WSLC 2006 Legislative Report

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fair Share Health Care: No fair vote, but progress nonetheless
Family and Medical Leave: Protection from Bush's tampering
Apprenticeship: A win-win for DOT and high-school outreach
PRESIDENT'S COLUMN: The middle brings results— and risks
Child-care providers: They win a voice to raise care and wages
Union rights: No action on labor law reform, employer intimidation
Civil rights: Nondiscrimination bill finally passes!

This is an abbreviated version of the 2006 WSLC Legislative Report. Union members can get a free printed copy, which includes stories on offshoring of state services, election and campaign reform, the Health Care Disclosure Act, performance audits of tax preferences, workers' compensation, the supplemental budget, biofuel standards, health care disclosure, collective bargaining for ferry workers, and much much more.

One of the Washington State Labor Council’s top priorities for the 2006 legislative session was the restoration of fair and reasonable unemployment benefits. With the passage of ESSB 6885, that goal was achieved -- although a significant price was paid.

In 2003, Sen. Jim Honeyford (R-Sunnyside) and The Boeing Co. spearheaded an extraordinary attack on those benefits. But this year ESSB 6885, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), restored the worst of those 2003 cuts, the punitive four-quarter averaging that cost some laid-off workers hundreds of dollars per week. The benefit calculation formula now permanently returns to the average of a worker’s two highest quarters of income.

But in order to restore two-quarter averaging, Washington workers must now accept a new lower multiplier of 3.85. Prior to 2003, it was 4.0. So workers are giving up $40-$50 million a year in benefits so that other workers don’t have to return to the pain and suffering that occurred under three- and four-quarter averaging between January 2004 and April 2005. Hundreds of families lost their homes and their life savings under that pernicious system, and so it is a very good thing that we have permanently restored the two-quarter model.

ESSB 6885 also restored "liberal construction" to the law. That means that in gray-area cases involving unique circumstances, the unemployed worker gets the benefit of the doubt. This tie-goes-to-the-worker liberal construction language is included in the UI laws of 44 states. It is part of the UI mainstream, L-word notwithstanding. In fact, ALL employment law is liberally construed, so removing liberal construction from the law in 2003 made absolutely no sense.

Finally, the bill allows spouses of military personnel transferred to another base to receive unemployment benefits if they cannot find work in the new location. This change was a no-brainer.

On the tax side, ESSB 6885 rewards the business community with more than $1 billion in cost savings, including taxing employers on a lower basis (four quarters) than that upon which benefits are paid (two quarters). This will save them a bundle, but also will create a lot of socialized costs. That means some businesses pay less into the system than their employees take out, and other businesses must pay more to subsidize them. Historically, this tax inequity has caused strife within the business community, but workers should be alarmed as well. Inevitably, the only thing feuding business interests can agree upon is cutting benefits.

Confusing the issue even further, the legislature gave up an opportunity to reduce socialized costs by including language in ESSB 6885 written by the Employment Security Department to clamp down on corporate fraud in the system. Some employers accept unemployment benefits for their owners while they continue working and operating the business. This type of fraud just shifts cost onto honest employers. But ESSB 6885 failed to include the ESD language trying to address this corporate fraud.

Another disappointment was that ESSB 6885 codified the remaining benefit cuts from 2003, including the maximum-benefit freeze and the reduction in maximum benefit duration from 30 to 26 weeks. This aspect of the bill renders moot a court challenge to the 2003 legislation, and constitutes a $200 million a year gift to the business community.

All that said, the WSLC considers the restoration of two-quarter averaging to be a significant victory and thanks all the legislators who led the charge. In particular, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown (D-Spokane) and Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) who brought the original version of the bill -- before the "compromising" began -- to an early vote, which forced the business community to the negotiating table.

Another of the 2006 priorities of the Washington State Labor Council -- and many other unions, businesses, and community, religious and health care organizations -- was the Fair Share Health Care bill, which aimed to stop the "race to the bottom" on health benefits.

