House Bill 1181 amends and adds multiple sections to chapter 49.46 RCW. It sets a statutory minimum wage schedule for workers 18 and older for 2026–2031 with an annual inflation adjustment beginning Jan. 1, 2032; requires employers to pay tips, gratuities, and qualifying service charges to employees in addition to the hourly minimum wage; directs the director of the Department of Labor and Industries to set a minimum wage for workers under 18; and adds new paid-leave requirements (paid vacation and paid bereavement leave beginning Jan. 1, 2027, in addition to the paid sick leave regime already in effect since Jan. 1, 2018). The bill also adds a workplace-protections section prohibiting employers from treating required paid leave as an absence that may lead to discipline and forbids retaliation for exercising leave rights. The bill creates new, driver-specific rules for transportation network companies (TNCs) and their drivers. It requires TNCs to guarantee minimum per-minute, per-mile, and per-trip compensation (with specified rates for trips originating in cities over 600,000 population and lower rates for other trips) and to adjust those amounts annually; requires TNCs to remit all tips to drivers and restrict deductions; requires electronic trip receipts and weekly driver pay summaries; requires an accessible system for drivers to request paid time; requires driver notifications in multiple languages; creates earned paid sick and earned paid vacation rules for drivers tied to “passenger platform time” (accrual and use thresholds, carryover caps, payment timing, and expiration after prolonged inactivity); establishes a $0.15 per-trip fee to fund a driver resource center; and authorizes voluntary per-trip deduction contributions to that fund under specified conditions. The bill also adds anti-retaliation and verification rules for leave use and specifies certain construction-industry pay-out exceptions at separation. The bill creates new enforcement and procedural tools. The director may issue stop-work orders to cease an employer’s business operations for violations, require employers to pay employees for scheduled hours during a stop-work period, impose probationary reporting conditions before release, and assess civil penalties up to $5,000 per day for operating in violation of a stop-work order with penalties indexed to inflation; employers may seek judicial review within 72 hours subject to the stay standards in RCW 34.05.550. The bill requires TNCs to negotiate and implement an account-deactivation appeals process with a driver resource center for “eligible” deactivations (three or more consecutive days) that includes notice, information sharing, an informal resolution period, and a formal adjudication option with a neutral panel or arbitration; the department must review and approve such agreements. Several details in the provided text are incomplete or inconsistent in the extracted facts. Sections referenced as providing paid vacation and bereavement leave are not fully included here; some provisions about minimum increments for driver sick leave use conflict across extracts (one part states four-hour minimum increments, another states one-hour minimum increments); the identity of the department responsible for some approvals is at times unspecified in the extracts; and portions of the bill are cut off mid‑provision, so full text for certain procedural, penalty, and verification rules is not available in these excerpts.

If enacted, most Washington employers will face higher and predictable labor costs: the hourly minimum wage for adults rises in scheduled steps from $17.50 in 2026 to $25.00 in 2031 and then will adjust annually for inflation, employers must pay tips and service charges on top of that wage, and paid sick leave (already in effect), paid vacation and paid bereavement leave create additional paid-time-off obligations (vacation and bereavement generally starting January 1, 2027). The labor department is given stronger enforcement tools — including stop-work orders that require employers to pay employees their normal scheduled pay during the shutdown and civil penalties up to $5,000 per day for violations (with inflation adjustments) — so noncompliant employers face higher financial and operational risks; some specific leave rules and exceptions referenced in the bill are not included in the facts provided, so a few implementation details remain unclear. Transportation network companies and their drivers are especially affected: TNCs must meet new minimum per-minute, per-mile, or per-trip payment floors (with different rates for large-city trips), remit all tips to drivers, provide drivers with sick and vacation benefits paid at each driver’s recent average hourly compensation, deliver timely electronic receipts and regular pay summaries, and begin remitting a $0.15 per-trip fee to fund a driver resource center (starting July 1, 2024) while offering a voluntary per-trip deduction option. TNCs will need new operational systems, reporting and remittance processes, and to negotiate and implement a driver deactivation appeals process with an independent driver resource center (including mediation/arbitration steps), which increases administrative costs and introduces new compliance and arbitration obligations; some procedural details about approvals and exact timelines are not fully shown in the extracted facts.