Posts tagged Bob Ferguson
WA state workers OK new contract with retroactive pay hikes
September 18, 2025 // Those affected work at 14 community colleges and in nine state agencies. Among them are the Department of Natural Resources, Department of Revenue, the Liquor and Cannabis Board and Department of Agriculture. By law, public sector unions in Washington must approve a new contract by Oct. 1 to be considered by the governor for funding in the ensuing two-year budget. The spending plan Ferguson signed in May funds multiple public employee union contracts with pay hikes of 3% on July 1 and 2% next July. These agreements contain other salary-related changes, including raising the starting wage for state workers to $18 an hour. But last fall, Washington Public Employee Association members voted down their tentative agreement in pursuit of larger wage hikes. They didn’t get them, eventually ratifying an accord on April 3 with pay provisions mirroring those they’d rejected earlier.
WA Supreme Court OKs ‘secretive’ process for state worker union negotiations
July 1, 2025 // “That occurs once the operating budget has passed both houses of the Legislature and been signed by the governor or been allowed to become law without the governor’s signature,” wrote Justice Steven Gonzalez in an opinion agreeing with the majority. Justice Sal Mungia was the lone dissenter. Mungia wrote the exemption ended when the Office of Financial Management and the union reached agreement, not when the governor signed the budget months later. “The people have the right to know what their government is doing. That value is the basis for the Public Records Act,” Mungia wrote. “(T)he Fund was entitled to the requested information.”
Gov. Bob Ferguson signs bill giving unemployment to striking WA workers
May 26, 2025 // The governor has signed a new bill into law which creates a path to collecting benefits while on strike. Unemployment benefits wouldn't start as soon as a strike begins, however. The bill takes effect in 2026.- Striking workers will be able to collect unemployment benefits starting next year. This will make Washington the third state in the United States to pass such a bill, joining New York and New Jersey. Governor Bob Ferguson signed a new bill into law, SB 5041, which will make workers eligible for unemployment insurance while on strike.
Raises for one union not funded in WA budget, leading to finger-pointing
May 19, 2025 // Leaders for the WPEA say a failure to fund a new contract could impact thousands of state government employees such as food safety officers, commercial vehicle enforcement officers, and wildfire fighters. Some contracts for WPEA locals were funded, including for employees at the Yakima Valley College and for Senate and House Democratic legislative staff. But WPEA contracts for general government and higher education employees, which represent the bulk of the union, were not. Many state agencies employ a mix of those represented by WPEA or WFSE.
Employers shouldn’t pay workers not to work: Paying people to strike should be a union’s job
April 14, 2025 // The bill is even worse than a similar one last year that would have allowed people on strike to collect UI benefits for four weeks. This year’s bill would allow for 12 weeks. You can imagine how harmful it would have been to the UI fund if this law had been in place in 2024 when Boeing machinists went on strike for more than seven weeks. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. The Employment Security Department (ESD) crunched the numbers related to providing UI benefits to striking workers in a large Boeing-style work stoppage last year. Paying 30,000 workers the max benefit under this year's version of the bill — three months — would have cost the fund around $367 million dollars.
State workers blast Ferguson’s furlough plan, calling it a betrayal
March 20, 2025 // Front-line workers and educators feel betrayed and frustrated that the man they helped elect wants to reduce their income while declining to endorse new or higher taxes on the state’s wealthiest individuals and largest corporations. “They feel they were lied to. We have to stop being the ones having the budgets balanced on our backs,” said Mike Yestramski, president of the Washington Federation of State Employees, following a rally Monday at the Capitol held by those pushing the Legislature to tax the wealthy and big businesses to erase the multi-billion dollar deficit. Yestramski called Ferguson a “pseudo Democrat” and added: “Budgets are moral documents. This is his moral test.