Electricians’ strike update | Boeing won’t engage | Pregnant and turned away

Friday, April 19, 2024

LOCAL

IBEW Local 46: Limited Energy Strike Update April 18th pic.twitter.com/c9hvhdJUis

— IBEWLocal46 (@IbewLocal46) April 19, 2024

► From IBEW 46 — An update on the strike by Limited Energy Electricians — “Your negotiating team met with NECA on Tuesday, April 16th. NO movement was made on wages; however, the Union presented another proposal that NECA did not dismiss right away. We meet again Friday morning.”

From The STAND (April 16) — Labor’s backing IBEW 46 electricians ‘as long as it takes’ — Union community rallies in support of striking Limited Energy Electricians.

From The STAND (April 11) — IBEW 46 Limited Energy Electricians are on STRIKE

► From the union-busting Columbian — PeaceHealth nurses picket Vancouver hospital, demanding safe staffing and fair wages — Picketing nurses decked out in blue crowded the sidewalks along Mill Plain Boulevard in front of PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center before dawn Thursday. PeaceHealth employees represented by the Washington State Nurses Association and their supporters carried signs demanding safe staffing levels and competitive wages in a new contract. Employees planned to picket a second time Thursday afternoon.

► From KING — DoorDash dishes hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight minimum pay ordinance — City of Seattle records show that in March alone, DoorDash spent more than $130,000 on lobbying efforts to repeal the PayUp ordinance.

From The Stand (Mar. 26) — Seattle unions fight to save gig workers’ wage ordinance

► From KIMA — Toppenish School District cuts 48 positions — The Toppenish School District has announced 48 staff cuts in an attempt to balance a severe budget crisis.

► From Crosscut — Whatcom County paid $225K to settle sexual harassment complaints — Multiple women accused a public works director of inappropriate conduct. Officials helped him get a new job by agreeing not to share the allegations.

► From the Public News Service — Annual farmworkers march supports WA tulip harvesters — An annual march for farmworkers’ rights will be Sunday in NW Washington. This year, marchers are focusing on the conditions for local tulip and daffodil workers.

From The Calendar at The STAND — Community to Community and Familias Unidas Por La Justicia invite all to the annual March With Farmworkers in the Skagit Valley at 10 a.m. on Sunday, April 21 at Edgewater Park, 600 Behrens Millett Road in Mount Vernon. Get details.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

► From the NW Labor Press — New contract at Portland Hilton, after two years bargaining — UNITE HERE Local 8 reached a tentative agreement on April 11 that raises wages and restores automatic daily room cleaning at the Hilton and Duniway hotels in downtown Portland. Local 8 represents about 125 workers across the two Hilton-owned hotels, including housekeepers, cooks, bellhops, and reception clerks.

READY FOR A RAISE? Get more information about how you can join together with co-workers and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!

► From the Oregonian — Complaint charges Portland teachers’ union with prolonging 2023 strike, seeks $100 million for families — The Portland Association of Teachers unnecessarily prolonged the strike that shut down schools for 11 days in November by trying to bargain over topics that the school district was not legally obligated to discuss, a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of four parents alleges. The complaint also asks a judge to void the contract that teachers and the district eventually agreed upon.

AEROSPACE

► From Leeham News — Boeing unlikely to meet FAA’s 90-day deadline for new safety program — The FAA on Feb. 28 gave Boeing three months to address “systemic quality-control issues,” a move sparked by new safety concerns following the Jan. 5 door-plug blowout on Alaska Airlines flight 1282. Now 45 days later, Boeing is unlikely to meet the deadline. In an internal memo, Boeing’s engineering and technicians union SPEEA reported that it has had no outreach from Boeing seeking its input into the plan. The memo reads:

“The current status of safety culture issues at Boeing underscores the need for collaboration between the company and its labor unions. This collaboration is necessary to elevate an unfiltered voice for safety experts who have been ignored and employees who have been silenced.”

SPEEA proposed several steps to improve safety and quality assurance, but so far with little progress, according to the memo. Boeing’s touch-labor union, the IAM District 751, has not heard from Boeing.

► From Bloomberg — Alaska Air sees clear skies despite 737 MAX woes as business travel rebounds — Alaska Air expects profits will top analyst estimates this spring, signaling that the carrier is recovering from a Jan. 5 near-catastrophe on one of its planes that triggered the temporary grounding of a key Boeing aircraft model.

