Bargaining isn’t the answer
Published 4:16 pm Wednesday, April 8, 2009
With less than three weeks left before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn, organized labor is working hard not to come away empty-handed.
A bill that is finding renewed traction is one we’ve criticized before that remains a bad idea: Giving collective bargaining rights to private child-care center directors and their workers, making them state employees for the purposes of setting wages and working conditions.
The bill, which passed the House a month ago, cleared the Senate Ways and Means Committee this week with a couple of amendments that improve it. One adds an opt-in clause, requiring centers that wish to participate in collective bargaining to say so or be left out. Another, sponsored by Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens), would require the state budget director to declare any labor agreement under the bill to be financially feasible before it could take effect — essentially enabling it to be voided if the state is swimming in red ink like it is now.
You can bet that labor lobbyists will try to get these amendments removed if the bill goes to a conference committee. The Senate should shelve it before it gets that far.
This is more about expanding union membership and political clout than improving the quality of child care. The latter would be better accomplished by increasing child-care subsidies for low-income families — something the state can’t afford this year, but can and should do once revenues improve. One bill introduced this session, SB 5506, would do just that.
The Service Employees International Union, which stands to beef up its membership if its bill (SHB 1329) passes, argues that better wages and working conditions won through collective bargaining will improve the quality of child care. YMCAs, which are among the state’s largest child-care providers, oppose the labor-backed bill on principle, saying it’s unnecessary to create a new and costly layer of bureaucracy when increasing direct subsidies would accomplish the same thing more efficiently and cost-effectively.
If the bill became law without the opt-in amendment, many centers could simply bypass its provisions by refusing to accept children from low-income families — clearly the last thing such families need.
The state has a clear interest making child-care affordable to parents who are struggling to make ends meet — it helps them stay employed, or to improve their job skills. And the level of subsidies to child-care centers need to reflect the true cost of providing quality care.
We just don’t need a new layer of red tape to get there.
