WSLC Legislative Update -- Feb. 7, 2003

Drug bill passes House!

HB 1214, the prescription drug bill, passed the House of Representatives by a 64-33 vote on Friday. Congratulations! Now, onward to the Senate!

The Senate Commerce and Trade (not Labor) Committee has now made clear its intention to trade away labor standards in the interest of commerce. On party-line votes Thursday, chairman Sen. Jim Honeyford (R-Sunnyside) led that panel in approving aggressive attacks on injured worker benefits, and by the time you read this today will likely have approved a bill restricting teachers from taking actions like they did Jan. 14 to fight for education funding.

SB 5378, the employer-backed workers' compensation bill that cuts benefits even more severely than the labor-opposed L&I bills, passed the committee. It would cut benefits by lowering the cap on time-loss payments from 120% to 105% of the state's average wage; voiding the Supreme Court's Cockle decision that said the value of health care and other benefits must be included in calculating compensation; and requiring 12-month wage averaging that targets all workers, but especially those in construction, agriculture and those just entering the workforce.

Also approved was SB 5271 which dramatically restricts eligibility for permanent partial disability claims in cases of work-related hearing loss.

This committee is also seeking some hearing loss of its own. SB 5155 would silence public school teachers by banning "walkouts" like the one organized Jan. 14 in Olympia. This bill's message is that the legislature is not interested in hearing from these people (especially not 25,000 of them) if it involves even a one-day disruption of school. As one teacher angry about this bill wrote this week to the Seattle P-I, "If teachers really want to shut down education, they would work a 40-hour week and no more."

All public employees concerned about their free-speech rights should be alarmed about this. The legislators who support this bill were also angry about the one-day "rolling strikes" by state employees back in 2001. Attempts to restrict our public employees' right to demonstrate and make their case are an affront to a free democratic society.

This week a joint committee work session and Senate hearing were held on what to do about the state's indexed minimum wage. People who earn it and others speaking on their behalf, argued "nothing." But people who pay it and others speaking on their behalf had a few suggestions:

SB 5013 would freeze our minimum wage until Bush & Co. get around to raising the federal one (not now nor ever high on their list of priorities); SB 5283 would create a sub-minimum “training” wage for teenagers and new hires; SB 5394 would cut and then freeze the minimum wage for workers who earn tips; and other bills would allow employers to deduct so-called "reasonable costs" from it. In addition, there's SB 5683 that would prevent local jurisdictions from passing so-called "living wage ordinances" like the one recently approved in Bellingham for city service contractors.

At Wednesday's work session, the nonpartisan Economic Opportunity Institute presented its new study, “Working Well in Washington: An Evaluation of the 1998 Minimum Wage Initiative,” showing the voter-approved standard is working to help our lowest-paid workers while having a negligible impact on unemployment or inflation. The business community offered up Ohio University professor Richard Vedder, author of Minimum Wage Costs Jobs, who said our minimum wage... (drumroll, please)... costs jobs.

As WSLC Research Director Jeff Johnson pointed out in his testimony, if you bring two economists together you'll get at least three different opinions. Such is the nature of the imprecise social science of economics.

But in an apparent breach of protocol that raised some eyebrows—and blood pressure—at Wednesday's session Sen. Jim Honeyford (R-Sunnyside) challenged the two EOI staffers presenting their study to explain what qualified them to do so. No one we spoke to can recall a similar challenge ever being made of policy analysts from the multitude of corporate-funded fact factories that routinely testify, such as the Washington Policy Center, the Washington Research Council and the Washington Roundtable.

MINIMAL MATH
Sen. Hewitt claims that if our state minimum wage had been indexed as of 1990, it would now be more than $10 an hour. That turns out to be a bit of an a exaggeration:
YEAR 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002	CPI-W* 4.1 % 2.9 2.8 2.5 2.9 2.9 2.3 1.3 2.2 3.5 2.7 1.6	Minimum WAGE 4.25 4.42 4.55 4.68 4.80 4.94 5.08 5.20 5.27 5.39 5.58 5.73 5.82**
* Average annual increase in the federal Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. ** Indicates adjusted minimum wage that would take effect Jan. 1 of the next year.

