The 2021 WA legislative session wrapped up on Sunday, and it was a busy one: thousands of you took part this year by sending messages, signing-in to hearings or even testifying in support of key bills, and making sure elected officials knew workers were watching.
Together, we achieved some major victories this session. We helped lead a broad coalition of organizations to win $465 million in additional cash relief for undocumented workers. We passed laws expanding the legal tools workers can use to enforce their rights, and making sure that more workers have access to free legal help. And we joined the fight to win the state’s first capital gains tax on extraordinary profits, taking a first step towards taxing the rich and funding a just recovery.
Of course, legislators didn’t act on all of our priorities—in part because lots of legislators are business owners, friends of business owners, or backed by business owners, but zero legislators are low-wage workers. (Three, however, are named Drew.)
When we released our What Workers Want 2021 Reconstruction Agenda back in January, we called on legislators to support workers who’ve lost income, strengthen labor standards and protect public health, and tax the wealthy to fund a just recovery.
So where do things stand now? Here’s the full rundown of What Workers Won in the 2021 WA legislative session:
We called on legislators to support workers who have lost income.
We won $465 million in relief money for immigrant workers. We helped lead a coalition that secured additional relief funding that will go directly to the Washington Immigrant Relief Fund and support undocumented workers across WA who’ve been excluded from federal stimulus and unemployment insurance.
Legislators failed to act on repairing the unemployment system. Unemployed workers called on legislators to address the crisis in our state’s unemployment system by making immediate fixes to speed processing of claims, address inequities, and maximize the number of workers who can successfully collect benefits. But legislators did not take meaningful action for unemployed workers, choosing to prioritize tax breaks for businesses over the changes workers need.
Legislators did not establish an ongoing income support program for immigrant workers. We called for a program that provides undocumented immigrant workers with income replacement similar to unemployment insurance, and we worked with a coalition to introduce a temporary two-year version of this system. But legislators did not advance our proposal forward. Undocumented workers still need a permanent system in place to support them when they lose work — and that’s why we worked to secure funding in the budget for the state to study this issue and make recommendations for next year.
We joined the fight to win the Working Families Tax Credit, which will put cash back into the pockets of low income WA residents, regardless of immigration status.
We urged legislators to strengthen labor standards & protect public health.
Legislators failed to pass the Worker Protection Act. This bill would have allowed whistleblower enforcement, ensuring workers can hold employers accountable for violating labor standards. Hundreds of you took action and helped us move this bill through the full House, a Senate committee, and a second Senate hearing before a couple of pro-business legislators killed the bill near the end of the session.
We passed the Washington Wage Recovery Act, which will allow workers who are victims of wage theft to put a temporary hold on the known assets of their employers. With bosses stealing $1.2 billion from workers each year, this law will improve workers’ ability to enforce their rights and get paid what they’re owed.
We passed HB 1072 to ensure Office of Civil Legal Aid funded services are accessible to all Washington residents, regardless of immigration status. This means hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in WA will have expanded access to free legal help.
We called on legislators to include all workers In our labor standards by eliminating loopholes in state law that exclude domestic workers and agricultural workers from basic labor protections:
Farmworkers won a bill requiring that they earn overtime pay when they work overtime hours, eliminating a longstanding racist exlcusion in our labor laws. Last fall, the State Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling requiring that dairy workers receive overtime pay, but the court stopped short of extending overtime to all agricultural workers, prompting a campaign to get the legislature to step in.
We would have liked to see similar action to ensure domestic workers, gig workers, and others are covered by our basic labor protections, but legislators didn’t take any of this up during the session.
And we demanded that legislators fund a just recovery.
Legislators passed a tax on the wealthiest humans in WA. We made huge progress by joining the fight to win the Capital Gains Tax on extraordinary profits over $250K made by WA's wealthiest humans when they sell stocks and bonds, which will generate hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a just recovery. But legislators could have gone much further by passing a billionaire wealth tax and an executive compensation tax on pay above $1 million.
We won major investments in our future. We called on legislators to jumpstart our state’s economy by renewing and expanding investments in healthcare, housing, food assistance, and other critical needs. Many organizations from across the state worked hard to win a final state budget that includes $658 million for rental assistance, $350 million for affordable housing, and a 15% increase in direct cash assistance as part of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
WHAT we would have liked to see
We would have liked to see legislators take up universal income support. Workers need our state to move towards a bold no-fault program to provide income support to everyone who loses work income, regardless of the reason income is lost. As we chart our recovery from this crisis, state leaders must think big about how to ensure that everyone in WA has the support they need to make it through future crises.
We would have liked to see the legislature act to close corporate loopholes and ensure Amazon, Boeing, and other large corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
We would have liked to see legislators make the gig economy Pay Up by passing new laws that require DoorDash, Instacart, and other gig companies to pay minimum wage plus expenses to workers they treat as independent contractors.
And we would have liked to see more action to strengthen our labor standards. Workers continue to call for stronger health and safety standards to respond to risks associated with public health crises. We need stronger protections that ensure all workers are protected under state health and safety laws.
Other important things to know
In addition to the stuff on our agenda, low-income people across WA won a number of other major changes this year. Here are just a few highlights:
The Legislature passed protections to prevent people behind on rent from getting evicted, including a first-in-the-nation law guaranteeing the right to legal representation for tenants facing eviction, and a law ensuring that landlords cannot evict a tenant without having a legitimate reason for doing so.
The Legislature also approved a ban on private, for-profit prisons. Under the new law, the Northwest Detention Center—a private immigration detention center in Tacoma where 1500 people are detained, making it one of the largest in the country—will shut down within four years.
And legislators passed new clean fuel standards, dedicated money to fund desperately-needed wildfire mitigation, and passed a variety of police accountability measures. Click here to read a round up of these environmental and police reforms in Crosscut.
