NEXT UPDATE -- Tuesday, June 4 by 9 a.m. Pacific

Links to commercial press stories are functional at the date of posting. In some cases, links "expire" when the source would like to begin charging you for old news. Disclaimer: WSLC Reports Today  links to all stories of interest to organized labor; some positive and some negative. The intention is to inform.  The creation of a link does not constitute an endorsement of that story's content.

Reports for May 28-June 1, 2002

Previous weeks' news: May 20-24 -- May 13-17 -- May 6-10

SATURDAY, June 1 -- WSLC affiliates endorse candidates, ballot measures

FRIDAY, May 31 -- Bender column: June is Voice@Work Month
...plus -- Voice@Work events include Harborview, Music Man, Seattle hotels and theaters
— In yesterday's Seattle P-I -- Union troubles follow "Music Man" to Seattle (you can join the trouble)
— In today's Spokesman-Review -- Eyman & Co. back on the offensive (just as offensive as ever)
— In yesterday's Daily World -- GHC teachers' suit over retaliation for union activity set for trial
— In today's Tri-City Herald -- Many could be asked to help pay state for social, health services
— In yesterday's Columbian -- Ridgefield's high-wage strategy has critics (those who must pay them)
— In today's Olympian -- Brewery workers optimistic after sale of Miller Brewing Co.
...plus -- Solve the health care crisis -- Editorial: (Washington's congressional delegation) must increase the pressure on their House and Senate leaders and truly make this the top legislative priority for the coming year. It's past time for rhetoric. It's time for action.
— In today's Eastside Journal -- PDC right to appeal ruling on teachers, politics (editorial)
— In yesterday's Chronicle -- Memorial In Chehalis honors fallen DOT workers
— Today from UPI -- Declaring "No More Business As Usual," AFL-CIO calls for pension protection

THURSDAY, May 30 -- Campaign against our state's minimum wage has begun
— In today's News-Tribune -- Cantwell seeks probe of where Kaiser spent BPA income
— In today's Bellingham Herald -- Alcoa workers glad to be back; two of three potlines are restarting
— In today's Olympian -- PDC to appeal ruling allowing teachers to talk politics at school
...plus -- Miller Brewing Co. sold for $5.6 billion; no plans to close Tumwater plant
— In today's Eastside Journal -- KVI's Carlson says he's against gas tax, but not leading fight
— In today's Everett Herald -- Hansen will resign as mayor to become Snohomish PUD's new GM
— In today's Seattle Times -- County task force considers selling some parks to save others
..plus -- Bitterness coats sweet Hershey; month-long strike is longest in company history
— In today's N.Y. Times -- Shortage of nurses hurts patient care, new study finds
...plus -- As Dynegy probed for Enron-like schemes, CEO gets $33 million more for being fired 
— In today's Washington Post -- Companies gain death benefit; buy life insurance for rank-and-filers
— In today's Chicago Sun-Times -- Clinton library dispute part of Dems' rift with labor (Novak column)
— In the new American Prospect -- Who gets to retire? -- The political battle over pensions will be fought over broad themes, beyond the often mind-numbing complexity of pension finance. To succeed, Democrats therefore must redefine the central issue: In this immensely rich nation, there is no reason why millions of Americans who spend their working lives waiting on tables, loading and unloading trucks, or glued to computer screens should have their retirements depend on whether they were lucky enough to outsmart the inside traders in the stock-market casino. If Ken Lay and George W. Bush can have a defined-benefit plan, why can't we all?

