Remembering George Masten, a Giant in WFSE (and WA) History
Earlier this month we lost George Masten, a former WFSE member, staffer and executive director and a longtime member of RPEC, our sister union of retirees.
Celebration of Life: May 9 at 2pm at the Olympia Center
All are welcome as we celebrate George's life and accomplishments on Saturday, May 9 at 2 pm at the Olympia Center: 222 Columbia St NW Olympia, Washington 98501
Members are encouraged to attend and wear WFSE green to honor George and the union he helped build.
History-makers and participants in the History Panel at WFSE's 2023 convention, celebrating 80 years of WFSE.
"We all stand on the foundation George built," said current WFSE Executive Director Kurt Spiegel.
"He set a standard for leadership that continues to guide our union today. His unwavering commitment to public workers, his steady hand during challenging times, and his belief in the power of solidarity helped shape who we are as WFSE/AFSCME Council 28.
"I look to him as a compass for my own decisions and am committed to leading with the same conviction and respect for our members."
"George’s work allowed hundreds of thousands of state workers to buy houses, send their kids to college, and feel secure in their retirement years," says former WFSE Executive Director Greg Devereux.
"Though he would have been the last to acknowledge it, George was a towering figure in the history of Washington State.
"George and his wife, Lois, worked tirelessly in the early days of the Washington Federation of State Employees to build a public sector union that could withstand unfriendly Governors, legislative bodies, and economic downturns.
"George would go on to spend six decades of his professional life singularly focused on improving the lives of public sector workers and their families."
George with the plaintiffs in WFSE's historic "comparable worth" lawsuit against the state. He personally negotiated the largest settlement in Washington State history.
From Underground Union to Powerhouse
It's no coincidence that George's tenure at WFSE coincided with public workers winning massive increases in pay, quality of life, and respect on the job.
When George took a job at the Department of Labor & Industries in 1953 as an X-ray file clerk, he had essentially zero rights on the job. Taking a vacation or being seen as a union supporter were more than enough to get you fired.
Esther Stohl, a WFSE Local 443 member and later staff member, recalled workers “sneaking into somebody's house to have a meeting one by one instead of it being like they were holding a meeting.”
The public sector has long been considered the gold standard for stability and in providing a reliable path to the middle class.
That's thanks to the unusually high union rate in the public sector, 33% in 2025 compared to just 10% of all wage earners in the United States.
It wasn't always that way.
When George started his career in state service, workers were routinely laid off en masse and replaced by loyalists, friends and family members of newly elected governors in the so-called "spoils system" of political patronage.
Who you knew was more important than what you knew, which obviously didn't bode well for anyone depending on public workers knowing how to do their jobs.
By the time Masten retired as Executive Director in 1984, our members had just taken the entire State of Washington to court alleging systemic gender-based wage discrimination and won the largest settlement in state history, equivalent to $1.5b today.
The rights we enjoy as union members can't be taken for granted any longer.
In 1960, as the first paid WFSE staff member outside of the executive director, Masten was instrumental in collecting the required 90k signatures to get our initiative to end the spoils system (I-207) on the ballot and in getting it passed in November that year.
George center-left, as a brand-new WFSE staffer with a pile of signatures to get Initiative 207 on the 1960 ballot
"Frankly, there were many times I didn't think we would get enough signatures," George said. "I went to local union meetings and when they would ask me how it was doing I would tell them, 'Great, it just needed a few more'... and the truth was we weren't even close."
It went down to the wire. On the deadline day, WFSE chartered a helicopter to fly the final signatures from Seattle to Olympia. Local 443 member and state capitol gardener Joe Lewis arranged for the helicopter to be landed on the capitol lawn.
Protection from arbitrary firings and a nonpartisan civil service system were the foundation that allowed our union to emerge from the shadows, organize in earnest, and begin taking back power for workers.
The basic rights that allowed our union to flourish are under attack.
Civil service protections for federal workers that have been in place for over a century are being dismantled.
Loyalty, not skill or experience, are what make you fit to work in government.
One million federal workers had their right to collectively bargain unilaterally removed by President Trump via executive order, the largest act of union busting in American history. (AFSCME is still challenging this in court.)
And when even the mention of diversity, equity and inclusion are enough to cut funding for vital programs or end someone's career, it's hard to imagine how a federal judge today would react to WFSE's revolutionary legal argument of "comparable worth" that helped us prove Washington State had engaged in gender discrimination.
We have. We can. We will!
In over 80 years of history, our union has consistently emerged from challenges stronger than before -- be it a pandemic or a Supreme Court decision designed to bankrupt us.
As a union member, you play an important role in protecting public services as well as basic dignity and respect for workers.
To honor George's life and legacy, we invite you to take part in an upcoming union event or action, whether on the federal level via our national AFSCME GO campaign or in our contract campaign here in Washington.