Washington marked a milestone Aug. 28 with the final structural beam placed on a new psychiatric facility on the Western State Hospital campus in Pierce County. 

Along with the pomp came protest.

“This is really a chance to honor the hundreds and hundreds of workers who are working so hard every single day to build this really critical structure,” Gov. Bob Ferguson told a crowd that included hundreds of construction workers. As is tradition, the governor signed the final beam before it became part of the building.

A few yards away, on the other side of a 6-foot chain-link fence, a different group of workers was not there to celebrate.

The handful of state employees loudly chanted their displeasure with the progress of talks on a collective bargaining agreement with negotiators from Ferguson’s budget office.

“No contract! No peace! No contract! No peace!” they shouted, with some calling out the governor by name. 

Ferguson didn’t visibly acknowledge their presence during the event. Afterward, when asked for his message to them, he said, “It’s an interesting choice to come protest an event where we’re honoring workers.” 

“We’re negotiating,” he said. “I don’t have anything else to add.”

Negotiations between the executive branch and unions representing tens of thousands of state workers are intensifying. State law sets an Oct. 1 deadline for agreements to be ratified by unions in order to be considered for funding in the next two-year budget.

The Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents 54,000 state government, higher education and public service workers, is organizing walkouts Aug. 31 to demonstrate their frustration with the state’s proposals.

August 28 served as a warm-up. A half dozen of the union’s members marched on the other side of the fence from where Ferguson headlined the ceremony.

A barrier between them and the stage couldn’t prevent their voices from being heard.

Eric Olson, senior vice president of Clark Construction, the final speaker of the program, walked to the podium, paused briefly and glanced their way before saying, “We’re going to go forward now.”

A couple minutes into the demonstration, Charles Southerland, chief executive officer of the hospital’s Civil Center of Excellence, approached the members, asking them to stop. 

They did not. 

“Just to be clear, our issue is not with hospital administration,” said Mike Yestramski, president of the Washington Federation of State Employees and social worker at the hospital. “The issue is above them.”

Yestramski has been at odds with Ferguson in the past, helping lead a protest at the Capitol during the 2025 legislative session as Ferguson and lawmakers discussed the possibility of furloughs. The union leader drew attention at that time for calling Ferguson a “ratfink.” 

This year, with a looming budget shortfall, union leaders braced for bare-bones wage offerings from state negotiators. But Yestramski said Aug. 28 it is worse than expected, with the rejection of every one of their proposals.

Several construction workers approached and chatted with the governor after the event.

The state broke ground on the 500,000-square-foot, 350-bed facility in October 2024 and construction accelerated last summer. The nearly $1 billion undertaking is expected to be completed in mid-2028. It’s part of a court-ordered state effort to reduce wait times for mental health treatment and evaluations for criminal defendants who are incompetent to stand trial. 

As the ceremony wrapped up, Ferguson and his wife were escorted in the opposite direction of the protesting employees.

“If state workers (are) so important as you said when you came and talked to us the first time to become governor, then put more stake in the state workers,” said Mark Camacho, union member and behavioral health specialist at Western State Hospital.

Yestramski said that to say contract negotiations have not been going well “would be an understatement.” 

“We figured if we could come to this,” he said, “maybe (the governor) would talk to workers.”

This story is republished from the Washington State Standard, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that provides original reporting, analysis and commentary on Washington state government and politics.