THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2006
Many Washingtonians aren't earning a living wage, says report

The following press release comes from the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations:

SEATTLE -- Jobs aren't paying enough to support families, and Washington can do more to help people make ends meet. These are the findings of the Northwest Job Gap Study: Living Wage Jobs in the Economy.

For many families in the Northwest, working hard is not enough. For a single adult in Washington, 77 percent of all jobs pay a living wage of $10.77 an hour. But for a single adult raising one child, only 44 percent of all jobs pay a living wage of $16.83 an hour. The percentage of jobs that are currently paying living wages drops to 26 percent for single parents raising two children.

"We've worked hard all of our lives," says Bonita Churman of Olympia. Bonita and her husband David work full time and are raising two children, ages 13 and 6. "But one expense that has been out of reach is health insurance. Our premiums would cost $600 per month. We simply cannot afford it."

It's not just single parents who often struggle to find living wage employment. Assume that two adults are both working full time, raising two children, and are contributing equally to their household budget. Each parent would have to earn $14.16 an hour. Only 59 percent of all jobs in Washington are currently paying this wage. So even dual-income families, where both adults are using all of the resources at their disposal to earn a living, often find they are not earning enough.

When families are unable to earn living wages, many are forced to make difficult choices between adequate health care, balanced nutrition, and paying the bills. Health care is often the first tradeoff, as rising premiums and a decline in comprehensive employer-based coverage have made health insurance unaffordable for many families. Skyrocketing costs for home heating are also of particular concern to families during the winter season.

The report points to both the business and government sectors for solutions.

"We need policies that will encourage living wage job growth," says Rhonda Simmons, Executive Direct of Seattle Jobs Initiative. "In the meantime, our lawmakers need to establish policies that will increase access to health care and provide food, housing, utilities, transportation, and child care assistance to those earning less than a living wage."

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 2006
State ethics laws being used to suppress freedom of speech

The following Open Letter by Peter Kardas, Director of the Labor Center at The Evergreen State College , was distributed last week: 

An Open Letter to Washington State Labor Unions About
How the State Ethics Law Is Used to Suppress Workers’
Freedom of Speech and Association

January 12, 2006

On December 10th, trade unionists across the country leafleted and demonstrated in support of International Human Rights Day and the right of workers to organize.  We pointed to the guarantees in international law for the rights of free speech and association and for the right of workers to form and join trade unions.  In letters to our local papers we quoted Human Rights Watch about the legal obstacles in the U.S. that “…tilt the playing field so steeply against workers’ freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers.”  

As a corrective we expressed support for the Employee Free Choice Act that would reform federal labor law to provide greater protection for workers involved in union organizing campaigns.  Given the value placed in this country on free speech and association, this work of educating the public about the disjunction between basic human rights and what goes on in the workplace was an important activity, and perhaps one day in the not too distant future the Employee Free Choice Act will become law.

The focus of the December 10th demonstrations was on federal labor law, which is very much in need of reform.  But in our own back yard Washington state law is used to deprive state employees, both union and non-union, of their freedom to speak and associate on the job. 

The vehicle of this suppression is, of all things, the state ethics law and the regulations and interpretations that are used to implement that law.  I know this from talking with union activists in state agencies as well as from my own experience at The Evergreen State College, a public institution that while placing a heavy emphasis in its Social Contract on freedom to speak and associate and freedom from intimidation, nevertheless has directed at least one employee not to use state property (computers and email) to speak with other employees about common working conditions.  

From its behavior the college appears quite concerned that employees’ exercising their freedom to associate will lead to effective employee organizing – whether or not that organizing ends up in the form of a traditional union.  I’ll come back to Evergreen in a moment, but first want to provide a quick run-down on how the state ethics law is used to suppress a basic freedom among all state employees.

The Ethics in Public Service Law is Chapter 42.52 of the RCW (Revised Code of Washington).  Section 160 of that law states that “no state officer or state employee may employ or use any person, money, or property under the officer’s or employee’s official control or direction, or in his or her official custody, for the private benefit or gain of the officer, employee, or another.”  The rules for implementing this law are spelled out in WAC 292-110-010.  Section 6 spells out prohibited uses of state resources (including computers, email, and the internet), and paragraph b of that section states that among the prohibitions is “any use for the purpose of supporting, promoting the interests of, or soliciting for an outside organization or group, including, but not limited to:  A private business, a nonprofit organization, or a political party (unless provided for by law or authorized by an agency head of designee).”  

