Posts tagged Jay Inslee
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.”
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.
WA electrical contractors jolted by new law they say favors big contractors, unions
September 7, 2023 // Tim Rockwell is the owner of Rockwell Electric Inc, which is a small electrical contractor also based in Bellingham. Rockwell said trying to start his own apprenticeship program was extremely difficult. To do so, he had to receive a recommendation of approval of the apprenticeship program through the state Department of Labor & Industries, followed by another recommended approval by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. The Washington State Apprenticeship Training Council could then provide provisional approval after one year. Prior to a council meeting, the proposed apprenticeship program can be objected to by another apprenticeship program that operates within the same region. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union objected to Rockwell's proposed apprenticeship program.
TWO BILLS PASSED BY WA LEGISLATURE EXPOSE UNION HYPOCRISY ON PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PRIVACY
May 3, 2023 // One bill, HB 1533, creates a process for public employees purporting to be “survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment, or stalking” to exempt any information about themselves from being disclosed to people seeking government records under the Public Records Act (PRA). Meanwhile, the other bill, HB 1200, requires government employers in the state to regularly turn over the personal contact information—including home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses—of their employees to labor unions. While the two bills are at odds in their substance, the common thread is that they both advance public-sector unions’ goal of being the only nongovernmental organizations with the ability to communicate with public employees. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 upheld public employees’ First Amendment right to refrain from joining and paying dues to a union in its Janus v. AFSCME decision, government unions in Washington and around the country have worked overtime to make signing up for membership as easy as possible while making cancelling membership unnecessarily cumbersome. Part of the approach has involved attempting to silence the Freedom Foundation’s efforts to communicate information to public employees about their rights while simultaneously increasing unions’ ability to communicate for the purposes of soliciting membership.
LAWSUIT ALLEGES TEAMSTERS REFUSE TO ACCEPT PACKAGES CONTAINING MEMBERSHIP CANCELLATIONS
April 22, 2022 // But a federal lawsuit and request for a preliminary injunction filed on April 20 allege three different Washington Teamsters’ locals conspired to deny workers by the crudest of measures — brazen refusal to accept mail.