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00:00:00.000 -- The Senate Labor and Commerce Committee will now come to order.
00:00:05.000 -- We are having a work session to explore some issues and ideas today and to take a look at some problems.
00:00:12.080 -- So I want to thank everybody who is online and everybody who is here in Olympia with me.
00:00:20.560 -- This is an interim work that we're setting up for the future.
00:00:25.920 -- And hopefully we will learn some information that will be useful to my colleagues because this is my last committee to chair.
00:00:35.680 -- And so I'm looking at a swan song here and I have to tell you it's the kind of fun thing.
00:00:41.640 -- So with that I would like to open up with the work session and our first presentation from the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and Adjust Economy that has recently put out a workbook, a toolkit if you would.
00:01:00.840 -- And we have presenters to explain what they have put forward and what their goals are.
00:01:08.640 -- And our first presenter I believe is Sharon Bloc, who is the Executive Director of the Center for Labor and Adjust Economy and a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School.
00:01:21.160 -- Sharon, are you online? Take it guys up but I want to start first by.
00:01:31.600 -- I can't see you.
00:01:33.080 -- Sharon, I just see you face.
00:01:37.920 -- I think we have some more.
00:01:39.960 -- Can we excuse me Sharon? Can we make that please reverse? I don't know that we can reverse it but we can put her up initially before she starts her.
00:01:50.680 -- Okay.
00:01:51.680 -- I'd like to see her in full face.
00:01:52.680 -- We have a little poster to just stamp of your face for Sharon.
00:01:56.160 -- There we are.
00:01:57.160 -- Excellent.
00:01:58.160 -- Good to see you again.
00:01:59.160 -- Good to see you and I want to start by thanking you first for inviting us to share our work with the committee but also for your long service to the workers of the state of Washington and the model that you've set and so much of the legislation that has moved through your committee.
00:02:19.120 -- So a really heartfelt thank you and great admiration for your work.
00:02:26.520 -- And we have been inspired by so much of the work that has happened in Washington things like the captive audience ban legislation that has moved the extension of minimum wage and paid family medical leave to ride share drivers, healthcare coverage for striking workers.
00:02:45.680 -- All of these are policies that we have been tracking as part of the work that we're going to share with you today and so we so appreciate the committee's work.
00:02:56.000 -- In today's session we'll share a little bit about our center and our work.
00:03:00.760 -- We'll introduce this new resource that Senator Kaiser referred to and share a little bit about the legal context in which we think is most relevant for the committee in terms of thinking about how to move this kind of work forward.
00:03:18.760 -- So first who are we what do we do where the center for labor and adjust economy at Harvard law school where the hub for studying and assessing strategies and ideas for building worker power and the role of workers and labor and strengthening democracy.
00:03:35.040 -- So we do things like host conferences and workshops to bring together people from across different perspectives from across academia, labor, policy makers and to bring all those different perspectives and backgrounds together to work on coming up with new ideas.
00:03:55.600 -- We work with partners on the ground to help develop and test out new policies and legal strategies in cities and states across the country.
00:04:05.040 -- We amplify promising case studies across our networks including to share with policy makers and the media and then we we try to help revise and refine those ideas based on evaluations of the real world outcomes.
00:04:22.880 -- So the arc of our work really started back in 2018 with the report we did called Clean Slaper Worker Power Project which sought to explore what federal labor law could look like.
00:04:36.040 -- If starting from a clean slate it was designed to do a better job of empowering worker working people to build an equitable economy and democracy.
00:04:46.920 -- I mean probably comes as no surprise to anybody that moving big comprehensive labor law reform at the federal level is probably not going to happen at least in the very near future.
00:05:03.920 -- And so we've been thinking about how do we continue how can folks who care about building power for workers continue to make progress and that's brought a lot of our attention to work that's being done at the state and local level.
00:05:20.480 -- And so as we will now share with you we put together an overview, a compendium of all of the different ways that policy makers advocates labor are working at the state and local level to sort of move that needle forward and then we hope to be part of that overall effort especially in terms of helping to assess and evaluate what's working, what's not working and how can we be a good partner to folks who want to continue to refine these ideas.
00:05:56.920 -- So I will now turn it over to my colleagues.
00:06:02.320 -- Thank you Sharon very much for giving us that overview and I understand Professor Saks Benjamin will be presenting now is that correct? Yeah so let me just join Sharon in saying how much I appreciate the chance to be here today and then for the leadership of Senator Kaiser on these really important issues.
00:06:28.440 -- So my job is to provide a little bit of legal context for the discussion that's going to follow and my focus is going to be on the rules of federal labor prevention.
00:06:42.280 -- So this may be old hats to some of you forgive me if it is but basically we start with a federal labor law called the National Labor Relations Act that governs union organizing collective bargaining between unions and employers with respect to those employees that are covered by the statute.
00:07:01.960 -- Although the federal law says almost nothing about what states are free to do in these areas, the Supreme Court has built one of the most extensive sets of preemption rules and all federal law for the National Labor Relations Act.
00:07:17.720 -- Those rules, those preemption rules establish what we can think of as three zones that are off limits to state policymaking.
00:07:25.800 -- Now I'm going to review these zones but just so that by not hiding the ball I'm going to then turn to exceptions to the rules of preemption which is where states and cities have some discretion to act.
00:07:41.760 -- But to start with the rules of preemption, the first zone of preempted activity is a zone for NLRB regulation that is a zone reserved by the Supreme Court and federal law for the federal agency that administers the statute, the National Labor Relations Board and this zone covers anything that's arguably protected or prohibited by the federal statute.
00:08:08.360 -- So any conduct that's arguably protected or prohibited by federal law is off limits to state regulation.
00:08:16.800 -- So some examples, workers have a protected right to talk about unions during their breaks at work so no state law could allow employers to prohibit that kind of speech.
00:08:28.040 -- Employers for their part are prohibited from threatening to close their stores if workers vote to unionize so no state law could allow such speech.
00:08:37.960 -- So anything that's reserved for the board, anything that's arguably protected or prohibited by the statute off limits to states.
00:08:46.520 -- The second zone is what the court refers to as a zone for market freedom.
00:08:51.720 -- So here we're dealing with things that are not protected or prohibited by federal law but are nonetheless intended by Congress to be left unregulated by any government actor.
00:09:04.280 -- So an example here is an intermittent strike.
00:09:07.800 -- Now an intermittent strike is a short strike where workers act on a plan to strike, return to work and strike again.
00:09:15.680 -- Those things are neither protected by federal law nor are they prohibited by federal law.
00:09:21.040 -- So workers who engage in an intermittent strike could be fired for doing that but they don't commit an UOP and for labor practice by engaging in such a strike.
00:09:31.680 -- But what the court has said is that Congress meant to leave things like intermittent strikes unregulated by anybody including states.
00:09:41.000 -- So we have the zone for NLRB regulation.
00:09:44.200 -- We have the zone for market freedom and then we have a third category which is damages and remedies.
00:09:51.600 -- States cannot supplement the damages available for violations of federal labor law.
00:09:57.760 -- Even if the state is relying on NLRA rules and NLRB adjudications.
00:10:03.880 -- So for example the National Labor Relations Act doesn't provide for punitive damages.
00:10:09.640 -- So no state could supplement damages imposed by the board, supplement damages available for labor law violations by adding punitive.
00:10:19.320 -- All right.
00:10:20.280 -- So that in very short order is the three zones of preempted conduct.
00:10:26.880 -- That's a lot.
00:10:28.640 -- That's a lot that's off limits to state law making.
00:10:32.400 -- But here and here's the important point for our conversation today.
00:10:37.400 -- There are some critical exceptions that leave room for states to act and I want to highlight three of them.
00:10:44.880 -- They are first union organizing and collective bargaining for workers who are not covered by the federal law.
00:10:53.920 -- Then state action that takes the form of market participation and third minimum standards.
00:11:01.680 -- So the first category of stuff that's not off limits to states is organizing and bargaining rules for workers who are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act.
00:11:13.480 -- That includes public sector employees, agricultural employees, domestic workers, and probably gig workers.
00:11:21.680 -- The status of gig workers is in flux but at least for the time being they are likely exempt from preemption scrutiny.
00:11:29.520 -- And here we can think of this as a kind of silver linings rule.
00:11:33.520 -- Workers who are deprived of the protection of federal labor law lose the ability to serve rights under the federal law but thereby are entitled to whatever state protections a state wants to provide for them.
00:11:47.720 -- This is why things like the Agricultural Labor Relations Act that some states have are not preempted by public sector collective bargaining laws are not preempted.
00:11:57.440 -- And for states like here in Massachusetts and like Seattle in your own state, why states can begin experimenting with organizing and bargaining rights for workers like ride share drivers.
00:12:11.960 -- Okay.
00:12:12.960 -- The second category of actions that are not preempted are actions taken by a state in the state's proprietary capacity.
00:12:23.640 -- Sometimes this is called the proprietary exception.
00:12:25.840 -- Sometimes it's referred to as actions that the state takes as a market participant rather than a regulator.
00:12:32.680 -- But the basic idea is that if a state is acting like a market participant rather than a like a government, it's not preempted.
00:12:41.920 -- So there's a host of really important examples here.
00:12:45.320 -- Massachusetts needed to dredge Boston Harbor and it decided in order to limit the possibility for labor disruption to add a bid specification for the project that required project labor agreements and the use of union labor.
00:12:59.240 -- The Supreme Court took up this case and found the requirement was valid and not preempted.
00:13:04.600 -- Why? Because Massachusetts was acting like a market participant rather than as a state.
00:13:10.680 -- Pittsburgh used tax increment financing on a downtown hotel project and required labor piece agreements to be signed by any hotel that wanted to secure the tax increment financing.
00:13:23.560 -- The result of Pittsburgh's rule was that to secure the labor piece agreement and thus the financing, hotel signed neutrality and car check agreements with union seeking to organize hotel workers.
00:13:36.000 -- The third circuit found that this requirement was valid and not preempted.
00:13:40.120 -- Why? Because Pittsburgh was acting as a financier, not as a government.
00:13:46.400 -- Illinois's grant funds for the construction and renewal of ethanol plants that required union labor valid and not preempted.
00:13:57.240 -- Los Angeles's requirement that contractors who operate stores at LAX signed labor piece agreements valid and not preempted.
