There's a lot going on for WFSE Department of Correction Members: an arbitration award resulting in significant raises for our 2023-25 contract, workload concerns, important legislation, union organizing in WMS, and much more. Find everything you need here in the Corrections Corner.
WFSE members must come to Olympia to lobby during the 2023 Legislative Session to ensure funding for our contracts, which will benefit our communities, workplaces and families.
As a fish hatchery specialist with the Department of Fish and Wildlife in 1998, Kurt Spiegel was lucky. He had a good state job, and even better he had a great coworker—a friend to learn the ropes with as they navigated state service.
Thanks to her hard work in the AFSCME Free College program, WFSE Local 443 member Kaycee Keys was recently promoted to Fiscal Analyst 4 at the Department of Social and Health Services, earning a significant pay raise.
Keys found her way to this new position through perseverance, a desire to help others, and public service.
After finding herself in difficult times, Keys learned about DSHS employment programming when she visited an office to apply for food stamps.
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at a time when our nation’s health care workers were already experiencing burnout. The National Academy of Medicine, in a report from 2019, said that 35% to 54% of nurses and physicians in the United States had “substantial symptoms of burnout.”
