Unions question why child care bill nixed

The Washington State Labor Council today wants to know more about the reasons behind Senate Democrats' decision to not act on House Bill 1329 to allow day care owners and workers to unionize. The bill did not get advanced by the Senate Ways and Means Committee by Monday's deadline.

Its concern stems from comments made in a hearing on the bill Saturday by Republican Sen. Cheryl Pflug of Maple Valley.

In a blog post under the racy headline of
Did legislators commit to killing bill for Boeing, Allen, McCaw money? Pflug is quoted as saying:

"Not doing this bill was the bright-line promise that we made to the Paul Allen Foundation, The Boeing Company and the McCaw family that contributed the funding for this (Thrive By Five)," Sen. Pflug said. "We might want to remember that when we make a commitment to somebody that gives us $70 million, we might want to keep it."

The WSLC wonders if such a committment was made, is what the committee did legal. It goes without saying they think a deal was done.

Pflug phoned me to say the labor council is off on its interpretation of what she said.

She told me that a couple years ago in the crafting of the bill that led to creation of the Department of Early Learning and the public-private partnership with Thrive By Five, there were conversations on how private money would be used. Leaders of private organizations wanted assurance their money would go into programs and services for children and lawmakers gave such an assurance.

"They were concerned their money would be diverted to some thing other than what they wanted to do with it," she said. "We committed that it would not be diverted."

While there may have been folks involved then who envisioned a future effort at unionizing day care workers, there was no bill in the Legislature at the time to do so, she said.

"Nobody committed to kill a bill. That's baloney," she said.

Why is this interesting?

Remember, in 2009, some of the same Democrats had a hand in killing Big Labor's number one policy bill on worker privacy. They did so because of what they said were concerns about a possible effort to link campaign donations with votes.

That controversy surrounded an e-mail in which a union leader suggested to other union members they hold off from writing checks to Democratic Party campaign organizations until the bill got passed. No wrongdoing was ever found and the WSLC later set up its own politcal fundraising apparatus.