MAY DAY 2025 ON CAPITOL HILL
Seattle’s labor and worker energy this May Day will center on Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park where labor and community groups will gather for a noontime rally before marching into the streets of the city with messages in support of workers and immigrants. 2025’s May Day comes in a string of enthusiastic but mostly peaceful May 1st events in the city following years of intense clashes between police and demonstrators pushed onto the streets of Capitol Hill. More…
As thousands gather at May Day rallies on Capitol Hill and across the Seattle area, city officials from the Office of Labor Standards are again marking International Workers’ Day with door-to-door outreach to workers and businesses in neighborhoods including Broadway, Pike/Pine, and the Central District.
It is the seventh year of the May 1st outreach for OLS but 2025’s visits will include Mayor Bruce Harrell, Council President Sara Nelson, and Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck to kick things off, the city says.
“Today, the City of Seattle will honor International Workers’ Day and Seattle’s own tradition of protecting workers’ rights with its annual door-to-door outreach campaign,” the city announcement reads. “The event will mark the Office of Labor Standards’ (OLS) 7th anniversary of bringing outreach and education on Seattle’s labor laws directly to workers and businesses.”
This year’s outreach efforts will begin at the Chinese Information Service Center on S Lane. Last year’s outreach kicked off at the Central District’s booSH plant shop at 23rd and Jackson.
2025’s outreach comes amid Seattle’s 10-year anniversary of its overhauled minimum wage that is now pegged to inflation and has reached $20.76 an hour. The anniversary also brings an important milestone for OLS — ten years ago, Seattle also rolled out additional worker protections including sweeping wage theft law.
“When Seattle’s Wage Theft Ordinance took effect, it required, for the first time, employers pay all wages and tips owed to employees within Seattle city limits,” OLS said about the milestone. “The new ordinance coincided with OLS becoming a separate division within the Office for Civil Rights in 2015 and being given authorization to investigate workers’ complaints of wage theft – specifically, failure of an employer to pay all wages and tips owed by law.”
The OLS says ten years of Wage Theft Ordinance protections have resulted in 320 investigations, 2,610 worker inquiries, and $11.2 million remedies assessed to 5,917 impacted workers. Cases have involved employers ranging in size from Uber, to Pagliacci, to Skillet.
One of the most recent OLS District 3 cases involved shuttered Central District pot shop Ponder which the city says agreed to pay $23,000 to 31 former employees for “back wages, interest, and a civil penalty per aggrieved party” over allegations involving failing to meet published pay rates, holiday payments, and misuse of tip pools.
The city, itself, of course, has also faced issues around its own wage theft. Challenges with new software sparked a lawsuit earlier this year over the payroll system at City Hall.
OLS, meanwhile, has grown into a busy force in the city. Since its creation, OLS says it has guided $46 million in remedies returned to 91,626 workers, and from January of 2025 to date just over $1 million in remedies have been returned to 1,506 workers.
Thursday’s outreach will come as thousands are expected at worker rallies across the country including a new approach to May Day in Seattle where a coalition of union and labor groups, plus community organizations like the Latino Community Fund will gather in Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park before marching into the city.
‘SOLIDARIDAD, HECHO A MANO Y SIN PERMISO’ — Seattle’s May Day 2025 will step off from Capitol Hill
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