It was the hottest issue of the 2009 session.
And it's made a triumphant return in the closing days of the 2010 regular session.
We're talking, of course, about the worker privacy issue -- the rule barring employers from requiring employees to attend meetings, listen, respond to or participate in any communication related to political, labor or religious matters. It was the labor community's top priority for the 2009 session, and it all came to a screeching halt with one errant e-mail last March.
Well, it's back, in a skinnied-down version. In the rush to move the supplemental operating budget along, lawmakers in the House quietly inserted language restricting employers or service providers who receive DSHS funding.
Students of the 2009 Legislature may recall that Gov. Gregoire, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, collectively agreed to shelve legislation last session after an e-mail linked action on the bills to campaign contributions. Union representatives, outraged over the death of their bills, vowed revenge at the polls with the establishment of their DIMEPAC (Don't Invest in More Excuses Political Action Committee).
Flash forward to today and, specifically, to the 2010 Senate operating budget. Upon reviewing the proposal, AWB General Counsel Kris Tefft observed the insertion of the gag rule language in a substitute version offered by the House. He outlined his concerns in this memo to top members of the Senate Ways & Means Committee. Writes Tefft:
Notably, these provisions were not proposed by the Senate in the original or substitute form of SB 6444, but rather, inserted by the House in its striking amendment. Specifically, at sections 205 and 206 (pp. 73 and 81-82 respectively) of SB 6444, the following language is inserted:
No employer, provider, or entity receiving state funds to provide long-term care services or services to the developmentally disabled may use these funds to assist, promote, or deter union organization.
The inclusion of such language is invalid, Tefft notes, under a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States Chamber of Commerce v. Brown. The Court invalidated a California statute that prohibited private employers from receiving state program funds of more than $10,000 in any program year from using the money to "assist, promote or deter union organizing."
Yet, there it is. And while it is a much narrower version of the worker privacy bills proposed last year -- the clause specifically refers to providers who receive state funds for long-term care services or services for people with developmental disabilities -- it opens the door. Thirty-one words. Almost four lines of text.
Did they think no one would notice?
