February 22, 2006

By ROBBY STERN
Advisory Board

The 2006 session will be short and, hopefully, sweet for Washington’s working families.

After several years of revenue shortfalls and painful cuts in essential public services, the state now projects a budget surplus. This presents an opportunity to fix some of the damage done, particularly in terms of health-care cuts that left thousands of low-income working adults and their children without coverage.

The Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the state’s largest union organization, has a limited legislative agenda for this year’s 60-day session that began Jan. 9. Here are brief descriptions of some priority issues:

• Fair Share Health Care

The Fair Share Health Care Coalition is a group of labor, business, religious, and community groups and health care organizations that is supporting a four-point proposal to increase health care coverage for uninsured residents.

The bill would set a new standard that requires the state’s largest employers — those with 5,000 or more employees — to invest at least nine percent of their total payrolls (seven percent for non-profits) in employee health benefits.

Those who refuse would be required to pay a fee that will be used to provide coverage for uninsured residents. That would prevent them from gaining an unfair competitive advantage over responsible employers who do provide benefits, and it would protect taxpayers from having to subsidize huge corporations that have employees in state-financed health care programs.

In addition, the Fair Share Coalition is asking legislators to restore 10,000 Basic Health Plan slots, increase coverage for children in pursuit of the laudable goal of Gov. Christine Gregoire to cover all children by 2010, and to create a program to assist low-income employees of small businesses to purchase health care coverage.

• Unemployment Insurance

Legislators took a strong stand last year to reverse some of the terrible damage that was done to unemployed worker benefits in the 2003 session. EHB 2255 “stopped the bleeding” on the most extreme and unfair of several recent Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefit cuts, one that disproportionately harmed construction and agriculture workers and others who work irregular schedules, costing them hundreds of dollars per week. But the patch is only temporary, and if the legislature fails to act, this benefit cut will be reinstated in 2007.

We support making this fix permanent and restoring fair UI benefits. A fresh analysis of our state’s UI system has been conducted by the nation’s most respected UI funding expert, who recommends the state permanently restore these benefits. We wholeheartedly agree.

• Family and Medical Leave Act

The FMLA is a federal law that guarantees workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth, adoption, or serious illness, or in case of the serious illness of a spouse, child, or parent. This standard applies to businesses with 50 or more employees.

But just as with overtime pay regulations, the Bush administration is threatening to bypass Congress and reinterpret the FMLA, literally redefining “serious illness” and making it much harder for workers to qualify.

Organized labor will urge passage of a state statute that will protect FMLA, an important job security standard that all Americans have come to rely upon, from the meddling of the Bush administration’s corporate cronies.

• Employee Freedom from Intimidation Bill

Labor will be supporting legislation preventing employers from using their workplaces to force their political, religious, or union organizing viewpoints on their employees. Employees should not be forced to attend closed-door meetings where they are subjected to indoctrination on issues unrelated to their job performance, and should not have to fear retaliation for expressing opposing viewpoints.

Some other items on labor’s agenda include protecting injured workers’ interests in our state workers’ compensation system; strengthening laws dealing with farm labor contractors to better protect agriculture workers; fiscal accountability legislation supported by the Washington Tax Fairness Coalition, including requiring tax expenditure reports and tax loophole transparency and accountability; achieving collective bargining rights for child care workers; and moving the state primary election ahead by one month to Aug. Other legislation will be sought by specific unions affiliated with the Washington State Labor Council.

If you support these legislative issues and would like to help get them approved, get involved! You can call the Legislative Hotline at 1(800)562-6000 and leave a message for your state Senator, Representatives, and the Governor in support of any of the issues described here. Plus, you can sign up for a free electronic or printed newsletter — at www.wslc.org or by calling (206)281-8901 — that keeps you updated on the status of legislation affecting working families. 

Robby Stern, who serves on the Real Change Advisory Board, is the lead lobbyist for the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO.