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February 26, 2009 |
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
Senate U.I. reform bill: What about
workers?!
A state Senate committee has advanced a massive overhaul of Washington's Unemployment Insurance tax
system that would save employers hundreds of millions of dollars over the
next few years, but fails to
permanently restore benefits to their traditional levels. In its
current form, SB 5963
"amounts to a giveaway to employers with little benefit to workers." Read
more.
► At TheNewsTribune.com -- Not so fast on $45 boost in unemployment benefits -- There's a bill in the state Senate that might cut that increase. Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam) has sponsored a bill to use unemployment insurance trust fund money to pay for more worker retraining.
WSLC Legislative Conference is TODAY on Olympia
More
than 200 representatives of unions from across the state that are affiliated with the Washington State Labor Council are
expected to attend today's
WSLC 2009
Legislative Conference beginning at 8:30 a.m. at the
Olympia Red Lion Hotel. See
the agenda.
Legislative news:
► In today's Columbian -- Farmworker bill stifled in House committee -- Republican Rep. Bruce Chandler is furious with House Democrats for refusing to move a bill that he says would help employers address seasonal labor shortages by hiring guest workers from other countries. (See our assessment of Chandler's bill and then file this story under: "Furious?" Really?!)
►
In today's Tri-City Herald -- GOP
says new laws won't help businesses -- Republican leaders say that
they’re worried bills under consideration by the Legislature (including
the Worker Privacy Act) are sending the wrong message to businesses and will
further jeopardize the fragile economy. (This story not only ignores
proponents' side of the story, it erroneously claims the WPA is about
"stopping employers with communicating with employees about politics,
religion and union organizing." That is simply not true. Learn
the truth.)
► In today's Columbian -- Read her lips (editorial) -- What part of Gov. Gregoire’s no-tax-increases pledge do her fellow Democrats not understand? If she can keep that pledge and write a budget during horrific economic times, then so can the Legislature. (Are they trying to say that the governor's campaign pledges are somehow binding for the whole party? Scratch head here.)
Local news:
► At HeraldNet.com -- Boeing: Still no production cuts planned -- "Our delivery guidance remains the same: 480 to 485 (jet) deliveries this year," says a Boeing spokeswoman. The company has "nothing planned" in terms of slowing down rates later this year.
► In today's Bellingham Herald -- Napolitano orders review of Bellingham immigration raid -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered a review of a Feb. 24 raid at Yamato Engine Specialists that resulted in the arrests of 28 workers believed to be in the country illegally. She says she did not know about the raid before it happened and that work-site enforcement needs to be focused on the employers.
► In today's Seattle P-I -- Locke could face familiar WTO case (Bill Virgin op-ed) -- As Commerce Secretary, he could find one of the first items landing on his desk is a WTO ruling on one or both of the dueling complaints that Boeing and Airbus are unfairly subsidized.
► In The Stranger -- Anger and aggregation -- Assuming Hearst continues with the process of closing down the Seattle P-I's print edition by mid-March, it's easy to imagine an online-only P-I staffed with as few as 20 people. Or even fewer. As a result, at this point nearly all of the paper's roughly 170 employees expect to be out of a job.
Employee
Free Choice Act news:
► At AFL-CIO Now -- Leading economists: EFCA is key to rebuilding economy -- More than three dozen of the nation’s top economists call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help restore an economy that works for everyone, built on a sustainable, wage-based growth. The statement, signed by 39 of America’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, points to the failure of U.S. labor laws to protect employees’ freedom to form a union and bargain as a major factor in our economic crisis.
► At Talking Points Memo -- Prominent economists endorse Employee Free Choice Act
National news:
► Today from AP -- Obama budget moves toward universal health care -- President Obama is sending Congress a budget that would boost taxes on the wealthy and slash Medicare to make way for a $634 billion down payment on universal health care.
