Harger: You think Brian Heywood spends big? A caregivers union in Olympia outspent him on campaigns

Right now, somewhere in Washington, a home-care worker is getting an elderly or disabled person out of bed. Helping them shower. Making breakfast. The kind of work most of us hope somebody kind and competent will be there for when our parents need it. Or when we do.

And right now, the state and that worker’s union are in a standoff over what she gets paid.

SEIU 775, the union for Washington’s home-care providers, came to the table asking for a 12% raise over two years. The state balked, and the union trimmed its ask to 3% next year and 5% the year after. The state came back offering a freeze.

“We were certainly deeply disappointed by the state’s proposal,” SEIU’s Adam Glickman told The Washington State Standard.

Caregivers make about $22 to $25 an hour. These are hard jobs. The state has trouble keeping enough people in them, and about 80,000 workers depend on this rate. Whether it should go up is a fair fight, and the state, staring down a budget shortfall, is having it.

Then I looked at who’s sitting at the table.

One of the four votes on the board that sets this rate belongs to SEIU 775. The union asking for the raise gets a vote on the raise. That same union bargains the contract that divides the money, collects dues from the paychecks it helped set, and helped create a new tax that pays for this kind of care.

It is also the biggest political spender in the state, by a wide margin. It bankrolls campaigns and helps elect the legislators who ultimately approve the money, so when SEIU 775 wants something in Olympia, the people it helped put in office listen closely. Of course they do. So would you.

Every bit of that is legal, and all of it is disclosed, sitting in public filings for anyone who wants to look. Almost nobody looks. So most of the people footing the bill have no idea one organization is sitting on this many sides of the same deal. Say what you want about SEIU 775. Nobody in Olympia reads the rulebook more closely.

SEIU 775 holds one of four votes on Washington’s home-care rate

Washington sets the pay through the Consumer Directed Employer Rate Setting Board. Four voting seats, set in law: the governor’s office, the Department of Social and Health Services, the company that employs the caregivers, and the workers’ bargaining representative.

That’s SEIU 775.

Picture a seat on the committee that sets your pay. You’d take it. So would I. SEIU has it.

That’s a good seat at the table.

One vote of four is not a majority, and this wage-freeze fight is proof the union doesn’t simply get its way. The meetings are public and streamed online, which is more than you can say for most contract talks. If the board deadlocks past September, its chair breaks the tie. The next meeting is August 24, with an October 1 deadline to land a number for Governor Bob Ferguson’s budget.

The union describes the order this way: win the rate at the board, bargain the contract, then, in its words, “go to the legislature to approve the new funding.”

Which brings us to the Legislature. And the money.

SEIU 775 is the biggest political spender in Washington

SEIU 775 is not a little outfit passing a coffee can around the break room. The union itself likes to note that The Seattle Times once compared it to Boeing and Microsoft and called it one of Olympia’s most powerful players. The numbers earn the boast.

In 2024, The Washington State Standard called SEIU 775 “by far the largest donor” of the cycle, with the union and its branches laying out close to $18 million. It even outspent Brian Heywood, the man behind Let’s Go Washington’s initiative campaigns. In one week, it dropped $4 million into a single ballot fight. In 2025, its Ballot Fund was again the biggest political committee in the state, for money raised and money spent.

That war chest gets built $32 at a time. Dues run 3.2% of a home-care worker’s pay, so a $1,000 check gives up $32. Collect that from tens of thousands of caregivers, month after month, and you can fund the loudest voice in Olympia, one that backs candidates heavily toward Democrats, with a few Republicans.

The union is open about the loop, too. After the 2022 rate passed, it reminded members that lawmakers still had to fund it, and that they should elect legislators who back caregivers. Win the rate. Elect the people who pay for it.

Round and round we go.

Plenty of groups play this game. Businesses do it. Trial lawyers do it. Gun-rights groups do it. Teachers unions do it. SEIU 775 is just better at it than anyone else in the state.

SEIU 775 helped create WA Cares, the tax that pays for care

In 2019, SEIU 775 was one of the forces behind WA Cares, the state’s long-term-care program, funded by a payroll tax of 58 cents on every $100 you earn. The benefit went live this year, and people can spend it on care, including paying a caregiver. The union also runs the state-required training those caregivers have to take, paid out of the same rate.

So the union helped pass a tax that grows the publicly funded market for the work its members do. That’s roughly the union’s own pitch. One SEIU coordinator said Medicaid already brings paid family caregivers into the workforce, “and WA Cares will bring in even more.”

None of this is a scandal, and every piece of it is legal, disclosed, and done in the open. But stand back and look at the whole thing.

One organization sits on nearly every side of it: the vote that sets the rate, the contract that divides it, the dues, the biggest political budget in Olympia, and the tax that feeds still more public money into the same work. That’s not against the rules. It’s just a lot of the same board for one outfit to be sitting on, and most of the people paying for it never knew.

Caregivers deserve a fair wage. The union has every right to fight for one. And the rest of us, footing the bill, are at least allowed to notice how neatly it all connects.

So go back to that paycheck. Public money helps fund it. The caregiver earns it. Some becomes dues. The union spends it in Olympia. And Olympia sets the rate all over again.

That’s a long trip for one paycheck.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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