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The Washington State
Labor Council's
pretty-much-weekly report on the 2005 session
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 (PDF version)
Will family values take a back seat?
WSLC Legislative Tracker™
The award-winning website of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO includes the WSLC Legislative Tracker™. Check it out at www.wslc.org/legis/tracker.htm to follow the progress of some of the key working families bills before the 2005 legislature. You workers out there, especially you low-income folks in jobs with no benefits, can't be trusted with a little paid sick leave. That was the crux of the testimony from more than a dozen corporate lobbyists in the House Commerce and Labor Committee on Thursday, as they mounted an all-out campaign to kill the Family Leave Insurance bill.
Under SB 5069, which has already passed the Senate, workers who temporarily leave their jobs to care for newborn or adopted children or for sick family members would get up to 5 weeks of job-protected paid leave. The maximum benefit would be $250 per week, and cost workers about $40 a year. It was amended to exempt employers with 50 or fewer employees but allow them to opt in, if they so choose.
Because businesses aren't the ones paying for it, their lobbyists' talking points required a bit more finesse than the usual boilerplate "raising the cost of business" argument. So corporate lobbyists' principal objection was that the lure of $250 a week -- far less than you'd make working for the minimum wage, mind you -- would be so great that workers will cheat to get it. They'll fake illnesses and lie about sick relatives. (You know, just like people who get regular sick leave do.) Who knows? Maybe the Great Unwashed Masses will start having babies just for a month of this $250-a-week bonanza!
The elitism of these business lobbyists and their shameless anti-family, anti-government ideology deserves more than just our sarcasm, it deserves our condemnation.
How dare they! All of the tassel-toed lobbyists opposing SB 5069 represent businesses with 50 or more employees that are already required under the federal Family Medical Leave Act to grant up to 12 weeks unpaid leave in these circumstances. They are arguing that they don't want people with newborn children or serious personal or family illnesses to get any money when they miss work. Any stipend, however small, even if its financed by the workers themselves, would promote what they consider "absenteeism."
This is a class issue. Professionals, managers and higher income workers typically get paid vacation and sick leave, or can make special arrangements to attend to family needs. It is the low-income workers, those already struggling to make ends meet in jobs with few or no benefits, that SB 5069 will help most. But it's not just them. It is estimated that nearly half of the workers in our state have no paid sick leave they can use when a child, spouse or parent is seriously ill.
The (Tacoma) News Tribune endorsed SB 5069 as "a humane policy... a modest plan that treads as lightly as possible on employers... Society as a whole stands to benefit when wage-earners are able to take better care of children and the elderly. That's precisely what this measure offers."
Likewise, the Yakima Herald-Republic called the family leave proposal "reasonable," citing support from some business interests that are more family-friendly than the usual ideological suspects who roam the halls in Olympia. Richard Clarke, president of Amtech, a fiberglass-products manufacturer with 160 employees in Yakima and Yelm says paid family leave would cut down on costly employee turnover and could also save the state money by preventing some workers from having to go on welfare.
The Washington State Labor Council looks forward to a House vote on SB 5069. That roll call will identify which State Representatives really walk the walk on family values.
CALL TO ACTION: Please call the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000. Leave a message for both of your State Representatives to support SB 5069.
Gregore's budget: The devil's in the details
By now you've probably read plenty about Gov. Christine Gregoire's much-anticipated budget proposal released last Monday. It received generally favorable press reviews for avoiding major tax increases (it includes a partial restoration of the estate tax and a 20-cent hike in cigarette taxes) and also avoiding dramatic service cuts. As she vowed, Gregoire included full funding for state employee and home care contracts, and restored money for voter-mandated teacher raises and class-size reductions.
The Washington Federation of State Employees, AFSCME Council 28 was generally very pleased with Gregoire's budget. It not only includes long-overdue pay raises and health benefit stabilization, but also money to keep an important Western State Hospital program and Shoreline's Fircrest School open, both of which had been slated for closure.
How did Gregoire accomplish this budget wizardry, you ask, when so many were braced for bad news?
Unfortunately, one way was by deferring payments into state employee pension funds. Several WSLC-affiliated unions were upset to learn that, in effect, they would be paying for the contracts and raises out of their pensions. They express serious concerns that this deferment is setting the state and its employees up for a spike in pension payments two years from now, and beyond. In her budget press conference, Gregoire acknowledged that she would have liked to avoid this pension deferment and vowed to dedicate half of any new funds turned up in the next two revenue forecasts to keeping pension costs down in the future.
