According to Jay Inslee, it is “unacceptable” that members of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) have not received pay raises. Inslee told a “cheering crowd of about 500 Federation Policy Committee delegates” on Saturday,
“It’s just clear to me that it’s unacceptable that state employees have gone so long without a general pay increase.”
Our “green governor” decided it was a good idea to make these comments prior to the start of the next two-year contract negotiations between the Governor’s office and the state employee union set to begin this Tuesday.
Of course, Inslee’s comments have nothing to do with the huge checks the WFSE wrote to his campaign for governor… right? A brief history-of-Inslee lesson: In 2012, the state employees PAC contributed $750,000 to the Super PAC supporting Inslee’s gubernatorial bid– and WFSE was among the 14 union accounts that gave over $3.9 million to elect Inslee.
Right after Inslee dumped all of his bargaining chips on the negotiations’ table, he continued to further pacify his union audience by bashing the State Senate Majority Coalition Caucus (MCC).
Inslee said he thought the MCC’s “approach to funding court mandated education improvements was wrong,” then proceeded to make a list—of sorts—of all the MCC’s “wrong-approaches.”
In true Inslee form, our green governor ignored the fact that, under the MCC, Washington State drastically re-prioritized education spending for the first time in 30 years—something that Democrats failed to accomplish during their many years of unchecked power.
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