Members of the Seattle City Council demanded action Friday following a damning investigation into workplace culture in Seattle City Light.
The investigation, made public last week, found a group of front-line workers had woven alcohol into their work, stocking city trucks with booze, showing up to work drunk, bartending and making performance reviews contingent on buying drinks.
The report also found repeated instances of sexual harassment, including groping, sexual advances from superiors, showing porn at work, dumping water on a female worker and creating a general fratlike atmosphere.
“My heart is pounding at the level of anger that I feel about what our employees have been subjected to,” Councilmember Cathy Moore told City Light’s leadership during a meeting Friday, “as well as the incredible risks that they have put other employees at, as well as the risk that they put our general public at.”
The investigation focused on one group within Seattle City Light, responsible for distribution and transmission in the downtown core. The findings implicated 40 out of 90 people in the group and resulted in discipline for more than 30 workers, including five terminations and seven suspensions.
In response to the investigation, Dawn Lindell, Seattle City Light CEO, said the utility is working to change the culture. City Light has established a mandatory reporting requirement to discourage middle management from keeping quiet and publicized channels for employees to file complaints.
Lindell said the agency is also requiring supervisors to make more frequent site visits and establish frequent and random inspections of city trucks and work areas.
“We will not tolerate drinking or recreational drug use before work, at breaks, at lunch, dinner or between work and overtime shifts. This is a terminable offense,” she said. “It puts our professionals and our public at risk, and is 100% unacceptable.”
Council members said they wanted to see more. Moore said she wants to see random drug and alcohol tests.
“I don’t really accept that these minimal steps that have been taken are actually going to make much difference,” she said.
Within Seattle City Light, Lindell said the council’s anger is shared. The union representing the employees in question has been cooperative with management in trying to root out the issues. New management has held regular meetings with front-line crews.
Lindell cautioned, though, that it takes years for a culture to take root and it could take years to expunge it. Meanwhile, more reports of misconduct are likely to arise. In the week since the report was released, the utility has already fielded another complaint.
“I do believe we’ll continue to have misconduct because with 1,800 employees, people will make mistakes,” she said. “I don’t believe that we still continue to have such a cone of silence.”
One question since the report’s release is why it took so long for these issues to be uncovered. The city has records of complaints going back to 2014, with one in 2017 mirroring the investigation’s findings almost exactly: a city truck serving as a rolling bar with drinks and loud music, a crew chief downing four drinks before driving, marijuana on the job and sharing of porn.
Lindell, who became head of City Light in 2024, acknowledged the complaints were buried. The challenge, she said, was they were made anonymously and were therefore difficult to investigate. On other occasions, they were kept quiet or treated as one-off issues rather than being representative of a larger culture.
“People raising these concerns chose to remain anonymous. That is the issue,” Lindell said. “So what we have to do is create a psychologically safe environment where people feel confident that leadership hears them and that leadership will act on what they tell them.”
The investigation was order by Mayor Bruce Harrell in 2023 and took two years to unfold, in part because its author — outside lawyer Cathryn Dammel — needed to interview some people many times before they felt comfortable opening up. It cost the city $670,864.
As it proceeded, five employees were put on paid leave — one for more than two years.
Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck asked City Light to return for regular updates on progress.
“I join many people in feeling horrified and unsettled and upset about the findings,” she said.