EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS 
(Topics below: Family Leave Insurance --
Minimum Wage & Tip Credit -- Overtime Pay & Wage-Hour Standards)

Family Leave Insurance

BACKGROUND -- Family leave became a workplace issue in the 1980s because, by that time, a majority of women had entered the workplace. By 1989, 67 percent of women with children under 3 were in the workforce, and the "typical" family of four with a working father and a mother who stayed at home caring for the children shrunk to only 7 percent of the population.

This huge shift caused great pressure for more workplace flexibility. The intent of family leave laws is to promote family stability and economic security.

Two laws govern most of the current family leave practice. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (which replaced our state’s Family Leave Law) provides a total of 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth, adoption or serious illness. Leave can be taken for the serious illness of a spouse, child or parent. The key issue in the FMLA is job security.

The second law that covers many workers in our state is known as the Family Care Law. It allows parents to use their own accrued sick leave to care for a sick child. It was sometimes called the "chicken pox bill" because it was meant to deal with those relatively minor but unavoidable childhood illnesses that are not covered under the "serious illness" category of family leave.

The important part of this Family Care Law is that it provides limited paid leave. The problem with most family leave is that most workers cannot afford to take unpaid leave.

LABOR’S POSITION -- The Washington State Labor Council supports creating a new Family Leave Insurance program. When workers must take care of serious health conditions in their families, they should be assured both job security and economic security.

Currently, 40 percent of the workforce doesn’t have access to any family leave because they work for employers not covered by FMLA. And nearly half of the workers in our state have no access to paid sick leave, so they cannot use our state’s Family Care Law either.

California has already implemented a paid family leave program, and several other states are looking at similar approaches. In Washington, we can easily institute a Family Leave Insurance plan by using the already-in-place infrastructure of our state’s workers’ compensation program.

Family Leave Insurance offers a simple solution to one of the most important problems faced by both workers and businesses -- a cost-effective way to help workers balance their responsibilities and help companies remain competitive. Businesses benefit because when employees come to work sick or distracted by family illnesses, it costs $180 billion annually in lost productivity. Paid family leave will reduce absenteeism, turnover and will reduce the risk of spreading disease in the workplace.

1989 -- HB 1581, the State Family Leave Law, provided up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 24-month period for the birth, adoption or care of terminally ill children, providing job security for workers to return to their jobs with the same level of pay. Passed and signed into law.

1993 -- The federal FMLA passed Congress and replaced our state family leave law. It provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period, with coverage extended to seriously ill children, spouses, parents or the workers themselves, and provided that any health care coverage be maintained by the employer during the family leave. Although state law applied only to employers with 100 or more employees, the federal FMLA broadened coverage to all employers with 50 or more employees.

2001 -- The Washington Family Care Law is expanded to allow workers to use their own paid sick leave to care for ill family members, including spouses, parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, and adult children.

2004 -- HB 2399 introduced to establish paid Family Leave Insurance, with a benefit of $250 per week for up to 5 weeks, financed by 2 cents per hour premiums to be paid equally by employers and employees. HB 2399 was heard in the House Labor and Commerce, but did not pass out of committee.

2005 -- SB 5069 proposed a Family Leave Insurance program similar to the 2004 version. Passed Senate 26-21, amended in House to exempt employers with 50 or fewer employee but allowing them to opt in, died without House vote.

2006 -- SB 6185 codifies federal FMLA into state statute, protecting Washington workers from the Bush administration 's efforts to redefine "serious illnesses" and weaken its provisions. Passed Senate 37-12, passed House 54-44, signed into law.

Minimum Wage & Tip Credit

BACKGROUND -- The Fair Labor Standards Act first set a national minimum wage in 1938. It set out to assure "the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers." Many states have supported that principle by enacting minimum wage laws of their own which exceed the federal minimum.

Free-market advocates and certain business interests opposed establishing the minimum wage and have resisted every proposed increase since. In some states, the restaurant industry has succeeded in passing "tip penalty" laws, which allow employers to pay tipped workers less than the minimum wage. Washington has no such law.

Until 1998, our state legislature or, via initiative, the people of our state acted every few years to increase the state minimum wage. These sporadic increases failed to keep pace with inflation and the value of the minimum wage eroded over time.

In 1998, the citizens of our state took the matter into their own hands. Initiative 688, filed by WSLC President Rick Bender, raised the state minimum wage and made Washington the first state to require automatic annual adjustments for inflation. (Oregon and six other states now also "index" their minimum wage.) Using only volunteers, some 288,000 signatures were collected and I-688 passed by a 66-34 margin.

Effective Jan. 1, 2007, the Washington state minimum wage is $7.93 an hour, or about $16,500 a year for a full-time worker. It is the highest in the nation. Oregon's is $7.80; California's is $7.50; and Alaska's is $7.15.

The federal minimum wage has been frozen at $5.15 an hour for nearly 10 years, but the Democrats who now control Congress plan to pass legislation to raise it early this year.

