DAILY NEWS
Unions lift all workers | The future of aerospace | Liz takes the lead
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
COVID
► From the Spokesman-Review — Washington COVID hospitalizations continue to decrease, while Kootenai Health hits record high of COVID patients — COVID hospitalizations are decreasing in Washington , but North Idaho hospitals are treating record high numbers of COVID patients.
MORE local coverage from the (Aberdeen) Daily World, Bellingham Herald, Olympian, and the Skagit Valley Herald.
VACCINE MANDATES
► From KING 5 — Some Washington workers choose vaccination against their wishes as mandate deadline looms — Washington state employee Julie Beavers hoped to avoid getting a COVID-19 vaccine, but on Monday, she decided she had no choice. Beavers, a department of Licensing employee, is one of 60,000 state employees required to be fully vaccinated against the virus by Oct. 18, which means she needed to get her Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Monday, Oct. 4.
► From the Seattle Times — Non-bargaining, exempt Washington state workers get more time to get COVID-19 shots under Inslee mandate — Gov. Jay Inslee’s administration has extended some union provisions to nonrepresented and exempt Washington state workers that gives them a little more time to get vaccinated before losing their jobs. The move comes as Washington’s agencies work to verify how many of the 63,000 state workers subject to Inslee’s mandate were vaccinated as of Monday.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Once again, the power of unions lifts up all workers.
► From the News Tribune — Unvaccinated Connell prison guard sues Inslee, WA over possible ‘reassignment’ — Jeffrey Johnson, an employee at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center, filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Superior Court, asking a judge to declare that Inslee’s proclamation is unconstitutional and void.
► From the Washington Post — Republicans gird for battle and businesses brace for details of Biden’s new vaccine rule — The rule will require companies with more than 100 employees to institute mandatory vaccination or testing protocols for their staffs. Top administration officials have been working carefully to ensure the proposal is ironclad, and some have been heartened to see anecdotal evidence that companies and local governments implementing vaccine requirements have seen large-scale cooperation.
► From KOMO — Southwest Airlines is latest air carrier to mandate vaccines for workers
AEROSPACE
► From the Seattle Times — Aerospace workers should pilot future of a great American industry (by IAM 751 President Jon Holden) — September marked the 86th anniversary of the beginning of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751. The district came together to fight for dignity and fairness, resulting in the first labor agreement with Boeing one year later, in 1936. The fight wasn’t just about Boeing. It was a battle to ensure that our union and Washington state would grow the aerospace industry, significantly impacting generations of working families through good-paying jobs and benefits. Today, IAM District 751 represents more than 26,000 workers in the aerospace industry.
LOCAL
► From UFCW 21 — Grocery workers have right to wear Black Lives Matter buttons
► From KING 5 — Edmonds School District looking to fill dozens of empty positions — From bus drivers to cafeteria workers, the Edmonds School District has more than 80 positions that sit empty as of this week.
THIS WASHINGTON
► From the union-busting Columbian — Sen. Ann Rivers stepping down from Legislature to take job in Longview — Rivers will begin her new job this week as as community development director for the city of Longview. She said she has not yet decided when her final day as a senator will be, but she expects it will come before the 2022 legislative session begins in January. The Republican central committee from Clark County now will nominate three candidates to replace Rivers, and the Clark County Council will choose who will serve until the November 2022 election.
THAT WASHINGTON
► From Bloomberg Law — Supreme Court saves railway, airline unions from Janus sequel — The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take two cases that could have extended into the private sector its landmark ruling that limited public sector union financing, saving unions that represent airline and railway workers from a major legal battle. The justices rejected a petition on Monday asking them to consider whether to bar unions from requiring nonmember workers organized under the Railway Labor Act to pay fees for nonpolitical expenses, as the court did for public sector workers in its 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME.
► From The Hill — Schumer sets up Wednesday vote to suspend debt ceiling — Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) teed up a vote for Wednesday where he’ll need 60 votes to break a Republican filibuster and move forward with suspending the debt ceiling through December 2022.
EDITOR’S NOTE — To be clear, Republicans are using the filibuster to try to force America to default on previous spending enacted when they were in power. Why? We don’t know. But the consequences of a default would be to kills millions of jobs and send the country into an almost-immediate recession.
► From the NY Times — As the U.S. hurtles toward a debt crisis, what does McConnell want? — Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has a long record of tying debt ceiling increases to policy demands. But with a catastrophic default two weeks away, he has yet to make any.
► From Government Executive — TSA, Merit Board reach deal to provide appeal rights to airport screeners — As the Biden administration moves to provide full civil service protections to the TSA workforce, lawmakers say Congress must codify screeners’ rights.
► From The Hill — DOJ to investigate threats against teachers, school board members nationwide — The announcement comes after the National School Boards Association asked President Biden for “immediate assistance” to help teachers, school board members and students who have seen threats over mask mandates and critical race theory.
► State of the Unions podcast — Democracy, Safe Schools and Union Power — Co-hosts Tim Schlittner and Carolyn Bobb are joined by American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten to discuss back to school, the state of play on Capitol Hill and the rise of unions.
NATIONAL
TODAY at The Stand — IATSE OKs strike in near-unanimous vote
► From CNBC — Hollywood studios to head back the bargaining table after TV, film crew union authorize a strike — Negotiations between Hollywood’s studios and a union representing its film and television crews are set to restart Tuesday after backstage workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize an industry-wide strike Monday.
► From Current — New NPR SAG-AFTRA contract expands parental leave, includes DEI provisions — Members of NPR’s SAG-AFTRA union voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve a new three-year contract. The contract increases paid parental leave from eight to 20 weeks and provides an annual 2.5% pay raise.
► From Vice — Instacart shoppers will stage nationwide strike — On October 16, a group of Instacart’s gig workers will log off the grocery delivery app until the company agrees to a series of demands that would result in higher pay.
► From the LA Times — Once shunned, people convicted of felonies find more employers open to hiring them — Labor shortages are prompting more companies to consider the 20 million people with convictions, but criminal background checks, job restrictions and other barriers hold back hiring.
► From The Onion — Patriotic billionaire only invests in American-made tax havens — “These billionaires who hide their money in places like Switzerland and Monaco make me sick—I vow to continue only sheltering my vast fortune from taxation right here in the good old U.S. of A.,” said one agribusiness executive.
TODAY’S MUST-READ
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.