This was an unfair, unwarranted attack on the credibility of the only public policy center that can remotely be considered liberal-leaning. Democrats on the panel, to their credit, managed to restrain themselves from asking how much business groups had paid the traveling anti-minimum-wage economist from Ohio to testify. We hope in the future that comments and criticism can be confined to the facts themselves, and not the messengers personally.

For example, Sen. Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla) claimed at Wednesday's session that if the state minimum wage had been indexed in 1990, it would now be more than $10 an hour. His assertion also appeared in the Associated Press story that was published across the state. But a check of the facts reveals it would now be $5.82 under his scenario (see table).

The point is: By an incredible 2-to-1 margin, voters raised our minimum wage because they believe people who work full time shouldn't be forced to live in poverty. In addition, voters indexed it so the value of those wages wouldn't continue to drop with inflation—and to take the politics out of the issue. Let's keep them out.

Senate Republicans unveiled Thursday their blueprint for restoring confidence in our state's ability to provide a transportation system. Assertions that inefficiency and mistrust are to blame for Referendum 51's failure appear to have become consensus opinion in Olympia, among many in both parties. Forgotten are the facts that the tough economy and job insecurity made any tax hike a tough sell, many voters complained Ref. 51 paid to start projects but not finish them, and some 35-40 percent of voters wouldn't support a tax increase if their lives depended on it. (They also are the ones who say all government is inefficient.) That being said, labor supports efforts to make the Department of Transportation more efficient, but much of what was proposed Thursday are the same-old attacks on working people.

SB 5702, sponsored by Sen. Don Benton (R-Vancouver), would undo the contracting-out provisions negotiated in last year's Civil Service Reform Act. It would allow the DOT to contract out highway maintenance, engineering and administrative support—and eventually any of its services. The effect would be to prevent contracting-out issues from being negotiated in the first master contracts. Plus, the bill would weaken prevailing wage rules by saying smaller projects and those in rural areas can pay construction workers less.

If these ideas sound familiar, it's because they are the same right-wing ideological tenets trotted out every year by the GOP. They call it running government more like a business. We call it introducing the cost of private profit into government at the expense of workers' wages and benefits.

Republicans claim their plan, if fully implemented, would save enough money that it would be the equivalent of a 9-cent gas tax increase. At press time, it was unclear if Sen. Hewitt did the math on that one, too.

The Senate floor vote expected this week on the ergonomics repeal bill, SB 5161, looks like it will happen on Tuesday. Also on the agenda that day are SB 5255 limiting agency rule-making authority, SB 5256 insisting on cost-benefit analyses for such rules and SB 5257 requiring gubernatorial approval of rules. These measures are all about the ergonomics rule and corporate outrage that state agencies will act to protect consumers, workers and the environment from exploitation and harm.

As we reported Thursday, Sen. Mark Doumit (D-Cathlamet) plans to offer an amendment to SB 5161 that makes the rule voluntary by removing enforcement mechanisms and offering “employer incentives” to protect their workers from injury. That would be the equivalent of repealing it, and restoring the previous decade of incentives begging employers to prevent preventable debilitating injuries. They MUST do this. And when they do, they'll save money.

Keep the calls coming to the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000. Tell your Senator to Leggo Our Ergo! Oppose SB 5161 and the above-mentioned bills, and oppose making the ergonomics standard merely voluntary.

TUESDAY—Senate Ways and Means at 3:30 p.m. will have a work session on implementing contracting out in collective bargaining; House Appropriations at 3:30 p.m. hears a number of bills on public employee pensions.

WEDNESDAY—Senate Commerce & Anti-Labor at 8 a.m. hears SB 5388 (a revival of the infamous blacklisting bill granting legal immunity to employers who show reckless disregard for the truth when providing employee references) and SB 5462 (forcing the application of federal changes in wage-and-hour laws on our state like Bush's attempts to limit overtime pay and change the 40-hour workweek); Senate Economic Development at 8:30 a.m. will hear SB 5583 on granting more business tax credits and exemptions (more on that next week).

(corrected) THURSDAY—House Commerce and Labor at 1:30 p.m. has a work session on California's paid family leave law and will hear HB 1221 providing minimum paid leave in Washington.