LABOR'S POSITION -- The Washington State Labor Council was proud to play a leading role in the coalition of church, community and labor groups who sponsored and supported the passage of Initiative 688. Its overwhelming approval by a 2-to-1 margin, despite the usual dire predictions and scare tactics of some in the business community, was a clear mandate from the voters: If you work full time, you shouldn’t live in poverty.

Another mandate came as voters made Washington the first state to index its minimum wage: We took the politics out of this issue and put the fairness back by stopping the value of the minimum wage from eroding each year.

But it is apparent that attempts to politicize the issue will not stop. Since I-688’s passage, business lobbying groups have sought to slow down or end the annual increases; some industries have sought exemptions for their workers; and the restaurant industry has fought for a tip penalty to deny annual increases to workers who earn tips.

These business lobbyists claim Washington's relatively high minimum wage makes the state less "competitive." But there is no evidence that minimum-wage paying industries have suffered demonstrable job loss as a result. Washington's high unemployment rate during the recent recession was caused by disproportionate in high-tech, aerospace and in other high-paying manufacturing sectors. Retail, restaurant, agriculture and other low-paying sectors continued to add jobs, even during the recession.

Supporters of repealing or amending I-688 want lawmakers to believe this issue is about the well-being of businesses. But the minimum wage was created to ensure the "health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers," not businesses.

The Washington State Labor Council opposes weakening or repealing our state's popular minimum-wage law, or creating tip penalties or sub-minimum wages for certain workers.

1937 -- Washington state sets a national precedent by instituting the first-ever minimum wage.

1996 -- Congress approved the last increase in the federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15.

1998 -- After a failed attempt to pass legislation, Initiative 688 passes 66-34 raising the state minimum wage in two steps to $6.50 and then indexing it to the inflation rate.

1999 -- HB 2104 would allow employers to pay tipped workers 85% of the minimum wage. It died in the House.

2001 -- HB 1973 would freeze the minimum wage for tipped workers, and then fix it at 75% of the minimum wage for everyone else. It died in the House.

2003 -- 13 bills introduced to freeze or lower the minimum wage, or establish a tip penalty. All failed with only one getting a vote. SB 5697 would freeze the minimum wage if the state unemployment rate is less than the federal rate. Had this been law since 1992, our minimum wage would have increased just 4% in 12 years, from $4.25 to $4.42. SB 5697 passed the Senate on a party-line 25-24 vote, but died in the House.

2004 -- SB 5697 (see above) again passes Senate, this time on a 27-22 vote and dies again in the House.

2005-06 -- SB 5774 and HB 1795 filed to establish tip penalty. Both die without a vote.

Visit the Economic Opportunity Institute's website -- www.econop.org/MinimumWage/Policy.htm -- which includes the policy brief "Still Working Well: Washington's Minimum Wage."

Overtime Pay & Wage-Hour Standards

BACKGROUND -- Some of the most important employment protections for working families today are part of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which sets minimum standards for wages and overtime. Under the FLSA’s overtime rules, some 80 million workers must be paid time-and-a-half when they work for more than 40 hours a week.

But the Bush administration has set out to roll back these standards and make it easier for businesses to have employees work more "flexible" hours without getting overtime pay. This effort included changing the rules regarding who can be exempted from overtime pay and a failed effort in Congress to change the 40-hour work week to an 80-hour work fortnight or some other "flex-time" proposal.

After a contentious debate in which both Republican-controlled houses of Congress voted against his proposal, the Bush administration changed the rules defining who may be exempted from overtime pay requirements. Under the new rules, millions of workers who earn more than $23,660 a year stand to lose their right to overtime pay.

But not in our state. Washington is one of 18 states (including Oregon) with its own rules describing who qualifies for overtime pay, and those state rules closely mirror the federal standards in place for decades before Bush's changes. Because the state standard exceeds the federal standard in this case—as it does with the minimum wage, for example—the state standard applies.

In 2003, in anticipation of Bush's overtime pay changes, Senate Republicans pushed a bill seeking conformance between state and federal wage-and-hour laws that would not have affected the minimum wage but would have jeopardized the state overtime exemption standards. After labor's opposition to this "stealth attack" on overtime pay and wage-and-hour standards, the bill died.

LABOR’S POSITION -- Labor is adamantly opposed to the Bush administration's changes in the overtime pay rules. Their assertion that the new rules—written by corporate attorneys who specialize in fighting OT pay claims—could actually increase the number of workers who qualify doesn't pass the straight-face test.

Overtime pay is not a luxury or a bonus of some kind, it is something that millions of American workers count on to meet their families' basic needs. The FLSA was designed not only to reward workers who choose to work extraordinarily long hours, but to encourage employers to hire a sufficient number of workers. By all accounts, these laws have succeeded and labor sees no justification for changing them at the behest of powerful corporate interests.

The Washington State Labor Council has fought hard to protect workers in this state from President Bush's assault on their paychecks, and will continue to do so.

2003 -- SB 5462 would have made state wage-and-hour laws, including the rules defining who can be exempted from overtime pay, conform with federal standards. The bill was opposed by the WSLC. It passed the Senate 25-24 on a party-line vote, but died in the House.

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Copyright © 2007  — Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO