Description

This November, voters within the City of Olympia will be asked to consider enacting a new chapter in the Olympia Municipal Code as an “Ordinance Concerning Labor Standards for Certain Employees” to establish labor standards for work scheduling, a minimum wage, a safe workplace environment, and other labor regulations. This proposal, also known as Olympia Proposition No.1, will be on the 2025 general election ballot. The proposition expresses the following intent:

• Workers deserve fair and secure scheduling, with sufficient advanced notice of their work schedules, so they can plan their lives and family budgets.
• Workers deserve a fair opportunity to move into full time work when those hours become available, and those additional hours should be distributed in a reasonable, transparent, and non-discriminatory manner.
• Workers deserve a fair wage for their work. The initiative raises the minimum wage so that Olympia workers get paid fairly, like employees in other major Puget Sound cities, and allows the minimum wage to increase with the cost of living.
• Workers deserve a safe workplace environment. The Workers Bill of Rights protects workers through basic safety planning and precautions.
• Workers deserve to know their rights and have tools to enforce them.

Last year, the Thurston Economic Development Council (EDC) conducted a review of academic literature about minimum wage increases, and again in 2025. In addition, the 2025 review included a survey of academic work focused on the impacts of so-called “predictive scheduling,” or policies that ban the kinds of short-notice scheduling systems widely employed in restaurants and other low-wage industries.

We’ll hear from the Thurston Economic Development Council and Michael Cade about how the results of this review are mixed. Please join us to better understand the proposition.

Register to attend this free info session by clicking HERE.