King County looks at $19 minimum wage in unincorporated areas

Minimum wage workers at big businesses in unincorporated areas of King County would see their pay rise by more than $3 an hour under a new proposal from several members of the Metropolitan King County Council.

The proposal, sponsored by Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Rod Dembowski, would make King County the fourth locality in Washington to hike its minimum wage higher than Washington’s statewide rate of $15.74 an hour.

The legislation would raise the minimum wage in the county’s outlying areas to $18.99 an hour for employees working at companies with more than 500 workers (including franchises). The minimum wage would increase every year at the rate of inflation, just as Washington’s state minimum wage does.

The wage hike would be phased in more slowly for smaller businesses, just as it was when Seattle passed a $15 minimum wage in 2014 and when Tukwila voted to raise its minimum wage last year.

At the smallest businesses in unincorporated King County, those with 15 or fewer employees and less than $2 million in annual revenue, the minimum wage would start at $15.99, or $3 per hour less than the rate for the biggest businesses. The gap between the smallest and biggest businesses would narrow by 50 cents a year until it eventually reaches parity.

Midsize businesses, with between 15 and 500 employees, would initially have a minimum wage of $16.99, or $2 less than the largest businesses. That wage would rise by $1 a year, plus inflation, reaching parity with the biggest businesses after two years.

There are roughly 3,800 businesses with employees in unincorporated King County, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council. County Council staff did not have an immediate estimate of how many workers would be affected by raising the minimum wage.

The tiered model mirrors the minimum wage hike that went into effect in Tukwila earlier this year after voters overwhelmingly approved it last fall.

Tukwila was the third city in Washington to raise its minimum wage above the state rate, following SeaTac and Seattle, where the minimum wage is currently $18.69 for most workers. Unlike the campaigns in those two cities, which faced fierce industry pushback, the campaign to raise the wage in Tukwila drew no organized opposition.

The fight in SeaTac — the first city in the country to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour — stretched on for years.

Zahilay pointed to the unincorporated neighborhood of Skyway, at the south end of Lake Washington, to advocate for the change.

“If you’re a worker in a place like Skyway, your minimum wage is whatever the state says the minimum wage is,” he said. “If you were to walk a block north into Seattle your minimum wage would be almost $3 more per hour. If you walked a block west to Tukwila, your minimum wage would be over $3 more per hour. And that $15.75 is not enough to survive on.”

A push to raise the minimum wage in Renton, just east of Skyway, fell short of the number of signatures needed to send it to the November ballot.

Chase Gallagher, a spokesperson for King County Executive Dow Constantine, said Constantine had not yet reviewed the legislation but he “supports a consistent and livable minimum wage across the county’s communities.”

Tammie Hetrick, president and CEO of the Washington Food Industry Association, which represents grocers and convenience stores, said she expected there would be opposition to the proposal, although she hadn’t heard of any yet.

“The one thing we look at with the minimum wage increase is the market is kind of setting the demand right now — it’s hard to find employees,” Hetrick said.

She said a minimum wage increase would also pressure employers to raise wages for workers higher up the wage ladder, “and so you start having this compression where everyone needs to be bumped up and it becomes difficult to be able to meet that.”

The legislation cites a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which says a minimum wage worker earning $15.74 would need to work 103 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom home at market-rate rent in King County, without spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

A minimum wage worker would need to work 120 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to the report, released earlier this year.

A King County worker needs to make more than $40 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30% of their income on housing, the report found.

The Seattle area, with its sky-high housing costs, has seen the cost of living increase higher than the national average over the last several years, and costs have increased faster than wages have grown.

“The goal for my proposal to raise the minimum wage is to make sure that workers in every corner of our region, whether they’re in an incorporated city or not, can survive and thrive,” Zahilay said. “That’s the goal.”

Nationwide, 30 states have a minimum wage higher than the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. Washington’s minimum wage is the second-highest in the country, after the District of Columbia.

Four of the nine members of the County Council have already signaled their support for raising the wage. Zahilay said he was “relatively confident” they’d have a majority willing to go “in the overall direction to increase the minimum wage to $18.99.” But he expected haggling and negotiation over enforcement, possible exemptions and timelines.

As currently written, the minimum wage hike, if passed, would go into effect Jan. 1.