♪♪
-Well, I'm excited. I hope you're excited, too.
So I have so many thank yous to thank,
but I was reminded by Brianna
that when I first got elected, it started right in this room.
And we were sitting around, as many of you recall.
If you were in that room, just sort of show of hands.
I'm just sort of curious.
I remember, it started, and I say,
"We're going to win together."
If you were here, just raise your hand.
I want to see.
All right, so you -- we were there and now we're here.
And I'll say something I said yesterday
when we announced our -- a levy, our transportation levy,
and we announced it out in the great 37th District,
Jamie, and 98118 zip code.
And I was asked about this particular contract
with the Coalition of Unions.
And we had asked -- they primarily asked that,
and I said, "Look, it's very simple.
My politics are very simple. I believe in my employees.
They're our greatest assets.
And if we can't --" You know,
these labor contracts affect more than 7,000 city workers.
If we can't invest in our assets, I said,
then I better get another job.
I'll take the hits because I believe in you.
I know the work you do. I know your public service.
I know your hearts, your commitments.
We are competing against the private sector
in a rapidly-growing city.
The expectations of you and me are very high.
The people expect the water to be on.
They expect the potholes to be fixed.
And we do our jobs.
And so this is a celebration.
And I will tell you that I'm just going to read
off a few numbers and locals because I want to.
Local 269, Sheet Metal Workers, Local 66, Local 302, Local 46,
Painters Council 5, Local 242, Teamsters 763,
Teamsters 117, Protect 17.
I knew they were going to get the biggest applause.
Court Martials Guild, Local 21,
Carpenters Inland Boatman's Union, Local 8,
Local 104, Local 15, the Seattle Dispatchers Guild.
I pray to God I didn't forget one of these labors,
and if I did, they wrote it up for me.
And I'll tell you that, you know,
we're just starting really to redefine this city together.
Many of you know,
you know, I'm actually one of you, in this sense.
I'm going on almost 15, 16 years with the city,
and I think, you know, my mom and dad worked for the city.
And so if it weren't for the --
I actually started with the city in 1979.
Yeah, I'm old. I get that. I get it. I get it.
I was an intern for the Seattle City Council
and I worked for the City Council.
And my mom and dad worked here.
And I couldn't tell you, I was proud to be a city employee.
And so my pride in what you do started at a young age.
And so I want to say thank you
that what we're trying to achieve particularly in
this particular contract, a few things.
Number one is to recognize the value
that you bring to the workplace every single day.
And this not only affects you, but of course,
it affects your family.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is we look at where equity needs are,
that some people are underpaid in certain skill sets.
And we -- it's time we address issues head on
in terms of equity
and that's what we're trying to lead in our administration.
I got to tell you something sort of funny, I think.
I don't know if any of you
have ever started the day off with an argument with someone
that means something, a spouse, or a partner, or a child.
You just start off the day with an argument.
I don't typically like I started this damn day off
with an argument with my best friend/wife.
Let me see, so we're not recording.
Oh, we are recording this. Uh-oh.
I better -- my -- the love of my life,
my wife, and it was about a book that I'm reading
and the particular author was interviewed on TV.
And my theory,
and I don't want to get into details
about the specific argument,
but we were just really arguing about it.
And I said, you know, "You're not understanding my lens."
And she was advancing -- and this was early this morning.
She was advancing her position.
And I'm going to say I was right in the argument.
I mean, that's objectively I was right, I think.
No, I'm just joking. She's going to watch this.
And we didn't -- we just were at an impasse
that I think I was trying to convince her I was right
and she was trying to convince me she was right.
And, you know, this is, you know,
a three-decade relationship here.
You know, I've known her since I was 18 years old,
so we're not strangers.
And then, you know, she went away, and I went to work,
and then, you know, we kissed, and hugged, and everything else.
I was thinking, tonight, when I get home,
I'll get a second bite at that argument.
But then she called me and she says,
"You know, I was just thinking, honey."
So that's always a good sign, she calls me honey.
And she says,
"I really appreciated the way you were patient
and you really worked hard to understand my view."
And I said,
"That really warms my heart and, you know, have a great day.
Have a great day." So it ended up well.
And I tell you that story to say that in any kind of negotiation,
and I said this when you all made those t-shirts up
and I said, "Strike your asses off."
I thought that was funny, too, by the way.
I said that if we're going to win together,
and that's what it's about, winning together as a family,
and that's why I shared a family argument.
