Inslee, apologize to fired workers

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee is busy signing bills. I think he should start putting his John Hancock on apology letters to former state workers who were terminated because of his vaccine mandate.

I doubt he will.

In a press release about the move, the Inslee administration says that the end of the employment requirement “aligns with the end of the federal public health emergency and the lifting of vaccination requirements for federal employees and contractors on May 11. Last week, the World Health Organization announced an end to the global health emergency...”

That’s a good bandwagon to hop on.

The state Office of Financial Management will be providing notice to labor partners to negotiate changes to collective bargaining agreements, and it will start the process of amending civil service rules containing COVID-19 vaccination requirements, the press release says.

But booster incentives supplied with taxpayer dollars will.

“Beginning July 25, 2023, eligible state employees who choose to provide proof of their up-to-date vaccination status can qualify for a $1,000 incentive payment,” the news release says. That’s despite numbers showing boosted individuals are faring worse than people with only initial vaccination when it comes to testing positive for COVID-19, being hospitalized or dying.

Taxpayer money not well spent.

The booster bucks have always felt more like a reward for politcally like-minded thinkers than a public safety measure.

The press release failed to give any information about agencies’ ability to rehire the people who were thrown out of their jobs, so I followed up with the governor’s office. I asked if we could expect a rehire campaign for former workers, especially since the state’s workforce was harmed by the terminations of 2021.

I was told that people seeking re-employment can re-apply.

The state could do better — as in sending apology letters and courting potential rehires.

Rehires might help get the state out of its staffing problems and the institutional knowledge of former workers should be highly valued.

More than 2,000 state employees were lost due to the gubernatorial mandate; ferries and the Department of Transportation as a whole were hit hard.

Gov. Inslee’s vaccine mandate on employment is more than outdated. It was misguided from the outset.

Apology letters from the governor’s office would be a public good. The state has a duty to protect former workers from societal scorn that grew, in part, because of the governor’s misguided vaccine mandate.

— Elizabeth Hovde is the Centers for Health Care and Worker Rights director at the Washington Policy Center. Email her at ehovde@washingtonpolicy.org