Though it was blocked by House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-Seattle) from getting a vote, the bill received significant public support and prompted a remarkable debate about the health care crisis and employers’ responsibility to participate in the solution. Ultimately, Gov. Chris Gregoire pledged to work on developing a revised version of the bill, and Speaker Chopp has said he will work on this issue as well.

SB 6356 and HB 2517, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) and Rep. Eileen Cody (D-Seattle), would have required companies with more than 5,000 employees to spend at least 9 percent of their payroll costs on employee health care, or pay a fee to the state making up the difference. That money would go toward providing health care for people who can’t afford it. The idea is to stop large corporations like Wal-Mart from shifting their costs onto taxpayers.

State reports released mid-session added fuel to the Fair Share fire, confirming that Wal-Mart had more than 3,100 employees on state-subsidized health programs in 2004, the majority of them full-timers. The cost to state taxpayers was more than $12 million.

Fair Share health care supporters

The Fair Share Health Care bill didn’t come to a vote, but the following legislators are on record as supporting it:

SPONSORS: SB 6356 -- Sens. Kohl-Welles (prime), Keiser, McAuliffe, Franklin, Thibaudeau, Fairley, Prentice, and Kline. HB 2517 -- Reps. Cody (prime), Conway, Chase, Morrell, Appleton, Green, Wood, Hasegawa, Hudgins, Ormsby, Miloscia, Dickerson, Kenney, Moeller, McDermott, Sells, Hunt, Williams, Simpson, Roberts, Schual-Berke, Lantz, McIntire and Kagi.

The following State Representatives signed a letter urging a House vote on the Fair Share bill -- Appleton, Campbell, Chase, Cody, Conway, Darneille, Dickerson, Dunshee, Eickmeyer, Ericks, Green, Hasegawa, Hudgins, Hunt, Kagi, Kenney, Kirby, Lantz, Lovick, McCoy, McDermott, Moeller, Morrell, Morris, O’Brien, Ormsby, Pettigrew, Quall, Roberts, Santos, Sells, Simpson, B. Sullivan, P. Sullivan, Wallace, Williams and Wood.

Although almost all of the Senate Democrats supported the Fair Share bill, with their narrow 26-23 majority, there weren’t enough votes to pass it. But the House, where Democrats hold a 55-43 edge, was a different story. The Fair Share Coalition believes there were plenty of votes to pass the bill, but Speaker Chopp decided not to bring it to a vote. He received a letter signed by more than 40 representatives -- including one Republican -- urging him to bring the bill to a vote (see the list of legislators who signed it at right). But Chopp wasn’t swayed.

To be fair, House approval would have turned up the heat in the Senate, but would not have ensured its passage there. However, it would have been nice to have our state representatives go on record on this concept that is supported by fully 83 percent of Washington voters polled.

The good news is that, since the Fair Share bill’s demise, both Gov. Chris Gregoire and Speaker Chopp have said they want to continue working on this important issue.

At the WSLC Legislative Conference, Gregoire pledged to work on a "perfected" version in 2007, saying: "There are a lot of really good employers who want this done and have reached out to me and said, ‘We need to make this happen. We need a level playing field in the state of Washington, and we’re not going to reduce our health-care benefits in order to make that a level playing field’."

The WSLC thanks the many unions involved in the Fair Share Coalition -- in particular, the United Food and Commercial Workers -- and the business, religious and community organizations and leaders who supported this campaign. We also thank Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, State Treasurer Mike Murphy and the other elected officials who supported the bill. For more information, including a list of supporting organizations, visit www.FairShareHealthCare.net.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which covers employers with 50 or more workers, ensures those employees may take up to 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 here is job security.

But the FMLA is under attack by the Bush administration. Much as it did with overtime pay, the White House plans to change the rules -- which doesn’t require congressional approval. They plan to redefine "serious illness" and other changes that make it harder for workers to qualify for FMLA leave.