If we're going to win together,
I really need my bargaining team to know your lens,
what you're going through every day.
I'm sitting up here in the seventh floor
and not in the community.
I don't know what you see every day.
I don't see what you see every day
but I have to work hard to understand that.
I don't know your life experiences.
I don't know what's happening in your family.
I don't know what's happening in your health.
I don't know what inspires you and what discourages you.
I know what I go through every day,
but what you go through every day,
I have to know that and understand that.
And I hope my bargaining team felt that.
I have to show you the leaders you had,
quite candidly, they were outstanding,
outstanding advocates for you.
You were outstanding advocates for your respective groups.
And I think you understood the budget challenges that we have.
I think you understood the plight of the city.
I felt that during the negotiation,
that you were listening, as well.
So -- I don't know who I'm introducing next.
Is it -- okay?
So I will say that -- just one sec here.
You guys have met me before.
You know, I didn't say a word that was on this thing,
by the way.
This is where I look and say was there something
I'm supposed to say that I didn't say.
I'm just in a good mood
because we're going to run this city together.
We're going to run it with love, compassion,
equity, and all the commitments we stand for.
And in closing,
from the bottom of my heart and for my administration,
oh, I was supposed to thank the Council,
the City Council, Council member Dan Strauss,
for shepherding it through.
City Council member Tanya Woo is here.
Thank you for shepherding this through
and believing in the city as much as my administration does.
We are strong together.
So in closing, again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Let's have a great -- oh, I'm sorry.
Council member Morales. I didn't see you standing here.
Please raise your hand.
Are there any other Council members here that --
Council member or someone over here, I don't see that person.
Council member Tanya Woo. I said Tanya Woo.
I got Council member Woo.
Okay, thank you for being here,
always standing with the employees
and our labor partners.
I'm just getting a little giddy.
I'm just happy because we're just starting
this work together.
I try sometimes to deviate from the notes
because if I'm going to lead this city,
I have to know where my North Star is
and my North Star is to always to try to do what's right.
And I hope, at the end of the day,
negotiations aren't perfect.
I hope you know we just tried to do what is right.
And with that, I present our esteemed leader, Mary Keefe.
-Good morning. -Good morning.
-My name is Mary Keefe.
I am the vice president and business agent
with Teamsters Local 763.
I was one of the co-negotiators for the Coalition City Unions,
which was a distinct honor because I got to start my career
when I was 25 years old across the street
as a city employee at the Municipal Court.
And so to be here,
to be able to negotiate on behalf of so many workers,
is such an honor.
And Mayor,
because you told the story about your wife
and what it means to be in a relationship.
I will say that when I got hired as a Teamster rep,
my boss at the time told me this about labor relations
is a marriage and not a one night stand.
-And you know I cannot say that.
-But a Teamster can, right?
But right? That is the spirit of it, right?
We are not here to get everything we absolutely want
in that moment and run.
This is an investment in our workers and with the city.
And so with that,
I will say back to my speech
because I'm actually going to read my speech.
Today, we take this opportunity to be in this moment,
to reflect on the work it took to get here,
to take a breath before we get down to the work
which we commit to doing together in this contract.
Take a moment to remember that we started in this room,
as we've talked about, in September of 2022,
with our bargaining teams, and you, Mr. Mayor.
Starting our -- stating our lofty goals to take care
of the workers who take care of this city.
Our members pushed and organized
like we've never seen them before,
at least in my 20-year history with the city.
We built a communication system within unions
and across unions throughout departments where laborers
and recreational coordinators,
customer service reps and engineers,
mechanics and librarians.
Spoke with each other to find common interests.
We spoke to the public and we did,
indeed rally our asses off to show leadership,
but most importantly,
to show ourselves that we are worth fighting for.
And when it came down to it, we did the hard work of compromise.
We shifted our demands to wages and policies
that we can achieve in this near future.
Our contracts both reach into the past, way back to 2023,
but they also lay out our commitment
to continue our work together.
Together, workers at the table will develop policies
that reinforce the concept
that the mayor likes to call One Seattle.
We will establish a citywide safety committee built
on the work we did to keep --
built on the work modeled after our COVID response.
To make sure that workers,
regardless of what department they work for,
whether they work in an office building,
in the field, on a playground,
and directly with the residents and visitors of this city.
We keep our workers safe.
Our contract commits to supporting our
racial justice change teams,
again, with leaders, workers,
at the table to help dismantle racism
and the institutional racism
that this city is committed to doing.
