BILL REQ. #:  H-2816.1 

READ FIRST TIME 03/05/07.   

     AN ACT Relating to the training of and collective bargaining over the training of care providers; amending RCW 74.39A.270 and 41.56.465; amending 2005 c 276 s 1 (uncodified); creating a new section; repealing RCW 74.39A.190; and providing an effective date.

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

Sec. 1   2005 c 276 s 1 (uncodified) is amended to read as follows:
     (1) The governor shall establish a joint legislative and executive task force on long-term care financing and chronic care management. The joint task force consists of eight members, as follows: The secretary of the department of social and health services; the secretary of the department of health; the administrator of the health care authority; a representative from the governor's office; two members of the senate appointed by the president of the senate, one of whom shall be a member of the majority caucus and one of whom shall be a member of the minority caucus; and two members of the house of representatives appointed by the speaker of the house of representatives, one of whom shall be a member of the majority caucus and one of whom shall be a member of the minority caucus.
     (2) The joint task force shall elect a member of the joint task force to serve as chair of the joint task force.
     (3) Consistent with funds appropriated specifically for this purpose, the joint task force shall contract for professional services. State agencies, the senate, and the house of representatives may provide staff support upon request of the joint task force.
     (4) The joint task force shall create advisory committees to assist the joint task force in its work. The task force shall actively consult with and solicit recommendations from the advisory committee or committees regarding issues under consideration by the task force.
     (5) Joint task force members may be reimbursed for travel expenses as authorized under RCW 43.03.050 and 43.03.060, and chapter 44.04 RCW as appropriate. Advisory committee members, if appointed, may not receive compensation or reimbursement for travel or expenses.
     (6) The joint task force shall review public and private mechanisms for financing long-term care and make recommendations related to:
     (a) The composition of a long-term care system that is adequate to meet the needs of persons of all ages with functional limitations, including appropriate services to be offered in the continuum of care ranging from services to support persons residing at home through residential care. This shall be accomplished by first determining capacity in each level of care in the long-term care continuum and assessing the impact, by geographic region, of increasing or decreasing capacity in each level of care;
     (b) Efficient payment models that will effectively sustain public funding of long-term care and maximize the use of financial resources to directly meet the needs of persons of all ages with functional limitations;
     (c) State laws and regulations that should be revised and/or eliminated in order to reduce or contain long-term care costs to individuals and the state;
     (d) The feasibility of private options for realistically enabling individuals to pay for long-term care and the most effective tools for implementing these options. The assessment of options should include but not be limited to: (i) Adequacy of personal savings and pensions; (ii) availability of family care, including incentives and supports for families to provide care or pay for care; (iii) creative community-based strategies or partnerships for funding quality long-term care; (iv) enhanced health insurance options; (v) long-term care insurance options, including incentives to purchase long-term care insurance through individual or group-based products; (vi) life insurance annuities; and (vii) reverse mortgage and other products that draw on home equity; and
     (e) Options that will support long-term care needs of rural communities.
     (7) The joint task force shall recommend chronic care management and disability prevention interventions that will reduce health care and long-term care costs to individuals and the state, improve the health of individuals over their life span, and encourage patient self-management of chronic care needs.
     (8) The joint task force shall evaluate current long-term care provider and staff training requirements with respect to quality of care provided to vulnerable adults in different long-term care settings, and make recommendations for any changes in such training requirements.
     (9) The joint task force shall incorporate a process designed to facilitate an open dialog with the public on findings and recommendations.
     (((9))) (10) With respect to subsections (6) and (7) of this section, the joint task force shall: (a) Report its initial findings to the governor and appropriate committees of the legislature by January 1, 2006; (b) report its recommendations to the governor and appropriate committees of the legislature by January 1, 2007; and (c) submit a final report to the governor and appropriate committees of the legislature by ((June)) December 30, 2007.
     (11) With respect to subsection (8) of this section, the joint task force shall report its findings and recommendations for any changes in such training requirements to the governor and appropriate legislative committees by December 1, 2007.

