Posts tagged Rebecca Saldaña
Washington Democrats propose collective bargaining for farmworkers
January 21, 2026 // Washington Farm Bureau director of government relations Breanne Elsey told the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee on Jan. 19 that farmworkers are excluded from the federal law for good reasons. Untimely labor disputes would bankrupt farms, she said. “Striking during harvest could threaten the small window of time farmers have to produce their income for the entire year,” she said. SB 6617 would apply to housekeepers and employees of some small businesses, as well as farmworkers. Senate Bill 6045 and House Bill 2409 are confined to collective-bargaining rights for just farmworkers. Those bills are scheduled for initial hearings Jan. 20.
WASHINGTON DEMOCRATS ADVANCE BILL TO PERMIT ELECTRONIC UNION ORGANIZING
February 26, 2024 // The real problem with SB 6060 is that it doesn’t go far enough. The state agency administering Washington’s collective bargaining laws for public employees — the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) — processes three kinds of representation petitions: (1) petitions filed by unions seeking to represent groups of non-union employees; (2) petitions filed by unions seeking to supplant an incumbent union; and, (3) petitions filed by employees seeking to decertify the union currently representing them. To proceed, state law requires that each of these three petition types be supported by signatures from at least 30 percent of the affected employees. Under SB 6060, unions could use electronic signatures in their efforts to unionize new groups of employees while those seeking to change unions or remove an unwanted union would still have to gather John Hancocks the old-fashioned way. But if the goal is to “empower” public employees to choose whatever union representation they wish, shouldn’t electronic signatures be permitted across the board?