Legislative Session Victories: No Furloughs or Healthcare Cuts
In a legislative session with a historic budget crisis, we successfully:
Fought off attempts to strip our collective bargaining rights
Fought off furloughs and healthcare takeaways
AND lobbied the legislature to fully fund our 2025-27 raises and union contracts
What We Were Up Against and How We Won
The lesson from 2025's budget crisis? Members taking action really does work.
Governor Ferguson himself proposed furloughs and his own party in the Legislature rejected them.
The Senate proposed furloughs and healthcare takeaways, and we got them to get rid of them.
Governor Inslee (on his way out), Governor Ferguson, and the House proposed closing both Rainier School and Yakima Valley School (which would displace 119 disabled Washingtonians and kill 600 jobs), and we managed to keep both open with no layoffs.
There's still cuts and they will hurt, but the Legislature and the Governor really tried to balance the budget on state employees' backs and failed to do so. We gave our absolute best effort and left nothing on the table.
Scroll down for the full highlights.
We told our stories – 34 members from 16 different employers testified in hearings before the Legislature.
We lobbied our elected officials face to face at over 150 appointments, hand-wrote 1,500 postcards, wrote thousands of emails, made thousands of phone calls, and rallied across the state—including a march into the Capitol chanting “No cuts. No furloughs. Tax, tax the rich!”
When public services are under attack, we STAND UP and FIGHT BACK.
2025 Legislative Session Highlights
- Raises funded for 2025-27 and union contracts ratified
- NO furloughs for state employees
- NO premium increase to state employee health care or revoking collective bargaining rights
- $8.7 billion in new revenue, with a significant portion from progressive revenue sources
- The Legislature did not pass a wealth tax, but they did direct tax increases at wealthy individuals and big corporations within established tax structures rather than worsening Washington’s upside-down tax code, already second worst in the nation.
- The Senate did pass a wealth tax before session ended, and it could be picked up by the House and passed if there is a special legislative session due to federal cuts or in a future legislative session.
Saved Yakima Valley School and Rainier School
- No layoffs at either residential habilitation center.
- Rainier School will only cease operations when the census of long-term residents has reached ZERO persons. That means no displacement of the most vulnerable residents, and no layoffs to our members.
Fought for and won increased capacity and safety in Juvenile Rehabilitation
- New secure 48-bed living unit at Stafford Creek with over 100 employees
- Additional safety staffing at Green Hill
- Increased security at Echo Glen
Won $650 million for highway maintenance, a huge investment supporting our DOT members
Stopped devastating cuts to the Evergreen State College and reduced proposed cuts to other higher ed institutions by half.
- Get the full details for your college here.
- The Legislature proposed 3% funding cuts across the board to four-year and community colleges. We brought it down to 1.5% with no mandate for furloughs from the Legislature.
- Individual institutions may still decide to accomplish savings with furloughs. We'll need to keep pushing college management to put frontline staff and student outcomes first.
Passed House Bill 1105, giving WFSE Corrections members their own standalone union contract
Passed House Bill 1217, giving Washington renters desperately needed relief from rising cost of living.
- The bill caps rent increases at 7% plus inflation (CPI) or 10%, whichever is less, and up to 5% for manufactured homes. Landlords can reset rents to market-rate upon a tenancy’s end.
See below for the detailed budget report from every agency where WFSE members work.
FTEs = full time employees.
There's Work to be Done
The legislature did NOT pass a wealth tax – and while we increased overall Corrections reentry center capacity, three Corrections reentry centers will close.
- Through our members' activism, we managed to come out of a terrible budget year with a net increase of 19 beds in our DOC reentry program, which helps incarcerated individuals successfully reintegrate into our communities.
- Three reentry centers will close, and three more will be opened in new locations.
- From a capacity standpoint and a community safety standpoint we came out ahead, but the loss of Peninsula reentry center, Ahtanum View reentry center, and Tri-Cities reentry center will have real impacts on the vulnerable population served there as they are removed from family and the support systems that WFSE members helped them establish. Our members will bargain over the impacts of these closures, including transfer rights, etc.
Our message to the legislature is simple: It does not have to be this way. There is more than enough wealth in this state to ensure that every needed service is fully funded.
We will keep fighting to fix our upside-down tax code in the next legislative session—or during a special session this year should federal funding cuts require it.
All Progress Made is At Risk from Trump and Musk Funding Cuts - Join the Fight
All the work we’ve accomplished this legislative session could be thrown into question if Trump and Musk successfully slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – which many of our jobs depend on – so they can give themselves and fellow anti-worker billionaires trillions in tax cuts.
And we may find ourselves in special session with our jobs, our raises, and services at risk.
Federal funding makes up 28 percent of the Washington state budget.
Over 20k WFSE members’ jobs are funded in some amount by federal dollars, ranging from a little to 100%. Federal cuts to research grants are already putting many of our state’s higher education programs at risk.
Your union is fighting back.
AFSCME led a lawsuit that successfully reinstated tens of thousands of federal public employees after their illegal firing by the Trump administration. We’re actively fighting against unlawful attempts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for federal workers.
Their greatest fear is that we will continue to stand up for ourselves and each other.
More to come once our lobbyists fully digest the state budget -- a gigantic document!