The state-employees union and the nurses voted last week to strike but held off walkouts until this week to see if the Legislature would respond to their demands. The unions wanted bigger pay raises than proposed by Locke, no increase in health-care costs and fewer cuts to state services. The Senate recently agreed to give bigger raises. But Locke and the Senate have both backed the plan to require state workers to pay more of their health costs. Now all eyes are on the House, where Republicans and Democrats are laboring under a 49-49 split.
House leaders have a budget proposal drafted but refused to say what it includes for state workers.
Expectations that lawmakers would meet demands weren't very high on the picket line at state facilities along the Interstate 5 corridor, from a social-service office in Seattle to the port and parole offices in Vancouver. They wore union T-shirts, held picket signs and bellowed traditional union chants, but few pickets yesterday were hopeful that legislators would respond with improve raises and benefits. Instead, they said the goal of the limited strike was to raise public awareness about salaries, health care and the difficulty of retaining good state workers. It demonstrates that we can do something besides ask legislators. Goldberg and about a hundred other state employees picketed yesterday in front of the Division of Children and Family Services office in Seattle's Rainier Valley.