SB 6185 passed, codifying the FMLA into state statute, and protecting it from the White House’s anti-worker tampering. The bill easily passed the Senate 37-12 (see Vote #2). It was later approved by the House 54-44 (Vote #10) and signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire. The WSLC did not count three House Democrats’ "no" votes made in protest of the unfortunate decision to remove coverage for domestic partners from the original bill.

Thanks go to SB 6185 sponsor Sen. Karen Keiser (D-Des Moines) and the House bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle).

Put simply, a vote against SB 6185 was a vote against the FMLA. That means 12 senators and 41 representatives either oppose or want it to be harder for people to take unpaid leave to deal with a family crisis without compounding that crisis by losing their jobs.

"Running Start" for the trades OK'd

The Legislature approved HB 2789 to expand apprenticeship opportunities for high school graduates and spur more educational outreach to ensure students know about these excellent training programs.

Sponsored by Rep. Dave Quall (D-Mount Vernon), HB 2789 easily passed the House 89-6 and the Senate 42-2. The lone holdouts were Reps. Barbara Bailey, Bruce Chandler, Larry Crouse, Jim Dunn, Ed Orcutt and Lynn Schindler; plus Sens. Jim Honeyford and Bob Morton.

Gov. Chris Gregoire got a huge ovation in her 2006 State of the State speech when she said she supported a "Running Start" program for the trades. That’s what this bill aims to accomplish. Given the impending retirement of baby boomers with those building and construction skills, HB 2789 is truly a win-win..

Last fall, even as oil companies gouged them with extraordinarily high prices, voters elected to keep the 9.5-cent gas tax increase approved by legislators in 2005. The people of this state understood that this $8.5 billion investment in our transportation infrastructure was overdue and necessary.

It was a watershed vote for good jobs and our state’s economy. But it also raised concerns because the Department of Transportation is not covered under the state’s apprenticeship utilization requirements that create job opportunities for young workers and train the workforce of tomorrow. For most large public works projects, 15% of the labor hours must be performed by apprentices with requirements for minority and female workers. But DOT projects were exempted.

This year, legislators saw the importance of removing that DOT exemption, and did so with the passage of SB 6480. Sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), it passed the Senate 30-11 (Vote #3), the House 71-27 and was signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire. The WSLC counted the 68-30 vote (Vote #2) on the House version, HB 3003 sponsored by Rep. Steve Conway (D-Tacoma), because that early-session vote more accurately portrayed support for DOT apprenticeship. Three representatives later switched their votes once it became clear it would pass.

E2SSB 6480 implements the apprenticeship utilization requirements using the following time frame:

By the time it’s fully implemented, it is estimated that at least 83% of the total funding for all DOT projects within the state will have the apprenticeship utilization requirement.

Over the next 10 years the DOT has a budget of about $12 billion. These apprenticeship utilization requirements, coupled with the DOT budget, will insure that apprentices are being trained for the future and that Washington is building a larger, skilled workforce.

"I would personally like to thank everyone who attended the public hearings on E2SSB 6480 and those who came forward to testify," said Dave Johnson, Executive Secretary of the Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO, "especially the apprentices whose personal testimony captured the interest of the committee members."

The WSLC is very pleased that apprenticeship as a training model is finally getting the recognition and respect it so richly deserves. We, in organized labor, will continue to do all we can to insure that apprenticeship is utilized to address our state’s future workforce development needs.

Before the 2006 legislative session began, media pundits predicted the short 60-day session would be uneventful, with little more than a supplemental budget passing, so legislators could skip town to focus on their re-elections.

They were partly right. Election-minded legislators got out of Dodge a day early, but it was wrong to assume nothing would get accomplished.

Thanks to the hands-on leadership and effective negotiating skills of Gov. Chris Gregoire, legislators reached breakthrough agreements on issues they’d grappled with for years. They passed major bills on unemployment insurance, medical malpractice, regional transportation governance, a landmark water deal for Eastern Washington, and more. These bills and others, like tough sex-offender sentencing, actually had Republicans complaining that Democrats were stealing all their good campaign issues... by resolving them!

