Feliks Banel admits ‘evolving’ perspective on Seattle government

KIRO Radio’s Feliks Banel has been filling in on the “Tom and Curley” show all week and hates to admit that his opinion on Seattle government has slightly evolved after sitting with John Curley.

Nowhere did the two’s perspectives merge more than during discussion of retail workers who pushed a “secure scheduling” proposal at the Seattle City Council committee meeting Tuesday. The proposed law is intended to protect workers from erratic schedules. It includes certain mandates, such as requiring employers to post work schedules two weeks in advance, give available hours to existing part-time employees before hiring new workers, and to pay additional “predictability pay” when changes are made to the posted schedule, according to The Seattle Times.

Related: Council has built in ‘basic bias’ against the Seattle employer

While Banel said he sees “the intent” behind the argument coming from the Seattle government, he has difficulty agreeing with supporters — especially after listening to their comments at the meeting. One barista said he “was a machine” for almost two years and that employees need time to “relax and remember what it’s like to be alive.”

Curley had some fun with the quote, adding some soothing classical music to the barista’s complaint, and criticized his remarks.

“That’s what it is: Work is work. You do not have a right to relax. This is your job,” Curley said. “Did somebody force you? Is this like Cuba where they’re going to determine where they pick the employment for you?”

This led to Banel recognizing that the Seattle government went years without taking on these types of employee-employer issues.

Experiments with Seattle government

Banel: It seems like they’ve been front and center the last couple years. It’s just been a battleground. City Hall has become this place – I don’t know if it’s Democracy or what it is — but these issues seem to be coming to the forefront over and over again in Seattle as this kind of experimental place.

Curley: It’s sand in the gears and they are the sand. Why are they in there? Who is pushing the city council to involve themselves in these contracts between employers and employees?

Banel: As I’m evolving here, part of me is starting to see a parenting metaphor. It’s almost like everybody is asking for everything nowadays. All the different things outlined in this bill, other stuff with the police precinct. It’s like, as a good parent, you don’t give your child everything they ask for. They might ask for sugary treats, a toy. You might give them some of them and you explain why they don’t get the thing they want sometimes.

Curley: Do you want more security? Then you give up freedom. And that’s the entire argument. We’ll give you more security but you’ll lose freedom. You can create a false reality by giving $15 an hour, but the guy you don’t see is the guy whose hours are cut or he goes to part-time. But we never hear from him because it’s a false reality: the economy cannot be denied because the rules of economics cannot be changed no matter what those city council members say.

Banel: We live in an age where everything is constantly in flux. Things don’t always stay the same – we’ve seen that on the national stage as well. The things we consider institutions will radically shift in ways we don’t expect or know about because of outside forces, inside force or whatever. So this is just temporary. The way the city council is focused on this issue now, it may be that way for a decade but then it will shift back the other way. It’s kind of this unfinished experiment of American democracy.

Curley: I wish you would stop putting things in such a balanced way.

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