‘People are freaked out’: WA Policy Center director details unintended consequences of workers bill of rights

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson recently signed House Bill 2355, known as the workers’ bill of rights. Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill, co-hosts of “The Jake and Spike Show,” both found the bill’s language to be confusing and sought help on a clearer definition.

Elizabeth New of the Washington Policy Center joined the show to provide clarity on the bill that even she viewed as “super confusing” and may have people “freaked out.”

“It’s super confusing, House Bill 2355 is super fuzzy,” New said. “The exemptions within it for people who they’re not talking about, which they call casual workers, aren’t super clear. So that butts up against the framework that says a domestic worker, who you hire to do odd jobs or jobs regularly, is four hours a month or more. So, for most neighborhood kids, who are hired maybe one week for a yard, a couple of times babysitting a month could get you over this threshold.”

“Just really putting people in confusion about what an employment situation is and what casual labor is,” she continued. “I think they wrote it big on purpose, you’re not going to know whether you’re employing someone or not employing someone as a domestic worker, until someone complains and tries to either file a complaint with L&I or pursue a private right of action. That’s the fear that this is going to eliminate these informal, voluntary arrangements, because people are too freaked out to have them.”

Jake noted that under the new bill, he would be hesitant to hire a babysitter because he felt that he may now be responsible for vacation time, sick leave, and several other things a regular employer must worry about. New wholly agreed that the entire process under the new bill would not be worth the time.

“That’s what scared me when I was reading this the most,” New said. “Everyone agrees that domestic workers who are nannies in your home or doing a lot of housework for you, those kinds of things, they’re hired, and they need to be treated fairly. They need to be compensated, and they need to understand when they’re not going to be working for you anymore.”

“This bill would require those upfront clarifications to those people to be in a written agreement that tells them their schedules, their pay, what’s expected, how long they’re expected, and then you’re required to give a termination notice to these people as well,” she explained. “What we’re afraid of is that it was written so loosely with this four-hour standard that we live in a litigation land. Let’s say a child that you hired down the street talks to a lawyer and wants to now complain about the work they were hired for. It’s just not going to be worth it for a lot of people to go this route.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.