It provided a stark contrast with the other Washington, where Republicans are in charge. There, the minority party’s traditional constituencies -- labor unions, environmental interests, etc. -- are treated like they have infectious diseases and never consulted. Here, Democrats in control invited Republican constituencies -- corporations, agriculture and insurance industries, etc. -- into negotiations to resolve conflicts.

(Also in contrast, state Democrats set aside nearly $1 billion in reserves to deal with next session’s budget. In D.C., this year’s budget from borrow-and-spend Republicans amounts to a stunning $156,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in America.)

In sum, this state’s Democrats governed from the middle. That explains the agreements, their political strategy to retain majorities, and is a big reason why the Washington State Labor Council’s 2006 Voting Record has some surprisingly big numbers, from both Republicans and Democrats.

Believe me, I’d like to report that Republican legislators’ dramatically improved labor voting records and Democrats’ proliferation of perfect 100% scorecards signal of a new era of bipartisanship and cooperation on working families’ issues. But I can’t.

With the exception of the nondiscrimination bill, Family and Medical Leave, and a handful of others, the major bills passed in 2006 were negotiated agreements. As was the case with the unemployment insurance bill, both sides gave ground, and with opposing interests in agreement, the votes were easy and the passage near-unanimous.

So I would caution union members to take a look at legislators’ lifetime voting records when deciding who really supports our issues. Plus, the bill sponsorships listed with our voting record can offer a more accurate listing of who is willing to fight the good fight, and who simply holds their nose and gives us a negotiated vote.

The casualties of moderation -- in labor’s case -- were proposals like Fair Share Health Care, which lacked negotiated approval of the business community. Although we’re confident it had the votes to pass the House, we were denied the opportunity to find out.

And therein lies the danger of moving to the middle. When your base constituencies begin to feel compromise supersedes principle on issues they care about, they start to think of lawmakers as politicians and not advocates. Then, instead of doorbelling or volunteering for political campaigns, they decide to spend their weekends at home. It takes more than leaders to rally the troops to get out the vote, it takes troops that care deeply about their cause.

I thank and congratulate the Democratic leaders and the legislators of both parties who worked to pass the important bills described in this report. But I hope I never again hear a Democrat say, "labor has no place else to go." The truth is, union members do, even if it’s just staying at home.

Hundreds of child care workers organized by Service Employees International Union Local 925 descended on Olympia for hearings on the bipartisan Access to Quality Family Child Care bill. HB 2353 grants child-care workers the right to bargain wages, working conditions, state reimbursement rates and licensing rules with the governor’s office. It easily passed both the House 84-14 (Vote #4) and the Senate (Vote #5).

These child care providers -- independent business people who provide child care in their own homes -- told legislators that after expenses, low state reimbursement rates leave some of them earning less than $3 an hour. Washington state’s reimbursement percentile is one of the lowest in the nation, far lower than what is recommended by the federal government. Lawmakers from both parties got the message loud and clear: wages are just too low to recruit and retain qualified child care workers, especially for providers who care for children eligible for state subsidies.

Under HB 2353, providers can work together with the state to improve training, reimbursement rates, and the quality of early care and education. Thousands of these child-care providers voted last year to organize with SEIU 925 to achieve those goals.

"I get calls every week from mothers and fathers who can’t find care for their children," said Debbie Knighten, a provider in Kennewick. "Now providers like me will have a stronger voice to help parents get the quality care their kids need."

The bills’ prime sponsors were Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-Seattle) and Rep. Jan Shabro (R-Bonney Lake), and in the Senate, Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam) and Sen. Joe Zarelli (R-Ridgefield).

Intimidation, indoctrination
is legal — at work

Imagine if somebody had the right to force you to sit through a lecture about their personal politics, religion or anything else that is your private business, not theirs. Well, welcome to the workplace.

