Newsletters

President’s Message

Greetings Retirees!

You will be receiving a mailing from the Retiree Chapter Board soon. Please do not throw it away! We are planning the postponed Biennial Meeting and need your input. What you will be receiving is information on our Biennial Meeting and an important survey that we would like all to participate in. It will help us tremendously to put together a meeting that will bring us together. So please fill it out and return it to AFT Washington. I know that not all retirees will get this digital Union Spotlight, as we do not have email addresses for all. So please pass

The Case For Progressive Revenue

For this issue of the Union Spotlight, we asked several members and staff about the impacts their locals are facing due to the lack of progressive revenue in Washington state. The budget discussions in this legislative session throw into stark relief both the need for progressive revenue, where the wealthy are required to pay their fair share of the state's expenses as working Washingtonians do, and the impact of budget cuts that are being made due to the state's need for increased, stable revenue.

Bob Downing, AFT Washington Union Organizing Representative

If

No Time Like The Present: Where We Stand After The Legislative Session

By AFT Washington Staff

Over the course of the 2025 legislative session, our priorities were clear – invest in the education workforce! We sought significant investment in classified staff, professional staff, and contingent faculty compensation and a permanent COLA for TRS/PERS 1 retirees, as well as investments in our students like eliminating the cap on special education funding and funding free meals for PreK-12 students.

In support of these priorities, members sent emails, signed on to letter campaigns, rallied, met

Highlights From The AFT Washington 2025 Convention

By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist

In May, AFT Washington members came together to do the important work of passing resolutions, considering amendments, electing officers, and also the rejuvenating work of spending time in community. This was our first fully in-person convention since 2019, and fittingly, we returned to the site of the 2019 convention, the Hotel Murano in Tacoma. The joy and power of unionism was on full display!

Our keynote speaker was AFT President Randi Weingarten, who made time in her very busy schedule to

Resolution To End Contingency Passes At Convention - Get Involved!

By Enrie Morrison, Union Organizing Representative

At this year’s AFT Washington Convention, the Contingent Faculty Issues Committee (CFIC) put forward a resolution—which passed unanimously—that aspires to organize the committee itself out of existence.

How, you may ask? By making it so that no faculty are considered “contingent” any longer!

Inspired by the work of California Federation of Teachers (CFT) organizers, the resolution first creates a taskforce to research the best ways to advance job security for adjunct faculty in

Introducing AFT Washington's Incoming President!

By Jacqui Cain, President-elect of AFT Washington

It is an honor and a privilege to be elected as the incoming President of AFT Washington at our convention in May. During my union leadership at Pierce College, and particularly on the AFT Washington Executive Board as Vice President for Contingent Faculty Issues, I had the opportunity to engage with the many constituencies that make up our membership, and I appreciate the confidence you placed in my leadership to guide us through the challenging times ahead.

I am especially proud to be the first

Summer 2025

President's Column

The last Union Spotlight issue was mailed out right around the 100 day mark of President Trump’s second term. At that time, the House of Representatives had passed their version of a budget bill, proposing to cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid funding, concentrating wealth in the hands of the wealthy with tax cuts, taking a hatchet to funding assistance for college students pursuing higher education, privatizing our schools with vouchers, and starving the budget for food assistance, among a host of other cuts to services that working people rely upon. We

By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist

In August, the White House’s social media team raised eyebrows in some circles by calling out Republican Twitter accounts that were decrying President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. The team retweeted the complaining accounts and included publicly accessible data stating how much each person had forgiven in PPP loans. It was a fantastic response to the litany of complaint claiming that, among other things, ranchers and farmers should not be responsible for paying the student debt of Wall Street advisors and doctors – very culture-wars of