WEDNESDAY, May 29 -- New report: Labor Ready worker misclassification widespread
...plus -- "The Cradle Will Rock" in Olympia starting this Friday
— In the P.S. Business Journal -- AFL-CIO accuses Labor Ready of misclassifying workers
— In today's Seattle P-I -- UW pay freeze ignites union support among faculty
...plus -- Lucrative retirement packages mean truly golden years for CEOs
— In today's News-Tribune -- Murray, Democrats hope Medi-Fair Act will cure state's Medicare woes
— In today's Olympian -- PDC should appeal ruling on teachers, politics (editorial)
— In today's Seattle Times -- Split King County Council backs statewide transportation measure
...plus -- Not so fast on Sonic Cruiser outlook; some airline execs say its not fast enough
...plus -- A disheartening drop in minority contractors in the years since I-200 (editorial)
— In today's N.Y. Times -- The true purpose of welfare reform -- Op-ed: The main lesson of the 1996 welfare reform law is that having a job and earning a livable income are two different things. President Bush and his Congressional allies chose to ignore this fact and instead are going the get-tough route.
— In today's The Onion -- Congress threatens to leave D.C. unless new Capitol is built

TUESDAY, May 28 -- Speak out at hearings on proposed Medicaid co-pays, caps
— In today's News-Tribune -- No peace for new IAM District 751 chief Mark Blondin
...and on Sunday -- Group, led by talk-show host John Carlson, forms to fight hike in gas tax
— Speaking of Carlson, in today's Seattle Times -- Women, minorities lose business after I-200
...plus -- State's fiscal crisis puts UW in jeopardy (McCormick op-ed)
...and on Sunday -- The wage-canary and the price of asparagus (editorial re: minimum wage)
— In today's Bellingham Herald -- Rising minimum wage may force Dayton's Green Giant to move
— In Saturday's Olympian -- DOT employees under scrutiny for gas-tax comments
— In today's So. County Journal -- Firefighter files suit against Renton
— In the Chronicle of High Education -- UW student research forms basis of labor journalism website
— In Saturday's Oregonian -- Public employee unions hold aces in PERS deal
— In today's Washington Post -- Unions settle with Las Vegas hotels, casinos
— In today's N.Y. Times -- Shortage of nurses spurs bidding war in hospital industry
...plus -- Paralysis in health care -- Editorial: A sober recognition has settled in Washington that little can be done to expand or improve health coverage while health care costs spiral out of control and the federal budget sinks deeper into deficit. Lawmakers seem to be betting that voters will not punish them for inaction. But they cannot put off the issue forever.
— In Sunday's Detroit News -- Hoffa breaks mold, backs pro-labor GOP candidates

Previous weeks' news: May 20-24 -- May 13-17 -- May 6-10

In case you didn't notice, the public opinion campaign to begin dismantling Washington state's minimum wage as established by Initiative 688 four years ago has begun in earnest. Legislators and reporters were invited last week to tour a Dayton asparagus plant and hear the plant's owners threaten to move if our state can't be more "competitive" regarding its lowest legal wage. (See AP story.)

The state's business community rails against our $6.90 minimum hourly wage -- screaming, "It's the highest in the nation!" -- as if we should be ashamed rather than proud. But where Washington is leading, other states are following.

Rather than wait for the Republican-controlled Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, which at a shameful $5.15 an hour has been frozen for nearly five years and lost 10% of its buying power, the labor movement in states like Alaska are doing what we did: taking matters into the people's own hands.

After the Alaska AFL-CIO and allied groups collected enough signatures to put a similar measure on the ballot, the Alaska legislature this month voted to increase the state's minimum wage from $5.65 to $7.15, effective Jan. 1 and to have Alaska join Washington in indexing future increases to the consumer price index beginning Sept. 30, 2004.

Meanwhile, the Oregon AFL-CIO reports it is having no problem collecting signatures for a ballot measure to increase and index the minimum wage in that state also. Based on these successes out West, the labor movement in other states around the country are considering similar initiatives.

But back here in Washington where "business competitiveness" has become the accepted euphemism for promoting lower wages for the working families (or shifting more of the tax burden to them), when the agriculture industry launched it's public opinion campaign against the minimum wage last week, some in the commercial press bit.