Sec. 2   RCW 74.39A.270 and 2006 c 106 s 1 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) Solely for the purposes of collective bargaining and as expressly limited under subsections (2) and (3) of this section, the governor is the public employer, as defined in chapter 41.56 RCW, of individual providers, who, solely for the purposes of collective bargaining, are public employees as defined in chapter 41.56 RCW. To accommodate the role of the state as payor for the community-based services provided under this chapter and to ensure coordination with state employee collective bargaining under chapter 41.80 RCW and the coordination necessary to implement RCW 74.39A.300, the public employer shall be represented for bargaining purposes by the governor or the governor's designee appointed under chapter 41.80 RCW. The governor or governor's designee shall periodically consult with the authority during the collective bargaining process to allow the authority to communicate issues relating to the long-term in-home care services received by consumers. The governor or the governor's designee shall consult the authority on all issues for which the exclusive bargaining representative requests to engage in collective bargaining under subsections (6) and (7) of this section. The authority shall work with the developmental disabilities council, the governor's committee on disability issues and employment, the state council on aging, and other consumer advocacy organizations to obtain informed input from consumers on their interests, including impacts on consumer choice, for all issues proposed for collective bargaining under subsections (6) and (7) of this section.
     (2) Chapter 41.56 RCW governs the collective bargaining relationship between the governor and individual providers, except as otherwise expressly provided in this chapter and except as follows:
     (a) The only unit appropriate for the purpose of collective bargaining under RCW 41.56.060 is a statewide unit of all individual providers;
     (b) The showing of interest required to request an election under RCW 41.56.060 is ten percent of the unit, and any intervener seeking to appear on the ballot must make the same showing of interest;
     (c) The mediation and interest arbitration provisions of RCW 41.56.430 through 41.56.470 and 41.56.480 apply, except that:
     (i) With respect to commencement of negotiations between the governor and the bargaining representative of individual providers, negotiations shall be commenced by May 1st of any year prior to the year in which an existing collective bargaining agreement expires; and
     (ii) ((With respect to factors to be taken into consideration by an interest arbitration panel, the panel shall consider the financial ability of the state to pay for the compensation and fringe benefit provisions of a collective bargaining agreement; and
     (iii))) The decision of the arbitration panel is not binding on the legislature and, if the legislature does not approve the request for funds necessary to implement the compensation and fringe benefit provisions of the arbitrated collective bargaining agreement, is not binding on the authority or the state;
     (d) Individual providers do not have the right to strike; and
     (e) Individual providers who are related to, or family members of, consumers or prospective consumers are not, for that reason, exempt from this chapter or chapter 41.56 RCW.
     (3) Individual providers who are public employees solely for the purposes of collective bargaining under subsection (1) of this section are not, for that reason, employees of the state, its political subdivisions, or an area agency on aging for any purpose. Chapter 41.56 RCW applies only to the governance of the collective bargaining relationship between the employer and individual providers as provided in subsections (1) and (2) of this section.
     (4) Consumers and prospective consumers retain the right to select, hire, supervise the work of, and terminate any individual provider providing services to them. Consumers may elect to receive long-term in-home care services from individual providers who are not referred to them by the authority.
     (5) In implementing and administering this chapter, neither the authority nor any of its contractors may reduce or increase the hours of service for any consumer below or above the amount determined to be necessary under any assessment prepared by the department or an area agency on aging.
     (6) Except as expressly limited in this section and RCW 74.39A.300, the wages, hours, and working conditions of individual providers are determined solely through collective bargaining as provided in this chapter. No agency or department of the state may establish policies or rules governing the wages or hours of individual providers. However, this subsection does not modify:
     (a) The department's authority to establish a plan of care for each consumer or its core responsibility to manage long-term in-home care services under this chapter, including determination of the level of care that each consumer is eligible to receive. However, at the request of the exclusive bargaining representative, the governor or the governor's designee appointed under chapter 41.80 RCW shall engage in collective bargaining, as defined in RCW 41.56.030(4), with the exclusive bargaining representative over how the department's core responsibility affects hours of work for individual providers. This subsection shall not be interpreted to require collective bargaining over an individual consumer's plan of care;
     (b) The department's authority to terminate its contracts with individual providers who are not adequately meeting the needs of a particular consumer, or to deny a contract under RCW 74.39A.095(8);
     (c) The consumer's right to assign hours to one or more individual providers selected by the consumer within the maximum hours determined by his or her plan of care;
     (d) The consumer's right to select, hire, terminate, supervise the work of, and determine the conditions of employment for each individual provider providing services to the consumer under this chapter;
     (e) The department's obligation to comply with the federal medicaid statute and regulations and the terms of any community-based waiver granted by the federal department of health and human services and to ensure federal financial participation in the provision of the services; and
     (f) The legislature's right to make programmatic modifications to the delivery of state services under this title, including standards of eligibility of consumers and individual providers participating in the programs under this title, and the nature of services provided. The governor shall not enter into, extend, or renew any agreement under this chapter that does not expressly reserve the legislative rights described in this subsection (6)(f).
     (7) The scope of collective bargaining for individual providers under this section shall also include contributions for the cost of training and other such programs and services necessary to establish and promote career ladders and a stable and skilled long-term care workforce.
     (8)(a) The state, the department, the authority, the area agencies on aging, or their contractors under this chapter may not be held vicariously or jointly liable for the action or inaction of any individual provider or prospective individual provider, whether or not that individual provider or prospective individual provider was included on the authority's referral registry or referred to a consumer or prospective consumer. The existence of a collective bargaining agreement, the placement of an individual provider on the referral registry, or the development or approval of a plan of care for a consumer who chooses to use the services of an individual provider and the provision of case management services to that consumer, by the department or an area agency on aging, does not constitute a special relationship with the consumer.
     (b) The members of the board are immune from any liability resulting from implementation of this chapter.
     (((8))) (9) Nothing in this section affects the state's responsibility with respect to unemployment insurance for individual providers. However, individual providers are not to be considered, as a result of the state assuming this responsibility, employees of the state.

Sec. 3   RCW 41.56.465 and 1995 c 273 s 2 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) In making its determination, the panel shall be mindful of the legislative purpose enumerated in RCW 41.56.430 and, as additional standards or guidelines to aid it in reaching a decision, ((it)) the panel shall ((take into consideration the following factors)) consider:
     (a) The constitutional and statutory authority of the employer;
     (b) Stipulations of the parties;
     (c)(((i) For employees listed in RCW 41.56.030(7)(a) through (d), comparison of the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of personnel involved in the proceedings with the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of like personnel of like employers of similar size on the west coast of the United States;
     (ii) For employees listed in RCW 41.56.030(7)(e) through (h), comparison of the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of personnel involved in the proceedings with the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of like personnel of public fire departments of similar size on the west coast of the United States. However, when an adequate number of comparable employers exists within the state of Washington, other west coast employers may not be considered;
     (d))) The average consumer prices for goods and services, commonly known as the cost of living;
     (((e))) (d) Changes in any of the circumstances under (a) through (((d))) (c) of this subsection during the pendency of the proceedings; and
     (((f))) (e) Such other factors, not confined to the factors under (a) through (((e))) (d) of this subsection, that are normally or traditionally taken into consideration in the determination of wages, hours, and conditions of employment. For those employees listed in RCW 41.56.030(7)(a) who are employed by the governing body of a city or town with a population of less than fifteen thousand, or a county with a population of less than seventy thousand, consideration must also be given to regional differences in the cost of living.
     (2) For employees listed in RCW 41.56.030(7) (a) through (d), the panel shall also consider a comparison of the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of personnel involved in the proceedings with the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of like personnel of like employers of similar size on the west coast of the United States.
     (3) For employees listed in RCW 41.56.030(7) (e) through (h), the panel shall also consider a comparison of the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of personnel involved in the proceedings with the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of like personnel of public fire departments of similar size on the west coast of the United States. However, when an adequate number of comparable employers exists within the state of Washington, other west coast employers may not be considered.
     (4) For employees listed in RCW 74.39A.270, the panel shall also consider:
     (a) The cost of training and other such programs and services necessary to establish and promote career ladders and a stable and skilled long-term care workforce; and
     (b) The financial ability of the state to pay for the compensation and fringe benefit provisions of a collective bargaining agreement.
     (5) Subsections (((1)(c))) (2) and (3) of this section may not be construed to authorize the panel to require the employer to pay, directly or indirectly, the increased employee contributions resulting from chapter 502, Laws of 1993 or chapter 517, Laws of 1993 as required under chapter 41.26 RCW.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 4   RCW 74.39A.190 (Community long-term care training and education steering committee) and 2002 c 233 s 4 & 2000 c 121 s 8 are each repealed.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 5   If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remainder of the act or the application of the provision to other persons or circumstances is not affected.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 6   Sections 2 and 3 of this act take effect July 1, 2008.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 7   This act may be known and cited as the establishing quality in long-term care services to the elderly and persons with disabilities act.