00:14:06.080 -- Michigan for a time banned government entities requiring large labor agreements and the sixth circuit found that rule to be valid and not preempted because again it found that the state was acting like a market participant rather than as a government.
00:14:22.320 -- Just to note about this, the test here is highly fact dependent but in essence what the courts look for is that the state is acting in pursuit of an efficient procurement of goods and services and that the project at question is sufficiently narrow and scope to suggest market activity rather than regulation.
00:14:44.960 -- The final exception I'll mention is the exception for minimum standards rules.
00:14:49.960 -- Here we deal not with union organizing and collective bargaining but with things like minimum wage over time just cause protection against arbitrary discharges.
00:15:00.920 -- The basic idea is that the National Labor Relations Act governs union organizing and bargaining and doesn't pre-am state laws that deal with minimum standards.
00:15:11.280 -- Not only does this allow states to pass their own minimum wage laws, it also means that states can create worker boards.
00:15:19.360 -- This is a new development that's worth paying close attention to.
00:15:24.440 -- Other boards are composed of representatives of workers, businesses and the public and they do things like formulate minimum wage for the sectors which they govern.
00:15:34.360 -- California recently enacted such a board for the fast food industry.
00:15:38.400 -- Minnesota has passed a board for the nursing home industry.
00:15:42.440 -- That board is composed of nine members, six members, three representing nursing home workers and three representing employer groups appointed by the governor and three by the Department of Labor.
00:15:54.440 -- That board has the authority to set standards for wages and benefits across the industry.
00:16:00.120 -- In April of this year that board voted on an industry minimum wage increase that will go up to about $24 an hour by 2027.
00:16:10.720 -- Here we have three rules of preemption.
00:16:14.360 -- The zone for NLRB regulation, the zone for market freedom and damages and remedies but also three important exceptions to NLRA.
00:16:23.480 -- Reemption for workers not covered by the statute for actions taken by a state in the state's proprietary capacity and for minimum standards.
00:16:33.160 -- So okay, that's a very quick review of preemption law just to give you some context for our work in this area.
00:16:41.800 -- The bottom line, despite a very broad preemption regime, there is a lot of room for state action and important interventions in the field.
00:16:52.680 -- And with that I will pass it on to Raj.
00:16:56.440 -- Excuse me, Ben, Professor Stacks, we have a question from Senator Conway.
00:17:01.040 -- Yes, I was curious about the time of these finance-seer exemption here.
00:17:10.079 -- The state has involved in all kinds of capital budget projects, as you know, and they are the finance-seer of those projects.
00:17:18.960 -- Does this comment to capital budget projects qualify as state being the finance-seer? If that's so, any construction projects that the state funds would be there for, except from Federal Labor Board rules? Yes, so I'll start with a big caveat, which is that these questions are always intensely fact dependent, and we need to know a lot about the specifics.
00:17:50.520 -- But the basic rule that emerges from this sage hospitality case, which is the Pittsburgh one I mentioned, is that if the city or state maintains a financial interest in the project that it's financed, such that it could plausibly argue plausibly state that its ability to recoup its loans, for example, or its ability to secure payment on the financing that it's granted, and that that ability is contingent on something like Labor Peace.
00:18:32.000 -- Then yes, there's a strong argument that those programs are not preempted.
00:18:37.880 -- Well, the state has a prevailing wage laws, as you know, probably, that basically sets minimum standards in what I call state construction projects.
00:18:53.560 -- I just, it's an area that I'm just curious about.
00:18:59.000 -- I just think that there are a lot of the state when it funds something has an interest in the minimum Labor Standards, and if that's the case then perhaps an area to be explored.
00:19:13.240 -- Thank you for your presentation.
00:19:15.000 -- And I believe it was about five, six years ago that we established 15% threshold for any transportation projects for apprentices to be employed on the projects.
00:19:33.400 -- And by putting that apprenticeship threshold on those projects, we were able to really open up a much more diverse population of apprentices, and it's been quite successful for those that have been involved in.
00:19:48.120 -- We just now last couple of years passed the approach for cities, municipal public projects as well for an apprenticeship threshold.
00:20:01.440 -- So that might come under that same minimum standard threshold that Professor Sacks was explaining.
00:20:11.520 -- That was an incredibly valuable explanation of preemption and exemptions that were very foggy in my mind.
00:20:21.000 -- I very much appreciate the clarity.
00:20:24.440 -- Thank you.
00:20:25.440 -- Thank you for the chance.
00:20:29.040 -- Now our next presenter is the fellow at the Center for Labor and Adjust Economy.
00:20:39.040 -- Rajis Nayak.
00:20:40.840 -- Yeah, hi.
00:20:42.840 -- Hi.
00:20:43.840 -- We're so happy to be with you all today, and thank you for moving to exactly right slide.
00:20:49.040 -- I'll be continuing a little bit on Ben's point, providing some legal context today, but this time on why state action is so important given the federal landscape for protecting workers.
00:21:01.160 -- Today, in particular, I want to highlight four recent Supreme Court decisions that have really fundamentally reshaped the nature of executive action that protects federal workers at the federal level, and that really underscores why states are more important than ever here.
00:21:14.160 -- You know, taking a step back, I should say in the last few decades, it's been harder to pass legislation in Congress.
00:21:19.960 -- And I say that at a time when we're again, struggling to pass even a budget at the federal level, I can speak for myself at least to say it's unfortunate that there's less bipartisan legislation in Washington D.C. these days, which is why presidents in both parties have turned to executive action as a way to advance their policy goals for President Obama and now President Biden.
00:21:38.600 -- This is meant using executive action to improve wages, promote workers' voice in the workplace and improve opportunities for good jobs for all Americans.
00:21:46.760 -- executive action has to be rooted in the laws they're already on the books, which an agency can then interpret.
00:21:52.160 -- As many of you know, for four decades, the Supreme Court has said that if an agency's interpretation is challenged, there's basically a two-step assessment of whether the agency's interpretation is allowable.
00:22:04.520 -- First, the question is, if Congress was clear about the matter, then the text that Congress provided wins.
00:22:10.760 -- But if there's ambiguity, and the agency made a permissible construction of this statute, courts would defer to the agencies.
00:22:19.680 -- And on some level, that makes sense.
00:22:21.480 -- Agencies have large teams of economists, lawyers, policy staff who built decades of substantive knowledge and expertise to inform those decisions.
00:22:29.120 -- That was, of course, the Chevron doctrine named after the 1980s case Chevron versus NRDC.
00:22:34.000 -- But the summer of the Supreme Court over will Chevron in case he'll look right versus Ramondo.
00:22:39.360 -- The court said that under the Minister of Procedure Act, it's the job of judges not agencies to resolve ambiguities in the law.
00:22:47.040 -- Judges should give the agencies to use some weight and potentially more weight if their view is long standing, for example.
00:22:53.760 -- But still nothing close to the difference that agencies previously got.
00:22:57.920 -- This change will have real implications for the law.
00:23:01.160 -- For one thing, judges don't have the staff or expertise to assess the best weight to implement the law.
00:23:07.120 -- And I don't mean to speak for the legislative and Washington state, but in Washington and D.C., Congress often doesn't have enough staff either to run all those economic and illegal matters.
00:23:20.880 -- They often rely on agencies to interpret the law.
00:23:24.920 -- Courts are also at least accountable branch of government.
00:23:27.240 -- Now more than ever, they're empowered to decide what elected legislators meant to say.
00:23:31.960 -- Already, depending around the country or cases that are being remanded, the district courts rethink the decisions in light and flow for bright.
00:23:38.280 -- For example, in the worker context, the federal U.S. Department of Labor issued a retirement rule earlier last year saying that planned fiduciaries can take environmental social and governance issues into account when assessing what to invest in.
00:23:53.280 -- That rule was upheld by a judge in Texas, one who was notoriously skeptical of government action, relying upon Chevron, and now it's back to him to decide again after a lower bright.
00:24:03.120 -- Likewise, the Fifth Circuit recently invalidated the 2021 rule protecting tip workers from being paid a lower tip worker wage, while spending more of their time doing non-tipped work.
00:24:13.480 -- So that of course is just the beginning.
00:24:15.080 -- Another case from 2022, West Virginia versus EPA, recognized a newly kind of named major questions doctrine, which was built upon other recent administrative action cases, allowing the court to skip the difference in analysis entirely.
00:24:30.720 -- The court provided some basic criteria for when to apply this major questions to Ocra if there's an extraordinary case involving economic and political significance and considering the history and breadth of the authority asserted.
00:24:42.880 -- But in those criteria, which are quite subjective, the court has broad authority to invalidate agency action unless an agency can point to clear congressional authorization.
00:24:53.680 -- A third case that came down this year, SEC versus Charcazi invalidated the SEC's civil penalties because they involved enforcement proceedings in front of a minister of law judge, not a federal jury.
00:25:05.240 -- And in a statutory context, they said that resembles a common law fraud claim.
00:25:10.440 -- The implications of Charcazi isn't entirely clear yet, but there will be a lot more litigation to define its outer boundaries.
00:25:17.000 -- And this case will clearly undermine common enforcement schemes used across government statutes now.
00:25:22.840 -- It's possible it will interfere with enforcement in a number of other areas as well.
00:25:27.360 -- The fourth case listed on this slide here, Quarro Post versus the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System really amplifies the implications of all the rest of the cases.
00:25:37.440 -- Up until now, unless the statute says otherwise, plaintiffs have six years to challenge an agency's action after new rules enacted.
00:25:44.600 -- Quarro Post considers that six years sexual limitations and says, instead of running from the time the rule is published and finalized, the six year sexual limitations starts to new every time a new entity becomes subject to the rule.
00:25:57.320 -- So every time a new entity is formed, a new gas station is subject to labor laws, they can challenge any longstanding rule that they are subject to.
00:26:05.720 -- So Quarro Post could essentially allow plaintiffs to reopen every civil issue and litigate until they can find a judge to agree to enjoy the agency's rulemaking somewhere.
00:26:13.960 -- And we saw just this month the third circuit revived to challenge to the Department of Labor's 2013 rule ensuring that home care workers have been in wage and overtime rights, a rule that really passed through a gauntlet of challenges when it was first published in the early 2010s.
00:26:28.200 -- So none of this might be a sudden as it seems, there's been a long term movement to overturn Chevron led by law professors, lawyers, advocates for skeptical of executive action.
00:26:39.120 -- And the result has really been to empowered judges and courts that are now themselves skeptical of executive action over agencies that have built up this expertise and that have more responsiveness to much like legislators to voters.
00:26:55.400 -- That's why the state, the work that you're doing in Washington state is so important and why we're excited to talk to you today.
00:27:01.520 -- I'm going to turn over to Yuri next who could talk a little bit more about our toolkit and some of the models that we'd like to bring to your attention.
00:27:10.440 -- Madam Chair, your microphone.
00:27:17.320 -- I am so sorry.
00:27:18.520 -- Thank you very much for that presentation.
00:27:21.080 -- It's really kind of overwhelming to see all of these decisions coming down from the C-Apprim Court recently, sort of deconstructing and removing current standards and procedures, really.
00:27:36.200 -- I guess it's the attack on the administrative state is called or something like that.
00:27:41.400 -- Senator Conway, do you have a question? I just, in terms of executive action, isn't there a danger for labor and executive action with the wrong president? I mean, I think this is the, as I was saying earlier, I do think the presidents of, you know, both parties have turned to executive action to, you know, to advance their policy agenda as what I think is striking though is that in the last couple of years, their executive actions, a good example is the Department of Labor's US Department of Labor's overtime rule, which is, again, rooted in a system that's been on the books in 1940 in various ways.
00:28:21.640 -- And now you have courts going back and saying, well, can the US Department of Labor set an overtime salary threshold at all? Again, a precedent that the department has been doing since 1940s, which is, I think if you would ask people 10 or 15 years ago, they would have said, of course, you can, maybe in five years ago, of course, you can set an overtime threshold with some sort.
00:28:39.640 -- And in the case called mefield, the courts are currently rethinking that and it's, it's being litigated down in the fifth circuit.
00:28:48.600 -- Thank you so much again, Rajee, set was really very informative to have the big picture there.
00:28:54.440 -- Thank you.
00:28:54.440 -- I guess we now have Yori coming up.
00:28:54.440 -- Yori Chang.
00:29:04.360 -- Thank you so much, Canada and the committee for inviting us to speak with you all today.
00:29:11.000 -- I'll spend the last couple of minutes of our presentation introducing our new resource, building worker power in cities and states, a toolkit for state and local labor policy innovation.
00:29:20.040 -- As my colleagues have discussed, there has been no shortage of pro-worker policy innovation at the state and local levels.
00:29:25.080 -- And many examples of which we've been inspired by have come from Washington state.
00:29:29.560 -- But as we've been hearing from our partners on the ground, state and local government space, a range of obstacles to being able to do more to protect and enforce workers' rights.
00:29:38.200 -- As Raj mentioned, capacity constraints, in addition to the complexities of labor love preemption that Ben described.
00:29:43.800 -- And so in response to what we've been hearing from policy makers and advocates, we sought to build an accessible resource that might help to address some of these challenges.
00:29:53.000 -- So over the past year, we tracked and compiled as many policies that we could think of that could enable workers to have more say in their workplaces, allow for more favorable conditions under which to organize and build more robust enforcement capacity at the state and local levels.
00:30:07.320 -- And the results of this year-long effort culminated in this toolkit, which contains 11 sections that span the different areas in which such policies have been enacted.
00:30:17.880 -- Each section includes background information, objectives of state or local intervention, analyses of legal preemption risk, and options for state and local action.
00:30:22.520 -- I'll very briefly highlight a few of these sections and the resources we include in the toolkit.
00:30:27.720 -- Next slide, please.
00:30:34.040 -- So one of the major shortcomings of the NLRA is its exclusion of several categories of workers, including workers in the public sector and industry, such as agriculture and domestic work, as well as independent contractors.
00:30:43.640 -- And in this session, we discussed how states and localities have filled in the gaps.
00:30:49.240 -- So for instance, several states expand to collective bargaining rights for public sector workers over the years, including in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Janice decision, 14 states extend collective bargaining rights to agricultural workers, notably states like California with its Agricultural Labor Relations Act, and the domestic workers' bills of rights have passed and over a dozen states and localities, including Seattle with its domestic workers ordinance, which also included a worker standards board, speaking of which in our section on worker boards, if you want to mind flipping to the next slide.
00:31:18.520 -- We discussed how standard setting boards have been established in industries, including agriculture, nursing homes, and fast food.
00:31:29.400 -- These boards, which Ben has described, typically consists of representatives of workers, employers, and the public.
00:31:36.200 -- They've been effective in giving workers more of a concrete say in the setting, sector-wide's labor standards.
00:31:41.000 -- And so on this section's page on our website, we feature remarkable testimony from a California Fast Food Council member, as well as a policy tracker, we keep up to date with latest developments.
00:31:51.800 -- And you can find similar resources and stories throughout all sections of our toolkit.
00:31:57.400 -- Next slide, please.
00:31:57.400 -- So section five of our toolkit focuses on the role that worker organizations can play in administering public benefits and as a result, both strengthen the capacity of the state government to do so as well as support worker power building.
00:32:15.960 -- So this section describes the obstacles workers face to accessing public benefits and highlights the success of benefits administration models that give unions a role in supporting public benefits delivery.
00:32:25.080 -- And so in our examples of state action, we highlight UI navigators programs as exemplars of this model, including Washington state, seven states received ARPA UI navigator grants to participate in the program in 2022.
00:32:37.240 -- And early evaluations of these programs have been found to help to eliminate barriers to access for hard-to-reach and marginalized workers, including migrant and seasonal workers.
00:32:47.320 -- Another option we highlight in this section is that ACA navigators program, which contributed to helping over 20 million people sign up for health care coverage during the 2024 open enrollment period.
00:32:57.400 -- Next slide, please.
00:32:57.400 -- So the last section I'll highlight today focuses on what states and localities can do to protect workers from the impacts of the use of AI and algorithmic management practices and workplaces that impact worker autonomy, health and safety.
00:33:16.840 -- And so we highlight a couple of different examples of what states have been or can be trying in this area.
00:33:21.800 -- So there have been a number of states regulating the use of automated tools in making decisions related to hiring, firing compensation.
00:33:27.240 -- In some cases with a private right of action for workers, as state and local governments procure and implement AI enabled systems, procurement policies could also serve as an important lever for accountability and oversight by mandating high transparency and audit standards for vendors.
00:33:44.600 -- And, hardening back to our section on worker boards, we also discuss how AI standards boards could be established at the sectoral level to set guard rails for the use of AI that can protect workers from its harms.
00:33:54.680 -- And for more recommendations on responding to the use of AI in the workplace, we hope you might check out our report, worker power and voice, in the AI response, which is linked in this section on our website.
00:34:04.680 -- Last slide, please.
00:34:11.960 -- Thank you all so much.
00:34:11.960 -- We encourage you all to check out our toolkit, which is available in both digital and PDF formats on our website.
00:34:16.679 -- And please get in touch with us to let us know what's helpful, what we missed and should include, or how else we can serve as a resource.
00:34:21.960 -- Thank you again so much.
00:34:27.960 -- Our team is happy to take any additional questions.
00:34:27.960 -- Thank you very, very much, Rory.
00:34:33.960 -- And I do have one question and it kind of harkens back to some of the legal ramifications we were looking at from the previous speakers.
00:34:41.400 -- I believe there is the current case underway.
00:34:41.400 -- And I believe that one of our corporations here in the Washington state, I believe it's Amazon, is a litigator in this case going to the court to challenge the very existence.
00:34:57.160 -- If I understand correctly of the NLRB, is there information on that case that you have been gathering as well? Not explicitly in the toolkit, but I'm happy to defer to some of my colleagues to speak more on that.
00:35:14.840 -- Okay.
00:35:14.840 -- Any questions about the toolkit? Yeah, I can jump in and then Rajan can add.
00:35:21.880 -- There's a number and so there is the Amazon case.
00:35:31.320 -- There are actually right now a number of challenges pending brought by companies trying to invalidate the actions of the NLRB based on some of these cases that Raj had highlighted.
00:35:47.320 -- And in fact, right now, because of previous cases that were brought in the Fifth Circuit, which is the federal court that oversees Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, that the district courts there in those three states are actually joining the NLRB from processing cases based on these administrative law decisions.
00:36:09.960 -- So that means that, you know, not right now just for workers who are trying to assert their rights under the NLRA in those three states, they're essentially being denied the laws protection because if they try to bring a case, then companies have been coming into district courts in those states and asking those courts to tell the NLRB in Washington, D.C., not to even move forward to find out if there's any merit to their complaints or not.
00:36:49.800 -- So it's these cases that Raj highlighted are having a very real-world impact on workers, particularly around, as you point to their rights to engage in collective bargaining already.
00:37:07.000 -- Raj, Ben, if you want to add anything to that.
00:37:14.840 -- The only thing I'll add is if you're interested Senator Kaiser or anybody else, we have a feature on the blog on labor tracking these cases and the development.
00:37:20.600 -- So you can stay up to date.
00:37:29.000 -- As Sharon said, there are many cases some have been favorably decided and some have been unfairly decided, I suppose, depending on your perspective.
00:37:37.080 -- But the courts have come out different ways on these questions and so it's going to be something to watch.
00:37:43.080 -- Yeah, it seems like a moving target at this point.
00:37:49.080 -- We don't know what the actual outcome is, but we may have an indication information from those previous cases in the recent terms of the Supreme Court.
00:37:54.680 -- So I guess we need to be prospective and proactive in looking forward with the possibilities.
00:38:00.680 -- Senator Conway.
00:38:07.400 -- Yeah, for a good presentation today and I thank you for it.
00:38:07.400 -- But I was wondering, I'm old enough to hear it be around when the Norma Ray was made a movie.
00:38:18.920 -- Norma Ray excited everyone about the power of unions and I'm wondering, any of your center work, whether you folks are focused on trying to figure out ways to change the culture of America in terms of labor in terms of the power of workers, you know, I think that you know, we often miss in all of our work the importance of the media in terms of shaping attitudes and values.
00:38:47.880 -- And I'm just curious whether the center is focused on that.
00:38:57.320 -- I was great.
00:38:57.320 -- I'm likely.
00:38:57.320 -- I just think that, you know, the state has the state has the power here to impact the culture of ideas, as you know, and how are we doing in terms of trying to mobilize to help workers understand their rights and understand the importance of collecting bargaining.
00:39:29.640 -- So I'll just add, I mean, I think directly engaging and trying to shape the culture might be beyond our, but we do try to amplify research that we do, like looking at what are the real world impacts when states like Washington or other states that we highlight in the toolkit when they do take actions to try to empower workers, what are the real impacts of the people can see how these policies do make a difference for working people.
00:40:07.080 -- And then just to share as much as we can, you know, accurate information about how these policies can be adapted and adopted and to connect people who care about using the information that we provide in order to do what you, we have throughout our state.
00:40:24.200 -- You know, it has been very proactive in collecting bargaining.
00:40:31.720 -- We provide to collective bargaining for home care workers.
00:40:31.720 -- That's a big bill that was done in the past.
00:40:37.160 -- We have expanded protective collective bargaining for interpreters who do interpret them.
00:40:44.760 -- That's another big bill that we have passed here recently.
00:40:44.760 -- And and I guess what I'm trying to see in all this is how we can expand that collective bargaining right.
00:40:58.120 -- And I assume that's what your center is looking at here is how do do we expand collective bargaining rights now? You know, I just, I've about my role to work you're doing, but I also think we need to evaluate carefully, you know, that, you know, there are a lot of, there's a lot of work to be done in helping workers understand collective bargaining.
00:41:27.480 -- The, you know, it's not just worker power, it's a power to have a voice in your work sites.
00:41:35.720 -- And so I just hope that we'll keep focused on that issue.
00:41:35.720 -- Thank you.
00:41:42.120 -- And Sheri, I love that you brought up the home care workers because that's a great story to tell, right, of how the conditions and living standards for home care workers in Washington were just transformed by the ability to to engage in collective bargaining.
00:41:53.160 -- So it's a great example.
00:41:59.560 -- And that's some of what we hope the toolkit will do is to show policy makers all over the country.
00:42:06.200 -- Like there are things that even at the state level, you might think about labor laws being a federal issue, but that at the state level, there are things that can be done that will bring those kinds of improvements to workers lives and to know that there are resources for policy makers that want to want to take that leap.
00:42:24.840 -- Well, I want to thank you, Sheri, and your entire team there at the center for an incredibly comprehensive approach to what can be done.
00:42:41.080 -- And where can we go and providing this to us and to others? It's an invaluable resource for us.
00:42:49.720 -- So thank you so much for putting this together.
00:42:49.720 -- And some, I believe Ben mentioned the blog, how do we access the blog? www.onlabor.org. Oh, that's easy.
00:43:04.680 -- Thank you.
00:43:04.680 -- I even I can remember that one.
00:43:08.200 -- One small note about the cultural point, which this reminds me of is just how much interest and energy there is among young people and among students to learn about labor law, to learn about the labor movement, to think about creative ways of making the law better for for working people.
00:43:30.520 -- So it's it's both to agree with the importance of culture and also to sound a note of optimism about about the future.
00:43:45.640 -- Well, on that note, I love to have a point of optimism about the future.
00:43:45.640 -- Thank you all again for your great work and for your wonderful presentation to us today.
00:43:51.640 -- It's very valuable.
00:43:51.640 -- Thank you.
00:43:58.360 -- Thanks for having us.
00:43:58.360 -- Thank you.
00:43:58.360 -- Bye.
00:44:03.160 -- Now our agenda goes to in-person presentation now to give us an update from our state agencies about the enforcement of working conditions at large agricultural employer.
00:44:17.880 -- And I would like to bring forward Tammy Fellon from the Department of Labor and Industries.
00:44:24.280 -- Also, did you want to bring Kari Anderson? Terri Anderson.
00:44:27.720 -- She is remote.
00:44:27.720 -- Oh, she is.
00:44:27.720 -- Okay.
00:44:27.720 -- And Ariel, Nick, I can't pronounce it.
00:44:35.480 -- Inegas.
00:44:35.480 -- Thank you very much.
00:44:35.480 -- Also with labor and industries.
00:44:42.680 -- Tammy, I guess you go first on first.
00:44:42.680 -- I do.
00:44:42.680 -- Senator, thank you so much.
00:44:42.680 -- And good morning.
00:44:48.920 -- My name is Tammy Fellon with the Department of Labor and Industries.
00:44:48.920 -- And Senator Kaiser, first, I wanted to just acknowledge your long service and support of the department.
00:44:59.720 -- Your deep knowledge of the work that we do and, you know, how challenging you have been for the department at times.
00:45:07.960 -- We have grown and learned together.
00:45:07.960 -- And this, it will not be the same without you.
00:45:16.200 -- So thank you.
00:45:16.200 -- So with that, there were a few challenging items that I think you asked me to cover.
00:45:23.320 -- So it's sort of, I'll do the grab bag and then I will turn it over to Kari Anderson to do agricultural enforcement.
00:45:29.640 -- She is remote.
00:45:29.640 -- And then I will turn it over to Ariel to do our outreach efforts.
00:45:38.280 -- And then at the end, Brenda Hyalman will cover the the last return to work agenda items.
00:45:48.600 -- So first, I wanted to mention many legislators got an email from anonymous employees at L&I sharing concerns about our workers comp system monitoring station, our IT project that has been underway for a few to years now.
00:46:05.560 -- And we are just embarking on sort of putting the foundational IT systems in place to update our 40 year old workers comp system.
00:46:25.880 -- So we are one of the top five or six largest workers comp systems in the country.
00:46:32.440 -- We pay out two and a half roughly billion dollars, billion dollars in benefits a year to injured workers and medical providers.
00:46:40.840 -- And we are functioning on a 40 year old set of systems.
00:46:49.240 -- We actually have in excess of a hundred different systems that all connect.
00:46:49.240 -- It also impacts about a thousand of our staff.
00:46:56.280 -- And I would invite you.
00:46:56.280 -- We've we've done what we call a life of a claim tour where we actually bring people in and show you their black screens with the flashing cursor of with you know, four letter acronyms to get to different screens and our claims managers generally have five different screens open as they're talking to injured workers or employers to try and sort through all the information that comes in.
00:47:29.560 -- So we have been underway for a number of years to really map out what are all of these different systems and learn from other states.
00:47:44.520 -- And under the oversight of the legislature where you all are appropriating funds for us to do these activities under the oversight of WATEC and the technology services board.
00:47:54.200 -- And we also have external QA and independent reviews.
00:48:01.640 -- So I mentioned this is going to impact more than a thousand of our employees staff.
00:48:07.560 -- So far we've engaged about 800 of those workers of our employees to to be part of that change.
00:48:15.400 -- And I think that email that you received shows we need to do more.
00:48:23.480 -- So we are working to increase the communication to increase their participation and you know, continue to reflect the concerns of our staff.
00:48:32.520 -- We also have change management in place and again are just trying to be fully transparent.
00:48:40.680 -- I appreciate you speaking to that little controversy that was dust up last month I believe.
00:48:49.640 -- And I do hope that will continue to make progress and adjust and inform your employees who'll be impacted by this modernization.
00:49:00.040 -- When is the due date so to speak of implementation for your modernization? Well part of the independent review that we did really recommended that we change from sort of a big bang where we're going to turn off the old turn on the new because we have to continue to operate the system while we're building a new one.
00:49:24.040 -- So we're doing more of an agile approach so we're doing a sort of replacing modules at a time.
00:49:30.040 -- So we think we could be six or eight, ten years from now and we're doing it pieces at a time.
00:49:36.840 -- So we submitted a request to the GOV's office for the first step of about $40 million for really that technology backbone.
00:49:57.560 -- So database cloud services, things like that.
00:49:57.560 -- And then we have, but part of the work we've done so far is to also map out what comes next in what order, how do the systems sort of need to continue to operate as we move transition to the new.
00:50:13.160 -- So we'll have value at each after each module and then can revisit sort of the plan over the next six, eight, ten years.
00:50:19.800 -- Yeah.
00:50:19.800 -- That's a lot.
00:50:28.200 -- That sounds incredibly complex.
00:50:28.200 -- Yeah.
00:50:28.200 -- Yes.
00:50:28.200 -- Good luck.
00:50:28.200 -- Thank you.
00:50:28.200 -- Thank you.
00:50:28.200 -- All right, moving I also wanted to mention briefly we announced the workers comp proposal, the rates for 2025.
00:50:46.840 -- It matches wage inflation of 3.8% and again that is the proposed rate that kicks off a rulemaking process.
00:50:55.000 -- So we'll have hearings, public hearings in October announce the rate towards the end of November and then it takes effect in January.
00:51:01.800 -- It is not enough to cover what are expected costs for next year.
00:51:09.800 -- We're relying on about $64 million of reserves that we have.
00:51:09.800 -- We also would recognize strong investment returns that contribute to kind of buying down that rate with those reserves.
00:51:25.880 -- And I know that there's been some controversy around the rates keep going up, but I would mention as wages go up, we charge an amount per hour.
00:51:36.520 -- So whether you're making $20 an hour or $40 an hour, the amount that as a worker and that the employer pays per hour stays the same.
00:51:45.880 -- So unless we increase that rate, we won't we don't recover sufficient revenue to be able to cover those increased costs because as wages go up, you know, time last goes up and coal has go up.
00:52:01.640 -- And so we do, we buy down, we propose to buy down the rate by using about $64 million in reserves.
00:52:09.800 -- And also, I know that, and I just want to mention that we are the only state in the country where workers contribute a significant amount.
00:52:25.240 -- So workers will continue to cover about a quarter of the rates.
00:52:32.280 -- So the overall increases about a dollar a week and per worker on average.
00:52:41.000 -- I think we also saw a bit of a bump with county city, the sector of county cities because of PTSD claims.
00:52:46.840 -- Yes, I think that it, yes, we we capped the proposed rate for cities and counties, which is our practice.
00:52:59.400 -- When we created the fulfillment center rate, we did the same thing.
00:52:59.400 -- We capped it at 15%.
00:53:04.600 -- And the, I think it's important or remember, we have a robust benefit system here.
00:53:16.120 -- And with the combination of reserves and worker contributions and because we're a state fund state, we cover about three quarters of the workers in the state, we don't have additional costs, right, with that kind of a system.
00:53:32.920 -- And so we can offer a very robust set of benefits for, and one of the highest in the country, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance level of benefits, whereas our employer contribution is sort of middle of the pack.
00:53:46.600 -- And so, so we consider those PTSD benefits that are driving those city and county rates to be a portion of that generous benefit package.
00:54:01.960 -- Yes.
00:54:01.960 -- Senator Conway? Tammy, I'd be interested in seeing what percentage the state investment board, you know, it seems to me that one of the remarkable changes I've seen in the many years I've been here is that we've moved a lot of the work, comp funds into the state investment board and are actually getting returns on those dollars.
00:54:24.760 -- And it would be interesting to me to understand a little bit more the dynamic of that investment return on our rates because I think that recently we moved some of the business funds over there to the state investment board.
00:54:37.720 -- And it's acted as a way of, you know, managing the inflation on our rates.
00:54:45.480 -- And I just, it would be interesting to understand a little more how that state investment return is helping lower the rates or keep the rates stable for employers.
00:55:02.840 -- And so I hope you can give that information to us because I think it's a really major part of our management of our worker comp system.
00:55:08.200 -- Absolutely.
00:55:08.200 -- Senator Conway, it is a significant portion.
00:55:15.160 -- And I think the return on investment is a greater portion than the worker contribution rate at about a quarter.
00:55:21.320 -- But do you know, we invest those dollars differently because sometimes we have very short-term costs.
00:55:27.400 -- And then other times we have long-term pensions.
00:55:27.400 -- And so we work with the state investment board to invest those dollars differently depending on what the use is, of course.
00:55:40.440 -- But we, yeah, that would be happy to gather that information.
00:55:40.440 -- Okay, let's move on to then back to the agenda.
00:55:47.320 -- Because you've covered a lot of ground that sort of developed over the interim so far, Tammy, thank you.
00:55:53.640 -- But should we call forward next, Cari? And it's a Cari online? I am.
00:56:02.440 -- Great.
00:56:02.440 -- Go ahead.
00:56:02.440 -- Well, good morning.
00:56:02.440 -- Thank you for having us today.
00:56:12.440 -- Tammy, did you want to advance the slide? Or, remember, the staff has you.
00:56:22.200 -- Just a slide number three please.
00:56:22.200 -- So again, my name is Cari Anderson.
00:56:22.200 -- And I am the Deputy Assistant Director for Josh.
00:56:30.280 -- And most of you, I'm sure are familiar with the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, but we want to give you some key facts and figures.
00:56:38.360 -- Josh has 466 full-time employees located throughout Washington.
00:56:46.600 -- And I just wanted to, we're going to be talking about compliance.
00:56:46.600 -- So I also wanted to quickly highlight our consultation and program in Josh.
00:56:53.720 -- They are what we write to say, the Urenstone Carol of Josh.
00:57:00.360 -- They're such an important and impactful program.
00:57:00.360 -- They are one of, Washington has one of the largest consultation programs.
00:57:07.160 -- They have 66 consultants located around the state.
00:57:13.000 -- And then also over the last year, we've partnered with our communications to do a media campaign to bring awareness of our consultation services to employers out there.
00:57:20.360 -- So hopefully they can invite us in and we can help their work sites become more safe.
00:57:26.760 -- And additional maybe we have education and outreach team that does an amazing job creating educational tools and resources for employers and bookers.
00:57:39.640 -- Next slide.
00:57:47.000 -- So the Occupational Safety and Health Act allows states to run their own workplace safety and health programs as long as they are at least as effective as it would be.
00:57:58.360 -- Through OSHA, each of these programs is provided some federal funding.
00:58:07.560 -- I'm sorry.
00:58:07.560 -- Can you look at that? Go ahead.
00:58:12.280 -- Are we? And currently there are actually 29.
00:58:14.840 -- This says 27 states, but there is not counting the territory.
00:58:23.720 -- So currently there are 29 states and territories.
00:58:23.720 -- And that's Puerto Rico Virgin Islands are also in there.
00:58:28.840 -- They have their own state plans in place.
00:58:28.840 -- And the majority of those states cover both private and public sector employers while some only cover public sector employers and in those states OSHA covers private.
00:58:43.160 -- Washington is what is considered a comprehensive state plan.
00:58:43.160 -- And we cover both private and public employers.
00:58:49.960 -- Madam Chair, Senator Braun has his hand raised.
00:58:55.560 -- Senator Braun, we'd be good to see you.
00:58:59.960 -- Thank you Madam Chair.
00:58:59.960 -- And I don't have my camera on just them driving at the moment.
00:58:59.960 -- I appreciate your, right, guys.
00:59:04.600 -- I had a quick question about the consultation program that was mentioned a few minutes ago.
00:59:09.880 -- I've participated in that for probably two decades.
00:59:09.880 -- Mostly very positive.
00:59:09.880 -- But I've a lot of feedback lately that the consultants have become much more aggressive.
00:59:17.640 -- And the way that that set up is unless you have some sort of a major finding that it's collaborative and again, Mike's very, that's mostly been very positive.
00:59:30.200 -- But more recently, I've gotten feedback that has been less collaborative.
00:59:37.800 -- And I wonder if there's been any changes to the guidance or the rules associated with that program.
00:59:43.400 -- There hasn't.
00:59:43.400 -- And I have to say, I don't like hearing that.
00:59:43.400 -- We would love to be able to hear more about that or speak to anyone that's had a negative experience because we want to make sure that when we go in, it's very positive and we're there to help.
01:00:05.720 -- Yeah, that'd be great.
01:00:05.720 -- Maybe we could talk offline and I could connect you with folks who have shared this with me because I troubled me as well because I said, Mike's experience has been pretty positive for the most part.
01:00:14.440 -- And I think it's a valuable program.
01:00:14.440 -- Thank you.
01:00:14.440 -- Thank you, Master.
01:00:19.880 -- Thank you, everyone.
01:00:19.880 -- I would really appreciate that.
01:00:19.880 -- Thank you.
01:00:22.440 -- Thank you, Senator Braun and drive carefully, please.
01:00:28.040 -- Carrie, let's move on to the issue of agriculture directly.
01:00:28.040 -- It says in your slide that federal funds cannot be used for agricultural inspections on farms with 10 or more employees.
01:00:43.960 -- 10 or fewer.
01:00:43.960 -- Oh, I'm misreading your slide.
01:00:43.960 -- Okay.
01:00:49.640 -- And then it also says were they only state to have a dedicated agricultural inspection program that uses state funds? Yes.
01:00:57.400 -- Luckily you say the state legislature has funded us positions for our dedicated our unit.
01:01:09.880 -- And so we are the only state plan that has inspectors dedicated to inspecting only agricultural only agriculture.
01:01:20.040 -- Okay.
01:01:20.040 -- Now, let's talk about what we are finding in those inspections.
01:01:27.160 -- Okay.
01:01:27.160 -- And that's actually, let's see, let's go to slide five.
01:01:27.160 -- I think we're going to get there.
01:01:37.000 -- So quickly, you can see that because of the state legislature funding for our aid unit, we're able to do proactive and best proactive inspections, whether they're just respond to complaints, which is really important, especially during the times when it's extremely hard or there's a wired wildfire incident.
01:01:59.080 -- And then our next slide.
01:01:59.080 -- Our agriculture unit is located at the region offices.
01:02:11.000 -- They're on your screen, but they respond to accidents or fatalities or proactive aspects anywhere.
01:02:17.320 -- We're all over the state.
01:02:17.320 -- And we're really lucky that I'm going to look a little bit of time.
01:02:27.480 -- We had to work closely with HR to recruit, but we were able to get Spanish speaking safety professionals for all of our inspector positions that are a agriculture team.
01:02:40.200 -- Next slide.
01:02:40.200 -- And this is, I think, what we were making for.
01:02:40.200 -- This is some inspection data that we thought we might find interesting.
01:02:50.600 -- You can see that in 2019, we completed 260 total agriculture inspections for we here, which is drier to win the agriculture unit was informed.
01:03:07.640 -- And so far this year, we've completed 269.
01:03:07.640 -- Well, that's through August 31st.
01:03:07.640 -- So you can see we can get to so many more work sites now.
01:03:15.480 -- That's why I'm wondering.
01:03:15.480 -- Do you have any questions on this side? I'm trying to see the statistics on this slide because there's a lot there.
01:03:25.000 -- So, right, it's just a little tight, a small, so we're blowing them up here.
01:03:30.360 -- But it looks like you've increased your inspections quite a bit.
01:03:46.760 -- And then if and when you're ready, we can move to the next slide.
01:03:46.760 -- Any questions? Go ahead.
01:03:46.760 -- I guess move on.
01:03:52.760 -- Yes.
01:03:52.760 -- Okay.
01:03:52.760 -- Well, these are, these are consistently from the top-sided agriculture violations.
01:04:01.160 -- And I wanted to specifically draw your attention to the rollover protection, which we call drops on tractors.
01:04:07.320 -- And this was actually the cause of a fatality in 2019, four fatalities in 2023 and resulted in one fatality so far in 2024.
01:04:15.080 -- And this is all really sad because this is a very preventable issue.
01:04:25.960 -- It's completely provincial.
01:04:34.760 -- Do you have any questions on any of those? Senator Shaldana.
01:04:34.760 -- Thank you.
01:04:34.760 -- I do have a question on when there is a fatality.
01:04:43.960 -- What is there an investigation and looking at, you know, obviously you mentioned ways to prevent.
01:04:52.040 -- But I also serve on a task force right now around a mental health of the workers and farmers in agriculture.
01:04:57.800 -- And this particular one was one that was, there was a case where it was concerned that there might have been suicide.
01:05:08.280 -- So, is there, when you look at the investigation of like what the underlying causes or the situation is, are we, you know, is there, what's the question I want? The answer, the answer I'm looking for is just, you know, are a team looking at, you know, what was the underlying cause? You know, how are we looking for interventions? This is a report that we get from Department of Corrections when there's a fatality in that workplace.
01:05:38.360 -- And I wonder if there is something similar that we do in the private sector to help look at what our underlying causes or ways that we're addressing that? Well, presently we don't investigate for mental health suicide.
01:05:51.640 -- We don't have jurisdiction over that.
01:06:01.480 -- However, this is a great time for me to plug.
01:06:01.480 -- We do have a really great website that we're working on of that's up.
