SB 916 now heads to Gov. Kotek, who indicates she’ll sign the controversial bill, which makes Oregon the first state to provide unemployment benefits to public as well as private workers.
A bill to allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits passed the Oregon Senate on Thursday after suffering a surprise defeat two days earlier.
The legislative proposal, SB 916, has garnered strong feelings on both sides. With many employers able to wait out strikes, the bill would have allowed striking workers to collect unemployment benefits for 10 weeks, beginning two weeks after a work stoppage.
The bill passed the Senate in March on a party-line vote. It was slightly amended in the House, meaning it required another round of Senate approval. Earlier this week, four Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the bill, Willamette Week reported. Under Oregon law, both legislative bodies must pass identical versions of a proposed law.
The bill was undone Tuesday when a Democratic senator, Mark Meek — a sponsor of the bill — flipped his vote. A Democrat appointed last month, Sen. Courtney Neron Misslin, also opposed the bill, as did two Democrats who opposed the bill on its first trip through the Senate — Sen. Janeen Sollman and Sen. Jeff Golden.
But after an amendment was added in a rare conference committee Wednesday, two Democratic holdouts, Meek and Neron Misslin, were won over. The amendment reduced the number of weeks a striking worker may receive benefits from 26 to 10.
According to WW, Gov. Tina Kotek has signaled her intent to sign the bill. Supporters in the Senate must form a concurrence committee and resolve the differences between the Senate and the House’s respective bills.
The bill was introduced in the wake of several high-profile health care strikes in Oregon and was popular with the state’s unions, which treated it as a top priority this legislative session. But business interests are widely opposed, as are school districts and local governments, who worry the proposed law could blow up budgets and lead to abuses of the state’s unemployment insurance system.
Other states have similar laws on the books though teachers are barred from striking. New York, New Jersey and Washington have passed similar laws but none of those states grant unemployment checks to both public and private employees. Washington’s law caps benefits at six weeks and schedules the law to sunset in 2035.
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