URGENT ACTION ALERT – Don’t let corporations buy Seattle

Don’t fall for their lies.

Giant Silicon Valley app companies like Instacart and DoorDash are mobilizing here in Seattle to DEFUND workers' ability to enforce our rights in the workplace. 

We need to fight back, and we need to act fast.

SIGN THIS PETITION by MONDAY 11/13 and add your voice alongside workers to tell the Seattle City Council that we need the resources to uphold our rights at work.

The app companies are lying to the public about the ten-cent fee that Seattle gig workers are championing to establish dedicated funding for the Seattle Office of Labor Standards (OLS) and Community Outreach and Education Fund (COEF), which has helped workers enforce our rights, educate other workers about our rights, and win back nearly $14 million for workers from app companies caught violating our rights. 

WHAT’S THE FEE?

It’s a ten-cent fee that gig companies like Instacart, UberEats, and GoPuff would pay on online orders, excluding groceries. The revenue from that fee would directly fund Seattle’s standard model of workers' rights enforcement and outreach for this industry, which historically has been cut out of labor standards and has seen rampant violations of the few standards actually in place.

WHAT ARE CORPORATIONS DOING TO KILL THE FEE?

They’re getting ready to drop over a dozen last-minute, bad-faith amendments this week to weaken or kill the fee so that they don’t have to pay it, can continue to break workers’ rights laws, and can keep their wealthy shareholders happy at the expense of the gig workers who are actually building their business.

Despite paying $14 million in penalties in just the past three years, apps claim there really isn’t a need to fund enforcement.

And they are trying to paint the gig workers fighting for the fee as dark-money, special-interest, and political operatives. 

But it’s hard to believe them when they’re the ones with expensive lobbyists working to kill our bill and spending money on fearmongering ads trying to mislead consumers, while workers spend our limited free time pushing the Seattle City Council to care about us.

The apps claim that funding enforcement will make their services unaffordable – all while continuing to charge delivery and service fees that are often THIRTY TO FIFTY TIMES more than the fee we’ve proposed.

And with DoorDash making a record $6.6 billion in revenue last year, Instacart’s stock prices surging, and GrubHub reporting year-over-year growth, it looks to us like they’re doing just fine.

HOW CAN YOU JOIN WORKERS IN FIGHTING BACK? 

  • Sign the petition to join the growing chorus of working people’s voices telling the Seattle City Council that workers deserve the funding to enforce our rights.

  • Join us at city hall on MONDAY 11/13 at 5pm in solidarity with workers testifying in committee – and better yet, sign up to testify in favor of the fee!

  • Donate to Working Washington! Every donation makes it possible to support workers as we continue the fight to make the apps #PayUp.