Clarifying collective bargaining processes for individual providers.
Summary
Clarifies the various responsibilities for individual home care worker collective bargaining, and requires the Governor or Governor's Labor Relations Office to conduct the bargaining.
Expressly states that individual home care workers are not state employees and that collective bargaining law governs the collective bargaining relationship, not the employment relationship.
Adds that only collective bargaining may determine wages, hours, and working conditions for individual home care workers, but this does not modify, among other things, the authority of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to establish plans of care and terminate contracts with providers, and the Legislature's authority to make program changes.
Adds requirements for individual home care worker collective bargaining including: review of funding requests by the Office of Financial Management, consultation with the Joint Committee on Employment Relations, submission of the funding request in the Governor's proposed budget, requirement for the parties to renegotiate if there is a significant revenue shortfall, requirement for an arbitration panel to consider the state's ability to pay, and requirement for an arbitration award to be funded before it becomes binding.
Adds that the state and the DSHS are not vicariously or jointly liable for action or inaction by individual home care workers and that certain listed circumstances do not create a special relationship with the consumer.
From the Substitute House Bill Report (SHB 2933), written by the Legislature's nonpartisan staff. Read the full report ↗