News

Jason Wear participating in Lobby Days for District 3!

WFSE Local 795 is inviting YOU to participate in the election of your Executive Board members.

The message below is from WFSE President Mike Yestramski, a WFSE Local 793 member and psychiatric social worker at Western State Hospital.

We're calling on our elected officials to ratify and fund our 2025-2027 union contracts to ensure the state can hire and retain the workforce necessary to provide the vital public services we all depend on.
After a hard fight, WFSE members received an arbitration opinion vindicating our nine Department of Corrections members who teach Defensive Tactics courses who had been unfairly excluded from receiving assignment pay.
The proposed closures would negatively impact those who are in most need of these services , result in increased recidivism (a 2007 study showed Washington’s reentry centers lead to at least a 2.8% reduction in recidivism), cost the state more money (research conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy indicates that reentry programs have a positive cost/benefit impact; for every dollar spent, $3.82 is returned to the state.), and threaten the capacity of our community custody system when the need for more capacity is rising.
As you may have heard, the governor's proposed budget includes the closure of Yakima Valley School and Rainier School. We can't lose these crucial community resources for Washingtonians who need them. Read on for actions you can take to stand with vulnerable community members and dedicated WFSE members and stop the closures.

This year, we took on many challenges to become stronger as a union, protect our jobs, and ensure our families have the best futures possible. We aren't stopping there.

If you're worried about the pending budget shortfall, here's what you need to know.

We’ve known about the budget crunch since June, and here’s the good news. We’re ahead of the game.

Our members have already taken two crucial steps to limit how the downturn will affect the 52,000 public workers our union represents:

#1. We’ve already won an agreement from our employers to give us a 5% raise over the next two years.

Our hard work paid off this election year. WFSE voters took down three anti-worker initiatives, which would have resulted in job loss, income stagnation, and fewer services for Washingtonians and elected labor-friendly representatives that we'll need to vote to fund our contract. With a budget shortfall on the horizon, we need all hands on deck.