WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2009
Worker Privacy Act is "simple, but profound"
WSLC President Bender makes case for legislation at legislative hearings

House and Senate committee hearings were held Tuesday in Olympia on the Worker Privacy Act, HB 1528 and SB 5446, which would allow workers to choose whether or not to participate in employer communication on issues of individual conscience, including politics, religion, charitable giving, and unionization. The legislation has 47 sponsors in the House and 21 sponsors in the Senate. 

Under current law, companies can force their employees to attend such meetings to discourage union organizing or to press political views, as Wal-Mart did last year when it urged employees to vote against Barack Obama and Democrats. 

Under the Worker Privacy Act, employers would retain their freedom of speech on all issues, including those of individual conscience.  The only difference is that they would not be able to require employees to participate in such meetings and communications, or punish or fire those who opt out.  This is a fair and reasonable minimum standard for protection of freedom and privacy in the workplace.

Testifying in support of the Worker Privacy Act were Rick Bender, president of the Washington State Labor Council; the Rev. Paul Benz, director of the Lutheran Public Policy Office; Diane Zahn, Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Local 21; Tom Wroblewski, President of IAM District 751; labor attorney Dmitri Iglitzen; and several individual workers with personal, negative experiences involving compulsory communication with their employers. 

Here is WSLC President Bender's testimony:

For the record my name is Rick Bender and I am President of the WSLC. The WSLC represents over 500 local unions and 400,000 workers & their families in Washington State.

I am here to testify in support of HB 1528/SB 5446 the Worker Privacy Act.

The Worker Privacy Act is a simple but a profound piece of legislation.

In a simple and straightforward manner the Worker Privacy Act extends workers’ first amendment rights to the workplace. Specifically it allows workers the right to choose not to listen to or participate in unwanted communication with their employer on issues of individual conscience – including politics, religion, union organizing, and charitable giving.

Who to vote for, what party to belong to, how you practice your faith, whether or not you choose to join a union and participate in collective bargaining, and whether you choose to give to a charity are all private decisions.

At home or in the community you can choose to listen and participate in communication on any of these matters as easily as you can choose not to listen.

But when an employer can force you to listen to or participate in non-job performance-related speech on pain of discharge, discipline or threat thereof, this reality creates a powerful and illegitimate form of compulsion.

What worker can afford to risk losing their job? So instead workers are forced to forego their first amendment rights not to listen to speech on matters of individual conscience.

Many states recognize the importance of protecting employees from this form of coercion. But the protections are incomplete.

Washington State bars workplace discrimination based on a worker’s political activity. And Title 7 of the federal Civil Rights Act bars discrimination based on religion.

However these protections do not extend to protecting workers from being forced to listen to their employer’s attempts to improperly influence workers on their particular views about politics or religion.

The Worker Privacy Act has common sense exceptions for mandatory meetings on job performance and job-related issues, for example, skills training and training related to discrimination issues.

The Worker Privacy Act has a simple enforcement mechanism through an individual right of private action, penalties that are not punitive but align with the Fair Labor Standards Act, no record keeping requirements, and no fiscal cost to the state.

It will be argued by some in the business community that the Worker Privacy Act violates employers’ ability to communicate with their workers, violating their first amendment rights and imposing a gag order on employers.

It will also be argued that the Worker Privacy Act is pre-empted by federal labor law and that the recent US Supreme Court case Chamber v. Brown is applicable to the Worker Privacy Act.

Finally some will conflate the Worker Privacy Act with the Employee Free Choice Act at the federal level.

We believe that on all counts the business community is wrong. My written comments lay out the legal and constitutional framework for the Worker Privacy Act. Dmitri Iglitzen, who will testify later, can answer specific legal and constitutional questions that you might have.

I will close however by saying that the Worker Privacy Act in no way limits or prohibits employer speech either directly in the words of the Act or indirectly through the enforcement scheme.

The Worker Privacy Act neither denies workers the opportunity to listen freely to their employer’s views on issues of individual conscience nor does it deny employers opportunities to speak freely on issues of individual conscience.

The Worker Privacy Act is long overdue. It recognizes what in everyday life people know – that freedom of speech is a two-way street. 

^{Copyright © 2009 --  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO}