(May 17, 2013) — In his newspaper column this week headlined “Business rankings aren’t bunk,” corporate-funded think-tanker Richard Davis promotes a new collection of state business climate rankings called “Benchmarks for a Better Washington.” It was prepared by the Washington Roundtable, a public policy group comprised of the CEOs of Washington State’s biggest corporations, including Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Microsoft, Weyerhaeuser, and dozens of others.

Washington gets mixed reviews from CEOs of the Roundtable, generally scoring well on quality-of-life issues and not so well on business cost issues. But naturally, the benchmarks they choose have an agenda, one that conforms precisely to their lobbying objectives in Olympia.

For example, the Roundtable notes under “Business Costs” that Washington ranks 50th in terms of Workers’ Compensation Benefits Paid. The CEOs have very deliberately chosen the National Academy for Social Insurance’s benefits-paid ranking, rather than a business-cost ranking. They are hoping that by inverting this list — after all, some would consider high benefits to be a good thing — and declaring Washington to be dead last, readers will believe that employers here must pay the highest costs in the nation, too.

Not so.

As has been pointed out here in The Stand, Washington has very competitive workers’ compensation costs for employers. The latest Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services study ranks us 22nd among the states in terms of employer costs. That’s because Washington is the only state where workers’ comp costs are shared by workers (who pay between 25% and 30% of the premiums) and because of the efficiency with which our voter-affirmed state-run system operates because it doesn’t have the marketing costs and profit margins private insurers have.

In other words, we do have a workers’ compensation system in Washington that offers comparatively high benefits. But we manage to offer this superior safety net for working families at a competitive cost for employers. And since that cost is what the Roundtable claims to be benchmarking in its “Business Costs” category, why would they complain that we rank dead last because of high benefits?

The simple answer, of course, is that they are looking out for their businesses’ bottom lines and they want lower workers’ compensation costs. That’s what these CEOs are paid — sometimes obscenely — to do. Their concern is to maximize profits for shareholders, not to preserve strong safety nets for injured workers. That’s somebody else’s job.

Corporate CEOs don’t pay business groups and think tanks to make Washington a better place to live and work, they pay them to lobby for lower taxes and fewer regulations. The day that Richard Davis’s Washington Research Council or the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy (WashACE), another corporate-funded group that publishes an annual Redbook of competitiveness rankings, declare “mission accomplished” and agree that Washington is a great state for business… well, that’s the day these groups cease to exist.

Look outside Washington’s corporate echo chamber of public policy groups and sympathetic newspaper executives — yes, Seattle Times CEO Frank Blethen sits at the Roundtable — and you’ll find very different business-climate rankings. Here are a few from national organizations/publications that also advocate for lower business taxes and fewer regulations, yet aren’t driven by specific in-state agendas like cutting injured workers’ benefits:

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s 2012 Business Tax Index says Washington is 5th best in terms of its business tax system. This Virginia-based group advocates for lower business taxes across the nation and ranks states “according to the costs of their tax systems for entrepreneurship and small business.”

Tax Foundation’s 2013 Business Tax Climate Index finds Washington is 6th best in the nation for low business taxes. This conservative foundation says its report “enables business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare.”

Forbes’ Best States for Business says Washington is 11th best in the nation. States in this list get bonus points for actively discouraging unionization; all but one of Forbes’ top 10 states are so-called “right-to-work” states. So for a heavily unionized state like Washington to rank 11th best is high praise indeed! Which brings us to…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says Washington ranks 4th best in unionization rate, with the state’s 513,000 union members accounting for 18.5% of the overall workforce.

No doubt, some would argue that having high unionization isn’t “best.” But that’s the point. A strong case can be made that union members are better trained and earn higher wages, which makes companies more efficient and injects more money into that state’s economy. That’s good for business, right?

Who’s to say that having the lowest business taxes is best? Unless the rest of us pay higher taxes to make up the difference, low business taxes means less money for schools, roads, public health, police and fire protection, etc. Is that what’s best? If having the fewest regulations is also best, then what state can compete with Bangladesh?

The point is, by their very nature, business-climate lists are driven by somebody’s agenda and make subjective assumptions about what is good for business. Plus, they imply that what’s good for business is good for you — if you like having a job.

That doesn’t mean corporate CEOs or business think-tankers are bad people or that they are always wrong. But there’s no question that they have an agenda and it doesn’t necessarily include what’s best for you and your family. Anybody who has been paying attention to what caused the recession, who quickly recovered and who still hasn’t, should know this.

No, their benchmarks aren’t necessarily bunk, but they should be taken with a grain of salt.

David Groves is Editor of The Stand. Contact him at david.groves@thestand.org.

By MIKE ELLIOTT

(May 7, 2013) — Recently environmentalists have been claiming that coal dust poses an environmental risk to the region because coal transits the Northwest by rail. But there is no credible study to support this assertion, and I wonder what the true motivation for making such a claim might be.

I have worked in the Northwest rail industry for the better part of two decades, as both locomotive engineer and conductor, and I regularly speak with other rail workers operating all types of trains across Washington state. Coal trains have transited through the Northwest for decades and have done so without significant complaint or concerns. Despite allegations of coal dust blowing from trains, I have not witnessed it nor have I received any reports of it from our rail union members.

Nevertheless, some environmental groups have portrayed coal trains as creating some kind of “risk” to the Northwest environment, announcing they will sue railroad and coal companies for the dust they claim is escaping from passing trains.

To be clear, before it was announced that several multi-commodity export facilities were proposed for the region (coal being the first commodity to ship), the Northwest Clean Air Agency, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and the Spokane Clean Air Agency had not received a single complaint related to coal dust blowing from trains.

So why are coal trains and coal dust suddenly the focus of attention with environmentalists? The answer is that energy companies have shown an interest in exporting U.S. coal to overseas markets and that coal consumption contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

This is not really about coal trains or coal dust at all. It’s about climate change and attempts to slow this global trend.

I’m all for affordable energy for everyone. Unfortunately, the day hasn’t arrived when renewable sources can supply that. Considering there are approximately 7 billion people on the planet, it’s easy to understand why there is a high demand for an affordable energy source such as coal.

While coal certainly is not the end-all answer to a global energy source for the future, other energy sources are either not affordable, not better for the environment or not plentiful enough to meet the world’s energy needs. When you factor in exploding population numbers and growing industrial needs in Asian markets, one gains a better understanding of the rapidly growing market overseas for U.S. coal.

Let’s be honest about what’s really at issue here for opponents — climate change, not any fabricated train-related threat. The issue of climate change can and should be argued in an international forum where there is a chance to make meaningful progress. Trying to influence what energy sources other countries use by attacking an American industry is futile and grossly unfair to American job opportunities.

We should be supportive of responsible construction projects in the Northwest and follow established procedures for evaluating and permitting those projects. Trying to influence a legitimate process by filing nuisance lawsuits is counterproductive to U.S. industry, job creation and our economy in general.

The middle class of the 1950s and ’60s was, in large part, a blue-collar workforce that built and manufactured right here in the United States. We must remember the importance of these blue-collar jobs, sustain the ones we have and help create more of them.

Responsible projects that meet or exceed today’s environmental standards should not be delayed simply because someone can go down to the courthouse and file a lawsuit. Nor should the environmental bar be set so high it can never be reached. Opponents are free to argue against fossil fuels, climate change and whatever else they want. It is their right. But let’s be upfront in our debate and make the motives behind our arguments clear.

Mike Elliott is the spokesperson for the Washington State Legislative Board for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. This column originally appeared in McClatchy Newspapers, and is reposted here with the author’s permission.

By JOHN BURBANK

(Apr. 30, 2013) — What rhymes with going, going, gone? How about Boeing, Boeing, bawn? That doesn’t make sense in English, but it sure hits the nail on the head with the once loyal, Washington-state born, bred and based Boeing Company.

Every sign points toward Boeing’s departure from our state. I never thought I would see this day. When I first visited Seattle for the World’s Fair in 1962, Boeing was the gem in the emerald crown, putting out 707′s for all the airlines in the world. I watched on TV back home in Connecticut when the massively spectacular Boeing 747 was rolled out of the Everett assembly building. Returning to Washington in 1973, I drove past Boeing Field and knew that Seattle (and Everett and Renton) would never go the way of Detroit and its cars. Boeing just had too much invested in plant, equipment, experience, skilled machinists and engineers, to pull out of town. It was embedded into our economy, our politics, and our culture. It made us proud. It was a great corporate citizen.

I didn’t foresee that day in 1997 with Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas and McDonnell top brass started to call the shots. Or Boeing farming out production to off-shore sites. Or Boeing moving its headquarters to Chicago. Or Boeing making its home state of Washington bend over backwards in a bidding war to build the 787.

We did, with a $3.2 billion tax incentive package to build the 787 in our state. It didn’t actually work out that way. Boeing took the money, and proceeded to outsource most of the aircraft to sites around the world. Then those parts were brought back to Everett, where they were put together. But someone forgot about how to insure quality control when dealing with dozens of different vendors for different parts. That little problem with the batteries catching fire? Just this week Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner announced that the redesigned battery has “made a great airplane even better.” So Boeing engineers and machinists in Everett saved the 787, reconfiguring and remaking parts to put the 787 together again. What do these workers, and the taxpayers of our state get for their generosity and forbearance with Boeing? A Boeing investment in South Carolina for a duplicate 787 production line. Next up? Boeing is laying off 1,500 engineers and 800 Machinists in the Puget Sound area, while creating 2,000 new jobs in South Carolina and outsourcing engineering work to its design center in Moscow — that’s Russia, not Idaho…

We need to figure out how to keep our highly trained and educated machinists and engineers working in Washington. Right now our state has the deepest concentration of aerospace intelligence anywhere in the world. We have the facilities, the runways, the production capacity to build airplanes. So rather than the state being a promoter for Boeing, we have to be a promoter for aircraft manufacturing.

When Boeing demands tax concessions to build the 777X here, we should bargain. Yes, we will give these concessions, but let’s make sure we are a better steward of these lost tax dollars. Let’s write into the law requirements for the number of local jobs created and the wages paid as a result of these giveaways. And if those jobs aren’t created, let’s claw back our tax dollars to fund public education.

There are other aerospace companies out there — Bombardier and Comac, for starters. They want to manufacture in the U.S., because we have a huge market in flying. We don’t have to engage in a race to the bottom with other states to get aerospace business here. We have a high road for production that will attract manufacturers through a highly skilled organized workforce, with high production standards and incredible shared expertise. When you are building something as complex as an airplane, which can’t stop working in the middle of a flight, that is what you want. High road production insures profitability, a skilled, well-paid, and motivated workforce, and a good quality of life shared among all of us.

When Boeing abandons our state in search of anti-union and low-wage states and countries, we don’t have to become the next Detroit, with empty manufacturing facilities and abandoned runways. We can break the Boeing monopoly and build a 21st Century economy. Just because one big bird is leaving the nest, doesn’t mean we can’t make it a place for other manufacturers to roost!

John Burbank is the executive director and founder of the Economic Opportunity Institute in Seattle. He can be reached at john@eoionline.org.

(April 19, 2012) — As Congress and President Obama work toward reforming immigration, many scientists in labs at the University of Washington are watching carefully to see how their futures will be impacted.

More than a third of UW graduate researchers are immigrants, and about half of post-doctoral scholars, approximately 500, work on temporary visas. Not unlike workers in agriculture, they are an unnoticed, integral part of our local economy. As a global work force they drive the research pipeline that fuels innovation and economic growth.

Unions and community organizations have long worked to empower immigrant workers by pushing for full workplace protections and a clear path to citizenship. And as comprehensive immigration reform gains momentum, reforms need to be guided by a commitment to workers’ rights in every sector of the economy, including high tech and higher education.

When my organization, United Auto Workers Local 4121, helps people organize in workplaces with large immigrant populations, we bargain for contractual protection from capricious firings and unequal pay. But the temporary visa system stifles full equality by splitting workers into two tiers: those who rely on their employer to stay in the country and those who don’t. Not only do second-tier workers have less power to speak out in the workplace, but employer sponsorship means they also cannot choose to switch jobs or develop their ideas into a startup company.

As multiple analysts have observed, this employer-centered system makes it harder for all workers, foreign and domestic, to maintain protections and living standards that have been established through decades of effort. Without equal rights and mobility for everyone, wage erosion and an unstable job market inevitably follow.

Congress can do its part by erasing this two-tiered inequality. While critics are right to scrutinize proposals that dramatically increase the cap on temporary workers, such as the Immigration Innovation Act introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the solution is not to decrease the number of foreign workers working on temporary visas.

Science requires constant diversification and enrichment, and immigrants have had a net-positive effect on job creation and innovation. The key to worker-centered reform is to balance the system for temporary work visas so that employers do not have full control over their workers’ immigration status. Worker-centered reforms can continue to fuel innovation, while also creating more stable jobs that incentivize young scientists to pursue careers here.

This kind of reform can also spur economic growth. We can see what’s possible by considering exceptional cases of immigrant researchers who have built businesses, despite the current cumbersome immigration restraints, that help us see what’s possible through reform.

In 2002, immigrant Krishna Nadella, who had earned his master’s degree from the UW, developed his work as a graduate research assistant into a business called MicroGREEN, which turns discarded plastic bottles into recyclable beverage cups. MicroGREEN has created more than 50 manufacturing jobs in Puget Sound and hopes to expand by another 150 by year end. But Nadella needed a U.S. citizen willing to co-found the business and an attorney to help him navigate the maze of legal obstacles to realize his dream. Smart reform can minimize the obstacles faced by immigrant researchers.

Today’s immigrant researchers work in a system that tilts against them, particularly where they lack union protection. Through grass-roots efforts we can help strengthen their voice at work. Congress can help by enacting reforms that provide the same rights and opportunities for all.

David Parsons is president of UAW Local 4121, the union for more than 4,000 academic student employees at the University of Washington. This column, which originally appeared in The Seattle Times, is reposted here with the author’s permission.

(Apr. 15, 2013) — Today is Tax Day. Benjamin Franklin once said there were two certainties in life: death and taxes. But in America today there is a third certainty. Our tax structure is so riddled with tax loopholes, that corporate America and the rich pay far less than their fair share of paying for the common good. And their wealth has never been greater.

Income and wealth inequality is larger today than at any time in our history. Most people know that income and wealth is highly skewed in America. But according to a survey by a Harvard University business economist the reality of income and wealth disparity overwhelms the perception that nine out of ten people have.

In 2009, the total wealth of the United States was about $ 54 trillion and the top 1% of our population owned 40% of that wealth, while the bottom 80% owned 7% of the wealth. The top 1% pulled down 24% of the country’s total income in 2012 and owned 50% of the total stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of our population barely owned one-half of one percent of the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Click here to see a compelling video on the subject.

Corporate executives pay has grown to 380 times the pay of the average worker in America today. See www.paywatch.org for more information.

The average CEO in Washington State brought down $ 4,070,012 in 2012 while the average worker earned $ 49,190. In other words, the average Washington CEO got 82 times the compensation of the average worker in our state.

Here are a few jaw-dropping local CEO salaries for you:

Howard Schultz – Starbucks – $ 28,909, 770

W. James McNerney –Boeing – $ 27,484,138

M.C. Pigott – PACCAR Inc. – $ 9,279,178

Bradley Tilden – Alaska Air – $ 5,691,372

W. Craig Jelineck – Costco – $ 4,810, 773

Blake Nordstrom – Nordstroms – $ 3,918,716

No doubt these CEOs work hard, but not 82 times harder than the average worker and certainly not over 560 times harder, as in the case of Schultz and McNerney.

This is why it is unacceptable to allow Republicans in Congress to hold our economy hostage to protect the interests of the wealthy. This is why President Obama’s offer to lower Social Security benefits to the elderly and poor by accepting the chained CPI and raising Medicare costs for those seniors earning more than $ 47,000 a year is in President Trumka’s words “unconscionable.”

This is why Governor Inslee’s budget proposal and the proposal by the House Democratic caucus is far superior to the Senate Republican caucus budget.

In today’s world, the children’s fable “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” has been flipped. The rich and corporate America have sold the country a bill of goods and “we the people” continue to pay for it — we are the ones who are naked.

Happy Tax Day!

Jeff Johnson is President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the largest labor organization in the Evergreen State, representing the interests of more than 500 local unions and 400,000 rank-and-file union members.

By JOHN BURBANK

(Apr. 12, 2013) — At a poker table, the Washington Roundtable’s latest education report would amount to a bold bluff.  Our elected representatives in Olympia should call them on it. The leaders of Washington’s biggest corporations say they want more graduates from the state’s colleges and universities to employ — but they’re hoping no one notices the billions of dollars in tax breaks they get from the State Legislature.

Who is the Washington Roundtable?  They are the major corporate leaders of our state including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Boeing, Microsoft, Weyerhaeuser, BP, and TransAlta.  They are deeply invested in the Washington state economy, and they are worried that our state won’t be producing the high school, community college, and college graduates they need to keep their companies profitable.  The Roundtable report claims that our state currently has 25,000 unfilled jobs, most of which are in high-tech and health care.  In five years, if we don’t change anything, the gap will grow to 50,000 jobs.

So policymakers are faced with a question: How do we enable more students to go to the state’s community colleges and universities?

Now, if this were about increasing access to higher education, you might assume they would try to keep tuition down to ensure higher education is available to all students — including low-income and middle-class kids.  But the reverse has happened. Tuition at Everett Community College now exceeds $4,000 a year. At Western Washington University a middle-class student is expected to come up with $8,800. The University of Washington now charges $12,393 and there’s no telling what it will be by the time a student earns her degree.  That’s almost one-quarter of the median income in our state — one quarter of the typical family income, before taxes!

One result of this is that the number of students at UW has dropped by about 1% in the past year, Western’s student body has not grown at all, and close to 9,000 fewer students are in community colleges.

What does it take to increase the number of students graduating from our state’s colleges? Money. But it’s clear that most students and their parents are maxed out in paying tuition. Well over half of graduates start out their careers with a diploma and $25,000-plus in student debt. That wasn’t the situation a generation ago, or even 5 years ago.

What happened? It’s pretty simple. While legislators protected tax loopholes and subsidies for corporations, they starved higher education. In 1990, the total cost of educating a student at UW was $17,000, of which the state paid more than 80%. Now the total cost is $16,800, of which students pay more than 60%.

This is the math that is ignored by the Washington Roundtable. They make a strong case for increasing the number of graduates in high-tech fields by tens of thousands. They show how this can increase overall employment, money spent in the local economy, and ultimately, tax receipts for state and local governments, which then could go to furthering higher education. It is a nice story, but the problem is how to get there.

We can’t continue to raise tuition and expect students to pursue higher education at the same rates. So we have to inquire of the Roundtable:  Where is the money? They are the right people to ask.  After all, they have succeeded in carving out tax loopholes for their corporations, and they are demanding that the state invest more in education to directly benefit their bottom lines.

It would cost about $17 million a year for 1,000 students to participate in STEM programs — science, technology, engineering, and math — at UW. Right now, Microsoft enjoys a $20 million “high tech” sales tax waiver each year. That is about .1% of Microsoft profits. The Legislature could close this loophole. Indeed, Microsoft should encourage this. Why? Because that money could fund more students in the STEM college pipeline, and from there right into Microsoft. It is good for the state, it is good for students and it is good for Microsoft.

And that’s just one little loophole out of several hundred. Altogether, this and similar loopholes make for a leaky bucket draining billions of dollars out of public services — like education — to pad the profits of already wealthy corporations. Now these same corporations are waving the banner of education.

They have identified a problem. It is up to our Legislature to put forward a solution which will allow these corporations to help solve a problem they helped create.

John Burbank is the executive director and founder of the Economic Opportunity Institute in Seattle. He can be reached at john@eoionline.org.

By JOSH SWANSON

(April 9, 2013) — Today it seems more difficult than ever to discern fact from opinion. Some say the stilted mix of TV ratings, profit-minded corporate journalism and credibility-challenged blogs has inflamed partisanship, dashed fair-minded discussion and hopelessly polarized the country.

Others say that’s nothing new. After all, it was Mark Twain who famously said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can lace up its shoes.”

In Olympia in recent weeks, state legislators scrambled to find credible information on Senate Bill 5805 from industry, labor, environmentalists and their assorted lobbyists and surrogates. The bill sought to revise existing legal language so that projects of statewide significance could be co-led by state regulatory agencies such as the Department of Ecology.

SB 5805′s fate serves as a reminder that perhaps it’s time for those who consider themselves environmentalists to get the same jaundiced eye that advocates for industry and labor routinely receive.

The bill was killed amid fears that an “expedited” review for such projects would jeopardize the environment, despite explicit language in SB 5805 that no local, state or federal environmental regulation or regulatory requirement would be exempted in the comprehensive review.

Bill proponents included several unions, the Washington State Labor Council and the Association of Washington Business. Such groups supported changing the current proviso that gives local government officials sole say-so in authorizing statewide designations. That proviso, notes proponents, is precisely why the law has yet to grant a single “project of statewide significance” since being enacted 16 years ago.

“It doesn’t make sense to give a local politician absolute veto power in deciding which projects has statewide benefits,” said Daren Konopaski, international vice president for the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 302. “The law was created to give the people of the state, through their regulatory review agencies, a voice in projects that benefit us all.”

Opposition to SB 5805 included Jefferson County locals trying to thwart the “pit-to-pier” sand and gravel project. Now referred to as Thorndyke Resource, the project proposes to barge and ship sand and gravel from an upland deposit in northern Hood Canal to Puget Sound, Washington and West Coast urban markets. As integral components for concrete and asphalt, sand and gravel is fundamental to constructing roads, highways, bridges, buildings and public infrastructure.

Project officials tout several environmental, safety and economic benefits. Transporting via barges and ships removes thousands of trucks off crowded roads and highways while creating 2,000 direct and indirect family-wage jobs in mining and maritime through onshore, construction and ship-building trades, including engineers, shipwrights, electricians, pipe-fitters and welders. The project has also publicly pledged 500,000 tons of sand and gravel for broad-scale restoration projects repairing miles of denigrated Puget Sound beaches and nearshore habitats.

The project has been mired in Jefferson County review processes since 2003, despite winning numerous (four) lawsuits levied by the Hood Canal Coalition (HCC), a local opposition group headed by John Fabian. Since retiring from Texas to a Hood Canal waterfront view in Port Ludlow in 1998, Fabian has become a regular at county commissioner meetings and active in local Democratic Party politics.

Fabian cites numerous groups opposing the project, opposition based primarily, if not exclusively, on information provided by Fabian. Over the years, those project portrayals have included numerous colorful attacks on the industry and project supporters:

• In a letter to the editor, Fabian wrote, “…Mining is an ugly thing, a crime against nature and a rape of the environment. … It is not only ugly while it is happening, it is ugly when it is finished.” [Note: the former Steilacoom regional pit is now Chambers Bay Golf Course and host to the 2015 U.S. Open.]
• Fabian continues to equate the project’s proposed barges and ships hauling sand and gravel to the Exxon Valdez oil tanker and “U.S.S. Nimitz and NATO-class aircraft carriers.”
• He has characterized the project as “strip mining 21,000 acres.” [Note: the project application calls for surface mining and prompt reclamation of sequential 40-acre segments within 690 acres on lands designated for mineral resources].

In Olympia this month, Fabian again showed up in emails, letters and missives, supplying his hyperbole to senators and environmentalists, who subsequently peppered politicians over the past several weeks with emailed vitriol on the pier project and SB 5805. Despite bipartisan sponsorship, and the willingness by prime sponsor Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens) to amend the bill to address specific concerns, SB 5805 was killed without a vote.

“We have to be smarter than listening to those who think it’s a blind choice between job creation and environmental protection,” Konopaski said. “We can do both. I mean, really, 10 years to review something as routine and benign as barging sand and gravel? We all deserve better. Families not only lose jobs, but in the competitive global economy, our country gets its butt kicked.”

Smarter solutions come from environmental scientists as well. When a caller to KUOW 94.9 inquired about the dangers of the pier project on Hood Canal, Scott Redman, the technical/science program manager for the then-Puget Sound Action Team, answered:

“If we really carefully take a look at that, we can design development, whether it’s shoreline landowners, whether it’s a growing city along the shores of Puget Sound or a gravel mine. I think we can do those things in a smart way.”

Josh Swanson is Labor Research and Communications Director for the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 302. You can contact him at jswanson@iuoe302.org.

By REP. CHRIS REYKDAL

(April 8, 2013) — A successful America — and Washington State — requires a robust and healthy middle-class. We created that middle-class from the bottom up from 1941 to 1980; four decades of growing prosperity because we literally built things for the rest of the world, we invested in our workers, we unionized, and in turn those workers paid taxes and supported a vibrant public education system that became a self-fulfilling circle of success.

The trickle-down philosophy of Ronald Reagan began to unravel middle-class prosperity after his inauguration in 1981.  His outright attacks on public- and private-sector unions became the centerpiece of his economic agenda — deflate wages for the masses, create an unprecedented accumulation of wealth for the top 1%, and then convince the citizens that their struggle has come at the hands of big government, a failed public education system, and the ultimate demon-spawn — TAXES.

Sadly, that philosophy permeated the hearts and minds of too many Republicans and Democrats over the decades and a once robust discussion of competing economic philosophies became an almost uniform chant for the dismantling of all that made us great. In Washington State, union density has shrunk nearly 40% since the Reagan revolution.

But are things beginning to change?

While we are still seeing some legislation that seeks more tax breaks for the wealthy, repeal of minimum wage, repeal of prevailing wage, and a loss of support for injured workers, there is a new awareness that these approaches are doing more damage than good to our economy and our future.

We have a new Governor who is showing no interest in these failed policies that seek to harm working-class families.  Instead, he is proposing to invest more in education and job training. He is proposing to shut down hundreds of millions of dollars of reckless tax loopholes to invest in job growth, a sustainable environment, and a brighter future that we can all shape for the better.

A new breed of legislators, social justice activists, and small business owners are joining labor leaders and long-standing champions of working families to once-again embrace the concept of building an economy from the bottom up. Creating family-wage jobs not only helps workers but these policies promote economic growth and contribute to our economy’s recovery. Disposable income encourages spending, which is good for business.  The real job creators are healthy consumers!  Businesses hire workers when they have demand for their products and services not because they got another fat tax break.

As Gov. Jay Inslee said in his 2013 budget proposal, investing in a working Washington begins with investing in education. We can begin this process by eliminating tax breaks that have either proven to be ineffective at improving economic outcomes or that lack any specific, measurable public policy objectives. These are tangible steps we can take to provide the revenue we need to make critical investments in our future.

We must summon the courage to cut tax loopholes benefiting a select few so that we can invest in Washington’s families. When it comes to our values, we must put workers and public education above corporations. It is time to close the book once and for all on Reagan’s trickle-down experiment. Let’s admit that it failed; let’s invest in our people once again.

If you share this vision, you need to weigh in heavily to Legislators in the coming weeks. You can email your legislator (or others) by clicking here and selecting their name. Tell them to close tax loopholes and put workers and kids before corporations.

Our future depends on a healthy middle class, and the investments we make today in our people will help us turn around an economy and a nation!

Democratic State Rep. Chris Reykdal represents Washington’s 22nd Legislative District, which includes the northern portion of Thurston County, all of Olympia and portions of Lacey and Tumwater. Email him at chris.reykdal@leg.wa.gov.

By JOHN BURBANK

(Mar. 28, 2013) — It’s fine to expect instant gratification when downloading an app to your smartphone or streaming a movie to your computer. But we can fairly expect our elected representatives to behave differently than the average consumer, by making choices that are less about short-run returns and more about building for the long term.

Most of the rhetoric in Olympia these days masks a simple question confronting legislators: As the state slowly climbs out of the Great Recession, will they continue undercutting and defunding public education, social services and other public structures in a quest for short-term budget gains — or will they make the (admittedly more difficult) choice to invest for long-run value?

Faced with a flat or declining income, families often buy less or borrow more in the short run. You can see that approach in the last four years of state budgets, which have drastically cut funding for everything from K-12 schools to higher education, long-term care, state parks, and more. But even when times are tight, people spend money in order to protect their current investments and build capacity for future income — like fixing up their homes, going to college, even buying a car when the old one is kaput.

Likewise, public dollars cover current expenses, such as salaries for state patrol officers, teachers, nurses and social workers. And they’re also important for making and protecting long-term investments that build value.

For example, when the state provided funds to build the Everett Community College campus in the late 1950’s, there was no expectation it would “turn a profit.” And when a fire burned down the library and student union building in 1987, the new Trojan Union Building was built immediately, with the state providing emergency funds. No profit there, either. The construction of the Nursing and Health Sciences Building is a huge investment for the future, providing a pathway for the education of health care providers, nurses, medical assistants, radiology technicians, physical therapists — but not profit.

Why persist in making public investments when times are tough — when we don’t see much of a return after one quarter or one year, and the real returns may be one or more generations away? Because we all recognize the value of investing for smarter, healthier and more prosperous citizens in our state — even if there’s no “profit” to be gained such as you’d find in hedge funds or private industry.

That’s why our government doesn’t — and shouldn’t — exist to turn a profit. It exists to build long-term value in people. And that’s why our legislators should persist in making public investments that benefit the public as a whole.

Those averse to that idea will commonly say the state doesn’t have any money, despite the fact that personal income in Washington has grown by $50 billion since 2009. That’s about $7,500 per resident — but since almost all of the gains have gone to the top 1%, most people are no better off. Washington’s tax system doesn’t touch the income of the most privileged, so even though our “family income” has increased dramatically, our state doesn’t have sufficient funds for schools, roads, social services and other important investments.

We should challenge our state leaders to prioritize long-term investments, by asking those who have benefited the most from soaring incomes to pay their fair share toward a better future. Otherwise we’re looking at more of the same bad choices: increased class sizes, more college tuition increases, and additional park closures, to name just a few. That approach only digs a deeper long-term hole for us all, as hope and economic opportunity are lost for a generation or more of our citizens.

Put another way: we can either insist that our leaders repair and rebuild the ladder of opportunity that defines the American Dream, or we can let them pull the ladder up. If we want our children and grandchildren to have opportunities like — or even better than — we had, then we have to fund our public structures and services now. As the budget debate heats up, that’s the real bottom line for our legislators, our residents, our state and our future.

John Burbank is the executive director and founder of the Economic Opportunity Institute in Seattle. He can be reached at john@eoionline.org.

(Mar. 21, 2013) — Yesterday, on the first day of spring, Shelly Treator, President of Local 155 of the Association of Pulp and Paper Workers, led 130 hourly workers off the job at the pulp and paper mill in Port Angeles on an unfair labor practice strike. Nippon Paper the owners of the mill had just implemented their “final offer” while negotiations were still going on. (See coverage in today’s Peninsula Daily News.)

The last time these workers went out on strike was in 1978. At the time Shelly’s dad was heading up the union. Though her dad died several years ago Shelly told me, “I think my dad is looking down at the local with pride.”

The average age of the workforce at the mill is 50 with 20 years of service to the company and the community. Curt Madison, started working at the mill in 1975, the year he graduated from high school. At age 56, Curt has 35 years in at the mill. Curt and his fellow workers say they are out because the workers deserve simple respect from the company to finish negotiating a fair and equitable contract.

Nippon, a successful multinational corporation, has implemented a contract that would freeze the defined-benefit pension and create 401(k) plan for the rest of the ride for existing workers and for new employees. (Nippon is opening up a co-gen facility capable of producing 20 megawatts of power this fall — with the help of state tax benefits.) Health care takeaways and a two-tier wage system for new employees is also on the table.

Local 155 workers have joined with the community to say enough is enough. They would appreciate support from their state legislators Sen. Jim Hargrove, Reps. Kevin Van De Wege and Steve Tharinger, and other local elected officials. If Nippon is able to strong-arm this workforce, then both the workers and the community will lose.

Meanwhile, at 5 p.m. yesterday on the Bridgeport I-5 overpass near Lakewood, Sherrilla Hopson, President of Local 1501 of the American Federation of Government Employees, led a spirited group of 100 union and community members to call for an end to the sequestration cuts and to protect our earned benefit programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Also see coverage in today’s News Tribune and Seattle Times.)

Judging by the cacophony of car and truck horns the message was well-received by the motoring public.

Not only is sequestration one of the dumbest actions taken by Congress, it will also inflict great harm to the very families and communities that the Republicans in Congress claim they are looking out for. And, depending how long it is in effect, it could send our economy tumbling back into recession.

Local 1501′s rally was one of a half-dozen rallies against sequestration in Washington State as part of a National Day of Action yesterday and one of hundreds held across the country.

Jeff Johnson is President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the largest labor organization in the Evergreen State, representing the interests of more than 500 local unions and 400,000 rank-and-file union members.