Ferguson demands ferry service restored as 23 engineers' sickout cripples Washington fleet

The fog rolled thick over the Puget Sound on Monday morning, the kind of weather that usually brings out the distinctive sound of ferry horns across the region. Instead, at the Fauntleroy terminal in West Seattle, a dock worker named Tiffany stood repeating the same message to driver after driver: no boats today, try again tomorrow. Twenty-three engine room employees had called in sick that morning, and the Washington State Ferry System found itself unable to cover the gap. When the agency reached out to qualified relief workers who could fill those positions, each one declined. By mid-morning, thirteen of the system's eighteen operating vessels sat idle.

The cascading effect was immediate and severe. The Seattle-Bainbridge route, one of the busiest in the system, went dark. So did Edmonds-Kingston and the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth run. Mukilteo-Clinton and Seattle-Bremerton limped along with single vessels, and the ferry system warned drivers to expect waits stretching past two hours. In the San Juan Islands, the Samish canceled most of its evening sailings. Thousands of commuters who depend on these ferries to reach work, school, and home found themselves stranded or forced to seek alternate routes.

Governor Bob Ferguson met with union leadership Monday morning and heard their concerns about staffing levels directly. He left that meeting with a clear directive: every vessel on every route needed to be fully operational by the first sailing Tuesday morning. The disruption, he said, was causing significant harm and inconvenience to the people of Washington state, and that was not an acceptable way to address labor grievances. But Roland "Rex" Rexha, the secretary-treasurer of MEBA, the union representing the marine engineers, pushed back on the characterization of what had happened. The union did not organize this action, he said. This was not a coordinated job action by any means.

What Rexha did acknowledge was a system broken by chronic understaffing. The ferry system had become dependent on overtime to keep vessels running, a problem that predated Ferguson's time in office. The numbers told the story: one union member had worked more than 1,800 overtime hours in the past year alone. Across the membership, marine engineers had logged more than 100,000 overtime hours collectively to cover crewing shortfalls. "One person taking off sick shouldn't shut down the service that people rely on, and neither should 23," Rexha said, naming the paradox at the heart of the dispute. A system so thin on staffing that two dozen absences could paralyze it was a system that had failed its workers and its riders alike.

The ferry system responded by posting on social media about engineer compensation, highlighting that staff chief engineers earn a $157,000 base salary and can make more than $350,000 annually when overtime is included, along with sick leave, vacation, and retirement benefits. Rexha called the messaging "passive aggressive" and incomplete. Those engineers, he pointed out, typically spend fifteen years working toward the position and hold U.S. Coast Guard licenses. The qualifications and the pathway to them mattered. He also raised a separate grievance: the ferry system had not properly completed a prevailing wage survey required by state law, and comparable mariners in other parts of the industry earned more than what Washington ferries were paying.

By Monday afternoon, some service had begun to return, though major routes remained shuttered. The ferry system said it would continue trying to fill open positions and would provide updates as the situation changed. Rexha said he hoped and planned for everything to be running normally by Tuesday morning, though he stopped short of guaranteeing it. "We want the vessels to run," he said. "We want them to run on time. We want them to run safely. I think we all have the same goals here." The question hanging over the Puget Sound that evening was whether a system stretched this thin could actually deliver on those goals, or whether Monday's disruption was a warning of deeper problems ahead.