PAGE 14 | December 21, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Exit interview: Washington AFL-CIO president Jeff Johnson
From Page 2
be humble. Two, listen — not just to
union leaders but to community leaders.
And three, be bold; don’t be timid. We
can not take action based on the lowest
common denominator. If you’re trying to
make everyone happy, you’re not doing a
damn thing.
What do you think unions need to do
differently to be able to fulfill their
mission? I think we need a certain
amount of humility. We can’t do it all
ourselves. In fact, when we try to do that,
more often than not we lose. We’ve got to
bring other parts of the community into
the struggle and work together with
them and sometimes put their issues at
the forefront, with ours perhaps
following behind, because we’ve got to
prove ourselves to be valued partners. I
am thoroughly convinced from my study
of history and my participation in this
movement that that’s how real economic,
social, racial and climate justice is made.
When we work together we can do
amazing things. And when you do that
there’s less of an ability of your opponent
to divide and conquer you.
One of the biggest roles the
Washington State Labor Council
plays is coordinating union political
efforts and getting legislation
passed. What are some of the things
that have most improved the lives
of working people in Washington
that you’ve been involved in? We
passed three initiatives that took our
state minimum wage from $2.30 an hour
up to, at this point, $12 an hour, and
rising to $13.50 on the state level. We
passed $15 minimum wages in Seatac
and Seattle. We passed paid safe and sick
leave statewide through an initiative
which covers over a million workers that
now have paid sick leave that they never
had before. We covered farmworkers
under workers compensation,
unemployment insurance, minimum
wage, child labor standards, and health
and safety standards that they had never
been covered under before. We helped
negotiate and oversee two collective
bargaining agreements representing
farmworkers, one of the east side of the
state and one on the west side of the
state. We’ve increased collective
bargaining rights for over a quarter of a
million workers in our state over the last
two decade — everything from state
employees (prior to 2003 they were not
covered under collective bargaining law)
to teaching and research assistants at the
university, part time faculty at the
community and technical colleges, port
officials, interpreters. We’ve vastly
expanded collective bargaining rights. For
the building trades we passed numerous
transportation packages — in 2015 the
largest in the history of our state. We
passed Sound Transit 3, which was
another generational job-creating mass
transit package for building trades
workers. We passed a law that allows
prevailing wages to be set by collective
bargaining unit standards rather than a
wage survey for all employers. We passed
apprenticeship utilization standards. We
passed arguably one of the best family
leave laws in the country.
When you lay it all out, that sounds
like a pretty impressive list. So why
have I had the impression that it’s
been very tough going in recent
years? Washington is considered a
blue state - but it seems Democrats
have had a hard time getting
legislation passed that you guys are
behind. Why do you think that is?
You’re right. In 2013 we had control of the
governor’s house, the House and the
Senate. However in the Senate, two
Democratic senators jumped ship, kept
their democratic title, but went over to
the Republicans and created what they
called the Majority Coalition Caucus. So
for five years, we had a divided legislature
where it was really tough going. What
was really hard for us at the state labor
council as the lead political body in the
state for labor was trying to get labor
volunteers out to elect Democrats in the
face of two Democrats jumping ship, in
the face of really good legislation not
getting passed and really bad legislation
passing in the senate attacking us. Folks
were less and less motivated to go out
and volunteer politically. We ran
campaign after campaign and we lost
and we lost. Finally in 2017 we had a
special election and elected a Democrat
to the state senate, which gave us
functional control of the senate. We
passed a floodgate of bills — a whole
series of civil liberties bills, everything
from ban the box to ending the debt to
prison cycle. We passed a state voting
rights act, same day registration,
automatic voter registration on license
renewal, prevailing wage based on
collective bargaining. We passed a series
of anti-Janus bills, the most important of
which was giving public sector unions the
right to address new employees in an
orientation session; we had never had
that right before. This year we increased
our majorities in the house by seven
members, two in the senate. So we have
another very large agenda that we stand
to pass.
How does Washington rate in terms
of tax fairness - the idea that those
who are able to pay pay the most?
[Groans.] Terrible. Citizens for Tax Justice,
in their rankings, we’re down at the
bottom of the list. We have one of the
most regressive tax systems in the
country, because we rely a whole lot on
sales tax, business and occupation taxes.
We have no income tax. We have no
capital gains tax. And so poor and middle
income folks pay heavily in sales tax and
various fees, licenses and whatnot. We
also have somewhere in the
neighborhood of 650 to 750 tax
exemptions, many of which were passed
by Democrats. So we continue to have a
structural budget deficit, which I think is
about $3 billion going into 2019. I think
we can pass a capital gains tax. I don’t
think they’ll be as ambitious as they need
to be. We have so many wealthy people
in our state that could well afford to pay.
And we need significantly more revenue
to meet the basic needs of people and to
build the infrastructure we need to fight
climate disaster, and the infrastructure
we need just to create jobs for people.
And the truth is I’m not advocating taxing
the working person more; I think we are
overtaxed. But there are wealthy folks
that have the means to pay this, and
corporations, that should feel some pride
in paying that revenue.
Suppose you found a bottle and
freed a genie who gave you three
wishes. What would you wish for? I
think I would wish for working people
and their community allies having real
voice in setting the economic decisions
that determine what our economy and
our communities look like. That would be
my first wish — that we had control,
decision making ability. Second, I would
wish that we would stop arguing over the
transition away from fossil fuels and
simply do it by putting in place real ‘just
transition’ strategies and real
commonwealth benefits, so that it’s not a
zero sum game, so that it’s not a question
of some workers winning and some
workers losing, so that — instead of
investing in pumping every barrel of oil
and every cubic foot of natural gas out of
the ground — we’re investing in long
term care, we’re investing in education
and health care, and building up our
communities in ways that create good
high paying union jobs. I’m not sure what
the third wish would be. I think if we can
do the first two, we’re in a pretty good
place.
If you had just one message for the
rank-and-file union member, what
would it be? Your union is your best
investment for a good life and security for
your family and your community. Don’t
take it for granted. Get involved. Speak
up, disagree when you need to disagree,
but get involved and stay involved.
MORE ONLINE
In our interview, Jeff Johnson spoke
candidly about racism in the union
movement, and about the heart-
break he felt when – after years of
work on Clean Energy Jobs measure
I-631 – he couldn’t get 2/3 of WSLC
affiliates to endorse it. That’s at
nwlaborpress.org/johnson