Papers show ferry staffing shortages might have been avoidable
SEATTLE -- Staffing shortages on state ferries have led to 54 missed sailings so far and thousands left stranded on the dock. But a KOMO Problem Solvers investigation has now uncovered documents that show the state might have been able to avoid it.
Washington State has the largest ferry system in the country, but the unions representing the men and women who run the massive boats say the state has put it all at risk.
"When they decided to lower the manning, we felt it was a safety issue," said Jay Ubelhart with the Inland Boatmen's Union.
But Washington State Ferries director David Moseley insists safety remained number one, as he faced a mandate from Gov. Gregoire to cut spending.
"We never compromised the unparalleled safety record that we have," he said.
Moseley's plan? Cut the number of crew members. But Moseley needed Coast Guard approval.
After months of review, the Coast Guard issued a draft letter that determined WSF's plan would leave some boats "understaffed" possibly leaving the crew unable to adequately respond to emergencies.
"WSF knew last May or at least in early June, well in advance, the Coast Guard had found problems with manning on some of the classes of vessels," Ubelhart said.
Union leaders claim ferry officials suppressed the Coast Guard's findings to move ahead with reduced staffing during the busy summer season. The Problem Solvers uncovered hundreds of pages documents that seem to support some of the union's claims.
One internal email reads:
"This letter says 'draft' but sounds final. This is not good at all. We have not had the chance to make our case."
Secretary of Transportation Paula Hammond's Chief of Staff suggests: "...time for a call from Paula? It will be hard to unring the bell."
Ubelhart said: "About the emails in particular, WSF went 'uh-oh' and did everything they could to quash the first letter and delay it."
I asked Moseley: "Did you try to suppress the Coast Guard report from coming out in the beginning of June knowing that June 17th your staffing levels are changing?"
He replied: "What we asked for was the same courtesy and opportunity that the Coast Guard had afforded to the unions."
The unions had already met with the Coast Guard and Moseley insists he only wanted the same. The delay dragged on, lower staffing levels went into effect and riders paid the price in dozens of ferry cancellations.
"We cannot afford it," Gregoire said. "Our public cannot afford it, they deserve better."
The unions claim the lower staffing could have been disastrous. In July, a car fire on the Mukilteo run meant a smaller staff had to fight the fire and leave the passenger decks unmanned. Union officials say if passengers had panicked, there would have been no one to guide them.
"We probably needed slightly higher staffing during the busier peak seasons," Moseley said.
The Coast Guard report was finally issued last month, requiring more crew members on certain boats. But that won't help the thousands of passengers left at the dock when dozens of runs were canceled
this summer.
"I think that all of this was preventable," Ubelhart said.
The state says it will comply with the Coast Guard's new staffing levels, however, it asked for more time to comply with one aspect of it because of specialized training. In the meantime, the ferries say the increased manning set by the Coast Guard last month will cost almost $3 million by 2015.
Washington State has the largest ferry system in the country, but the unions representing the men and women who run the massive boats say the state has put it all at risk.
"When they decided to lower the manning, we felt it was a safety issue," said Jay Ubelhart with the Inland Boatmen's Union.
But Washington State Ferries director David Moseley insists safety remained number one, as he faced a mandate from Gov. Gregoire to cut spending.
"We never compromised the unparalleled safety record that we have," he said.
Moseley's plan? Cut the number of crew members. But Moseley needed Coast Guard approval.
After months of review, the Coast Guard issued a draft letter that determined WSF's plan would leave some boats "understaffed" possibly leaving the crew unable to adequately respond to emergencies.
"WSF knew last May or at least in early June, well in advance, the Coast Guard had found problems with manning on some of the classes of vessels," Ubelhart said.
Union leaders claim ferry officials suppressed the Coast Guard's findings to move ahead with reduced staffing during the busy summer season. The Problem Solvers uncovered hundreds of pages documents that seem to support some of the union's claims.
One internal email reads:
"This letter says 'draft' but sounds final. This is not good at all. We have not had the chance to make our case."
Secretary of Transportation Paula Hammond's Chief of Staff suggests: "...time for a call from Paula? It will be hard to unring the bell."
Ubelhart said: "About the emails in particular, WSF went 'uh-oh' and did everything they could to quash the first letter and delay it."
I asked Moseley: "Did you try to suppress the Coast Guard report from coming out in the beginning of June knowing that June 17th your staffing levels are changing?"
He replied: "What we asked for was the same courtesy and opportunity that the Coast Guard had afforded to the unions."
The unions had already met with the Coast Guard and Moseley insists he only wanted the same. The delay dragged on, lower staffing levels went into effect and riders paid the price in dozens of ferry cancellations.
"We cannot afford it," Gregoire said. "Our public cannot afford it, they deserve better."
The unions claim the lower staffing could have been disastrous. In July, a car fire on the Mukilteo run meant a smaller staff had to fight the fire and leave the passenger decks unmanned. Union officials say if passengers had panicked, there would have been no one to guide them.
"We probably needed slightly higher staffing during the busier peak seasons," Moseley said.
The Coast Guard report was finally issued last month, requiring more crew members on certain boats. But that won't help the thousands of passengers left at the dock when dozens of runs were canceled
this summer.
"I think that all of this was preventable," Ubelhart said.
The state says it will comply with the Coast Guard's new staffing levels, however, it asked for more time to comply with one aspect of it because of specialized training. In the meantime, the ferries say the increased manning set by the Coast Guard last month will cost almost $3 million by 2015.