Predictably, it was the Seattle Times that editorialized Monday that the two-thirds majority that voted for I-688 may have had good intentions, but didn't know what they were doing. It called on lawmakers to "consider the effect of a lost industry providing no jobs in the fields or in the processing plants," and begin making exemptions for certain industries to the minimum wage standard.

Whether the legislature will bite is another question. Some of last session's agriculture industry proposals on this issue certainly did.

SB 6304 would have allowed agriculture employers to count the wages of a farm worker against the minimum wage requirement for his or her spouse. In other words, spouses of farm workers would be non-employees that "help" with the work but don’t get paid, don’t get unemployment or workers’ comp coverage, don’t get anything but the satisfaction of knowing their spouses’ minimum wage paid for twice as much work. We're not making this up.

As legislative candidates ring your doorbell asking for your support, make sure you ask them where they stand on our state's lowest wage and whether they would support exempting certain workers from it.

Here what's Rick Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, had to say in a Letter the the Editor response to the Times editorial:

To the Editor:

 

Sadly, the Seattle Times continues its anti-worker editorial stance with its latest ill-considered endorsement of an asparagus industry exemption from our state’s minimum wage for workers cutting and canning the vegetable.  Some food for thought:  When has the Seattle Times EVER endorsed ANY minimum wage increase?  Indeed, when has the Seattle Times EVER endorsed ANY legislation or ballot measure that improves the lives of workers?  Search, but you won’t find one example. 

 

A minimum wage of $6.90 an hour is still a minimal income, hardly enough to pay rent and put food on the table for a full time worker, even in Eastern Washington. 

 

Asparagus producers have a problem because they are getting the same price per pound for processed asparagus that they were paid in 1996.  Costs for everything, including energy and equipment have gone up.  The problem will not be fixed until the growers and canners negotiate higher prices.  Perhaps what the asparagus producers really need is a union—often called a cooperative in rural areas—to provide a better bargaining position. 

 

Sincerely,

 

Rick Bender, President

Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO

 

P.S.     You referred to the situation in Dayton, Washington.  For your information, Dayton was my father’s hometown and I still have many relatives in the area.  I know Dayton much better than you do, and I know this:  Dayton’s workers deserve better than a minimum wage.

The following is a press release from the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department regarding the Tacoma-based Labor Ready, Inc.:

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, has provided a new report to state regulators containing evidence that Labor Ready Inc. has misclassified its workforce on a large scale in most states in the U.S. since at least 1994. The consequence, according to the report, is that Labor Ready may have:

• Underpaid its insurance carriers and under-estimated its reserves to pay claims by at least $200 million.
• Employed more construction workers (32%) than any other type of worker, yet classified less than 10% of their workforce as construction.
• Classified nearly half of its workforce as "clerical", even though company records show that Labor Ready does not dispatch clerical workers. In several states, nearly 100% of Labor Ready's payroll was classified "clerical."
• Underpaid more than $125 million in claims to injured workers.
• Paid NO benefits in Arizona, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York, even though the company had around $20 million in payroll and hundreds of potentially compensable injuries in those states.

In addition to statistical records, the report also cites court testimony submitted to the courts by Labor Ready employees.

Former Labor Ready worker Larry Richards worked as a construction laborer 126 times in West Virginia from March 1996 to December 2000. For workers' comp purposes, Labor Ready coded him as a maid, clerk, or clerical worker 27 times. For the remaining 99 jobs, Richards was coded "piano tuner/taxidermist." Not once was he coded as a construction worker. Workers’ comp insurance for construction workers is more than 10 times higher than the cost of a piano-tuner/taxidermist.

Building Trades President Edward C. Sullivan asked state regulators to use the report to launch new probes of Labor Ready's practices or expand probes that are currently under way, and to consider criminal prosecution against the company.  

For more information, contact Will Collette of the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department at (202) 756-4635.

If you have news items regarding unions or workplace issues in Washington state that you would like to see posted here, please submit them via e-mail to David Groves or via fax to 206-285-5805.

Copyright © 2002  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO