We Did It – 70% Voted YES for a Union!! 🎉

I am thrilled to share some incredible news—our union authorization vote has been counted, and

70%

Voted YES to form a union!!

The people have spoken, Highline Exempt Staff want a union!

This is a powerful and historic moment for all of us. Since we made our campaign public on Tuesday and started signing authorization cards, the vast majority (70%) of Exempt Staff have signed authorization cards in favor of forming a union and affiliating with AFT. Of those, 92% (65% overall) were collected within the first 24 hours! This is amazing!

This victory belongs to every person who had conversations with colleagues, showed up to meetings, asked questions, listened, stayed hopeful, and believed that we could build something better together. It took courage, time, and determination, and we should all be proud of what we’ve accomplished.

By winning this election, we’ve taken a major step toward:

• Having a real voice in decisions that affect our work and our lives
  
• Building a workplace rooted in fairness, transparency, and respect
  
• Making sure that the needs of professional staff are seen, heard, and acted on

Today, we celebrate!

What’s next? (Detailed overview)

TLDR: Submitting cards, review period and committee elections.

Filing our union authorization petition with the State Labor Board

1. 📩 We have teed up our petition to file at noon on Monday with the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC), the government agency which oversees collective bargaining in the state of Washington. Along with this petition, we will include the authorization cards we collected, which PERC will count and verify their authenticity.
2. 📃 Soon after this, an arbitrator from PERC will reach out to notify Highline’s management of our petition, along with the anonymized results of the vote. Highline’s HR will send employment lists and a PERC arbitrator will verify that they match our own.
3. 🧐 There will be a period of review, resolving any discrepancies in the composition of the bargaining unit. If you are someone in a Director position, or are not sure if your position will be included in the bargaining unit but you want to be part of the union, please notify highlineprofessionals@gmail.com – if possible, include a copy of your job description to ensure our project organizer can make the case to PERC for your inclusion in the union.

There may be issues with signatures or information mismatches on your card, so keep an eye out for any communications from this email to make sure your card is up to date.

4. ☑️ After this review period, an official card check will take place. PERC will call for a week-long period in which employees who signed cards will be notified that their authorization card counts as a vote in a union election. You will be notified that you are allowed to revoke your authorization prior to the card check, so watch for any emails from Highline and make sure to not revoke your authorization card during a card check to make sure your vote is counted YES in the final vote.

Demand to bargain for a fair contract

⏱️ Soon after we file our petition and during the review period (in about 1 week), we will call on Highline’s management to come to the table to bargain with us for a fair contract. We will hold bargaining committee elections and vote on initial demands and a contract draft.

We are very hopeful that Highline’s management will voluntarily recognize our bargaining unit and begin collective bargaining in good faith, and we will ask Highline to schedule bargaining dates for early January 2026.

✊ We want a fair contract by the end of the academic year, and we can do this if we’re organized and work together.

Bargaining

Soon, we will begin the important work of negotiating our first contract and turning this victory into meaningful improvements for everyone.

Our organizing committee has decided to make use of an open and transparent bargaining process, meaning we will request open bargaining as a ground rule for negotiations. This means anybody who is part of our union can come to the negotiations sessions, participate in group discussions with your elected bargaining committee, and weigh in on the bargaining contract proposals. This model is used in many unions, and we feel it is the best way to achieve success in bargaining and make sure everyone has a voice.

We will hold democratic elections for bargaining committee members, and thereby recruit a large, diverse, and representative group of Exempt Staff employees to serve on our elected bargaining committee. If you have some time and knowledge to devote, and want to help write contract proposals to negotiate with management, watch for communications and submit your name for nominations when nominations open!

Even if you’re not on the bargaining committee, there will be many ways to be involved and have a say in our future contract:

• Bargaining committee strategy meetings will be open to all union members, so you can observe discussions and weigh in on contract language
• you can attend open bargaining sessions and participate in group discussions
• you can be part of another committee such as Comms, Research, or Events
• or help by talking with your coworkers about bargaining.

When we say democracy in our workplace, we mean it. This is your union and your voice matters. When we come together, we can have a say in our working conditions and achieve amazing things for Highline.

Congratulations!

Thank you for your commitment, your advocacy, and your belief in each other.

This is just the beginning—and together, we’re going to build something extraordinary.