Why should you care? Depends on who you are and what you do.

You've got to love it when reporters perfectly frame the debate on a particular issue.  Today we take up the infinitely exciting issue of Unemployment Insurance (UI), specifically the hub-bub about two quarter vs. four quarter averaging to determine unemployement benefits.  I.E. whether unemployment benefits are calculated based on  the two economic quarters in which you had the most income last year, or whether it is based on the total average for the year. 

This News Tribune article on the main issues of contention between the labor community and the business lobby (oooh...Lakoff would be proud) accurately sets up the opponents on this issue when it asks the question "Why should you care? Depends on who you are and what you do."

If you care about making sure workers whose jobs are seasonal or affected by the weather (construction, agriculture) have access to the same decent unemployment benefits that the rest of the workers in the state have, you support two-quarter averaging.  If what you care about is "ultimately the cost to business," you support four-quarter averaging.  Or to phrase it a little closer to the language in the article, if what you do is work night and day fighting for regular working people (the state labor council), you support two-quarter averaging.  If you are the president of Association of Washington Business, you support four-quarter averaging. 

Lucky for you all I'm going out and don't have time to get into the nitty-gritty of the fight over this issue.  Long-story short, we've had two-quarter averaging in this state for a long time.  For a variety of reasons the state's tax to fund UI insurance unfairly privileged industries like Homebuilders who had a high-level of unemployment (and used the insurance relatively more often).  This created an incentive for the other business interests to lobby for UI changes.  A labor / business partnership crafted a compromise which significantly addressed these issues.  The business lobby stabbed the labor lobby in the back and negotiated legislation in the overtime session of 2003 that preserved all of labors concessions and none of businesses - including a switch to four-quarter averaging.   Last year we went back to two-quarter averaging for two years to study the issue.   This session, one of the major fights is over making permanent the switch back to two-quarter averaging. 

It is exactly these sort of issues that show us why we need to pay attention to every legislative session, even ones the traditional media would like to tell us are likely to accomplish little.  This issue may not make the front page, but the unemployed construction worker looking at a difference of several hundred dollars in her unemployment check sure cares about it.

PortDork

Comments

[noemie.maxwell]

This post shows a fundamental problem in our current world --

The issues that affect everyday life are just too complicated and numerous for people to track.

I had to read this several times to understand it. There are thousands of issues like this. It's absolutely beyond the capability of anyone to keep up with all this stuff. And yet it affects our lives directly.

The only rational way I see to address this is to have a more accountable governance and to restore the overall balance in our society between the wealthy and the working people. Our legislators should be taking care of these issues but we can't trust them to do this because they're so influenced by business.