Posts tagged Washington State Legislature
IF UNIONS DIDN’T HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL
October 17, 2023 // By any fair reading of the state’s public disclosure laws, the name, address, birthdate, etc., of every person drawing a salary from the taxpayers should be 100 percent disclosable to anyone who asks for it. And for anyone but the Freedom Foundation, it probably would be. But pretty much every time we file a legal public information request for an employee database, the agency in question caves to pressure from public-sector unions to decline it. They cite a variety of bogus reasons for their action, such as concerns we’ll sell the information to a third party — but the truth is even more terrifying to them. They know we’ll inform their members that, according to the First Amendment, they can’t be forced to join or pay dues to a labor union. The government officials who deny our information requests know they’re breaking the law, but it costs them nothing and forces us to spend months or years waiting for the courts to award us what we were entitled to all along.
UNIONIZE MANAGEMENT? WASHINGTON STATE IS CONSIDERING IT.
January 19, 2023 // WMS employees earn up to $300,456 per year, more than three times the salary of the average working Washingtonian and 23 percent more than the highest-paid state department secretaries. Historically, the Legislature has consistently increased the salaries of WMS employees at the same rate it has increased wages for union-represented state workers. In terms of compensation, the only reason it would be in the interest of WMS employees to unionize would be to attempt to secure wage increases larger than those negotiated by the unions representing general government civil service employees. But given that state funds are finite, this necessarily pits managers’ interests against those of the employees they supervise.