The Renton City Council has rejected minimum wage amendments that would have repealed and replaced the Raise the Wage initiative that was passed by Renton voters in the February 2024 special election.

At the July 17 council meeting, a motion to approve a committee report containing minimum wage city code amendments failed. The proposed amendments would have gone before voters in the November general election.

The proposed amendments would not have changed the new $20.29 minimum wage. However, they did bring forward other changes, such as:

• How many employees constituted a large business.

• The removal of non-wage-related labor standards.

• Having tips counted toward the minimum wage.

• Franchisees being classified as small or large by in-house employees, not worldwide employees.

• How minimum wage is based on statewide wage inflation, not Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue’s wage average, and that covered employees are ages 18 and older.

The current minimum wage standards constitute a business with over 15 employees as a large employer. The proposed legislation changed that to a small employer having 50 or fewer employees, a medium employer having 50 to 499 employees, and a large employer having 500-plus employees.

With the proposed changes, employers with 50 or fewer employees would still be allowed to pay their employees the statewide minimum wage, $16.29, while medium employers would need to pay employees $18.29, and large employers would need to pay their employees $20.29. Subsequently, the minimum wage would always be $4 above the statewide minimum wage. The medium employer size would be phased out over the next two years, and then there would only be small employers under 50 and large employers over 50.

The proposed ordinance would have repealed all nonwage-related labor standards, so employers would be allowed to hire more employees or contractors instead of giving hours to current employees. Tips could be counted toward the minimum wage, but that is not required.

Initiative 23-02, which was passed by voters during the Feb. 13 special election, requires employers with 15 or more workers or more than a $2 million yearly gross revenue to pay a minimum wage of $20.29 per hour. It requires all employers to offer additional hours to existing part-time employees before hiring new employees or subcontracted services. The initiative also requires that employers not retaliate against employees exercising rights created by the ordinance, and comply with administrative requirements. The proposed ordinance creates remedies and penalties for violations. If enacted, the ordinance cannot be repealed without voter approval, according to the ballot measure.

How this draft was brought forward

This draft of proposed amendments arose after Councilmember James Alberson Jr. brought a motion to the council June 17. Alberson said he believed it was the council’s duty to put forth due diligence to amend any policy that potentially has significant detrimental effects on Renton as a whole.

“My only intent was to ensure that a fully comprehensive and clarified initiative went to the voters because of some of the comments I heard from voters was that they fully didn’t comprehend everything that was in the initiative,” Alberson said on July 15. “It was ambiguous. And what we wanted to do was keep the wage. Not mess with the wage, because we know that is consistently what was essentially voted on.”

Alberson said another concern was that he was not sure when the details of Initiative 23-02 were uploaded, but if King County did not upload the details of Initiative 23-02 until much time had passed since voting opened, he does not know how the February vote resulted from a fully informed voting electorate. He said he had no agenda, but he only wanted to put forward something to clarify the crux of the matter, which was taking into account what businesses gave as feedback.

Council concerns

Councilmember Ryan McIrvin said he was not opposed to changing the draft, but his two most significant concerns were the cost of putting the proposed legislation on the ballot and the likelihood of its passage.

“I’m not opposed to making tweaks to this thing, but it has to be done the right way. There needs to be a stakeholder process so that we can actually get by, and if there’s organized opposition, that decreases the chance of this thing passing,” McIrvin said at the council meeting. “We did hear recently within this year, previous last year, overwhelmingly that this thing passes. I’m concerned with the time frame. I understand that’s just the nature of when this thing would be due to get on this November ballot. I don’t know that without those unknowns that, I would be ready to advance it and say ‘yes, let’s go’ until I have those questions answered.”

Councilmember Carmen Rivera said she was pleasantly surprised with the outcome of the council’s vote, but she did have some thoughts about what was on the proposed draft ordinance. She said she had to take time to think about what her constituents would have wanted her to advocate for and represent.

“The draft completely gutted 23-02. The only thing it kept, and barely, was the minimum wage at $20.29. It changed the inflation calculator, which was going to gauge how the minimum wage was going to increase over the next two years,” Rivera said. “It changed the inclusion of tips, and tip credits, it changed the part-time worker protections. It changed the age, it changed the medium worker, what was the exempt business, and what was considered a medium business. Again, I find it laughable that that was considered a balance when it literally just gutted everything that was so thoughtfully developed in 23-02.”

Rivera said in addition to her concerns with the proposed legislation, she said the council had the opportunity long ago to do something if they did not agree with Initiative 23-02. Rivera said she is all for voter-led initiatives, but said she also feels like because some councilmembers did not agree with 23-02, she suggested that the council could have discussed creating their own minimum wage initiatives to avoid now disagreeing with what Initiative 23-02 passed.

“I’m supportive of 23-02, but I also knew our options, and I would have been supportive of anything that raised the minimum wage and protected workers from being exploited. And, that is exactly what 23-02 does. That’s not what the administration proposed on Monday did. It was a very reactionary thing, again, because they never really appreciated Initiative 23-02, and I never saw any real open-mindedness to it,” Rivera said.

Regarding how 23-02 will affect businesses who are concerned about it, Rivera also said she wants to see the city create a small business grant program and make it easier for business owners to leave their leases due to rents increasing in recent years.

“It’s our responsibility to make this transition as easy as possible for our small businesses point blank,” Rivera said. “So now we need to look really critically at how we can make this transition smooth and easy and supportive for our small businesses and our medium-sized businesses and our long-term businesses.”