H-1312              _______________________________________________

                                                    HOUSE BILL NO. 689

                        _______________________________________________

State of Washington                              49th Legislature                              1985 Regular Session

By Representatives Belcher, Leonard, Scott, Cole, Brough and Wang

Read first time 2/8/85 and referred to Committee on State Government.

AN ACT Relating to comparable worth; and adding a new chapter to Title 41 RCW.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1.     The legislature hereby adopts recommendations two through eleven contained in the January 14, 1985, report of the joint select committee on comparable worth.  The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall follow the recommendations directed to them and shall report to the house committee on state government and the senate committee on government operations on the agencies' progress in complying with the recommendations of the joint select committee.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2.     The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall conduct a detailed study of methods to incorporate prevailing rate and comparable worth salaries.  The study shall consider both the market and internal equity as a basis for recommendations to the legislature regarding salaries.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3.     The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall conduct education programs on comparable worth implementation and its impact for all state employees, including classified and exempt staff.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 4.     (1) The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall each update their personnel classification systems with particular consideration of the following:

          (a) Each job class shall be evaluated and job classes and class series shall be reconstructed as necessary to reflect the updated information;

          (b) A point factor evaluation of all classified job classes shall be conducted based on updated job analyses and descriptions; and

          (c) Review of the incumbency in job classes to insure that the number of employees in job classes does not prohibit accurate description of the responsibilities of the job class.

          (2) The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall consult with each other to insure that jobs common to each personnel system are described in a similar manner.

          (3) The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall each conduct systematic cyclic review in order to update classification plans.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 5.     The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall each adopt policies assuring that, through review and updating of benchmarks and through indexing, job classes indexed to benchmarks will bear a logical relationship to the benchmark class.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 6.     The department of personnel and the higher education personnel board shall report to the legislature and the governor not later than January 1 of each year concerning their progress towards complying with the recommendations of the report of the joint select committee on comparable worth.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 7.     Sections 1 through 6 of this act shall constitute a new chapter in Title 41 RCW.