The WPEA Offices will be closed between December 25 through January 1.  If you have an emergency, please call (360) 943-1121 and hit "0" - you will be transferred to the main line and prompted to leave a message in case of an emergency.  That line will be checked daily to assure that WPEA is able to respond to emergencies in this time period.

Thank you for being our members and we hope each of you have a happy holiday season. 

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/