Will Seattle's proposal to roll back gig worker wages be enough to counter new app fees?

A Seattle City Council committee is moving to roll back a package for gig workers that includes a minimum wage hike.

But workers are pushing back. At a recent committee meeting, Uber Eats driver Kyle Graham reminded the council that a decade ago Seattle was the first city to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“The council seems to want to make history again by being the first major city to remove a minimum wage for tens of thousands of workers,” Graham said.

The law, which only went into effect in January, prompted app companies like DoorDash to impose new fees. Businesses blame the changes for driving down demand. Council President Sara Nelson said she warned about the impacts when the law passed in 2022.

“I feel that it’s incumbent upon us to reverse the unintended consequences that I predicted from the get go,” Nelson said. “So I sought a solution that will make the fee go away.”

But it’s not clear whether the proposed revisions would sway app-based companies to drop the fees. The changes include lowering the minimum wage from the current 44 cents per minute to just under $20 an hour.

Gas mileage reimbursement would be lowered from 75 to 35 cents per mile.

The current proposal would strike certain enforcement rules, including requiring companies to share data with the city’s labor agency, and giving workers protections to sue.