►
At AFL-CIO Now -- Job
quality in the new green economy -- As the nation increasingly focuses
on the need to create green jobs, a new report reminds us that such jobs do
not always measure up in terms of wages and working conditions.
High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green
Economy outlines strategies to ensure that green jobs are good jobs. Many
wind and solar manufacturing plants are receiving large economic-development
subsidies from state and local governments. Says the report's author: "This
use of taxpayer money provides an opportunity to raise wages and other
working conditions. Many states and localities already apply job quality
standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts. In the
report, we urge wider and more aggressive use of such standards by federal
as well as state and local agencies."
► Today from AP -- UAW chief urges union givebacks -- United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger advised union members to vote for contract concessions to Ford Motor Co., saying the automaker can't survive in the long term without major restructuring.
► In today's Washington Post -- Bloggers, unions join forces to push Democrats -- A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.
► At Huffington Post -- Unions file complaint to strip anti-labor group's tax status -- The AFL-CIO and Change to Win submit a complaint to the IRS alleging that Rick Berman's Center for Union Facts and Bernie Marcus' the Marcus Foundation violated rules regarding their tax status by explicitly endorsing and trying to raise money for Republican senatorial candidates.
THURSDAY,
FEBRUARY 26, 2009
Senate U.I. reform bill: What about the workers?!
A State Senate committee this week advanced a massive overhaul of Washington's Unemployment Insurance tax system that would save employers hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years, but that denied efforts by organized labor to permanently restore benefits to their traditional levels and make other pro-worker changes.
SB 5963, as advanced by the Senate Committee on Labor and Commerce & Consumer Protection, "amounts to a giveaway to employers with little benefit to workers," said Jeff Johnson, Special Assistant to the President of the Washington State Labor Council.
"In its current form, the State Labor Council has no choice but to consider SB 5963 to be a 'bad labor vote' when we compile our legislative voting record," Johnson said. "It is just bad policy to make a permanent structural change to the tax system without any corresponding permanent benefit change."
TAKE ACTION: Call the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000 and leave a message for you State Senator to "OPPOSE SB 5963 unless it is amended to give workers permanent benefit increases alongside the employers' permanent tax cuts."
The business community has argued that the previously approved $45-a-week temporary benefit increase -- which is intended to be an economic stimulus and expires at the end of the year -- was all that workers should get. But organized labor argued that permanent tax decreases should be balanced with a permanent benefit increase.
Among other smaller changes, organized labor sought to restore the benefit multiplier to 4.0, where it was for decades. (That means your weekly benefit would be 4% of the average of your two highest-earning quarters.) In 2005, the multiplier was cut to 3.85. For a worker earning $30,000 a year ($7,500 per quarter), the multiplier change cut weekly benefits from $300 to $288.75. It may not seem like much, but since the 2005 multiplier change, workers have lost some $68 million in unemployment benefits in Washington state.
Meanwhile, an analysis by the employer community found that, if enacted as approved by the Senate committee, SB 5963 will save employers up to $583 million if the economy continues at its current baseline, which projects unemployment of above 8% through 2012. Even if the economy plummets into the worst downturn since the Great Depression -- with 10% unemployment rates out to the year 2015 -- employers would still save $312 million in taxes between 2010 and 2015.
"We don't begrudge employers some tax savings, but this effort calls for a little fairness and equity," Johnson said. "SB 5963 could have truly been a win-win for employers and workers, and instead it has become a divisive one-sided giveaway."
Not only did the Senate committee refuse to include the "Restore to 4" language on the multiplier, SB 5963 repeals the Spain-Batey Supreme Court decision from last year which gave the Commissioner of Employment Security limited discretion over granting benefits for voluntary quits due to work-related issues. Since that court decision, ESD has reviewed more than 23,000 claims and only adjusted benefits in 300 of them.
"Maintaining commissioner discretion is not a cost issue, but one of equity to workers," Johnson said.
Copyright © 2009 -- Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO