Workers at Ecology keep union

OLYMPIA – The Washington Federation of State Employees has turned aside efforts at the Department of Ecology to decertify the largest state employee union.

The politically powerful union won a showdown vote, 459-406. Votes representing about 76 percent of the eligible workers were counted by the Public Employee Relations Commission on Thursday.

One of the oldest and largest of several anti-union groups around the state formed at Ecology after the federation and state agreed on a new contract, the first negotiated under a new collective bargaining law.

Kerry Graber, a union activist at Ecology, said the federation won the vote by carefully explaining how the bargaining was conducted.

The contract is the first to require every worker it covers to either pay union dues or a similar representation fee.

“There was a lot of unhappy folks with the required fees. The job was to get out there and explain where it came from,” Graber told the Olympian in a story published Friday.

“There was a lot of confusion, a lot of hearsay, a lot of misunderstandings about the collective bargaining law.”

Federation spokesman Tim Welch said the union welcomes the dissenters into the labor ranks and encourages them to stay involved.