Recently, a state worker friend reached out to share some laughable text messages he received from Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE). A council representative had sent him a message hoping to connect about some union updates. Since he had canceled his dues several years ago and WFSE is losing members, it seemed like an attempt to recruit him back.
She began the message with, “Hi James!”—completely unaware that his name is John.
This wasn’t a one-time mistake; John had made numerous past attempts to correct it. It got so bad he even went to the union headquarters in person to have the mistake corrected, but without success.
When John first started working for the state of Washington 2017 (shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 issued its landmark ruling in Janus v. AFSCME banning mandatory union membership and dues in the public sector), union membership was compulsory, a condition of employment. By 2018, he was trying to make a difference in his workplace by serving as a shop steward for a few years.
During his time as a steward, WFSE’s poor record-keeping caused him numerous headaches. He was forced to take the preliminary steward training three separate times.
“I signed up for that class, and there was a sign-in sheet before you even walked in the door,” John said. “It’s ridiculous that my time was repeatedly wasted because they kept losing that information.”
Things went from bad to worse when John needed WFSE to step up due to a conflict with his supervisor. “When I was at DCYF, I worked hard and did my job perfectly,” he said. “But my boss continually abused and slandered me. All I wanted was a transfer to another unit. I asked WFSE and HR for help, and all I got from HR was that I could move, but I’d have to take a demotion. When I went to WFSE to fight for me, they told me they couldn’t do anything and that I should just accept the demotion.”
At the same time, WFSE was cycling through multiple union representatives, leaving John so frustrated that he gave up on the union and applied for a new job in a different department.
“Erin, when you came to work at the Freedom Foundation and told me I didn’t have to pay for this nonsense, I couldn’t cancel my WFSE dues fast enough,” he told me. “I was relieved to know I wasn’t financially tied to such a lazy mess of a union.”
As we laughed over the rep repeatedly butchering his name — yes, she did it more than once in the short series of texts — we reflected on how this small interaction highlights just how disconnected WFSE is from its membership.
It’s no wonder the Freedom Foundation’s 2024 WFSE opt-out campaign has inspired more than 1,000 state workers to cancel their dues in less than eight months.
