Lawsuit filed in Walla Walla County challenging vaccine requirement for prison workers reflects growing frustration

A lawsuit filed in Walla Walla County Superior Court last week challenging the state government’s authority to base employment on taking a COVID-19 vaccine is indicative of mounting uneasiness in Washington state prison workers, according to tips sent to the Union-Bulletin.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, Sept. 10, by Seattle-based law office Arnold & Jacobowitz, claims that Gov. Jay Inslee exceeded the authority of his office in mandating that all state-sponsored workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18 or be terminated.

Of the 90 plaintiffs named in the suit, 12 are Washington state Department of Corrections workers living in Walla Walla County — Danielle D. Oyen, John E.B. Oyen, Autumn R. Lewis, Eric Burt, Andrea Burt, Tonya Gould, Orland Gould, Johnathan Phillips, Nicolette Phillips, Troy Head, Gary Pierce and Cody Havens.

The suit claims another 30,000 to 50,000 people plan on signing on as plaintiffs in future amendments of the filing.

According to the Washington Courts database, the lawsuit is still in the “summons” phase and no other hearings have been scheduled thus far.

It’s unclear why Walla Walla County was chosen as the venue for the lawsuit. There is a line in the suit that claims the county’s Superior Court is a valid location in relation to a Washington law requiring tort claims against the state to be filed in the principal location of one or more of the plaintiffs. However, the suit’s main filers, William Cleary and Sherra R. Cleary, reside in King County.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office said they are not intimidated by the complaint.

“We’ve had 30 lawsuits against the governor’s proclamations,” said spokesperson Brionna Aho. “We’ve won every one. We expect this one to be the same.”

Aho directed any further questions to the governor’s office.

When asked about the suit, Rochelle Stephens, a spokesperson for the DOC, said the department has a policy of not commenting on current or pending litigation.

Teamsters 117, the union representing DOC corrections officers, offered a counter-proposal to Inslee’s office earlier this month and had been pushing back on the “rigidity” of the vaccine mandate while also encouraging workers to get immunized.

In addition, the union warned that the last date to begin a two-dose vaccine was Monday. Now, those who wish to be vaccinated by the deadline must rely on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but Walla Walla County health officials reported that vaccine is running out quickly across the state.

On Tuesday, the union announced it had failed to negotiate a new requirement and will be back at the table this weekend for a new round of bargaining — meaning unionized corrections officers in the state who aren’t vaccinated must get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Oct. 4, or get an approved exemption, or be terminated.

While details of the lawsuit’s process will come to light in the coming days, one DOC corrections officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the vaccine requirement is the cherry on top of a long list of labor issues. The officer is not one of the people listed on the lawsuit.

“It has been almost three years of constant overtime,” said the officer, who has worked at a state DOC facility for more than 14 years. “There are many things that get swept under the rug.”

The officer said staffing levels that were already too low will get even worse.

“Too many people are leaving ... What will happen when most staff leave?” the officer asked.

An interdepartmental DOC email sent by another corrections officer who resigned, citing the vaccination mandate, said low staffing and overtime work has been grueling on workers. In particular, the officer said the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla has seen “a horrid blend of apathy, burnout and lost morale.”

The departing officer pointed to a 2019 independent study from CGL, a California-based justice system consultation company. In the study — which was ordered by Teamsters 117 — CGL found that the DOC “substantially undercounts (sic) the actual amount of time custody staff are not available to fill a post assignment.”

The study also found that high levels of overtime “are strong indicators that current custody staff levels are insufficient.”

CGL found that the DOC had posted more than 745,000 hours of overtime across all of its facilities in 2018, which was “excessive for a system of this size.”

Teamsters 117 called for increased staffing at all prisons in September 2019.

A formal grievance was filed in November 2019. Five months later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck Washington’s shores first.

Workers ran into more issues in 2020’s pandemic-related financial crisis, according to the union, as they faced mandatory furloughs and layoffs.

The departing corrections officer wrote in the email to DOC staff that many wondered when they could “get back to being functional husbands, wives, parents, etc.”

“My opinion is as follows,” the officer wrote. “(The) Administration of (the DOC), from Olympia down to individual facilities, have abandoned their duty to the safety of communities, inmates and staff — not necessarily in that order.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, governmentjobs.com showed the DOC is trying to hire for at least nine positions in Walla Walla County and at least 139 positions statewide.