A petition to raise the minimum wage in Burien has been declared legally insufficient after failing to collect enough valid signatures, according to King County Elections.
Out of 6,451 signatures submitted for Initiative Measure No. 24-001, only 3,553 were validated as registered voters, falling short of the 4,420 required under Washington state law.
That determination was communicated by King County Elections to the City of Burien and the Transit Riders Union on Aug. 30, 2024.
Following this announcement, the City of Burien formally notified the Transit Riders Union, the primary sponsor of the initiative (view that letter here). The City’s correspondence, signed by Administrative Assistant Kathy Wetherbee on behalf of City Clerk Heather Dumlao, outlined the insufficiency and provided guidance on the next steps.
“This correspondence confirms that your initiative petition regarding minimum wages in Burien is legally insufficient because it lacks the required number of valid signatures,” the city’s letter stated. It further indicated that other defects in the petition were noted, although details on those were not provided.
As we previously reported, in March, the Burien City Council passed Ordinance 837, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2025, and be $3/hour higher than the state’s, making it $19.28 per hour, depending on business size. The petition in question wants to raise the minimum wage to $20.29 per hour, matching Tukwila’s.
The Burien Minimum Wage Initiative is a citizen-driven effort aimed at establishing higher labor standards for certain employees within the city. It seeks to ensure that employees receive a minimum wage comparable to neighboring cities like Tukwila and Seattle, and includes several these provisions:
- Minimum Wage: The initiative proposes that large employers (over 500 employees) immediately match Tukwila’s minimum wage, with smaller employers given a phased implementation period.
- Fair Access to Additional Hours: It requires employers to offer additional work hours to existing employees before hiring new ones.
- Enforcement and Retaliation Protections: The initiative includes strong anti-retaliation measures and allows for civil action against employers who violate the provisions.
“We knew when we submitted our petition that we would need to use the additional ten days allowed by state law to submit additional signatures,” said Katie Wilson, Campaign Coordinator for Raise the Wage Burien. “This result is approximately what we expected, and we are confident that once all our signatures are submitted and counted we will qualify for the ballot. The thousands of Burien voters who have signaled their support for raising the minimum wage to parity with nearby cities will get a chance to vote on this measure next February.”
“As for what ‘other defects in the petition’ Burien officials believe there to be, we have no idea what they mean by that,” Wilson added. “Our petition follows closely the pattern of the successful recent citizen’s initiatives in Tukwila and Renton, so we don’t anticipate any problems.”
Petitioners have until Sept. 9, 2024, to submit an amended petition to King County Elections if they wish to proceed with the initiative.
Excellent news as this misguided wage effort is just an outside activists driven attempt to bring in union influence and dues. It’s the same organizations that try to buy the elections in Burien so they can have insiders doing their bidding. They just wasted $80,000 trying to buy yet another way into Burien politics and tie us to other cities, we are our own and have a wage plan already in place.
Do not raise the minimum wage! I stupidly voted for it back when I worked at McDonald’s only because I was uninformed of its consequences.
The minimum wage should be very low, if it should even exist at all. Activists like to call it a “living wage”, but that is nonsense. Does a high schooler living with parents need a living wage with their first job? No, they can afford to work for a lot less, which means there are a lot more jobs available to them.
Increasing minimum wage is just ignorant of reality.
You would be misinformed about who primarily works minimum wage jobs. They aren’t just for teens. Well over half of minimum wage earners are above the age of 25. Also not sure why being able to exploit teenage workers is the goal.
I actually canvassed for this petition, and you wouldn’t believe the number of hiring managers and business owners that strongly supported this change. I’ll try to describe what they explained to me. Many business owners or hiring managers are actually unable to set the wages for their employees, they are required by corporate policy to use minimum wage as the bottom floor, and with Burien’s minimum wage being unreasonably low, they are unable to hire any workers. Especially when the workers can just go to Tukwila or Sea-tac for a job that pay many dollars more per hour.
Burien workers and businesses deserve this minimum wage increase.
You portray your argument like Burien pays the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Burien went thru an in depth study and crafted an Ordinance that recognizes Burien’s unique business makeup, why do you not except that comprehensive effort? America is a free market society, everyone is free to seek better wages elsewhere in towns that have a huge tax producing retail business base and/or Port to feed it which we don’t.
I don’t “except (sp) that comprehensive effort” because it wasn’t a “in depth study” it was spearheaded by an unelected, corrupt city official, City Manager Bailon, and was just him doing some research and sharing what he personally thought was important. I’m not going to trust a single word of Bailon’s.
There is nothing unique about Burien’s business makeup that would make this initiative bad policy.
Some if not all corporate chain fast food places if the employee is 18 or older . The corporate offices try to get them to train for a management position and switch them to salary pay vs hourly pay . That is if the employee actually does their job and follows rules show’s up on time . They might even offer a raise if the district manger got their raise then the general manger for your location also got a raise their will be a small very small chance you might get a raise to .
You’ll have to rewrite this with some better sentence structure and grammar if you want a response. It’s unreadable as is.
I did not ask for a response from you . Sorry nik d I suffer from learning disabilities so i am unable to type that well or spell that well. With you work i wouldn’t trust a response from you.