Due to new law, Chinook Enterprises could lose jobs for people with disabilities

It can be difficult for adults with developmental disabilities to find employment. But because of Mount Vernon’s Chinook Enterprises, started in 1980 by Samish Island resident Rob Martin, this job search has gotten a little easier in Skagit County.

“[The job search] was challenging back in 1980, and still is challenging, to a large degree,” Rebecca Murray, Chinook communications and public relations representative, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Martin started out by going door-to-door offering services such as lawn-mowing and yard work on behalf of a group of adults with developmental disabilities.

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Now, nearly 40 years later, nonprofit Chinook Enterprises helps 200 people with special needs or other challenges find a job each year. Since it began, Chinook has aided over 1,000 individuals in the search to find “employment with employers in Skagit County,” Murray said.

The Grounds Team started by Martin in 1980 now beautifies the lawns and flowerbeds of entities such as the Port of Skagit, the Port of Anacortes, Skagit Valley College, and Skagit Valley Hospital.

“This small industry that he started has grown to a group of 14 people, 75 percent of [whom] have various disabilities, today, who take care of municipalities’ grounds, maintenance,” Murray said. “And it has grown to 850 acres a week of maintaining grounds in Skagit County.”

Nine of the 14 team members live with special needs, such as autism. Others are recovering from substance addiction and homelessness. They earn between $14 and $17 per hour, along with benefits.

Profits from Chinook Enterprises’ contract manufacture services fund these social projects.

However, a Senate bill passed during the 2017-2018 Legislative session could take away the Grounds Team members’ jobs.

Senate Bill 5493 made it so that anyone who operates power equipment such as lawn mowers or leaf blowers on local or state government property must be paid the prevailing wage rate of $59.49 per hour.

Murray said that this affects “any landscape company that has a contract with a state [or municipal] agency.”

When Chinook Enterprises attempted to renew its contract for 2019 with the Port of Anacortes, which would begin in March, the port told them that the contract could not be renewed because the labor would be too expensive. The Port of Anacortes represents over half of the Grounds Team’s work.

“Chinook Enterprises would lose 70 percent of all of its ground business,” Murray said. “And by next year, when the remainder of the contracts with the college and the hospital were finished, we would lose that work as well. So essentially, our entire grounds maintenance division would be gone.”

Murray said that a wage of nearly $60 an hour is not a fair return on this type of unskilled labor.

“No worker doing this kind of work merits $59 an hour … I don’t know many people who make $59 an hour working full-time all year long,” she said. “What an amazing salary that would be for cutting grass.”

What’s more, she said, while it may not go as far in Seattle, a $14 to $17 per hour wage is good for rural Skagit County.

“This is an entry-level job, unskilled labor,” she said. “For that, $14 an hour is actually a decent wage.”

The bill also negatively impacts affordable housing, in that it affects contracts with shelters for building homeless and domestic violence shelters. Murray said that the Associated General Contractors and Associated Builders and Contractors have filed a lawsuit against the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.

“[There are] all these unintended consequences of the bill,” Murray said.

Chinook has been working with legislators in Olympia all week to try to change the legislation. Almost 100 people have written letters to the Department of Labor and Industries on behalf of the grounds-keeping workers.

If you’d like to send a letter of your own, you can get a template for a letter on Chinook Enterprises’ website. It appears as though the power of free speech may be working, but Murray said that Chinook still needs all the help it can get.

“It looks like we are getting some traction, and it is possible — is possible — that this will be fixed next week,” Murray said.

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