Elizabeth New: Spokane workers won’t be alone in facing a pay decrease and less wage security if two bills before the Legislature become law

If you’re employed, two bills moving toward final passage in the Legislature should be of special concern to you.

One promises a higher payroll tax for a benefit you may never use and that benefits people with no need for taxpayer dependency. That’s Senate Bill 5292. The other doesn’t promise a pay decrease, but it threatens a generous unemployment insurance fund built by employers (and therefore employees) and meant for workers who lose work through no fault of their own. That’s Senate Bill 5041.

If SB 5041 succeeds, benefits from the UI fund will be available to workers who choose to strike and not work, creating lopsided labor negotiations and possibly depleting the UI fund. That won’t help the majority of workers in the state. Striking workers would be able to collect UI benefits for somewhere between four and 12 weeks. The number is still being negotiated.

If paying workers who strike is a labor priority, unions should provide the money with a strike fund built with members’ union dues. What better use is there for members’ dues?

SB 5041 would even allow public employees to collect benefits while striking. They are prohibited from striking, but they do sometimes anyway. Many parents can relate to scrambling for backup care or counting on reduced wages to get through a teacher strike.

Recouping overpayments when employees are paid their contracted wage in addition to UI benefits is not guaranteed. The Employment Security Department told me that estimates show the department recovered about 46% of overpayments in 2023. Administering an increased number of benefit claims will also cost taxpayers.

This bill will encourage more strikes and has the potential to hurt far more people than it helps. It is a favor to unions at the expense of employers, consumers, taxpayers and most workers.

Back to the pay decrease that will result if SB 5292 passes: Right now, workers pay 92 cents on every $100 they earn for paid family and medical leave. The tax rate has more than doubled for the mandatory state program in its first five years. It started at 40 cents per $100 of earnings. If SB 5292 passes, the majority of workers in the state will lose even more of their wages to PFML. The bill outlines that a tax rate cap of 1.2% can increase to 1.4% in 2027 and 2028, 1.6% in 2029 and 2030, 1.8% in 2031 and 2032, and 2% for 2033 and subsequent years.

Workers should be prepared to pay $2 of every $100 they make just this paid-leave program. Why? Because this program isn’t able to pay its way. For that reason alone, lawmakers should consider ending the program rather than increasing the amount of workers’ wages that go to it.

PFML offers a benefit that many workers will never use and takes money from people that need more of their wages to make ends meet. The program is no safety net.

A look at ESD numbers shows that low-income workers are forced to give wages to those with middle and upper incomes. In fiscal year 2024, workers making $60 or more an hour used the fund nearly twice as much as the lowest wage earners. Meanwhile, full-time workers of all incomes lose hundreds of dollars a year to this tax.

State taxpayers can and should support safety nets for people in need, but this program doesn’t do that. Instead, it harms low-income workers and decreases many workers’ ability to be self-sufficient.

Gov. Ferguson should get his veto pen ready for these anti-worker bills.

Elizabeth New, of Vancouver, Washington, is the research director for the Washington Policy Center.