Washington Federation of State Employees
Local 443
Our History
On March 24, 1942, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) issued a charter to the state employees located in Olympia, WA, to form Local 443. The size of our local chapter of AFSCME was a little more than 300 members. Our first president was William "Bill" E. Healy, employee of the Washington State Patrol, and the first issue campaign our union took on was to advocate for a state civil service law where jobs are secured by performance and merit, not political patronage and nepotism.
During the 1940s, we worked on securing a retirement system for Washington state workers and extending Social Security benefits to all state workers in America. During the 1950s, we worked to further expand Social Security coverage, and we secured vacation leave and state travel rates. We even formed a credit union, the Washington State Employees Local 443 Credit Union (WSECU), in 1957.
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Our hard-fought campaign for merit-based civil service reform finally concluded in 1960 with the passage of the State Civil Service Law (RCW 41.06) by ballot initiative, which includes the state employment salary and benefits survey. Unfortunately, the last time the salary benefits recommendations were fully implemented by the governor and legislature was in 1969. So by the early 1970s, Local 443 members were agitating for a strike to secure the fair wages we had been denied.
At the 1974 WFSE Convention, members passed a resolution calling for the WFSE executive board to immediately take a strike vote if the legislature or governor​ did not meet our union's wage demands. That following January, Local 443 loaned a few thousand dollars to WFSE (AFSCME Council 28) for a strike fund, and in March, the WFSE executive board voted 33-1 in favor of holding a vote by membership on whether or not to strike. The strike vote fell just 73 votes short of the two-thirds majority of union members needed to authorize the strike...
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Since those storms of the 1970s, most of the state's labor strife has come from the teaching ranks. But in 2001, WFSE members authorized a strike over low cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), increased health insurance premiums, and inadequate funding of state services. Out of those concerted efforts, our union secured the legal right to collectively bargain with the state over wages and healthcare costs.
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In April 2025, Local 443 staged a successful protest and sit-in at the Washington State Capitol Building against furloughs, cuts, closures, and an attack on our legal right to collectively bargain over healthcare costs. Today, we have over 7,000 members, and as long as there is government, there will be 443.
