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UFCW LOCAL LEADS FIGHT TO WIN WASHINGTON’S STRONGEST TENANT
PROTECTIONS  
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Ty Moore
February 12, 2024
Labor Notes
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_ “The labor movement backed Initiative 1 because housing costs
keep rising faster than wages, forcing more and more workers into
housing insecurity,” said Local 367 President Michael Hines at a
December press conference. _

Members and staff of UFCW Local 367 systematically reached out to the
union's 1,800 members registered to vote in Tacoma to urge them to
support an initiative that dramatically strengthens tenants' rights in
the city., UFCW Local 367

 

Grocery and retail workers helped win the strongest tenant protections
in Washington state last November for the 100,000 renters in the city
of Tacoma.

First we had to beat the mayor’s and city council’s attempt to
bring a competing watered-down ballot measure. And then we had to
overcome a vicious and deceptive landlord opposition that smashed all
previous political spending records in Tacoma.

“We’ve created incredible goodwill in the community just as we
gear up for a tough contract fight,” said Michael Whalen, who helped
initiate the campaign as a dairy clerk and shop steward at Fred Meyer.

“Members were inspired to take on this fight not only because we
have co-workers sleeping in cars; not only because rent hikes keep
eating away at bargaining table gains,” said Whalen, a member of
Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 367’s executive board and
now on union staff. “Solidarity goes both ways, and we’re going to
need all of Tacoma to stand with us as we get strike-ready.”

Local 367’s contracts cover more than 7,000 workers at Fred Meyer,
Safeway, and Albertsons, as well as many independent grocery stores
across six counties. County-wide contracts begin to expire in May
2025, and the union faces a tough fight to win stable, guaranteed
hours, safety measures, and pay increases.

WHAT WE WON

Under the new law, tenants who fall behind on rent are protected from
cold-weather evictions between November 1 and April 1. Households with
students or educators are protected from eviction during the entire
school year.

Landlords who raise rents by more than 5 percent must offer relocation
assistance equal to two months’ rent. If they hike rents by more
than 10 percent, that assistance rises to three months.

The law also requires that notice of rent increases be sent out six
months in advance. Landlords cannot raise rent or evict tenants if
outstanding health and safety code violations exist.

Move-in fees, including deposits, cannot exceed one month’s rent,
and late fees are capped at $10 a month. The law also creates stiff
new penalties against landlords who violate renters’ rights.

‘KEEP TACOMA FEARED’

Tacoma is known as the “grit city,” and Tacomans are proud of our
blue-collar reputation. Since we’re situated beside the sprawling
Joint Army-Air Force Base Lewis-McChord, many veterans settle here.
While solidly “blue,” Tacoma’s political leaders have tilted
more conservative than Seattle’s, making it all the more shocking
when working-class voters passed the strongest tenant protections in
the state.

Though we’re just 45 minutes south of Seattle’s booming tech
industry, “new economy” investments have largely passed us by.
“Keep Tacoma Feared” is a favorite local bumper sticker that
roughly translates to, “We don’t want you wealthy snobs moving
down here anyway!”

Nonetheless, Seattle’s affordability crisis is pushing more and more
people to move southward. Real estate vultures are buying up Tacoma
properties—and working people are being squeezed out.

Between 2017 and 2022, landlords in Pierce County (which includes
Tacoma) hiked rents by 43 percent. They are evicting our neighbors at
the highest rate in the state. Young workers, women, and especially
workers of color have been the hardest hit.

Now workers need to earn at least $32 an hour to afford a two-bedroom
apartment, according to the Tacoma Housing Authority
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And you’d need to make double that, at least $150,000 a year, to buy
a new home in Tacoma, according to real estate listing service Redfin
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WHOLE WORKER ORGANIZING

The rising cost of housing has hit grocery workers hard. Despite
significant wage gains in our last contract, union grocery workers in
Tacoma start at just $16.53 an hour. Meat cutters, the best paid, top
out at $29.70. Making things worse, many grocery workers are denied
full-time hours.

“The labor movement backed Initiative 1 because housing costs keep
rising faster than wages, forcing more and more workers into housing
insecurity,” said Local 367 President Michael Hines at a December
press conference.

“To secure a decent standard of living, dignity, and hope for the
future, our movement needs to look beyond the workplace and fight for
the whole worker where they live,” Hines said.

TACOMA FOR ALL

Initiative 1 began as a joint campaign of Local 367 and the Tacoma
chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Our local’s
partnership with DSA has helped excite and activate members,
especially younger members,” Hines added. “The partnership was
critical to our victory.”

