Federation sues 1,900 state workers

Word about lawsuits being filed by the Washington Federation of State Employees against some workers the union represents has been trickling out for a while. But a conservative think tank found the total number of targets listed in the meeting minutes of a local: 1,900.

That's a lot, even for a union that represents about 40,000 higher education and state government workers. When the union pushed for firing non-paying workers years ago, the number was less than a dozen, if I recall correctly.

Asked federation spokesman Tim Welch about it and he said it "sounds high." The union is going after unpaid dues, he said.

"We pursued those folks after many years of trying to persuade them to pay their fair share," he said.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an long-time antagonist of the union, called the action "bullying tactics," in its post today.

UPDATE: Checked the archives, and the union turned in a list of 779 people who were not paying dues and could be fired. Only six were known to have been fired by March of 2006, when the federation dropped the request for terminations.