. All right. Six in favor.
Speaker 0: Nine opposed the bill passed in show Senate. Please read the next agenda item into the record.
AN ORDINANCE relating to the organization of City government; creating an Office of the Employee Ombud; and adding Sections 3.15.020, 3.15.022, and 3.15.024 to the Seattle Municipal Code.