Rules surrounding Washington state’s new policy to allow striking workers to receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits might have run into an inconvenient reality: UI is not only a state program. While employers in our state fund the benefits that go to unemployed workers, the UI program is a state-federal partnership with federal strings, federal oversight and federal dollars attached.
That’s why a recent “questions and answers” letter from the U.S. Department of Labor matters. In the Jan. 8 memo to state UI administrators, the department reiterates a core rule under federal law: States must require claimants to be able to work, available for work and actively seeking work each week they receive benefits. It adds that states cannot exempt individuals from those requirements and that a striking worker must be able to “demonstrate” to the state that he or she is actively seeking work.
That rule might collide with information the state’s Employment Security Department (ESD) is currently giving workers who strike. An agency webpage says that most eligibility requirements apply to striking workers, but that they “do not need to complete weekly job search requirements.”
ESD says the letter from DOL is a document “opening discussion,” noting it plans to engage with the department for clarification. That’s the responsible next step.
The Oregonian described the letter from DOL as a warning, headlining its story about the DOL letter, “Feds warn Oregon, other states, on paying unemployment benefits to striking workers.” (Oregon and Washington are two of four states that have passed laws to pay striking workers with UI funds.) And the Washington Retail Association’s summary of the federal memo says this: “The guidance explains that providing benefits to individuals who are not genuinely seeking alternative employment or who have withdrawn from the labor market may place a state out of conformity with federal law." It continues, "A finding of noncompliance could jeopardize federal administrative funding for state unemployment insurance programs, as well as employer eligibility for federal unemployment tax credits.”
Washington state should care a lot about the federal money and compliance. Benefit payments are largely paid through employer taxes that go into the UI trust fund, but the machinery that runs the system is significantly supported by federal dollars. A list of grant disclosures from ESD includes a $94,121,817 federal grant for “Unemployment Insurance – Administration” in fiscal year 2025. That’s not pocket change.
This brings us back to why Senate Bill 5041 was misguided from the start. UI exists for people who are unemployed. A strike is, by design, a form of economic pressure that presumes a continuing relationship with the employer. Trying to squeeze strike activity into UI’s eligibility framework forces agencies into rhetorical gymnastics, such as redefining “available for work” while waiving the very job-search proof the feds describe as non-optional.
ESD and lawmakers should move quickly to confirm what compliance requires and avoid any consequences. At a minimum, ESD should revise the no-weekly-search guidance to striking workers so they aren’t promising something federal law may not allow.
Bad policy giving striking workers UI benefits is already state law. But protecting the solvency and credibility of the state's UI system needs to be a top priority. Washington state cannot afford to lose federal administrative funding on a policy experiment that never fit UI’s purpose in the first place.
