UPDATE: This article was updated on Monday afternoon, March 2 to reflect that provisions of HB 2747 change state financial oversight for university exempt staff, higher education faculty, and community & technical college employees.
An attempt to weaken collective bargaining rights for higher education workers was stopped this week after swift pushback by PSE, WFSE, WEA and other higher education unions.
The proposed changes to collective bargaining in HB 2747 would have added the State’s financially feasible process to EWU exempt staff agreements, university faculty agreements, and community & technical college agreements. regional university classified staff CBAs are already subject to the financial feasibility process.
The higher ed labor groups secured a promise from a high-ranking House Democratic leader to pull the offensive language from HB 2747 before the bill was formally introduced on Monday, March 2.
The measure is sponsored by House Appropriations Chair Timm Ormsby and Vice Chair Mia Gregerson.
The proposed language in Sections 4 and 6 would have required collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) for classified staff at Central Washington University and Western Washington University, and exempt staff at Eastern Washington University, to go through the same Office of Financial Management (OFM) financial feasibility certification and gubernatorial budget submittal process as general government employee contracts.
This was not a technical adjustment. It would have been a fundamental shift in power from employees to the State.
The proposal also ignored a critical fact: higher education contracts are only partially funded by the state, while general government contracts are fully state-funded. Treating them the same under a “financial feasibility” model makes no structural sense — unless the goal is to rein in collective bargaining rights.
Currently, PSE bargaining units negotiate directly with their universities — not with the state labor negotiators with the Office of Financial Management (OFM), the governor’s budget office. The proposal would have inserted a new layer of state oversight into that process and fundamentally altered the bargaining dynamic.
This fight is unfolding behind closed doors in the shadow of a significant operating budget deficit and ongoing debate over a proposed Millionaires Tax, which supporters say could generate roughly $3.5 billion annually for the state general fund. As budget negotiations intensify, some lawmakers are seeking “sustainability” concessions — including new guardrails on state employee compensation and other major budget cost-drivers.
Let’s be clear: balancing the budget on the backs of public employees is not fiscal responsibility. It’s a political choice, largely being made by lawmakers usually aligned with organized labor.
Recent House budget drafts have even floated proposals as extreme as closing one of Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges — institutions that serve as lifelines for local workforce development and economic mobility.
For now, this attempt to chip away at collective bargaining rights has been stopped. But the pressure is real, and the effort to limit worker power in the name of budget “discipline” is ongoing. Union members must remain vigilant and ready to defend the fundamental right to bargain collectively.