Siding with the boss: Dino Rossi’s record

Expect millions of corporate dollars to gush into the campaign war chest of Dino Rossi, recruited by the Republican National Committee to take on Democratic U. S. Senator Patty Murray in this year’s election.

The corporate folks know what they’re doing. During his six years in the State Senate, Rossi managed only five positive votes in 77 issues, the Washington State Labor Council reports. Delegates to the council’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) conference unanimously endorsed Murray for re-election.

Here in brief is Rossi’s record on issues of major concern to working people:

• Unemployed workers: Rossi voted for changes that cut benefits for workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own; voted against providing benefits to victims of domestic violence who are forced to quit their jobs to flee their attackers; voted against a retraining bill to assist laid-off Boeing and other workers; and voted against providing benefits to workers locked out of their jobs.

• Injured workers: Rossi voted to cut benefits for victims of job-related hearing loss; voted to repeal the workplace ergonomic safety rule; voted against empowering health care workers to prevent needle-stick injuries; voted to lower state standards protecting workers from second-hand smoke; voted for partial privatization of the worker’ comp system; and voted to grant legal immunity to job site contractors who negligently injure workers who are not their employees.

• Low-income workers: Rossi voted to freeze the state minimum wage; and voted against increasing home-care workers’ wages to an average of $8.50 an hour.

• Collective bargaining and union rights: Rossi voted against granting collective bargaining rights to state employees, four-year college faculty, and U.W. academic student employees; voted against allowing dues deduction for home-care workers who unionize; and voted against prohibiting public employers from firing or misclassifying employees to avoid providing benefits.

• Other telltale votes: Rossi voted against allowing use of sick leave or other paid leave to care for sick family members; voted for the privatization of certain ferry runs; voted against a “pay gap” measure to grant bigger raises to state employees whose pay lags behind that of private sector counterparts; voted against promoting apprenticeship on public workers projects; and voted against a bill to create a “buying pool” to negotiate lower drug prices.

Voting right on labor issues only 6% of the time, Rossi’s record “ranks among the worst and most partisan of any legislator during his 1997-2003 tenure in the State Senate,” the State Labor Council said.