I wanted to thank all Teamsters for the work you have been doing toward getting our Department of Corrections contract funded. Your phone calls and emails to legislators in support of correctional employees is making a huge difference.

I also wanted to ask your help. We need to send letters to the editors of local newspapers across the state calling on the legislature to fund our contract. Legislators will see those letters as a reflection of the mood in the community and pay attention.

Would you be willing to write a letter? In writing your letter, you can follow these simple guidelines:

• Your letter should be 250 words or less; 
• Briefly describe the risks you take to keep your local community safe; 
• Focus less on your need for a raise, and more on the need for the legislature to value your work by funding the contract. 

Please let Paul Zilly, our Communications Director, know if you’ve written a letter and where you will be sending it. If you’d like, send him your draft and he can help edit it for you. His email is [email protected]. If you have questions about the process for getting your letter published, you can call him at 206-794-6673.

In particular, we are hoping to publish our letters over the next few days in the following newspapers: the Spokesman Review, the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, the Tri-Cities Herald, the Everett Herald, the Columbian, the Olympian, the Seattle Times and the Peninsula Daily News.

If you have already sent an email to your legislators, just edit it to match your local newspaper's guidelines.

Thanks so much for your excellent work. Together we will win this and get our contract funded!