Members of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) continue to vote with their feet.

After approving a 2027-29 collective bargaining agreement that included no general wage increase — an outcome WFSE President Mike Yestramski described as “the best we could get” — the pace of member opt outs accelerated. By the end of September, 1,753 WFSE members had exercised their right to opt out of membership and dues through the Freedom Foundation’s Opt Out Today website in 2026.

The total puts the organization’s outreach efforts on pace for a record year.

As for WFSE, each member who chooses to leave represents a significant financial hit. Union dues are deducted at 1.5 percent of a member’s salary, an average of roughly $1,200 per year.

By that calculus, every 100 members who stop paying dues represents roughly $120,000 in annual dues revenue no longer collected by the union.

In all, 1,753 opt-outs adds up to more than $2 million in potential dues revenue loss annually.

For workers balancing a rising cost of living against a contract that leaves salaries flat, every dollar matters.

By choosing to cancel WFSE dues, employees can keep more of their own paycheck instead of continuing to pay 1.5 percent of their salary to the union.

The decline in WFSE membership is also reflected in the union’s most recent LM-2 filing with the U.S. Department of Labor, which shows a clear decline in dues-paying members over the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, WFSE leaders just keep fiddling while Rome burns. Their members are already leaving in droves, and the pace is increasing thanks to the Freedom Foundation’s aggressive outreach efforts to Washington state’s public employees.