Reiterating how much he values the 23 Washington State Ferries engineers who called out sick Monday in protest of low wages, today Gov. Bob Ferguson thanked them for returning to work by throwing the below-deck staff an extra fish.
“I can’t believe these overworked essential employees getting paid so much less than their industry peers while clearly having the power to bring the entire ferry system and local economy to a standstill ever thought we doubted their value for a second,” said Gov. Ferguson dangling a freshly caught salmon above a chute connected to the below-deck staff’s working lair. “That’s why today I’m thanking them for returning to their posts this week with a whole extra fish—here, ya go, I’ll drop it right in here. Don’t be greedy now – share amongst yourselves! See? Just because we’ve refused for years to pay you the going market rate for your jobs or as much as above-deck staff or what is barely a living wage for a single person in Seattle, doesn’t mean state officials like me don’t appreciate you. If you can somehow manage to keep these old, decrepit ferries running while we wait for multi-billion-dollar ferries to arrive in six years, you’ve got another whole fish coming to you, just you wait!”
When asked why below-deck staff get paid as much as 25% less than above-deck staff—$65,000 year in base salary some cases—Washington State Ferries spokesman Faceless Entity plugged their ears and yelled gibberish before reminding everyone how much their most senior position makes a year.
“Look, the Chief Engineer makes a $157,000 base salary and can make $350,000 with overtime a year, so I don’t know how much the other workers make, but it’s probably something around that,” said the Faceless Entity before plugging their ears again when we said some don’t even make more tha $70k unless they run ragged working seven days a week, sometimes sleeping in their cars to make a shift. “It’s just like any other employer. I don’t know how much Amazon warehouse workers or delivery people make, but it’s probably something close to whatever C-Suite exec running Amazon Prime is making a year.”
While there is no indication Gov. Ferguson is considering increasing spending on the engineers’ salaries beyond their promised extra fish, at press time he was reportedly researching whether the ferries already do that steel door locking thing the Titanic did to below-deck engineers as it was sinking.