01:06:09.880 -- And it's resources for employers and employees for mental health awareness and suicide prevention.
01:06:19.160 -- And we're really working hard to get that information out there, especially in agriculture and construction, which is some of the highest suicide and mental health information.
01:06:34.680 -- And so it's something that we're really working on providing resources and tools for workers and employers to create their own plan or in their own program.
01:06:45.320 -- So yeah, thanks for thanks for asking that because that's really something we're going forward to.
01:06:58.520 -- Thank you, Kari.
01:06:58.520 -- I have a question about heat working in very hot weather, which is going to become more and more of a problem apparently.
01:07:07.160 -- So do we have in our current menu of agriculture work violations, some kind of review of those kinds of violations where people are being required to work in the fields at very high heat times? So yes, we do have a heat rule and we do actually do a lot of proactive enforcement, especially on those particularly hot days, go out there and check some extra that employers are providing the shade, the rest breaks, water, all of the things that they're entitled to.
01:07:49.000 -- And so that's one of the things that we, one of the reasons we're so grateful for our team is that we're able to go out there and do all of that proactive enforcement, especially during these times.
01:08:03.240 -- Senator Conway? I guess my question is, are your agricultural violations complaint driven or are they the basis of your inspections? You know, there's so many reasons why we're out there and I think actually if we go to the next slide, you're psychic, these are some of the reasons why we go out there for that we respond to fatalities, hospitalizations, we get complaints, we categorize the complaints, those would be a current, an ex-employee, a current employee, maybe a family member of the employee, we get referrals which would be anonymous, or maybe someone's driving by and seeing something.
01:08:52.279 -- And then of course, we have the scheduled plans and restrictions.
01:09:00.200 -- So it kind of just is a mixed bag of why we get there.
01:09:09.479 -- So if I may, Senator, I think specifically to your question, what we call a schedule or a programmed inspection, those are those proactive inspections.
01:09:15.640 -- And this is specific to the industry of agriculture and you can see we're already nearly 130 of those planned inspections where we proactively go out to do those without a complaint or a referral.
01:09:31.160 -- So yes, we are able to do and you can see that we're on pace to significantly outdo what we did in 2019 before we had the ag unit.
01:09:46.359 -- I guess going back to Senator Kaiser's question on heat, you know that we all recognize that the temperature is changing the nature of the work.
01:09:56.280 -- And I just hope that we're ahead of the curve here in terms of trying to develop the protections for the workers from the success of heat has been so prevalent.
01:10:11.400 -- So thank you.
01:10:15.320 -- Okay, welcome.
01:10:15.320 -- And that we are one of the United States within outdoor heat.
01:10:23.480 -- So I think Washington is really progressive with our protections.
01:10:33.000 -- Well, I want to thank you very much for providing this overview of your very proactive approach to health and safety on the job in the agriculture industry.
01:10:42.120 -- In our state, it's very important and very large part of our state.
01:10:47.160 -- So it's excellent that we're on a good level of activity to make sure we have a very productive and safe environment for everyone.
01:10:55.880 -- Don't see any other questions, Karay.
01:11:03.080 -- So thank you very much.
01:11:03.080 -- I think we're moving on now to am I correct? We're moving on to the area.
01:11:11.000 -- Yes.
01:11:11.000 -- Thank you.
01:11:11.000 -- Next slide, please.
01:11:11.000 -- So we're really going to get a community relations from LNI.
01:11:22.040 -- So Senators, Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to provide information about our reach efforts to our diverse workforce.
01:11:27.480 -- In the next slides, you will see the efforts of this unit.
01:11:34.680 -- These are some pictures showing the staff in this unit conducting our reach in these pictures of worth thousand words, right? So you can see our activity in a variety.
01:11:40.040 -- And I will be talking further in each of those pictures.
01:11:47.160 -- So you have now a visual about it.
01:11:47.160 -- So next slide, please.
01:11:55.720 -- So in our community relations, our reach and engagement unit, it's made up of six, seven individuals that are stationed across the state.
01:12:00.840 -- This unit is part of the community relations office that oversees tribal relations and language access at LNI.
01:12:06.040 -- The outreach and engagement unit has increased since its foundation in 2017.
01:12:12.200 -- The unit was formed when the legislature approved one of our budget requests for two FTEs during, during the Spinium, you approved two additional FTEs.
01:12:28.360 -- We thank you for your support and your confidence in our work.
01:12:28.360 -- We want to specifically highlight the none of these, none of these staff are enforcement.
01:12:35.240 -- And you heard previously from Kerry in regards to enforcement activities.
01:12:42.040 -- The entire function of this unit is to inform, educate and build relationships with the community and workers we serve.
01:12:48.680 -- The staff in this unit provides information on worker rights, help workers access services, and resources in the language of their preference and collaborate at events with their multi bilingual communities.
01:13:13.240 -- We have very intentional and recruiting people for these positions who come from the communities we're trying to reach.
01:13:18.680 -- All of these staff are bilingual.
01:13:18.680 -- For example, one of our most recent staff we hire, Jewan Kim is bilingual and Korean English and covers the King County area.
01:13:32.040 -- And the rest of the staff are bilingual and Spanish in English.
01:13:32.040 -- Next slide please.
01:13:38.520 -- So how do we conduct outreach? So how do we conduct, we go to where the workers are at, who visit farms, warehouses, and housing facilities.
01:13:45.960 -- We have one-on-one interactions with workers to assist them in navigating our system.
01:13:54.120 -- These one-on-ones can be a simple, a-sanswering a question about where to find a form.
01:13:59.640 -- To help a worker file a safety complaint, a wage complaint, or filing a workers complaint.
01:14:06.120 -- When a worker has a one-on-one with us, they are sometimes in a stressful situation.
01:14:13.080 -- We don't tell them call the 1-800 number or send them to our web page.
01:14:20.520 -- These says hands-on assistance.
01:14:20.520 -- We only move on until the worker has a warm handoff to the proper program and person who can provide assistance.
01:14:28.200 -- We partner with community organizations and attend events throughout the state.
01:14:35.240 -- We meet with external partners to increase the understanding of LNI services has to offer.
01:14:41.320 -- These meetings can be one-on-one with advocates, other state, local, and federal agencies or group meetings.
01:14:47.800 -- For example, last week, I spent a couple days in Walla Walla in the Tri-Cities meeting with community organizations who have direct contact with workers and with other state agencies who provide services to workers.
01:15:06.280 -- These conversations are essential in developing a trust in relationship with our partners.
01:15:12.200 -- We also meet with internal LNI programs to provide feedback on what we hear from the community and any barriers the workers may encounter accessing our services.
01:15:18.600 -- We also work on individual solutions to get their help to the worker.
01:15:26.600 -- We believe that internal enreach is just as important as external outreach.
01:15:34.120 -- Everyone on one interaction with the worker can produce multiple meetings with our internal programs.
01:15:40.440 -- We also do outreach using our 18 media contracts to distribute information which I'll talk more later.
01:15:47.560 -- Next slide, please.
01:15:47.560 -- Here are some of the numbers.
01:15:56.760 -- Workplace visits and event activities.
01:15:56.760 -- You can see where we reach most of the workers.
01:15:56.760 -- In 2023, we reach over 26,400 workers.
01:16:04.200 -- So far in 2024, we have reached over 21,400 workers and we still have a few months left during our busiest time.
01:16:13.560 -- In 2023, we had over 921 on one individual worker interactions.
01:16:22.840 -- This year, we already interacted with over 700 workers.
01:16:22.840 -- As you can see, since 2023, we directly assisted over 1600 workers.
01:16:31.160 -- And as I stated before, we have 18 contracts with media outlets that we utilize to distribute information to workers.
01:16:38.680 -- In 2023, we had 114 radio interviews.
01:16:46.840 -- And this year, we already have conducted 100 live interviews.
01:16:46.840 -- We are proud to say that people are able to hear information about LNI across Washington from forks, Mount Vernon, Spokane, Walla Walla to Vancouver, Washington.
01:17:01.000 -- We have contracts with Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese radio stations.
01:17:09.160 -- We also have contracts within the Visione and Telamund TV stations in Eastern Washington.
01:17:15.880 -- Next slide, please.
01:17:15.880 -- Some of you may already know that we have been contract with organizations to conduct our reach to small businesses.
01:17:25.560 -- Well, we thought that we should also do the same to increase our reach to workers.
01:17:31.640 -- During this biennium, you authorize $1 million dollars per fiscal year starting July 1st, 2024 for us to contract with community organizations.
01:17:45.480 -- These contracts are with community organizations to provide services to underserved and limited English-perfinship workers.
01:17:51.000 -- Next slide, please.
01:17:51.000 -- The goals of this initiative is to increase knowledge of worker rights and protections, increase access to LNI services, decrease fear of government, and empower workers to self advocate.
01:18:09.400 -- Next slide, please.
01:18:09.400 -- This year, eight organizations receive this grants.
01:18:17.320 -- These organizations represent many different communities.
01:18:17.320 -- We're excited about this initiative and we're confident this is going to enhance our connections to many of the communities who may not have been aware of the many services LNI has to offer.
01:18:29.160 -- As you can see, we have a layer approach to our reach.
01:18:36.280 -- We have boots on the ground who meet directly with workers, advocates, and partners.
01:18:41.960 -- We attend events.
01:18:41.960 -- They are well attended by the communities we're trying to reach.
01:18:47.880 -- We use media outlets that serve the communities and workers who need our services.
01:18:55.320 -- And now we're going to leverage the relationship these workers have with community organizations to enhance our capabilities in reaching workers.
01:19:01.640 -- Thank you very much.
01:19:01.640 -- I believe do you have any questions or we have questions to the end? Senator Saldana, no? Okay.
01:19:07.720 -- I want to thank you, Yereel.
01:19:16.680 -- That was very impressive.
01:19:16.680 -- I am really happy to see that kind of collaboration and community outreach and communication.
01:19:23.880 -- It is so vital to that workforce.
01:19:23.880 -- But one question I do have is just how large is our agricultural workforce? Well, that's a statistic.
01:19:31.880 -- Maybe Tammy, you can help me out with this one.
01:19:42.680 -- I will have to get back to you on that, Senator, to get specific numbers.
01:19:47.960 -- My name is impressed at the number of individuals that you would contact with.
01:19:47.960 -- So it just opened that door of how big a population are we working with here.
