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Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
a weekly report on the 2003 session

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10
A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
There's more to "competitiveness" than the usual corporate wish list

Addressing Washington state's revenue shortfall of more than $2 billion will dominate everything that happens in Olympia during the 2003 legislative session that begins Monday.  Although those most directly affected by budget cuts will begin pleading their case immediately with rallies, the nuts and bolts of budget negotiations won't begin in earnest until the next revenue forecast is issued in March.

In the meantime, energized with new talking points on "business competitiveness" and "government efficiency," some legislators will commence a familiar assault on the wages and working conditions of Washington families. Depending on which press conference or committee hearing you attend, our state's sluggish economy will be used as a reason to attack the minimum wage, the prevailing wage, workplace safety rules, collective bargaining rights, injured workers or the trump card of anti-worker rhetoric, the influence of labor unions in general.

The unpopular solutions being proposed have been rejected time and again over the past decade, in good economic times and bad.  Only their marketing has changed.

It is with a renewed sense of urgency that the usual suspects have spun our economic woes, voter rejection of Ref. 51 and support of Eyman initiatives into a mandate for government efficiency and corporate deregulation.  And the commercial press has responded with enthusiasm.

But no one seems to question the explosion of corporate influence that has invaded our public policy debate.

Last year's Competitiveness Council exercise that invited area CEOs to draw up a wish list of legislation, evolved into this year's Priorities of Government exercise by Governor Locke. (Tellingly, before the PC Police arrived on the scene, it was called Price of Government.) Only one stakeholder was brought to the table to advise the governor's budget writers what our state's priorities should be: the business community.  And not surprisingly, the commercial media has acclaimed this approach as "universally popular" for its start-from-scratch newness and ignored the fact that corporate interests enjoyed exclusive access in the process.

Given the corporate accounting scandals that snuffed out investor confidence and have prolonged the recession, doesn't anyone see the irony that government leaders continue to seek CEOs' advice on balancing the state's books? 

Is there any chance working people are rejecting tax increases simply because they are suffering economically, or that they are disproportionately bled by the most regressive state tax system in the country?

It simply does not pass the straight-face test to argue the answer to our economic woes is to pay people less money or absolve employers of their responsibility to provide safe and healthy working conditions. But that is exactly the case that is about to be made, all in the name of "business competitiveness."

For our part, the Washington State Labor Council will work alongside the business community to achieve real efficiencies that save money and streamline procedures while protecting working families. After all, efficient cost-effective government is in all our best interests.

But it's apparent we will also be spending considerable time reminding our elected officials that there is more to competitiveness than corporate wish lists.  At stake is whether our state will be able to compete in areas like education and transportation.  At stake is whether we want Washington to be a place where our responsibilities to our children and the most vulnerable people in society are sacrificed in the name of theoretical trickle-down economic promises made by corporate interests. At stake is whether we decide to Put People First.

WSLC 2003 Legislative Agenda
(Click here for a one-page PDF version of this agenda.)

Organized labor recognizes the serious challenges facing the 2003 State Legislature in terms of funding critical state services.  Given the tough decisions ahead, the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, strongly believes everything lawmakers consider should be measured by the test: Does it Put People First?

With that theme in mind, the WSLC will pursue an agenda to create economic growth and security for the people of Washington state, and will work to achieve progress on the following fronts:

Creating and Preserving Family-Wage Jobs

1.  Support a focused, achievable transportation package

2.  Creating job opportunities through apprenticeship utilization

3.  Capital budget that provides an economic stimulus for the state

4.   Reasonable pay raises for public workers

5.  Invest in workforce training and retraining programs

Promote the Health and Safety of Washington Families

1.  Support a coalition effort to help control health care costs through bulk purchasing of prescription drugs

2.  Support a coalition effort to provide minimum paid leave for workers

Improve Government Accountability and Efficiency to Achieve Public Trust

1.  Ending the use of public funds to oppose or support unionization

2.   Disclosure and assessment of the effectiveness of tax breaks and tax exemptions

3.  Sunset review of tax breaks and tax exemptions

Provide for Our Most Vulnerable Citizens

1.  Fund home health care contract

2.  Support federal extension of Unemployment Insurance benefits

3.   Unemployment Insurance reforms for part-time workers

4.  Support social service coalitions’ efforts to ensure funding for programs essential to the survival of our most vulnerable residents

While the WSLC promotes policies that Put People First, we also will oppose legislation that undermines that principle by attacking the economic conditions or health-and-safety of working people:

1.  Stop all efforts to weaken our minimum wage law.

2.  Stop all efforts to weaken our labor standards.

3.  Stop all efforts to weaken our prevailing wage law.

4.  Stop all efforts to weaken workers’ compensation protections for injured workers.

5.  Retain our state rule on ergonomic protection so that there is relief from the 50,000 musculoskeletal injuries a year suffered by workers in Washington.

Additional detail on these proposals and positions will be posted at the WSLC website at www.wslc.org (updated daily with legislative and other labor news).  Position papers that offer background information on general issues on everything from Apprenticeship to Workers’ Compensation are also available at the site.

Minimum wage law under assault

Sen. Jim Honeyford (R-15th), the new chair of the Commerce and Trade (but not Labor) Committee, didn't wait for the session to start before offering his prescription for business competitiveness. He has introduced SB 5013, which would repeal our minimum wage law as passed by voters in 1998 and allow future increases in Washington only when the U.S. government increases the federal minimum wage.

Joined by agriculture industry lobbyists, Honeyford has already toured Eastern Washington newspaper editorial boards making his case, and received a favorable response. SB 5013 is just the first of several expected bills to freeze our minimum wage, create a sub-minimum "training wage," exempt certain industries from the law, and introduce so-called "tip credits" into the state.

Honeyford's efforts come at the same time the Economic Opportunity Institute has released a new study of the impact of our minimum wage law that contradicts their claims. The study shows the law has had a significant impact raising income among our lowest-paid workers, but no significant impact on inflation or unemployment in the state.

When voters passed I-688 by a 2-to-1 margin, the most popular argument for an indexed minimum wage was that it takes the politics out of the issue. Small annual increases would end the perennial political debate and allow minimum wage workers merely to maintain what they've got instead of lose ground to inflation.  Well, if Honeyford & Co. get their way, the politics are back.

Copyright © 2003  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO