As their colleagues in the state House are leading the charge to pass a statewide mandatory paid sick leave law and dramatically increase the state minimum wage, labor-aligned Democrats on the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee are opposing efforts to eliminate exemptions from local minimum wage and employment benefits regulations.

Last week, Sens. Bob Hasegawa (a Teamster for 32 years and head of Local 174 for nine), Steve Conway (UFCW Local 81 secretary-treasurer for 21 years) and Karen Keiser (communications director of the Washington State Labor Council for 25 years) all voted against passing SB 5332 out of committee.

The bill would require any local minimum wage or employment benefits regulations like paid sick leave to apply equally to both union and non-union firms. Seattle’s paid sick leave law, SeaTac’s minimum wage and paid sick leave ordinance and Tacoma’s new sick leave ordinance all allow unionized firms to be exempted from complying.

As the ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Hasegawa explained that he opposed the bill because being required to offer paid sick leave and higher minimum wages would place “hardships” on currently exempt firms:

“I think this (bill) does just the opposite of local control, actually, by exempting—well, what it does is preempt collective bargaining agreements. The building trades, for instance, don’t have a sick leave clause (in their collective bargaining agreements). This would require many of those employers to start providing sick leave if a locality has a sick leave provision, for instance. So while it—I think the attempt is to try and put a level playing field across the board for all competitors within the marketplace, I think it actually gives preference to, or not preference, creates some hardships against some of the employers that otherwise they wouldn’t have to face. So I’d recommend a no vote.”

Watch Sen. Hasegawa’s comments below:

After Hasegawa’s comments, all three Democrats on the committee voted against the legislation. The bill passed with the support of the committee’s four Republicans.

Hasegawa, Conway and Keiser have all signed legislation in the Senate to increase the state minimum wage and require all businesses to provide paid sick leave, so the sincerity of their opposition to SB 5332 on the grounds that it would burden businesses is questionable, to say the least.

Why would three progressive, pro-middle class legislators with enough labor accolades to fill a union hall oppose expanding existing paid sick leave and minimum wage laws?

As the Freedom Foundation has explained before, collective bargaining waivers in local wage and benefit ordinances create an incentive for non-union firms to unionize to avoid the burdensome requirements.

As I explained in my testimony to the committee:

Such laws permit union organizers to approach non-union employers and offer to waive the minimum wage or paid sick leave requirements in collective bargaining if the employer will sign a neutrality agreement.

While the details of each neutrality agreement vary, they typically obligate the employer to refrain from opposing the unionization effort. They also generally require the employer to waive the employees’ right to vote about unionization in a secret ballot election administered by the National Labor Relations Board. Instead, the employer provides the union with employees’ personal contact information so that union organizers can confront employees one at a time, publicly or at home, and get them to sign union membership cards that are submitted to the NLRB in place of a vote…

Not only do (employees) lose their right to vote on unionization in a secret-ballot election, but they end up being deprived of the pay and benefits the union had proclaimed was their right to receive, all for the privilege of having union dues deducted from their paychecks.

Unions appear to take advantage of the collective bargaining waivers regularly. A memo from the Seattle City Auditor documented last year that 37 of the 56 surveyed Seattle unions had waived the city’s paid sick leave mandates in some or all of their contracts with employers.

The only lesson that can be drawn from their actions is that Senate Democrats care more about quietly protecting Big Labor’s special privileges than they do about expanding the allegedly pro-middle class policies they publicly champion.

It is worth noting that, during the public testimony on the bill, Tacoma City Councilman Anders Ibsen made a generic “local control” argument against the legislation which was later echoed by Sen. Keiser.

But as the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Braun (R-Centralia), pointed out:

“(SB 5332) is simply an attempt to ensure that as local communities pass rules such as the minimum wage in Seattle that its implemented across the board without exceptions… If we start making laws but yet exempting whole groups from those laws, that’s no longer effective local control. That’s simply choosing winners and losers. And it doesn’t matter whether that’s at the local level or the state level. We shouldn’t be using laws or legislation to choose winners and losers.”

Watch the TVW footage from the public hearing on SB 5332 below:

More information about collective bargaining waivers from local minimum wage and paid sick leave laws is available below:

• Following the passage of Proposition 1 in SeaTac in the fall of 2013, UFCW Local 21 wrote in its newsletter that: “…the initiative also provides an incentive for employers to collectively bargain with their employees.”

• An article about Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law in Labor Notes stated that, “A few unions want an exception for unionized workplaces, reasoning that it would help them convince employers to recognize a new bargaining unit if they could promise to accept a wage lower than the minimum, perhaps with additional benefits to balance the lower wage.” A waiver for collective bargaining was not ultimately included in Seattle’s law, however.

• In an article in the Huffington Post, Unite Here Local 11 communications director Leigh Shelton defended L.A.’s $15 minimum wage law for hotels, which included a waiver for collective bargaining, by claiming, “Because it’s so hard to organize a union, we have to do it any way we can.”

• According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a homecare agency owner noted that, “SEIU guaranteed her an exemption from paying the County’s wage hike if she agreed to deduct union dues from all of her employees’ paychecks.”

• In article in the Long Beach Business Journal about the unionization of two Hyatt hotels following the passage of a living wage law with a collective bargaining exemption notes, “An element of the ‘living wage’ measure that played a role in this union election is that hotels may avoid the $13 minimum wage mandate if they opt to unionize.” The article went on to note that, “The Business Journal confirmed with NLRB spokesperson Nancy Cleeland that this election was not run by the NRLB nor does the NLRB certify election judges.”

• For a fuller discussion of collective bargaining waivers in minimum wage and paid sick leave laws, refer to this report from the U.S Chamber of Commerce.