Today, it’s perfectly legal for companies to force their political, religious and union-organizing lectures on employees -- and fire those who refuse to listen. These mandatory meetings are politicizing the workplace as bosses insist employees support issues that "help" the company or oppose issues it deems unacceptable. These meetings are used to discourage unionization by fully 92% of employers facing organizing campaigns, according to a Cornell University study.

No worker should be forced to choose between losing their job and enduring an employer’s lecture that conflicts with their religious, political or union beliefs. HB 3068, the Freedom from Intimidation Act sponsored by Rep. Steve Conway (D-Tacoma), would give employees the freedom to walk away from this indoctrination. It was granted a hearing but no vote.

The consensus among pundits was that the 2006 Legislature accomplished a great deal during the short 60-day session. There’s no question that is true. But as will always be the case, some important issues were ignored. And one of those votes that never happened was on a resolution that, although symbolic, was of critical importance to unions.

Ask any union leader what the single biggest challenge facing organized labor is, and the answer will be the same: ineffective and unenforced labor laws have taken away American workers’ freedom to choose unions without employer intimidation and harassment.

House Joint Memorial 4036 would have put state legislators on record as supporting (or opposing) U.S. labor law reform in the form of the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA would require employers to recognize a union if a majority of workers sign cards authorizing representation. It also would provide mediation and arbitration in first contract disputes and establish stronger penalties for violating workers’ rights.

The EFCA is not a radical bill. It is co-sponsored by all six Democrats in Washington’s congressional delegation. At this writing, the House bill has 215 co-sponsors, three short of a majority, including several Republicans. There are 42 Senate co-sponsors, including both Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

HJM 4036 would also have condemned the Bush administration’s latest attempt to bust federal employee unions. The National Security Personnel System, which a federal judge recently ruled to be an illegal subversion of workers’ rights, would throw out civil service rules at the Department of Defense.

Although the vote would have been symbolic, it would have been nice to know which legislators support restoring the freedom to form unions, and which support the Bush administration’s union-busting.

The Anderson-Murray Nondiscrimination Bill granting civil rights to gays, lesbians and bisexuals finally passed the legislature in 2006 and was signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire. With the passage of HB 2661, Washington is now the 14th state to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"For some of us, and I think for the whole state, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day," said Rep. Ed Murray (D-Seattle) after the Senate’s 25-23 passage of the bill (Vote #1). As it had in several recent years, it easily passed the House 61-37 (Vote #1).

Murray has sponsored the legislation since 1995, when he was appointed to fill a House seat the same year that the measure’s previous sponsor, Rep. Cal Anderson, died of complications from AIDS.

The Washington State Labor Council is very pleased with the bill’s passage, having supported this legislation for many years. One day, it will be a source of historical curiosity -- and shame -- that it was once perfectly legal to fire or refuse to hire someone in Washington state simply because of his or her sexual orientation.

"Without laws like this, explicitly defining and including all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, union contracts represent the only promise of protection for LGBT workers," said Josh Cazares, Co-President of Pride At Work, a national LGBT constituency group of the AFL-CIO. "We could not be happier that a similar armor is being provided to non-union workers in Washington State. We hope and expect to see this trend continue throughout the nation."

Unfortunately, initiative profiteer Tim Eyman -- ballot products have been related to taxes -- has filed a referendum to repeal the nondiscrimination bill. Conservative Christian groups have vowed to back such ballot measures as part of a national strategy to get "their" voters to the polls this fall by fanning the flames of anti-gay bigotry.

There are many, many more stories included in the print version of the WSLC's 2006 Legislative Report on issues like offshoring of state services, election and campaign reform, the Health Care Disclosure Act, performance audits of tax preferences, workers' compensation, the supplemental budget, biofuel standards, health care disclosure, collective bargaining for ferry workers, and much much more. Union members may request a free copy.