Posts tagged Employment Security Department
Employers shouldn’t pay workers not to work: Paying people to strike should be a union’s job
April 14, 2025 // The bill is even worse than a similar one last year that would have allowed people on strike to collect UI benefits for four weeks. This year’s bill would allow for 12 weeks. You can imagine how harmful it would have been to the UI fund if this law had been in place in 2024 when Boeing machinists went on strike for more than seven weeks. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. The Employment Security Department (ESD) crunched the numbers related to providing UI benefits to striking workers in a large Boeing-style work stoppage last year. Paying 30,000 workers the max benefit under this year's version of the bill — three months — would have cost the fund around $367 million dollars.
Make employers pay striking workers? Too silly
January 21, 2025 // Sponsored by Sen. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, and cosponsored by 12 other Democrats so far, SB 5041 is similar to last year’s House Bill 1893 and Senate Bill 5777. Those pieces of legislation had the support of nearly all Democrats but failed to pass in the Legislature’s final hours. As long as the strike is legal, union workers could receive unemployment benefits while actively on strike. (Public employee strikes are not legal, so teachers, who strike frequently, should not be able to receive unemployment insurance benefits along with the taxpayer-provided pay they already receive, even in years that they strike. I hope to see legislative talks clarify that this is so.) Sen. Steven Conway, D-Tacoma, a strong proponent of employer-financed strike benefits, told NPR-station KNKX the bill would allow workers to access the benefits starting on the second Sunday after they begin withholding their labor and would be eligible for four weeks of benefits.