In addition, other WSLC affiliates had specific issues with Gregoire's budget, including:
The Washington Federation of Teachers was "extremely disappointed" in Gregoire's budget for state community and technical colleges. While it proposed funding additional enrollment slots and tuition increases that would be kept by the institutions, none of that money can be used for faculty salary increases because the schools are prohibited by law from bargaining any additional funds for salary above and beyond what the state specifically provides for them. The result, the WFT says, is that Gregoire's budget provides less for salary step increments and part-time pay equity than any budget in 10 years.
Service Employees International Union Local 775 says Gregoire's budget is "$15 million short on home care issues." It includes $11 million in cuts to Medicaid Personal Care by eliminating home care for about 1,800 current clients and raising eligibility standards for the rest. This costs our state another $11 million in matching federal dollars. The budget also lacks the
$4 million required for compensation parity between agency home care workers and individual providers.Senate Democrats are scheduled to release their budget proposal on Monday. The Washington State Labor Council looks forward to working with its affiliated public employee unions, House and Senate leaders and the governor's office to resolve some of these issues in the final budget.
It's time to return to the mainstream on UI
A work session will be held at 1:30 p.m. Monday in House Commerce and Labor Committee on HB 2255. That's the bill to repair some of the unintentionally severe damage done to Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits in 2003. Two changes are being proposed to move Washington back into the mainstream in terms of jobless benefits:
Restoring the benefit formula to being based on the average of the two high quarters of income, as opposed to the present four-quarter averaging that is so devastating to construction workers and others with cyclical employment. Today, 33 states base their formula on the highest single quarter of income, and only six states use the most-punitive four-quarter averaging.
Restoring the liberal-construction language that basically says: "Tie goes to the worker." Every state and federal employment law on the books -- from our state's workers' compensation system to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act -- has liberal construction language that comes into play in certain appeals over workers' eligibility for coverage. At least 42 other states have liberal construction clauses in their state unemployment laws, but ours was removed in 2003.
The WSLC looks forward to answering all questions that legislators might have about these proposals. Had we been given that opportunity before UI changes were implemented (without a public hearing in the 7E7 bid frenzy), we are confident these unfair and unnecessarily punitive changes wouldn't have been approved in the first place.
Social Security privatization hearing Thursday
As you are probably aware by now, Thursday, March 31 will be a National Day of Action, the biggest single-day grassroots mobilization ever to defeat President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security. In Washington, there will be protests outside Charles Schwab offices in Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma and Spokane to tell the privatization-backing investment firm: "Don't Pick Our Pockets to Line Yours!" (Click here for details.)
But what about Olympia, you ask?
The House Children and Family Services Committee will be holding a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in JLOB House Hearing Room D on SJM 8014, a resolution expressing opposition to the privatization of Social Security. Sponsored by Sen. Pat Thibaudeau (D-Seattle), it has passed the State Senate on a party-line 25-23 vote, with every Democrat opposing privatization and every Republican, including Mason County Commissioner Tim Sheldon (I), supporting privatization.
This is an opportunity for voters to find out where their state legislators stand on one of the most important and controversial proposals of our time. The WSLC urges the committee to advance SJM 8014 to the House floor for a vote.
PREVIOUS EDITIONS of the 2005 WSLC Legislative Update:
March 18 -- The price of legislative inaction (HCRA, UI, Retro, elections, family leave)
March 11 -- Big issues in play as deadline looms (UI, retro, Family Leave Insurance)
Feb. 23 -- Clock's ticking on the HCRA (apprenticeship, simple-majority school levies)
Feb. 11 -- What are they so afraid of? (offshoring, tax breaks, health care & tip credit... oh, my)
Feb. 4 -- Health care: A shared responsibility (plus mental health parity, apprenticeship)
Jan. 28 -- Tax system "unconscionable" (plus tax accountability and disclosure; and more)
Jan. 21 -- Apprenticeship: It's a win-win (plus health care; "Dead Peasant" bill; and more)
Jan. 14 -- Wasteful Retro needs reform (plus state employee contract; more tax breaks)
Copyright © 2005 Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO