After WFSE fought in the 2023 legislative session to bring back the Productivity Board, a Local 443 member won $10,000 for her idea to improve letter translation in the Paid Family Medical Leav
If these cuts are implemented by the legislature, the colleges will decide how to implement them. Furloughs are on the table and have been utilized in the past. We need to speak up and demand the rich begin paying their fair share.
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.
Workers who belong to unions make more money than their nonunion counterparts. They have better health care insurance and retirement plans, more job security and safer working conditions. They’re happier.
Some of the nation’s largest cultural institutions accepted more than $1.6 billion in federal help to weather the coronavirus pandemic, but continued to let go of workers – even though the assistance was meant to shore up payrolls and keep workers on the job, according to a report released by AFSCME Cultural Workers United.
When Fran Krugen’s late husband was first diagnosed with diabetes, his insulin cost about $35 a bottle.
But Krugen, an AFSCME retiree from Arizona, will never forget the day when she and her husband went to the drug store to pick up his insulin and the pharmacist told them it now cost $900 a bottle.
“This was medication he needed to live, and we had insurance,” she said at a press briefing earlier this month. “We looked at each other and had to ask ourselves: Do we make the house payment? Do we buy food? Or do we pay for his medication?”
The pandemic has led many of us to take stock of our lives and our goals. For AFSCME New Jersey member LaTrenda Ross, the pandemic ignited a long-held dream—starting her own life coaching business.
“I was thinking about revamping my whole entire life,” recalls Ross, a member of Local 2306. “I was looking out for things I want to do, things I haven’t been going after.”
WFSE members at Western State Hospital learned to use their union rights as a tool to save the Violence-Reduction Team, a small group that has made huge safety gains over the last several years.
Collective bargaining agreement represents a victory for public health and due process
Olympia, Wash. – Members of the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28 (WFSE) ratified an agreement with the state addressing the effects of Governor Inslee’s vaccine mandate. The vote concluded Thursday night with more than 80 percent casting their ballot in favor of ratification.