We did it, After an almost two-year-long rulemaking process, multiple public hearings, and thousands of comments sent in by workers across the state, the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries today at last released a final version of the new overtime rule. And it's official: our state is restoring overtime protections to hundreds of thousands of overworked & underpaid salaried workers.

Our victory today reverses a decades-long trend of salaried workers clocking more and more hours but getting paid less and less for them. When the new rule is fully phased in, workers paid up to 2.5x the state minimum wage (about $70,000/year in 2020 dollars) will get time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week, regardless of whether they’re salaried or hourly, and regardless of their job title.
In other words: Washington state is bringing back the 40-hour workweek!
And it’s about time.

Click here to send a message sharing your support for the state's new overtime rule.
 
The new overtime rule is a huge step forward. But it isn't the only fight we're facing to make employers respect workers' time again. Hundreds of thousands of hourly food & retail workers are also struggling with unstable & unpredictable work schedules.
That’s why the next step is for the state legislature to pass a statewide secure scheduling law in 2020. Because every worker deserves to have their time respected with advance notice of shifts, input into their schedule, and a right to rest.

TELL YOUR REPS: OUR TIME COUNTS!

Passing a statewide secure scheduling law is going to be tough. The big business lobby is going to fight us every step of the way.  But if we can restore overtime protections, we can pass statewide secure scheduling too. And you can help make it happen by sending a message to your state legislators today.

​We won a big one today. Now let’s keep it up and make sure that here in Washington, every worker’s time counts.
 
Thanks for being a part of it,
Working Washington

Wages are 3.1% lower in so-called “right to work” (RTW) states, for union and nonunion workers alike (after correctly accounting for differences in cost of living, demographics, and labor market characteristic) The negative impact of RTW laws translates to $1558 less a year in earnings for a typical full-time worker. Additionally, workers in RTW states are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and pension coverage.
https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/
 
 
The EEOC receives 36% more discrimination charges from right to work states
https://aflcio.org/issues/right-work
 
…the data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the worker-friendly states have a higher standard of living. Fully 11 of the 13 states with the lowest uninsured rates are worker-friendly states, while 11 of the 15 states with the highest uninsured rates are RTW states. The median uninsured rate for worker-friendly states is 12.6 percent, while for RTW it is 15.7 percent. Furthermore, we find that 18.6 percent of people in RTW states are uninsured, while only 13.9 percent of people in worker-friendly states are uninsured. The sharp increase in overall percentages of uninsured compared to the median percentages for each group is largely due to the fact that some highly-populated states (California and Texas) also have high rates of uninsured people (18.9 percent and 25.5 percent, respectively). Again, to put this in perspective, if the rates of non-insured citizens in RTW states were spread across the country, then an additional 8,640,480 Americans would be uninsured and suffer a lack of access to affordable health care.
http://www.nea.org/archive/52880.htm


These maps below show all the best states for workers and with the highest minimum wage are the SAME states that don’t have Right to Work.


Interactive Map: Best States for Worker Rights and Highest Minimum Wage
By Melissa Shin and Rebecca Koenig, Aug. 28, 2018
https://money.usnews.com/careers/salaries-and-benefits/articles/2018-08-28/interactive-map-best-states-for-worker-rights


Right to Work States - The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
https://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states/

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) announced its opposition to Amazon’s launch of a cashierless grocery chain, reported to open next year. UFCW President Marc Perrone released the following statement:
 
“Amazon has one agenda – to eliminate as many jobs as possible to enrich one multi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos. The takeover of Whole Foods was just the beginning of a ruthless strategy to fundamentally change our country’s grocery industry. Despite a widespread consumer backlash to Amazon Go stores, Jeff Bezos is doubling down on the cashierless business model in food retail as he seeks to eliminate millions of good American jobs. 
 
“Make no mistake, Amazon represents a clear and present danger to working and middle class Americans. It is long past the time for our leaders to wake up and act before Amazon and Jeff Bezos do long-lasting damage to America’s economy. 
 
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The UFCW is the largest private sector union in the United States, representing 1.3 million professionals and their families in grocery stores, meatpacking, food processing, retail shops and other industries. Our members help put food on our nation’s tables and serve customers in all 50 states, Canada and Puerto Rico. Learn more about the UFCW at www.ufcw.org.

Many of you will remember the efforts starting in 2016 to keep the Freedom Foundation getting all sorts of personal information about you through the Public Records Act.