Good to finally see TRUE and REAL investigative reporting! WSF has said that the unions may have staged a work protest slowdown this past summer, why not compare the amount of phone calls to the ferry dispatch system received this summer season to the same time frame last season? If the call numbers are similar and more crews were short this year than last then the common denominator would be the reduced manning forced on the unions by the WASH ST FERRY SYSTEM!! This is not the fault of the unions. I understand that WSF submitted a budget proposal to the State Legislature for this year at the reduced manning for the first time and not the safer, higher level that had been proposed in previous budget requests. None of the unions were involved in this process. The Unions were then informed after the fact that WSF did not have the funds to man the ferries at the higher level and that WSF would be reducing manning on the ferryboats this past summer. Had they put in a proposal at the higher level they would not be short of funds to return the ferryboats to the levels now deemed safer by the Coast Guard! My next question would be will WSF now say that they have to reduce service to make up the for the budget shortfall that they themselves are responsible for!! The ferry riding public would like to know this.
Thank you KOMO 4 for this report, you let both sides speak.
The stafing levels from the Coast Guard are for safety of pasangers , crew and other people on the water. The C.G. does not do whatever the Unions want, far from it. What I think happened is that W S F started lowing the workers on some ferries to save money. The C G, and of course the unions, did not like it. Whatever one thinks about unions, it was the Coast Guard that said "unsafe".It should be of intrest that many mates and captains, who are not in the Inland Boatmans Union, felt WSF  was acting unsafe just to save money. Several Mates and Captains may have hurt their chances for advancments by stating in writing to C.G. and WSF that the new stafing levels were unsafe. As a personal note I would like to thank those officers, men and women, for standing up in tuff times. It makes it easy to have the proper respect for you.
To Denise Whitaker, I am told WSF management went from 25 to 250 in 30 years, is this true? That would be an interresting report if true, you could call it "Waste Over the Water".
Finally some real investigative reporting with hard documents to back it up. Thank you KOMO for digging deep enough to get to the bottom of a story and not just sensationalizing it. Hopefully the new governor will appoint some people who are smart enough to solve these types of problems by working with the unions and the legislators rather than working against them. I'm sure the truth this story has uncovered is making some people very nervous right now. Keep up the good work Denise Whitaker and staff, I look forward to seeing the follow up stories.
I find this all humorous. If the leglislature really wanted to do something great for the citizen's of Washington they would chnge the law that holds the tax payers of the State of Washington hostage to the Maritime Unions. The Union's, starting with the Inland Boatmen's Union have no fear of loosing their strangle hold on the tax payers ofÂ
Washington. They owned the outgoing Governor and have a law naming them as the only union that can be bargained with. I am sure Inslee will be their pupet too. My own resarch and confirmed by my local representative revealed this whole situation started with the Legislature. They cut money from the Ferry budget based on a reportt provided to them by one of their million dollar studies by an outside group. That group advised it was not a good use of money to have more employees onboard a ferry that were required by the Coast Guard. I also find it interesting the Coast Guard did a 180 from their position regarding how may employee must be on a ferry. The staffing was good enough for some ferries over 40 years. Removing extra crewmembers as suggested by the study meant less full time positions for the Inland Boatmen's Union. The other unions most likely went running to their support as unions do. I am sure this is probably where the outcry of the ferries are now unsafe came from. I will admit they used the right word, Safety, as their battle cry. Who can argure against safety. Of course having more employees onboard a ferry paying union dues is much safer. In fact I bet the unions would support putting 40 or 50 employees on a ferry. That would be much safer than 10 or 15. Dah! I have been a ferry commuter for years and for one will feel much safer knowing their are more employees in their break room reading the paper, popping their pop corn, and as I saw the other day, gathered around a lap top watching a foot ball video, while the bathroom was filhty. I know there are many employees on the ferry whom are good workers and do the best job they can each day for the tax payer. I commend those employees. I have met several over my years of commuting. I would feel more sympathy for the unions if they would sit with management and assist them with removing poor performing employees. I ran into a gentleman at a store in Bremerton I used to chat with regularly and more times than not would spend the whole crossing chatting with what appeared to be very young teenage girls.. He used to kind of brag to me, how many times he had been late for work and could never be fired. To my shock, he told me he had been fired. We chatted a bit and he told me how his union will get his job back and he expects to get a lot of back pay. The next day I was chatting with another employee during my commute to Seattle, I mentioned running into the other employee who had been fired and he spent the rest of the trip telling me how angry he was his union was trying to get his job back. I will make the Inland Boatmen's Union a deal. Quit fighting for poor perfomring employees and I will be willing to pay a fare increase to support the increased ferry employees.
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Well done KOMO. The clown bus they call management at the state ferries has had one sorry excuse after another for why we commuters need to pay more for less service over the last several years. It's bad enough they screw up our schedules and put our service on the chopping block every two years, but to threaten our safety on top of it all?!? They have been some of the worst stewards of the public purse on record. Fire the lot of them!
Well done KOMO. The clown bus they call management at the state ferries has had one sorry excuse after another for why we commuters need to pay more for less service over the last several years. It's bad enough they screw up our schedules and put our service on the chopping block every two years, but to threaten our safety on top of it all?!? They have been some of the worst stewards of the public purse on record. Fire the lot of them!
pretty sure 3 million dollars is worth having our nations LARGEST ferry system functioning 100% of the time.
Just another piece of finely oiled state machinery limping down the road of total incompentence...
Citizens of the state keep voting the clowns back into office term after term.
FIRE PAULA HAMMOND
I usually read the news to hear about stories I do not already know about. Reading this is like going to a psychic and listening to them tell you things you already know about.
Of course it was avoidable.