With an initial donation of $6,000 from the union, Tacoma for All
[[link removed]] was launched in the summer of 2022 to
advance a bold housing policy platform
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and to organize tenants into action. By last February, when 120 union
and community activists gathered to kick off the signature drive, the
Pierce County Central Labor Council and numerous community groups were
backing the campaign.

Fueled by 100 volunteers, Tacoma for All gathered 7,300 signatures to
qualify the initiative for the November ballot, and knocked 20,000
doors to win the vote. Hundreds of small donors contributed most of
the $130,000 raised.

Within Local 367, the 21 members of the executive board agreed to lead
by example, with nearly all volunteering to collect signatures,
phone-bank members, and canvass to get out the vote. A dozen other
members also put in volunteer shifts, and more than 20 provided video
testimonies for social media highlighting how Initiative 1 would
impact them.

All told, Local 367 donated $17,000 and dedicated significant staff
resources to the effort. In August, Whalen was hired off the shop
floor to become the local’s community and political organizer,
leading up the union’s get-out-the-vote campaign. In the final
weeks, member leaders and staff systematically reached out to the
local’s 1,800 members registered to vote in Tacoma.

“This victory made me and my co-workers proud to be a part of Local
367,” said Whalen. “I think a lot of my co-workers are more
confident now, going into our next contract fight, knowing that the
community has our back and knowing that when we fight, we can win.”

BEATING CITY HALL

Before we started collecting signatures, the mayor and most city
council members dismissed our lobbying efforts. But in April, as it
became clear we would qualify the Tenant Bill of Rights for the
November ballot, Mayor Victoria Woodards rolled out the red carpet for
negotiations.

By offering us “a seat at the table,” the mayor hoped our
coalition would agree to a weak compromise rather than turning in
signatures to force a popular vote. The implicit threat was that city
leaders would put forward a competing, watered-down tenant rights
initiative.

We faced two potential traps here. On the one hand, if we rejected
negotiations, city leaders and landlords could have dismissed us as
“uncompromising radicals” (they tried this anyway, but it didn’t
stick). On the other hand, if we kept negotiations with city leaders
behind closed doors, we risked alienating our activist base, who were
correctly skeptical of the mayor’s intentions.

So after the first of five negotiating meetings, we publicly committed
that:

* any compromise offered by the mayor would be put to a democratic
vote of all supporters at an open conference on June 11, just before
the signature deadline;
* we would publicly report on our meetings with city leaders; and
* we would continue going all out to collect enough signatures to
qualify our initiative.

In the end, the city’s alternative was so weak that the 100
supporters who gathered on June 11 voted unanimously to turn in the
signatures and put Initiative 1 on the ballot.

In July, the City Council voted 7-2 to put forward its competing
initiative, but made a critical legal blunder in the process. Tacoma
for All and Local 367 filed a lawsuit to knock it off the November
ballot. We won, clearing the way for a clean up-or-down fight for
Initiative 1.

THE LANDLORD OPPOSITION

We spent the entire nine-month campaign warning supporters that
landlords would spend big to stop us. But for months they hid their
faces, hoping the city council would derail our efforts. When that
failed, corporate landlords came out swinging in the final month of
the campaign.

The landlords spent a record-shattering $371,000, including $200,000
from the National Realtors Association alone. All told, more than 90
percent of the opposition money came from outside of Tacoma—no
surprise, since a big majority of Tacoma’s landlords don’t live in
the city.

Nonetheless, their deceptive and divisive campaign of ads, mailers,
text messages, and robo-calls clearly had an impact. Most of it was
outright lies. They claimed Initiative 1 would protect “criminals”
and “squatters” from eviction, increase taxes on working people,
and destroy small landlords.

In the end, in a close vote polarized along class lines, our
grassroots campaign proved more powerful. In many working-class and
racially diverse precincts we won by more than 80 percent, while
voters in wealthier waterfront neighborhoods turned out in big numbers
against us.

This victory raised the confidence of tenants and union members in
Tacoma—demonstrating our power when we organize, and putting on
display how different the bosses’ interests and workers’ interests
are. Our coalition is already discussing what we should take on next.

_Ty Moore was the campaign manager for Initiative 1. He began working
as a political and community organizer with UFCW Local 367 in
January._

* Tenant Protections; UFCW Local 367; DSA; Tacoma
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* Washington;
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