WPEA, later joined by a coalition of other unions, filed suit for a permanent injunction to keep your private contact information and other identifying information out of these blanket public records requests. This was followed by a series of court hearings, from the Thurston County Superior Court all the way to the State Supreme Court in 2018. Just last week, we finally got a ruling on the case. Unfortunately, we lost the case. It was a 5-4 decision when our state lawmakers and courts have been reluctant to consider any new exemptions to the Public Records Act.

Fixing this issue with the Public Records Act and safeguarding your privacy, is our number one non-economic issue in the coming legislative session. We are incredibly frustrated and disappointed that it has come to this but we are still fighting to protect your privacy rights.
 
Timeline

• 2016 – The Freedom Foundation filed a public records request for all state employee WPEA members’ birthdates. WPEA, later joined by a coalition of other unions, filed suit to protect our members’ personal information. We lost in Thurston County Superior Court, and appealed to the Court of Appeals.

 

• 2017 – The Court of Appeals ruled that releasing public employee birthdates violated the privacy of public employees. The Freedom Foundation and the newspaper owners appealed to the Washington Supreme Court.

 

• 2018 – Senator Patty Kuderer introduced legislation (SB 6079) to update disclosure rules and better protect public employees’ personal information. Senator Kuderer got her bill through the Senate, but it died in the House.

 

• 2019 – In a 5-4 decision, the Washington State Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeals decision & ruled against protecting our members’ personal information from disclosure.

 

• 2020 – Now that the Court has issued its ruling, it is time for the legislature to act. We are calling on the legislature to modernize and strengthen protections for public employee data.

 
How you can help:
Contact your legislators and tell them it is time to pass a bill to protect your personal information from public disclosure. Here are some points you can include:

• The Public Records Act was written over 40 years ago, long before we faced issues such as identity theft or cyber security. It’s time for an update.
  • Public employee social security numbers were subject to disclosure until the legislature exempted them less than 20 years ago.
  • The only reason the Court ruled against public employee privacy was because the law didn’t exempt birth dates specifically. Their ruling opens the door open for the legislature to update the PRA.

 

• Public service employees already face harassment - especially those in law enforcement, child welfare, or health inspection. Why make it easier for their harassers?
  • In 2019, the legislature passed narrow laws to protect personal information in circumstances of harassment: “The legislature finds that state agency employees operate in unique work environments in which there is a higher level of transparency surrounding their daily work activities… The legislature finds that workplace safety is of paramount importance and that the state has an interest in protecting against the inappropriate use of public resources to carry out actions of sexual harassment or stalking.”

 

• Names and birth dates are the key that unlocks private information and exposes people to identity theft and worse.
  • Even in ruling against employee privacy, the Court recognized that birth date disclosure creates a risk to public employees: “We appreciate the Unions’ concern that disclosing birth dates with corresponding employee names may allow PRA requestors or others to obtain residential addresses and to potentially access financial information, retirement accounts, health care records or other employee records.”
  • As Justice Wiggins wrote in his dissent, “Identity theft, credit card fraud, hacking, phishing – cybercriminals use our names and birth dates to do all of this and worse. To protect against these threats, it is critical to safeguard personally identifying information like names and birth dates.”
  
  

“In our age of technology, information is fuel. And personal information collected and shared around the world – with good and bad actors alike. Governments collect information about their workers for useful and innocuous goals, such as identifying and tracking workers; but public disclosure of that information risks exposing those employees to cybercrime.”
​
“The disclosure of names and birth dates to the public will occur without employee consent and will inevitably make these employees vulnerable cybercriminals searching for personal details at cut-rate prices online.”
 

• Governmental transparency doesn’t mean that public employees have to give up all their private personal information.
  • The newspapers argued that birth date disclosure was necessary to report on government activity. Wiggins refutes that claim, writing, “While identifying state workers could potentially advance a third-party interest, such as easing the job of news reporting, that interest alone does not qualify as a legitimate public concern – especially in light of the significant harm that may befall state employees by the disclosure of their names and birth dates.”
  • Justice Steven Gonzalez wrote a separate dissent in which he said, “I cannot believe the legislature intended to allow the PRA to undermine an agency’s protection of individuals’ personal information.” Later, Justice Gonzalez wrote that “Disturbing results will follow if this personal information is not protected by our state agencies.”