01:19:52.840 -- Thank you again.
01:19:52.840 -- That's wonderful.
01:19:58.360 -- I think it depends on the question.
01:19:58.360 -- How does the immigration issue impact your communications with workers? Well, it doesn't.
01:20:03.960 -- Because we at LNI provide services.
01:20:03.960 -- You're a worker in the state of Washington.
01:20:10.280 -- You're eligible to the service.
01:20:10.280 -- Just like Tammy mentioned earlier, you're paying for the service already as a worker.
01:20:15.080 -- And so there is absolutely no impact.
01:20:15.080 -- When we're reaching a worker, we're reaching a worker wherever they're headed.
01:20:21.400 -- I just just curious.
01:20:27.080 -- Also, of course, we bring in workers here through our programs.
01:20:27.080 -- You'd indistinctly, I mean, we have workers who are based, you know, who live in our state and we have workers who are coming into our state.
01:20:41.480 -- And how does that impact your outreach? Well, I mean, it is, you know, you mentioned it, you know, the program where we bring in workers from other nations.
01:20:50.680 -- Actually, it makes it easier for us because we facilitate, we coordinate with the people that bring in the workers.
01:20:57.720 -- We coordinate with the employers and so far to go talk to the workers directly when they actually are receiving their orientation about their contract.
01:21:07.800 -- Yeah.
01:21:07.800 -- Yeah.
01:21:07.800 -- And then the domestic workers, most of the mix, that's why we use the layer approach.
01:21:15.960 -- So we reach domestic workers through radio programs, we reach domestic workers through our events, where we go to events.
01:21:20.680 -- And that's how we're capturing both domestic and also the H2A.
01:21:26.680 -- Senator Sotam, you have a question.
01:21:33.640 -- Yeah.
01:21:33.640 -- So I think the question I have is, as you has grown your outreach team and you're hearing, you know, all those interactions, is there a theme or issues that are rising that, you know, you would like to share with us or can share in the future that is helping inform how labor and industry is prioritizing your work or looking at ways that we can improve the system to help the workforce.
01:21:58.840 -- I think, tell me, we probably can come back with that.
01:21:58.840 -- I don't think the committee has time.
01:22:05.160 -- I mean, we meet every two weeks with our safety and health professionals, with Ariel's team, with our communications team, with our director, specifically on Ag.
01:22:11.160 -- So to hear the experiences, the information that Ariel's team has gathered and also overlay that with the enforcement side of things that you heard from Kerry and then really strategize around, are there new resources we need to bear? Are there new information? So there's a lot there.
01:22:33.000 -- Yeah.
01:22:33.000 -- Yeah.
01:22:33.000 -- I mean, if you can get Tammy and get us the more specific in regards to the better, I think, we'll be able to get what you need.
01:22:44.360 -- Tammy, I don't mean to throw a wrench into this, but I have a question about a totally different issue that just popped up in a recent article on wage theft and interpreters.
01:23:05.480 -- I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I just saw an article from PBS.
01:23:05.480 -- It says that labor and industries and also self-several, self-insured companies and the previous agency that contracted to schedule interpreters called interpreting works are being sued by several interpreters who say they haven't been paid.
01:23:30.200 -- So I know you can't speak to a lawsuit particularly, but I was curious because the complaints apparently are all with self-insured companies and self-insurance programs.
01:23:43.240 -- So how does labor and industry end up on that same page? Right.
01:23:52.600 -- So thank you, Senator, for the question.
01:23:52.600 -- I think the article brings light to an important topic.
01:24:00.920 -- It seemed to kind of mix the two.
01:24:00.920 -- There's sort of two separate issues, and we are party to the lawsuit where the complaint is related to self-insured employers not paying for the interpretation services they've received over the previous two or three years.
01:24:17.400 -- And what the mind, we can't comment on it.
01:24:23.400 -- My understanding of what the lawsuit asserts is that the department serves as an in an oversight role.
01:24:28.520 -- And so that is our role as a party to the lawsuit.
01:24:36.520 -- There is a separate, a second part where we have transitioned from our contracted vendor for interpreting services in the workers' comp system from interpreting works to a new vendor, which is called SOCI.
01:24:54.520 -- And I think there there has been some growing pain, some transition.
01:25:00.760 -- But when we moved from that previous vendor to the current vendor, and so we are continuing to work with the vendor to make sure that the input from the interpreters, like they need to get paid on time, they we've heard that they would, we've heard from interpreters that the prior vendor used to have regular payment schedule.
01:25:26.520 -- And that might be something that these, you know, really self-insured or I mean, self-employed often interpreters are providing service, relying on these paychecks, and it's difficult for them to have sort of a varying pay paid dates, for example.
01:25:45.560 -- But as far as we know, the individual interpreters that do have wage claims were all working for self-insured companies.
01:25:52.040 -- I can't say that specifically, I do believe that that is the nature of the lawsuit, though, in the article.
01:25:58.680 -- Thank you for commenting on that, even though I'm sorry, I didn't give you a heads up, it came out rather good.
01:26:02.520 -- Great.
01:26:02.520 -- Thank you.
01:26:02.520 -- Very well.
01:26:09.400 -- That and thank you again, Uriel, that was a wonderful presentation.
01:26:13.880 -- Moving on, the agenda one last item I wanted to do a review of our return to work program participation complaints and legal actions.
01:26:19.240 -- And we have Brenda, Hilman, if she online or if she she's on the on the well.
01:26:27.320 -- Tammy, did you want to speak to this before she gets underway? Nope, okay, Brenda, please.
01:26:35.320 -- Can you hear me? Uh-huh.
01:26:35.320 -- Yes, can see you too.
01:26:35.320 -- Thank you, just making sure.
01:26:35.320 -- Well, Senator Kaiser members of the committee, thank you for having us here today to talk about our return to work program again.
01:26:46.040 -- I know it's very important to our system.
01:26:46.040 -- And I am Brenda Hyalman.
01:26:51.000 -- I'm the new assistant director for Workers' Comp division at Labor and Industries.
01:26:51.000 -- And I want to express how grateful I am for all the work that you have supported and sponsored over the years.
01:27:03.480 -- I know you worked very closely with Vicki Kennedy on a number of really important issues and the work that she did that helped our organization move from just being a regulatory and process oriented approach with vocational services and return to work to a worker centric approach has just seen amazing results.
01:27:23.400 -- And I'm working with our team to sustain those results and find new ways to encourage and support return to work efforts.
01:27:30.280 -- And so for example, last session, we were able to expand the incentive programs to employers who offer like duty work and can be reimbursed and also offering a new option for workers to get basic skills training like computer literacy or English as a second language.
01:27:49.160 -- So just really appreciate the support and recognize how important return to work is to our system.
01:27:54.280 -- Today, we're going to just do a little bit of a background talk about the implementation status of the proviso funding that we received to set up a light duty job offer complaint office.
01:28:06.520 -- Give you a little bit of data and talk about next steps.
01:28:06.520 -- Next slide, please.
01:28:14.440 -- Okay.
01:28:14.440 -- So we did receive the funding and we're able to set up a new office.
01:28:14.440 -- It actually went into effect on June 3rd and we have some dedicated resources for that.
01:28:26.680 -- We have a report that's due to the legislature June 30th.
01:28:34.360 -- This stemmed from last year's bill, the Senate Bill 5368 that did not pass where originally the parties were interested in expanding light duty job offers to work with nonprofit organizations.
01:28:50.520 -- And then there were some other changes proposed that were really foundational changes to how light duty job offers work in our system.
01:28:56.360 -- So we really appreciate having this year to study the issue more closely, gather data, gather facts in order to provide that report next year, next summer.
01:29:09.560 -- Okay.
01:29:09.560 -- Next slide, please.
01:29:09.560 -- And I have a question.
01:29:09.560 -- Do you have any kind of interim number of complaints you have received from workers about light duty or about return to work? Thank you, Senator.
01:29:27.720 -- Yes, the light duty job office opened on September 3rd and in the first two weeks we received 15 complaints.
01:29:35.240 -- Five of those have been resolved or resolved as of last week.
01:29:35.240 -- Four of of the jobs were job offers were not found to be valid and one was upheld.
01:29:43.480 -- Two of the ones that were not valid had to do with the commute distance that was required and two had to do with not meeting the physical restrictions or physical requirements of the job.
01:29:58.840 -- Excellent.
01:29:58.840 -- I assume you're going to be tracking all of that for the next few months.
01:30:03.880 -- Yes, good.
01:30:03.880 -- Excellent.
01:30:03.880 -- Thank you.
01:30:03.880 -- We're hoping to have information to share before session starts in 2025 and you know that's the nature of what we're collecting.
01:30:17.560 -- So we'll be able to tell you something about the volume and for example of the 15 complaints, 13 workers were not represented by council and we'll have information about employers and whether they have third party administrators, the nature of the complaint and again how many you're upheld or not upheld.
01:30:36.760 -- Thank you very much.
01:30:36.760 -- First.
01:30:36.760 -- So some just background reminder information.
01:30:44.760 -- Light duty work has several references.
01:30:44.760 -- You might hear people talk about transitional work, graduated work or modified return to work and they're all talking about light duty.
01:30:51.720 -- We know that it often occurs during the recovery phase before permanent restrictions are established and that there are different types of light duty work and employers can offer just working four hours a day instead of eight hours a day or they can modify the job.
01:31:11.800 -- So if someone has a standing restriction, they can offer a stool to the person.
01:31:20.600 -- So maybe you're required to stand usually for this job but because it's going to be temporary they'll allow the person to sit and then another option could be performing completely different duties that are within the light duty, physical requirements.
01:31:39.080 -- I think it's important to know that the statute doesn't require that the work be related to the original job.
01:31:44.200 -- What it says is that the worker is able to perform work other than his or her usual duties and so that opens up the door to providing work that's you know of a different nature.
01:31:58.040 -- Next slide please.
01:32:05.000 -- We know that every injured worker who's off work is at risk of work disability and that the longer their off work they have a risk of long-term disability and this is really important for us to support light duty return to work in order to prevent a permanent reduction in their lifetime earnings and we know that there are studies that it just affects their quality of life and even mortality rates change when a person has work disability.
