Working Washington and Fair Work Center support SB 5061, the unemployment reform proposal sponsored by Sens. Keiser and Conway which would raise the minimum weekly benefit, reduce employer unemployment taxes, and make other changes to a state unemployment system which has failed to do its job of paying benefits promptly to those who lose work. We also urge legislators to expand the bill to do more to support workers in need.

However, while the current draft of SB 5061 does take some useful steps to improve the system for workers, the current draft does not address the single most important issue workers have faced: it fails to do what is necessary to give workers confidence they will receive benefits promptly when they lose work.

While the current draft of SB 5061 does take some useful steps to improve the system for workers, the current draft does not address the single most important issue workers have faced: it fails to do what is necessary to give workers confidence they will receive benefits promptly when they lose work. Here’s what needs to change to better support workers in need:

In 2020, our public health crisis became an economic crisis. Entire industries turned upside down, communities were devastated, and more than a million people filed for unemployment. Black, brown, and immigrant workers are bearing the greatest impacts — more likely than white workers to be essential workers exposed to COVID, more likely than white workers to lose their jobs, and less likely than white workers to collect unemployment benefits.

We cannot emerge from this crisis without addressing the underlying inequities that have made the virus hit so hard and the economy crash so unevenly. As a multi-racial, multi-industry organization uniting working class people across the state, we call on our elected officials to adopt the following reconstruction agenda to ensure we support workers who have lost income, strengthen labor standards & protect public health, and tax the wealthy to fund a just recovery.

The key consideration in the Governor’s plan is public health — not restaurant revenue or restaurant owners’ political power. That’s good news. And we’re pleased to see that the new roadmap reflects the basic reality every restaurant worker knows: indoor dining is not an essential service, and it is simply not safe right now.

But much much much more must be done to provide workers relief, and we cannot afford to wait for federal action.

The economic and public health crisis has hit workers hard. In response, we shifted our priorities to address the urgent needs revealed by this crisis.

Read more about 11 victories we accomplished together in 2020 and how you can help us build an even stronger worker movement in 2021.

Eight billionaires in WA have gotten $138 billion richer since the pandemic took hold in March — all while 2.2 million people in WA can’t afford to buy groceries.

Now more than ever, we need politicians to put the needs of workers before the wishlists of the wealthy. We don’t need the same old trickle-down agenda. We need income support programs that help us put food on the table and pay our rent. We need strong workers’ rights laws that protect everyone’s health & safety. We need a just recovery built on jobs, not cuts. And we need your input.

Take 10 minutes to complete the survey today and help us shape a workers’ agenda.

The restaurant industry has launched an aggressive effort to lift the new restrictions, arguing that their businesses are perfectly safe and no new restrictions are necessary. That's misleading. The industry’s push to remove restrictions is wildly irresponsible.

Workers in the industry are definitely concerned about their own safety when it comes to indoor dining—and the available data shows they have good reason to be worried.

After healthcare, the restaurant & food service industry has the highest number of COVID outbreaks in the state, according to a report from the Washington State Department of Health.