H-3886              _______________________________________________

                                                   HOUSE BILL NO. 1439

                        _______________________________________________

State of Washington                              50th Legislature                              1988 Regular Session

By Representatives Fox, Hargrove, Vekich, Rasmussen and Appelwick

Read first time 1/15/88 and referred to Committee on Trade & Economic Development.

AN ACT Relating to first source agreements with the employment security department; amending RCW 50.64.050; and creating a new section.

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

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1.     The legislature recognizes that a primary purpose of state economic development programs is to encourage the hiring of the unemployed.   The state is benefited to a greater degree if citizens drawing unemployment or public assistance benefits are hired in the private sector, resulting in greater security and prosperity for those hired and reduced costs to the state in benefit expenditures.  The legislature further recognizes that state economic development programs are not intended to replace employees already employed in order to provide access to employment for the unemployed.  Such action would ultimately result in increased benefit costs to the state and a lower standard of living for affected employees.  The use of a targeted program that encourages employers to make a good faith effort to hire public assistance recipients and the unemployed in ways that replace existing employees will undermine the effectiveness of such a program and is not beneficial to the state.

        Sec. 2.  Section 5, chapter 116, Laws of 1986 and RCW 50.64.050 are each amended to read as follows:

(1) An employer and a prospective employee to be hired from the pool may agree to a thirty-day training period, at the end of which time the employer shall make a decision whether to hire the individual.  The individual may continue to draw unemployment or public assistance, or both during the thirty-day training period.

(2) Financial incentives under RCW 50.64.040 and the training period under this section shall not be available to an employer who assumes operation of the business or the facilities of a prior employer and who does not offer employment to the nonmanagement employees of the predecessor employer, with wages, hours, and working conditions that are similar or substantially equivalent.  This subsection does not apply when a business is substantially different in character from the business engaged in by the prior employer.