We will dismantle the pay and hour structures
that hold them down so that we can achieve greater goals.
And we're going to invest in our workers
when we recognize whole family and
community members by establishing
the Dependent Care Task Force.
Because so many of us work to support our families,
both our children and our aging parents.
They need us.
The Coalition City Unions and the city
is committed in this agreement,
in this contract, to developing innovative policy
and will benefit a structure that is impactful to its workers
and our community.
So I'll end by saying this.
We've come a long way. We've done some hard work.
And as many of our Council members
asked just this past Tuesday, please stay.
Stay to enjoy the hard work, the benefits of this contract,
and stay to do the work
that we have committed to do in this near future.
Mr. Mayor, Labor Relations, the Coalition of City Unions
and all of its workforce will be here to work with this --
work through these issues and to build a better city.
-Thank you, Mary.
That was a wonderful speech and if you were to --
if there were only two words
that resonated within that powerful speech,
it was please stay.
That was the --
and I want to recognize Council member Cathy Moore.
Raise your hand, please.
Another one of our --
And now we're going to hear from Mark Watson,
the other co-chair of the CCU bargaining team who,
again, a union representative Protect 17, again,
who just did an outstanding job on your behalf.
Mark Watson, please share a few words.
-Okay, I'm going to keep it really short
because I want to hear the members speak
about what this contract means to them.
So I just want to say mostly some thank yous,
first of all, to the mayor.
Mayor, you did something
that no other mayor has done in this situation.
Many times, we've been in bargaining that took two years,
and you stepped into the breach and showed leadership,
and I just want us all to acknowledge that.
I know sometimes we feel like, you know, we're like this,
but that really was a moment,
as Mary said and you said, we have to live together.
This isn't the private sector where it's, you know,
existential battles.
We're all here for the same reason,
which is to provide services to the community
and to pay for food, housing, gas, and maybe college,
and maybe even get to go on a vacation once in a while.
So I just want to honor you
and call you out for that, so thank you.
I also -- yeah. I also want to thank LR.
You know, this was I call a perfect storm of negotiations.
It -- this was unprecedented.
This fight wasn't just because we wanted to,
and I don't want to call it a fight.
Whatever -- a vigorous conversation amongst parties.
But that was mostly because of circumstances
of having a particularly tight budget after the pandemic,
unprecedented inflation,
and a market study that had been kicked down the can.
Nobody's fault, but had been long delayed.
And those things,
I don't think either side had ever been faced with before.
And I -- and, you know, we got through it.
We got through this perfect storm
and we are now in this safe harbor together, again.
And I just want to thank LR for your work on that.
I also want to thank the Council, City Council.
Thank you for your support last year,
and for the new City Council folks,
I know it's not always easy to come into something new
like this, and it's a completely new context.
And you're trying to figure out the lay of the land,
and your priorities,
and then a fairly big vote comes before you.
And I just -- we just really want to show appreciation
for that unanimous vote.
I think it says a lot to your city workers
that you committed to us in that way,
so thank you for that, City Council.
Last couple of things I would say,
I want to thank the members, as Mary did,
and I want to thank the coalition, the other union reps.
I don't think they've heard enough from us.
We sat in many rooms,
in the same room multiple times for multiple hours
either at the bargaining table or in preparation.
And the level of commitment and respect
for each other during that process
was such an honor for Mary and I.
And it meant a lot to us and a really tough bargain.
And I hope that has forged us for the future,
for whatever we do with the city and work together.
And I just want to honor you all as reps.
Thank you.
And my last, Mary, thank you.
What a great partner, amazing.
I think we both, hopefully, taught each other things.
-You said it wasn't going to be that bad.
It wasn't going to take that long.
-I -- We -- it was less than two years, so that's something.
I also, in my last, I want to give a thank you to Brianna.
I don't know if people remember.
We did this little petition thing right out here
and we asked for somebody from the administration
to come accept the petition and Brianna,
at very last minute, looked like she might have had PJs on.
I'm not sure. I don't know.
I don't know if you rushed over from your house to accept it,
but she so graciously
and slightly nervously accepted a petition from us
and did it in a way that I thought showed a lot of grace.
And so I wanted to thank you for that, too.
And in the end, again, I just want to thank everybody.
I also want to thank MLK for their support
as an organization, you know,
supporting workers across King County.
And I also want to thank my boss, Karen Estevenin.
She showed a lot of trust in us during this campaign.
And that's it. Thank you so much.
Congratulations to all of us.
