I literally left my last job after a raise that insulting.

w o w

... wow, that's pretty shitty!

But fortunately I’m in a bigass union. We’re going into arbitration asking for 12% in 2025 and 10% in 2026.

This is what we did last contract, and settled at 8%/6%, which was good.

But arbitration costs $50k/day. My union can afford that, but the much smaller union our supervisors are in cannot, so they’ll likely get screwed with the lowball offer.

And it’s always been in our contract that we cannot strike.

and to think, they could just not lowball you in the first place and they probably wouldn't have to pay hundreds of thousands in arbitration costs on top of your raises

Yep

I do not understand our state finances. Last year, we reported a $3b surplus in the state budget, but the state is also $16b in arrears to our education system (it’s part of WA state constitution that the state pays fully for the ed dept, but they never have and the debt keeps piling up.)