NEWS ROUNDUP
Strikes loom ● “Keep the poor uncomfortable” ● It’s gettin’ hot in here
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
LOCAL
► In today’s Seattle Times — Tukwila teachers plan to strike Friday if they don’t reach agreement with district –For the second year in a row, a potential teachers strike could impact the first week of school for 3,000 Tukwila students. After months of negotiations with the Tukwila School District, the Tukwila Education Association (TEA) announced Tuesday it plans to strike Friday, two days after the school year begins, if the union’s bargaining team and the district cannot reach a compromise.
More than 80,000 technicians, nurses, and medical personnel at Kaiser Permanente, organized through a coalition of several unions, including SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers division, have authorized a strike scheduled to begin in October. A whopping 98 percent of union members voted to walk out. If they go forward, it would be the largest strike in the U.S. since 1997, when 185,000 United Parcel Service workers walked off the job… Workers fronted rallies and marches in several cities where Kaiser operates on Labor Day, including Los Angeles, Denver, Portland, Oakland, and Sacramento.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Kaiser workers in Washington state are among those poised to strike.
► In today’s Seattle Times — It took 11 years, but Sound Transit officially breaks ground for Lynnwood light-rail line — It’s been 11 years since voters approved light-rail expansion in 2008. A groundbreaking ceremony was held Tuesday for the line from Northgate to Lynnwood. New housing and commercial development will follow, plus 2,000 worker-years of union labor building the $2.8 billion, 8.5-mile track and four stations. After the line to Lynnwood is finished in five years, riders will reach downtown Seattle in 28 minutes.
► In today’s Tri-City Herald — Kennewick has new $85M plan to expand convention center and add another hotel — The city on Tuesday approved a public-private partnership with an arm of A-1 Hospitality Group, a Kennewick hotel development firm headed by Taran Patel.
► From KING TV — Seattle may regulate side-hustle gigs like Uber, Lyft, food delivery apps — On Tuesday, Council member Teresa Mosqueda led a forum designed to show the concerns of people who have worked in the “gig industry,” which has been proliferated with companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Caviar, Postmates, and more.
THIS WASHINGTON
ALSO at The Stand — Time is running out to restore overtime — Civic Action has set up a one-click web form for you to submit a comment of support, or you can email comments to EAPrules@Lni.wa.gov. Please take a moment to submit your comments in support of the rule. Get more information about the proposed rule.
► MUST-READ in today’s Seattle Times — Now corporate donors are abandoning Washington Rep. Matt Shea? They knew he was an extremist for years (by Danny Westneat) — Shea is under some official scrutiny now for palling around with extremist groups and fantasizing about waging a holy crusade to make everyone obey biblical law. But what rings so hollow about the belated corporate denunciations is that their lobbyists, for many years, have all known Shea is a far-right extremist with delusions of apocalyptic grandeur. They didn’t care — they gave him money anyway… It’s politics at its most transactional. It makes no difference to the companies if you’re a fringe religious zealot who imagines yourself carrying a sword into a new Christian civil war. If they imagine needing your vote on some matter, they’ll seek to influence it.
BOEING
► From Reuters — Boeing shuts 787 plant in South Carolina as hurricane approaches — Boeing suspended operations on Tuesday at the South Carolina plant where it assembles 787 widebody jetliners following evacuation orders for coastal areas threatened by powerful Hurricane Florence. The company did not have an estimate for when operations would resume.
► From KMUW — Spirit employees return to full work week after furlough — Some employees at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita returned to a full work week Friday after 10 weeks of furlough. The company announced in June it would reduce work weeks, and pay, as a way to cut costs as the Boeing 737 Max jet remains grounded. SPEEA said more than 70 percent of the union’s roughly 2,700 employees at Spirit were impacted by the furlough.
THAT WASHINGTON
► From Truthout — As drivers protest, Trump’s NLRB sides with Uber and Lyft — As workers across the country prepared for a long Labor Day weekend, the NLRB quietly issued another blow to the increasingly powerful movement of ride-hail drivers and gig workers locked in a high-profile struggle with Uber, Lyft and other tech firms that hire millions of people as independent contractors. In a major win for employers, the NLRB ruled last Thursday that misclassifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees is not by itself illegal.
► In the NY Post — Trudeau tweets thanks to Pelosi for ‘new NAFTA’ talk — The Canadian PM’s tweet came a day after Trump — on Labor Day — berated AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who told Fox News that unions would not back the administration’s proposal in its current form. “If Mexico can’t enforce their own agreement, this agreement will never work because their wages will be artificially low and they will suck jobs and capital out of the United States,” Trumka said.
► A related Swamp Update™ from the Washington Post — Days after leaving post, ex-Interior official who pushed drilling in Alaska takes oil company job — Joe Balash, who served as the Interior Department’s top official overseeing oil and gas leasing on federal land until Friday, is joining an oil firm that’s expanding drilling operations on Alaska’s North Slope.
► From Vox — Inside the shadowy think tank pushing to kick 3.1 million people off food stamps — The increasingly influential Foundation for Government Accountability is mixing sketchy research with legislative leverage — and it’s working.
► From HuffPost — McConnell rails against ‘Moscow Mitch’ nickname: It’s ‘over the top’
EDITOR’S NOTE — Memo to MM: This is not how you do it.
NATIONAL
► In the Detroit Free Press — UAW authorizes strike; union targets General Motors first in contract talks — The UAW will seek to negotiate a contract with General Motors this fall as a template for talks with Detroit’s two other automakers, setting up a confrontation with a company that has angered workers with plans to idle four U.S. factories. UAW leadership made the decision, spokesman Brian Rothenberg said. Factory workers have said they feel angry and mistreated by the company since GM’s announcement of plant reductions in November.
► From the Phoenix New Times — Gannett confiscates pro-union Arizona Republic reporter’s work phone — A human resources representative for Gannett, the parent company of the Arizona Republic, confiscated the work phone of a reporter involved in a campaign to unionize the Phoenix newsroom, the reporter said on Facebook. Rebekah Sanders, who covers scams and bad business practices, claimed that a Gannett representative “interrogated” her about her “unionizing activity.” Afterward, Sanders said, the representative confiscated her work phone.
EDITOR’S NOTE — America: Land of the free.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
► from Truthout — Alaska’s sea ice completely melted for first time in recorded history — July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth since record keeping began in 1880. Nine out of the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005, and July was the 43rd consecutive July to register temperatures above the 20th century average.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.