Blog

Workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and quarantines

Given the coronavirus outbreak in Washington, policymakers are considering how workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance should be applied when workers are quarantined. Today Gov. Inslee and the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) announced: L&I is immediately changing its policy around workers’ compensation coverage for health care workers and first responders who are quarantined by […]

Is Seattle’s scheduling ordinance stricter than that proposed in the Legislature?

Gov. Inslee’s 2020 supplemental budget proposal assumes passage of SSB 5717, which would require employees in food service, hospitality, and retail get 14 days’ notice of their schedules and be compensated for schedule changes. Yesterday the Labor & Commerce Committee heard a proposed substitute bill. Some of the differences in the proposed bill compared to […]

Gov. Inslee’s budget proposal assumes passage of scheduling bill

As I noted earlier this week, the governor’s 2020 supplemental budget proposal assumes passage of SSB 5717. The bill, which was introduced in 2019, would restrict how certain food service, hospitality, and retail employers in the state may schedule their employees. Under the bill, work schedules would have to be provided at least 14 days […]

Prevailing minimum wages in Washington will increase in 2020

When Washington voters approved I-1433 (to increase the state minimum wage) in 2016, three cities in the state had their own, higher minimum wages (and all are indexed to inflation). Here’s what state and local minimum wages will look like come January: State: Under I-1433, the higher minimum wage was phased in. The final step […]

L&I’s new overtime rules increase the salary threshold to 2.5 times the minimum wage

The Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) has approved new overtime rules for executive, administrative, and professional (EAP) employees. In order to be exempt from overtime requirements, EAP employees must be paid a salary that meets a specified threshold and their duties must primarily be executive, administrative, or professional. Washington’s current salary threshold for this […]

Will restrictive scheduling be the “next $15 minimum wage”?

Politico has a story about restrictive scheduling proposals in the states: Several states, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, are considering so-called fair workweek laws that would arm workers with a set of rights, such as requiring that employees be given advance notice of work schedules and are compensated for canceled shifts. The effort has been […]

For the 10th year running, Washington has nation’s highest workers’ comp benefit costs (and supplemental pension benefits are increasingly a factor)

The National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) has released its annual report on workers’ compensation benefits. The report covers data from 2017, and it shows that Washington’s benefit costs per covered worker were $766.59—the highest in the country. (Alaska came in second at $736.55.) When you consider benefit costs as a percent of covered wages, […]

At the Pension Funding Council, caution about increasing spending on pension contributions in 2021–23

The Pension Funding Council (PFC) met yesterday to discuss pension funding recommendations from the state actuary. Currently, in determining pension contribution rates, the actuary assumes that state investments will yield a 7.5 percent rate of return. In 2011, the investment rate of return assumption was 8 percent. Since then, the Legislature has stepped it down […]

Workers’ compensation rates could drop again

Yesterday the Department of Labor and Industries proposed reducing average workers’ compensation premiums for 2020 by 0.8 percent. If adopted, the average rate decrease will be the third decrease in a row. (From 2008 through 2017, the average rate increased each year.) According to L&I, The price drop would result in employers paying an average […]

Another state Supreme Court ruling on piece rate work and the minimum wage

The state Supreme Court has ruled in yet another case related to piece rate work and the minimum wage act (MWA)—the fourth case in so many years. Lopez Demetrio v. Sakuma Brothers Farms (2015): “employers must pay employees for rest breaks separate and apart from the piece rate.” And, “rest breaks for pieceworkers [must] be […]