Duff on Hospitality Law

Not a moment too soon, Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards on Tuesday provided mandatory employee notice posters for hotel worker protections that take effect Wednesday, July 1. Seattle hotels must post these notices immediately.

Four sweeping new ordinances affect Seattle hotels with 60 or more guest rooms. The ordinances require panic buttons for employees, set maximum housekeeping workloads, require larger hotels to fund employee healthcare coverage, and offer employees greater job security. (Read Foster Garvey’s prior coverage of these ordinances.)

Initiative 124 (aka I-124), the ballot measure approved by voters in November 2016 that establishes several new purported "safety and health" standards for hotel employees in the city of Seattle, opens the door for unprecedented exposures for Seattle's hotel operators. Since its enactment last December, Initiative 124 has given rise to several questions about how, if at all, insurance policies might respond to allegations under the new law.

On Monday, July 25, 2016, the Seattle City Council unanimously voted to place Initiative 124 (“I-124”), entitled the “Seattle Hotel Employees Health and Safety Initiative,” on the November 2016 ballot. Many voters will likely not even bother to look beyond the title before casting their vote. But they should. There is much more to this initiative than the title suggests.

I-124 is comprised of five substantive parts, plus definitions and a “miscellaneous” section (containing perhaps the most important piece of the entire initiative – more on that in the following paragraph). Each of these parts has an admirable statement of purpose (e.g., “Protecting Hotel Employees from Violent Assault and Sexual Harassment”), and a slew of requirements that are allegedly aimed at achieving that purpose. But, as with the title of the entire initiative, each part contains language that prompts countervailing concerns.