Thank you. -Thank you, Mark.
I believe we're going to hear from a few employees
and I don't have -- I don't know.
I don't have any introductory remarks on who I'm to introduce,
so give me a little help.
Are you good at self-introductions?
-Yes. -Okay. All right. Okay.
-Thank you, Mayor. I'm Ashley Clayton.
I am a proud Protect 17 member.
I am a District 5 resident
and I work in the Human Service Department.
I'm embedded with the Seattle Fire Department
on the Health One team.
Wore my t-shirt.
I want to thank the mayor for getting the contract
across the finishing line,
to the City Council for your support,
both the old City Council and the new City Council.
I want to especially thank the tireless bargaining team,
our amazing union reps,
and all the coalition members who stepped up
and took action to move this contract forward.
It was a formidable force.
This contract, with its robust COLA,
it's market rate adjustments for the city's lowest-paid workers,
and increases to benefits like vacation and bereavement leave,
is truly life changing.
It means I can continue to do the work I love
while still taking care of my family
and being a part of this vibrant community.
As city employees,
we feel seen and recognized for the critical work
we do providing essential services and care
to the citizens of Seattle.
Thank you so much.
-Hello. I am Jennifer Clayton, unrelated,
and I'm with the Seattle Dispatchers Guild.
And I would just like to take a few moments
to say thank you for all your support
in the bargaining process and getting us past the finish line.
It's been a couple of years.
I personally took over in December,
so it's quite the rush job.
I do want to say thank you for everybody to keep me informed,
and get me up to speed, and that was quite the overwhelming task.
But I do appreciate all of your guys' hard work
and the welcoming environment in which I joined.
And we fought hard this last year to ask for fair wages,
fair treatment, in order to better serve this community.
And we appreciate the city has recognized
our hard work and dedication
by showing their support
and supporting their city workers through this process.
In this new agreement,
we will assist us in recruiting better candidates
to provide quality services to our community.
And secure the future of hardworking,
experienced employees
who work tirelessly to support this city every day.
And with this new collective bargaining agreement supported
by you and the City Council this week,
we can finally achieve what we've all been asking for.
Fair wages, a work-life balance,
and higher quality of services for a city
that deserves them as much
as their employees deserve this deal.
So thank you. Thank you very much.
-Okay.
I want to first recognize that our budget director,
Julie Dingley,
and a person with the finance background
that works for the Council, [inaudible] Ben Noble walked in.
I'm acknowledging them because everything's okay, right?
We can -- you don't have bad news in the middle of this --
okay, I'm just -- that was sort of a joke because they're
the ones making sure I stay on track with our budget.
So when they walked in here together in the middle
of our presentation.
In all seriousness, this is a great day.
I want to recognize Council member Dan Strauss,
the financier that helped us, again.
I recognize Dan.
I want to recognize Rob Saka in the back, raise your hand.
Council member Saka.
So, oh, Council member Maritza Rivera right there.
Right there, Maritza, so let's see.
One, two, three, four, five.
You guys sort of stay spread out.
You're breaking -- oh, who are you pointing to?
Who? Oh, we did that.
So Council member, let's beat up this Council a little bit.
I've been a little too nice to them.
You know, we start things on time here in the City Hall here.
We started at -- no, in all seriousness,
we -- for those who did -- we know you're very, very busy.
We know you're very, very busy,
but what we said earlier outside of your presence is
how it came together.
It came together because of your commitment to the employees,
and so I just want to, in all seriousness, recognize that.
And I'll close by saying --
we're going to go over here and take some pictures,
that you've heard me say in a few speeches,
if you've ever heard me say, we don't take victory laps.
There's too many people out there hurting,
too many people falling through the cracks.
It's too hard to live in Seattle
right now for a variety of reasons.
But I do believe we have one of the best cities in this country
because we have the best people.
We have the best people.
And a few weeks ago,
my wife and I took the Civil Rights Tour down
in Montgomery Alabama.
And if any of you have --
want to do something incredibly life-changing,
I'd recommend that you do that and look at the place
where the Civil War started
and the Civil Right revolution began.
And you will see that where we are here in Seattle,
we have our own unique, remarkable history,
that we should be proud of this city
and we should defend it because we're going to do this together.
So this is a great day of celebration and great result
and we're just beginning the work together
in our One Seattle model.
So thank you very much and let's sign some legislation.
-And those of you that have done this before,
you know this is the moment that if you want to be in the picture
while it's being signed,
please come to the front and stand behind the mayor.