01:32:29.640 -- We know that employers offer jobs early sometimes before we've even received the claim because by the time it goes through the process and gets assigned to an adjudicator workers are already back to work light duty and we don't want to interfere with it when it's successful but when there's an issue or a dispute or problem we do need to get involved and there are several different areas of disagreement.
01:32:54.200 -- For example they might feel like it's not a real job or that it's not meaningful work.
01:33:01.720 -- Again the statute doesn't say that it has to be meaningful work but we do have a court case that described what meaningful light mean and other complaints that we get are that it's a different shift or that once they start the light duty job that the job duties will change without getting approval from the attending provider.
01:33:30.280 -- One area that we see a different shift for example is a daytime worker who has offered a light duty job like the graveyard shift and maybe they have childcare needs that would be a factor and most likely we would say that's not a valid job that the worker can't accept that job for that reason and an example of duties changing without approval.
01:33:53.560 -- I think that does occur and I'm glad that we're going to have this light duty job office now that can collect it and really have some concrete information.
01:34:06.040 -- I think in some cases it occurs just as a communication issue so perhaps it's a large organization and the HR department arranged this light duty job offer and the person reports to work with a supervisor who doesn't know all of the details associated with it and so it could just be innocent or it could be that they aren't aware or maybe they just say oh come on can't you do this ones we don't know exactly what's happening but I think by having this dispute office opportunity to collect that will have more information and can be able to intervene when we need to.
01:34:47.960 -- Okay next slide.
01:34:47.960 -- So the light duty job offer complaint office is responsible for resolving all transitional and permanent light duty job offer disagreements and it includes both state fund and self-insured disputes from workers.
01:35:04.360 -- I mentioned it started at the first of September and it is funded through June 30th.
01:35:10.360 -- We just really feel like this is beneficial and have put in a request to make this a permanent job office and that might be on my next slide.
01:35:19.240 -- I might be getting ahead of myself.
01:35:25.320 -- We have had meetings with our stakeholders so we've met with a Kelly Carson and different members of the business and labor communities to talk about setting up the office and the type of data that we need to collect what they're interested in saying what we want to be able to report out on and we plan to continue those conversations and have interim check-ins with them as we get reports and data to share with everyone.
01:35:52.360 -- Next slide please.
01:35:52.360 -- Yes so one of the reasons this office is so beneficial is the single point of contact for questions and concerns and the previous environment we have about to.
01:36:07.160 -- Madam Chair Senator Braun has his hand raised.
01:36:07.160 -- Okay excuse me Senator Braun you have a question.
01:36:13.160 -- Thank you Madam Chair and I can wait to say this part is about the this office.
01:36:20.120 -- There's a couple of two questions if I may.
01:36:20.120 -- One is this I think 15 complaints received so far you have a time period that doesn't seem like a very many to for a whole office but maybe I don't understand and the other was I completely agree with some of your concerns about short temporary work in changing or modifying without approval but my question is there are my point is there's certainly valid complaints from a worker standpoint on changing temporary jobs.
01:36:54.520 -- There's also quite a few challenges from an employer standpoint in terms of getting temporary work approved and I wonder if this office would deal with that as well.
01:37:00.520 -- For instance some providers are very very good at this and very work very proactively defined temporary work and that's consistent with what you said which is good for everyone to get folks back to work in meaningful employment even if it's temporary but some can be very difficult in that regard and will this office also help employers deal with those situations.
01:37:21.800 -- Hi Senator Brown thank you for those questions.
01:37:28.440 -- The 15 complaints were received in the first two weeks that we opened the office.
01:37:37.560 -- Got it that makes sense.
01:37:37.560 -- Okay so we'll know more you know in the next few months to see what the volume of complaints or disputes looks like and those were all state fund disputes we have not received any yet for the self-inference community and as far as getting the temporary work approved that is not a function that this office is working on because they're seeing the claim after the job has already been offered and in a complaint or an issue has come up they can help clarify good additional information and resolve the complaint but not that initial approval.
01:38:14.440 -- But that's something we can take and look at.
01:38:14.440 -- Okay great thank you thank you Madam Chair.
01:38:20.680 -- Senator Saldana you have a question and just a follow-up on Senator bronze I mean that seems like a decent amount two weeks but how are their individual workers or employers aware of this new office? We did send out some communications to list serves we posted it on our internet the what's new in claims section so we've done some promoting of the office basically through email and internet communications.
01:38:53.080 -- Senator Conway.
01:38:53.080 -- Yeah I guess the answer to the Senator bronze question and the fact of the office the attending physician and the employer I assume are the two that are involved in defining the white duty and what role then does the department have I guess Tammy that's question for you more than anyone who approves you know so often attending physicians are not what I call knowledgeable of the job settings that people have for light duty so how do we improve the communication between the attending physician and the employer about what kind of work might be best suited for them and then what is the role of the department in helping ensure that used to find some very good goals here but what is the role of the department in ensuring that the light duty is not as constructive I guess and then the you mentioned skill development from the worker that's always important for workers you know I've been around the grocery industry a lot and I know light duty in the grocery industry and sometimes it's difficult for a grocer to find a meaningful job and so it'll often fight duty there leads to some very I don't want to get into the details here because I'm not familiar with all the details in the industry but I was just wondering what is the role of the department in determine the quality of the light duty job? I would actually defer to Brenda on that question I don't know Brenda if you can speak to that.
01:40:49.000 -- I'll do my best as far as developing the light duty job what typically happens is the doctor starts by providing restrictions the worker can't lift more than 10 pounds or they can't stand for more than 30 minutes this they give what the restrictions are and then the employer in turn comes back with a statement describing the work and it's usually very informal early in the claim before vocational services are assigned so it can just be a few sentences describing what the work is and that it's you know within these limitations there is a more formal method where there can be a job description or a job analysis that is very very detailed describing all of the work and all of the functions that are required of the worker that takes more time to develop and doesn't usually happen until a little bit later in a claim meaningful is a challenge right because what's meaningful to me might not be meaningful to you and what's meaningful to a worker might be different than what's meaningful to the employer and so you know if you have a person who's a construction worker who gets injured and then has given some office work to put together packets for you know paper packets for conference they might not find that meaningful but it's meaningful to the employer because they needed those packets put together for that conference the the case that I remember seeing in the past they said implicit I wrote this down implicit in these definitions is the idea that an activity becomes work when it has purpose beyond simply doing the activity so definition of meaningful is complicated and I think that's another reason that it's good to have a dedicated office with dedicated resources because previously we had 250 adjudicators who are doing their best to apply this definition to you know claims that came across their desk and by having two resources with a team of subject matter experts that include legal and vocational and you know other expertise will help us see what's coming through and help us give better examples better education for employers about what jobs are appropriate.
01:43:21.960 -- Brenda you mentioned at one point that having a job offer that maybe went from a daytime job to a nighttime job would not be approved if there were a child care issue and now so does labor industries actually approve a job offer? when there's a dispute when there's a dispute okay until there's a dispute okay and one final question um well I'm not sure it's final but one other question um is it uh is it if a job offer has offered to an injured worker and the injured worker turns it down what is the repercussion on the injured worker? They're their wage loss ends so they would lose their benefit.
01:44:09.320 -- right okay that's what I wanted to clarify thank you.
01:44:16.360 -- all right I think I just had a few more points on this slide let me see if I've gone over those yet we've talked about tracking and they will have reports for you um our intent with the job offer office is to have them resolved within 10 days.
01:44:28.360 -- I feel like that's a little bit too much time and would actually prefer to see that um in five days so we are are working to determine what the volume is going to be.
01:44:42.600 -- Next slide.
01:44:49.800 -- Thank you.
01:44:49.800 -- We do have a contract with an independent research firm and our intent this year starting hopefully next month is to conduct a survey of injured workers to collect information about their experience with light duty work or if they didn't have light duty work would they have been interested or would their feedback they have to share.
01:45:09.880 -- If we're able to conduct that survey in October we also plan to share results with that um in time for the 2025 session.
01:45:15.800 -- We also appreciate again this this office and want to make it permanent and so instead of the proviso funding we're asking for three FTEs to permanently establish this office and then hopefully reduce the turnaround time we will of course be continuing to work with stakeholders throughout the next several months until we're preparing the report next spring.
01:45:48.840 -- Are there is there anything I didn't answer or other questions you have.
01:45:48.840 -- Brenda you did a great job of giving us an overview and giving us an update on the new complaint office which I really appreciate you having already up and running just with the budget proviso just taking effect a couple months ago so that's fantastic and I encourage you to continue this good work of keeping an eye out on the complaints and seeing if we see something that needs to be addressed through that as well and the worker survey would be really interesting to track as well so thank you very much Brenda and I want to thank the Department of Labor and Industries this has been a very robust conversation in this work session about many different issues in many different programs and I really am so proud of our Department of Labor and Industries I think we are an outstanding state because of labor and industries so thank you so much thank you and Senator Conway yes we have to excuse my voice today gives us a little recipe but I you know Senator Kaiser mentioned when she starred said this meeting was her swan song her last meeting in the Senate chambers of that she has served how many years 30 years in December 30 years both House and Senate is that right correct yeah and I can't help but say that we all need to thank Senator Kaiser for her years of public service and for being in this process this critical process that we just witnessed here today of trying to improve the quality of experience first was health care Karen Kaiser please put a lot of time into health care before she moved over here to a commerce and labor her labor and commerce there we are and you know I can only say that thank you Karen oh thank you Stephen that's very kind thank don't make me cry we're not thank you for your service and I actually can only say that she's done a superb job and she has always been I think one of the qualities labor and commerce is not an easy committee to chair and I will only suggest that she brought a spirit of collaboration to this dialogue and this debate which was very unique and and I thank you for that thank you and I thank everybody who's been here and working with us for the many terms and sessions we've had I am I am it's a bittersweet thing to say goodbye but I'm also feeling liberated so I can't complain I do want to say that I have a little repast up in the conference room on the third floor if anybody wants to join us to have sandwiches and salads set up Senator isn't an ABC I'm sorry is it an ABC yeah no on the on on I thought it was on the third floor I think the last note was ABC and there is a sign up there your name is on the door for ABC I don't know where I'm going that's why I depend on my staff thank you so much I read it and I'm in the wrong place so with that we will all go have hopefully a little time to say goodbye and thank you so much for incredible support and work in this field it's been a privilege and an honor to work with you and with that the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee is now adjourned.