Recently, the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) released a 2021 Legislative Report, along with ratings for all Washington state legislators, based on their voting records.
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In the report, April Sims, Secretary Treasurer of WSLC, says the immediate needs of workers were WSLC’s main focus during session.
“Our strategy focused on the immediate needs of working people to ensure we are made whole in pandemic response and recovery, like emergency labor standards for protecting working people’s health on the job (SB 5115 and 5190) and extending the eviction moratorium (SB 5160).”
To develop their legislator rankings, WSLC looked at the voting records of all Senate and House members. 19 bills related to labor were analyzed for both the house and senate, including HB 1076 — the Worker Protection Act — sponsored by Rep. Drew Hansen, which did not pass. WSLC also evaluated lawmakers’ votes on HB 1097, which passed into law and protects workers from civil penalties against a health-and-safety complaint.
Other bills include: SB 5284 and SB 5021 in the Senate and EHB 1090 and HB 1026 in the House.
The document includes both a voting percentage for this legislative session as well as a lifetime percentage for each lawmaker based on their overall voting record.
Some key takeaways from the WSLC’s evaluation are:
24 Democratic senators and 48 Democratic representatives received 100% scores for voting yes to all the bills evaluated by WSLC. Rep. Mike Chapman was the lowest scoring Democrat with an evaluation of 42%.
Rep. Jeremie Dufault, Rep. Bob McCaslin, Sen. Perry Dozier, and Sen. Sharon Brown all received zeros for their 2021 score from WSLC, voting no on all of the bills under consideration in WSLC’s evaluation.
Sen. Curtis King had the highest rating of any Republican in the House and Senate at 47% this legislative session. Sen. Tim Sheldon, a Democrat caucusing with Republicans, scored 53%.
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