The Executive Ethics Board, which is where state agency employees must report if charged with a violation of the ethics act, in turn states in Advisory Opinion 02-01A that “…Unions are considered private associations” and that “…Union business is a private interest.”  The Board says that it’s okay to use state resources for collective bargaining, since state labor law authorizes and sometimes requires agencies to negotiate with unions, but it’s not okay to use state resources for other activities like “…Union organizing, internal Union business, or advocating for a Union in a certification, union shop, or other election….”  There is a suggestion that de minimis use of state resources by Unions or union members is perhaps okay, and WAC 292-110-010 spells out what the de minimis criteria are.  However, it is up to each state employee if called before the ethics board to spell out why a particular use falls within those criteria; using your computer in a minimal way won’t prevent you from getting called before the board if someone decides to blow the whistle on you.

Anyone who’s heard the rhetoric used by employers to denigrate unions will see familiar language in the Ethics Board’s Advisory Opinion.  Anti-union employers trying to prevent a union organizing drive will, among other things, say that unions are outside organizations -- private businesses, really -- that only aim to grow for the sake of their own profit.  The union is not the members, they say, it is a third party that’s trying to intrude itself in the workplace and come between the employees and management.

Likewise, the Ethics Board says that unions are outside organizations, private associations with their own private interests.  The Board’s advisory opinion has no room for the idea that unions perform a number of functions in agencies that go well beyond their own private interests as organizations or the private interests of their members.  Unions and union members help set agency policy (whether through the collective bargaining process, through labor-management committees, through other special task forces, etc.); they help prevent or correct abusive management (through the establishment and use of the grievance process, for instance), which helps employee morale, a good thing for the whole agency -- and for agency clients; contractually guaranteed protections give workers more confidence in speaking with each other and acting together, which enables them to “speak truth to power” -- and this provides essential feedback to management; and unions help improve wages and benefits for all employees, which helps reduce turnover.  These things are for the collective good of an agency, not just for the private interests of union members.  The Ethics Board advisory opinion takes a very narrow, and therefore dim, view of what unions are about.

It’s my understanding that the ethics law, rules, and interpretations have been used by agency managers to severely restrict the use by union members of email, whether to communicate with each other or with other staff in the agencies, at least about anything that might be considered a union concern.  Generally it appears that unions, at least to this date, have accepted these restrictions and advised members not to use email for union communications (and sometimes, in fact, the restrictions have been written into collective bargaining agreements).  

Back in the 1990s, when I was working at the Department of Community, Trade, and Economic Development, I heard staff from one union say they considered email to be management property and a management tool, something that union activists should stay away from.  While it is the case that anything transmitted on agency email is a matter of public record -- so employees should only say things there that they’re willing to put out publicly (sort of like talking on the telephone when you think the FBI is listening) -- I believe it’s a mistake to write off email as just a management tool.  For years trade unionists have been discussing the importance of member involvement, internal organizing, members taking care of their own business and not relying so heavily on staff -- members, in essence, being the union.  It’s very hard to make that happen in a modern workplace if email is off limits to you.  

Dozens of things might fly across your screen on a given day -- there’s leftover cake in the conference room, the agency softball game is Thursday night, anyone concerned about the situation in the middle east might want to check out the film on Wednesday night, and on and on -- but you as a union activist are supposed to sit there with your electronic lips sealed, unable to participate as an equal in what’s been called the modern equivalent of water-cooler talk.  You’re a second-class citizen, your intended talk is prohibited, you are suppressed.  

That’s not what unions are supposed to be about.  We organize unions in part to liberate space from the suppressions of one-directional hierarchical control -- to achieve voice and dignity -- not in order to find ourselves boxed out of dialog and communication.  Union activists who are not officers and who do not necessarily enjoy participating in the formal union processes -- but who are eager to help their union come alive at the workplace -- will feel particularly frustrated by the severe limits on their electronic communication.  This frustration can easily lead to personal withdrawal or, in some cases, active opposition to the union itself.  Unions -- those formal structures outside the workplace -- would provide an important service to members by helping to free up access to electronic communication.  By showing their willingness to stand with rank-and-file members against the repressions of management, this act could help decrease the distance between the formal organization and its members, who really are what the union’s about, but who sometimes don’t feel that way.  It could also give the union a greater presence in the daily life of an agency, at least in its digital form (and these days where does the digital life end and real life begin?).