THIS WASHINGTON

► From the Yakima H-R — Sen. Curtis King will move to run in new 14th District. He was eight blocks from the boundary. — State Sen. Curtis King’s (R-Yakima) decision comes after weeks of redistricting-induced chaos as voting rights lawsuits moved through the courts.

THAT WASHINGTON

► From the AP — Emergency rooms refused to treat pregnant women, leaving one to miscarry in a lobby restroom — One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents reveal.

The STAND (Jan. 24, 2023) — New report links abortion access to economic security

The STAND (June 27, 2022) — Amid attacks on abortion rights, unions must fight back (by Shaunie Wheeler James and Cherika Carter) — Organized labor has the tools to transform protests into concrete actions defending bodily autonomy.

The STAND (May 3, 2022) — WSLC: ‘Reproductive rights are workers’ rights’ — The Washington State Labor Council will fight to defend healthcare choices, abortion rights.

► From The Hill — Pacific Northwest emerges as new Hispanic political hot spot — The Pacific Northwest is emerging as a staging ground for Latino political representation, as a trio of federal elected Latina officials — Reps. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) — face their first reelection campaigns, with others potentially joining them in Congress.

The region’s Hispanic congressional footprint could expand in 2025, with Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Washington state Sen. Emily Randall (D) in the primary to replace retiring Rep. Derek Kilmer (D).

► From Penn Live — ‘He has our backs’: Pennsylvania steelworkers cheer Biden’s proposed tariffs on Chinese steel — A welcoming crowd at the United Steelworkers International headquarters in Pittsburgh on Wednesday made it clear that President Joe Biden picked the right place to propose tripling tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.

► From the WA State Standard — Despite petitions, federal regulators approve construction on expanded Northwest gas pipeline — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week denied petitions to reevaluate the project that delivers gas from Canada to the Northwest and northern California.

NATIONAL

► From Reuters — UAW hopeful of watershed union victory at Volkswagen Tennessee factory — The United Auto Workers is counting on scoring a seismic victory at Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant as unionization votes are tallied on Friday – one that opens up the anti-union U.S. South to organized labor. A win would make the Chattanooga factory the first auto plant in the South to unionize via election since the 1940s and the first foreign-owned auto plant in the South to do so.

EDITOR’S NOTE — If results are announced later today, this post will be updated.

► From the Herald-Times — Indiana University graduate workers strike for union recognition, living wage — There was a celebratory air outside of Indiana University’s Ballantine Hall on Wednesday, as Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition (IGWC) members held up picket signs calling for union recognition and marched to the beat of a pounding drum. It was their first day of a three-day strike against IU.

► From the Atlantic — The paradox of the American labor movement (by Michael Podhorzer) — It’s a great time to be in a union—but a terrible time to try to start a new one. How can this be? The answer, as I learned during my 25 years working for the AFL-CIO is that the story of organized labor in America is really two stories. On the one hand, established unions—especially those that emerged in the 1930s, when labor protections were at their most robust and expansive—are thriving. On the other hand, workers who want to unionize for the first time can’t get their efforts off the ground.

► From NPR — A Google worker says the company is ‘silencing our voices’ after dozens of employees are fired — The tech giant fired 28 employees who took part in a protest over the company’s Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli government. One fired worker tells her story.

► From the AP — Once praised, settlement to help sickened BP oil spill workers leaves most with nearly nothing — Thousands of ordinary people who helped clean up after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico say they got sick.

► From Reuters — Loss-making Warner Bros Discovery’s CEO pay rises to $50 million in 2023 — Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s annual compensation rose nearly 27% to $49.7 million in 2023, an SEC filing revealed Friday.

► From NOLA — Louisiana lawmakers vote to remove lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits — A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers.

T.G.I.F.

► Dickey Betts, the legendary lead guitarist for the Allman Brothers, died yesterday at 80. In addition to helping write hit singles like “Ramblin’ Man,” Betts gained renown for composing instrumentals, with one appearing on most of the group’s albums, including this one. R.I.P. to one of the greatest rock-blues guitarists ever, the man in the cowboy hat.

The STAND posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.