King County workers return to the office - to protest RTO mandate

About 75 King County workers occupied the lobby of the county's primary downtown Seattle office building on Tuesday to protest King County Executive Girmay Zahilay's mandate that they return to the office at least three days a week.

Protesters, organized by the PROTEC17 union that represents about 2,500 county employees, gathered during their noon lunch hour, to present Zahilay a giant blank check made out to Downtown Landlords," meant to symbolize the cost to taxpayers of the return-to-office mandate.

"All of us know our jobs and what we do in our communities better than anyone," said Brad Moore, a stormwater inspector with the county's Department of Natural Resources and Parks, as workers presented the check to a representative from Zahilay's office. "King County already had existing telework infrastructure that we felt worked really well for us, and we think that this mandate gets rid of that flexibility."

Workers gathered in the cramped lobby of the Chinook Building on 5th Avenue, below Zahilay's eighth-floor office, holding signs that read "If remote work works stop trying to fix it," "Communities not cubicles," and "Desks don't serve the community, WE DO!"

Youssef El Hamawi, a union representative, said the reasoning behind the mandate "is not clear."

"We've been working from home for the last five years-plus and there weren't any issues with that," he said.

The vast majority of the county's 18,000 employees have been and already are working in-person. Bus drivers, jail guards, sheriff's deputies and others worked in-person through the pandemic and continue to now.

Former King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a three-day return-to-office requirement for county office workers in August 2024, but it carried no implementation date and was never enforced.

Zahilay, who took office in November, announced in January that he would enforce the mandate, beginning this spring, at slightly different times for different departments.

Callie Craighead, a Zahilay spokesperson, said Tuesday that four of the county's 12 departments have implemented a three days-per-week return to office. All but one of the remaining departments are at two or two-and-a-half days per week, she said.

Zahilay, she said by email, "understands that many teleworking employees have concerns about returning to the office after several years of predominantly remote work."

"At the same time, he remains committed to working with department directors to consistently implement the County's three-day in-office expectation for Executive Branch employees whose roles include telework flexibility," Craighead continued. "The Countywide expectation is for employees whose roles allow for telework to be working onsite by June 2026."

The city of Seattle also announced in 2024 that its office workers must be in person at least three days a week. But an agreement struck late last year between the city and its largest union allows many to work just two days a week in person. Employees of the King County Prosecutor's Office, who is separately elected, have been working in-person at least three days a week for more than a year, a spokesperson said.

Workers on Tuesday framed the return-to-office requirement as both counterproductive and a waste of taxpayer money. The county does not currently have enough office space to house all the workers who would return to the office, they said.

The county in 2022 shuttered its downtown Seattle administration building, saying at the time that it was expensive to maintain and no longer necessary with thousands of employees working from home. That building remains closed and its capacity has not been replaced.

Craighead said Zahilay has requested $5.4 million to help with hybrid work implementation and that he expects to need more office space.

David Dahl, a capital projects manager for the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, said the office space he's been asked to return to can't come close to accommodating the 1,200 employees who've been asked to return.

"The math doesn't work," Dahl said. "Since 2020, DNRP has downsized their office footprint by a lot. The cost for new office space, new furniture, basic ongoing maintenance and operation of that space, we don't know what that costs.

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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 4:58 PM.