[TRU Research] New ORCA for All survey? etc.

[Katie Wilson]

Hey folks,

Happy new year! 2020 is the year we extend employer-subsidized transit passes to thousands more Seattle workers. Our goal is to pass legislation in the first half of the year.

TRU’s organizing team will be meeting later this month to develop our organizing plan. But we also need a research & data plan. I’m wondering if we can schedule a meeting soon to discuss what role this group might be play in the campaign. Here’s a doodle poll <https://doodle.com/poll/cdvi9gp8shz4nprp> for evenings the week starting Jan. 27. If you’re interested in this discussion, please fill out the poll by the end of this week. (I chose 5:30-7pm as the meeting time, but we could shift this earlier or later depending on people’s schedules— if you prefer a different start time, maybe make a note of that in the poll.)

My main idea so far is that we could design an online survey to collect input on the details of the legislation. Something like:

Here’s our basic proposal: employers with over 500 employees worldwide have to offer a 50% transit subsidy. What do you think of it? (Hate it to love it, scale 1-10 or whatever)
Here’s ten ways the proposal could get more complicated, what do you think of each one?
- include an upper tier for employers with 1000+ or 5000+ employees in Seattle, require 75% or 90% or 100% transit subsidy
- exempt non-profits
- include v. exclude part-time, temporary/seasonal, and contract employees
- etc.
Any other thoughts or ideas? (open-ended)

And maybe we also do a survey specifically for businesses… not sure if that’s a good idea, but worth considering.

Maybe there are other projects we could work on too that would be helpful to the campaign at this point. For example, it would be great to get a better sense of how many employees our legislation would impact. It’s possible we could do some back-of-the-napkin calculations and be able to say “this would result in at least X workers being offered better transit benefits” or something like that.

Katie

Katie Wilson
General Secretary
Transit Riders Union
https://transitriders.org
206-781-7204

The Transit Riders Union is a democratic organization of working and poor people, including students, seniors, and people with disabilities, taking control over our own lives, and building up the power we need to change society for the good of humanity and of the planet. We will fight to preserve, expand, and improve the public transportation system in Seattle and beyond, so that every human being has access to safe, affordable, and reliable public transit.

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