Legislature poised to give union win courts have spurned

LAST year organized labor pushed a bill to restrict a company's ability to talk to its employees. It was marketed as the Worker Privacy Act, and its aim was to shut up managers during the organizing of a union, so that only the union organizer would be heard. No law like it existed in any other state. Business hated it, and Democratic leaders, elected with union support, found an excuse to kill it.

The spirit of this bill resurfaced deep in the 292-page budget measure, ESSB 6444, moving through the Legislature. Certain employers receiving state funds would be forbidden "to use these funds to assist, promote, or deter union organization." The "or deter" is what this is about.

This restriction is not for all employers. It is only on those providing long-term care or services to people with disabilities. But the principle is the same: The state would use its spending power to favor unions. Here, not coincidentally, the benefit would go the state's most politically aggressive union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Compared to the whole economy, long-term-care homes are not large. But if this provision goes through once, it will be used again. "We view this provision as a crossing of the Rubicon," said Kris Tefft, counsel to the Association of Washington Business.

Let us be clear: Under federal labor law, unions can speak to workers. So can employers. A state cannot abridge the rights of either side. The U.S. Supreme Court said so recently in Chamber of Commerce v. Brown (2007). There the Court threw out a California law that forbade any employer receiving $10,000 in state money from using it "to assist, promote or deter union organizing." The ruling was 7-2, with the Court's senior liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, laying down the law.

The same language Justice Stevens struck down has been in and out of the budget bill in Olympia. It is a bad provision and has to stay out.