King County Employees protest going to the office three days a week
On Tuesday, about 75 members of the government employee union Protec17 protested the fact that King County is finally enforcing its 2024 order for workers to return to the office at least three days week. Protec17 represents 2,500 county employees, nearly all of whom have been working from home since the start of the COVID pandemic in March 2020.
In August 2024, then King County Executive Dow Constantine issued orders for county employees to return part-time to the office . He gave department heads a few months to come up with a plan to welcome their staff back. Yet, there was no follow-through on these orders as Constantine became focused on obtaining the Sound Transit CEO position which netted the career politician $6 million.
New County Executive Girmay Zahilay issued back-to-office orders in January that sets different schedules for each county department. His spokesperson justified the executive’s actions by stating that county government, “requires closer collaboration, faster decision-making, relationship building and a stronger in-person presence.”
It was during the county’s work-from-home era that an audit of the King County Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) found that employees had the necessary documentation for just 1% of the $1.8 billion it dispersed to groups to provide social service. The audit stated that this carelessness created the environment where “fraud likely took place.”
King County is the lead government entity responding to the region’s homelessness crisis. During the first five years of county employees working from home, homelessness skyrocketed 43.5% (from 11,751 in 2020 to 16,868 in 2025). This massive increase occurred even as the county was spending nearly a half billion dollars to purchase approximately 1360 units (in 15 different hotels) to house homeless individuals. The total cost to buy and remodel the facilities is $333,000 per unit
The county’s actions come three years after many major Seattle companies, including Amazon, returned to the office in the spring of 2023.
It also comes at a time when Downtown Seattle’s commercial real estate market has been devastated by a record-breaking 35.6% vacancy rates as the neighborhood’s crime, homelessness, and drug problems have made it unsafe for workers and customers. The lack of King County employees downtown and the City of Seattle’s lax requirement that its workers be required in the office for just two days a week has helped create the ghost town atmosphere where the above-mentioned troubles thrive. This has been devastating to hundreds of small businesses who are dependent on office workers to purchase their products and services.
Oddly, the county employee protestors were trying to make “bad guys” out of one of the groups which has economically suffered the most because of the high vacancy rates – downtown property owners. The protestors had a large check made out to “Downtown Landlords” as they attempted to make the argument that Executive Zahilay’s return-to-office decision was made solely to benefit property owners.
Government workers are supposed to be in the customer service business. The difficulty for most people to take off work to meet with a King County employee has been made more arduous by the employee being at home.
It should be noted that King County’s nine story Administration Building, just a block from the Columbia Tower, has sat empty for four years as county employees have worked from home.
As the audit of DCHS and the county’s terrible results on homelessness have demonstrated, King County government is not an efficiently run organization. The work- from-home plan is not working. Taxpayers, most of whom returned to the office years ago, deserve better results from the King County government.