In addition, if unions could get the ethics law and the accompanying WAC changed, it would be a great service not only to union members, but to other agency staff as well.  Our situation at Evergreen is a case in point.  The directive issued by the HR manager to an employee not to use email to communicate with other staff was sent not to a union member, but to an exempt staff employee who was planning to send a survey out, using her personal home computer and email address, to other exempt staff.  

I won’t go into all the details here, but essentially the HR manager was concerned that exempt staff conducting a survey of other exempt staff via email would eventually lead to a union organizing drive, and his reading of the ethics board decisions was that this is prohibited.  Never mind that Evergreen exempt staff are not involved in a union organizing drive nor are connected with any “outside” union organization, nor that there is no enabling legislation in Washington state to compel management to recognize or negotiate with a union of exempt staff.  Never mind, also, that the Ethics Board advisory opinion clearly refers to a Union as an “exclusive representative” or an organization attempting to become an exclusive representative through formal union organizing processes, using election procedures, etc., and never mind that the Board makes some allowance for de minimis use of state resources.  

In the opinion of our HR manager, the fact that we are exercising our rights to freely speak and associate is enough to suggest that we may end up as a union some day, and, in this HR manager’s opinion, you can’t use state resources to help with union organizing.  Even if we just ended up as a professional staff association, if that association wants to talk about salary levels, or morale on campus, or employees’ need for a voice, those are the same kinds of things that unions talk about.  Therefore, according to the HR manager, a professional staff association is just a union by a different name, and talk via email that might lead to an association -- well, maybe any kind of similar talk between two or more people -- is prohibited.  Ridiculous, I know, but it’s under cover of such arguments, aided and abetted by state laws, rules, and regulations, that freedom to speak and associate is suppressed in state agencies.

So while we certainly should work to change federal labor law, we should also pay attention to the use of state law to suppress those human rights we cherish and over the decades have fought so hard for.  I implore my fellow trade unionists, particularly those who are legally allowed to lobby legislators and those who are legislators yourselves, to work for change in the state ethics law and in the WAC which implements it.  I don’t think it will be hard to find language that says that agency union members and officers are not outside private interests and are therefore not subject to the restrictions that are meant to apply to companies, organizations, and persons who really are out to use public resources for their own private gain.

-- Peter Kardas
Director, Labor Center
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW, SEM II--E-2135
Olympia, WA  98505 
KardasP@evergreen.edu  

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2006
Fair Share Health Care bill hearings Thursday in Olympia

All union and community supporters of legislative efforts to stop large employers from exploiting the state's tax-subsidized health care program should make plans to attend public hearings this Thursday, Jan. 19 in Olympia on the Fair Share Health Care bills.

SB 6356, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle), will be heard in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee at 8 a.m. Thursday in the Senate Hearing Room 4 of the J.A. Cherberg Building on the Capital Campus. HB 2517, sponsored by Rep. Eileen Cody (D-Seattle), will be heard in the House Commerce and Labor Committee at 1:30 p.m. in House Hearing Room B of the John L. O'Brien Building. Fair Share Coalition supporters will meet between hearings for lunch to talk with legislators. (To RSVP, click here.)

These bills would set a minimum standard for employers of 5,000 or more to invest at least 9% of their labor costs into employee health benefits -- 7% for public employers and non-profits who can’t deduct health costs from their taxes. The handful of businesses that don't meet this standard would have to pay the state a fee -- the difference between that 9% and what they do spend on benefits -- used to cover some of the uninsured working adults in our state.

This legislation is only one part of the four-point proposal put forward by the Fair Share Health Care Coalition of labor, business, community and religious organizations.  The coalition also testified this week on restoring 10,000 slots for working people in the Basic Health Plan and continuing to increase coverage for uninsured children in this year's supplemental budget.

The coalition also supports HB 2572, the Small Employer Health Insurance Partnership Program, providing premium assistance to small businesses' employees who are under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.  It will be heard at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the House Health Care Committee.