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NEWS ROUNDUP

Hotel strikes | Uber’s duty | Boeing stock

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

 

STRIKES

â–ș From the Seattle Times — Seattle-area hotel workers strike as part of national work stoppage — The strike comes after months of contract negotiations that did not reach a deal acceptable by the negotiating committees. “They put cents in terms of wages on the table, and we really need dollars,” Seth said. “We need them to come back and start bargaining in earnest for the kind of money we need.”

â–ș From KING5 — Yelm teachers, district to vote on tentative agreement Tuesday — The first day of school in the Yelm school district was originally scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 3, and was postponed due to the strike. Yelm Community Schools (YCS) officials and the Yelm Education Association (YEA) members will meet at the Performing Arts Center and Yelm High School at 1 p.m. to vote on the tentative agreement. If the agreement is approved, classes will begin Wednesday, Sept. 4.

â–ș From Yahoo — New Seasons Portland workers stage 1-day strike — “New Seasons has broken federal labor law and tried to coerce our members when they issued an email threatening us with discipline or termination for exercising our right to strike,” the [union’s] statement said. “Labor Day is supposed to celebrate the rights that generations of workers have fought to win. When those rights are desecrated, we have a responsibility to do something about it.“

â–ș From the Atlantic Journal-Constitution — They walked off the job in August and remain on strike as Labor Day nears — Gus May has worked as a service technician for AT&T for 45 years. He’s spent his entire career with the company, having a front-row seat to the evolution of technology over the past four decades, and believes it is a great one to work for. But he and 17,000 other AT&T workers in Atlanta and across the Southeast are on strike, having walked off their jobs on Aug. 16 amid an impasse in contract negotiations.

â–ș From Variety — Voice Actor Jennifer Hale on Video Game Strike and AI Fears: ‘You’re Using Technology to Take Away Our Ability to Feed Our Kids’ — “AI is coming for all of us,” Hale says. “Because the truth is, AI is just a tool like a hammer. If I take my hammer, I could build you a house. I can also take that same hammer and I can smash your skin and destroy who you are.”

LOCAL

â–ș From the Seattle Times — Divided federal court says Uber owed murdered WA driver ‘duty of care’ — Washington law extends a “special relationship” between ride-hail platforms and their drivers and says those companies owe a “duty of care” to protect them from dangerous riders, a divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel has ruled in a lawsuit filed by the mother of an Uber driver killed in Issaquah.

â–ș From the Tacoma News Tribune — City of Tacoma sued over controversial housing initiative aimed at protecting tenants — “We’re not surprised to see a lawsuit brought by landlords who are eager to challenge the new law in an effort to preserve what they see as their right to raise rents rapidly without consequences and turn out working families into the streets in the middle of winter,” [Ana] Dorn [of Tacoma for All] said via email.

â–ș From Cascade PBS — Idaho, Oregon take different approaches to worker heat deaths — In Oregon, which has over 150,000 agricultural workers and over 123,000 construction workers, 10 people died from presumed heat-related illnesses in July’s heat wave, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Seven people died in Washington and five in Idaho.

â–ș From The Spokesman Review — Deadline approaching for $200 energy bill credits, a small piece of a big state law under scrutiny this November — The program, which must be applied for by Sept. 15, offers notable relief to cost burdened households across the state. It is also one piece of one of the state’s most notable climate laws to date, one which is the center of a heated political debate and which voters might decide to permanently scrap in November.

â–ș From the Washington State Standard — Feds will auction two wind energy sites off southern Oregon coast in October — The sites would cover 61,200 acres off the coast of Coos Bay and 133,808 acres off the coast of Brookings. The Coos Bay site is 30 miles from the coast and the Brookings area is 20 miles away. The Department of the Interior said the granting of any leases would not constitute approval of development plans. To move forward, they would need to pass an environmental, technical and public reviews, including input from tribes, state and federal agencies and the public.

 

AEROSPACE

â–ș From CNN — Boeing’s next big problem could be a strike by 32,000 workers — Without a new contract, the workers who build its planes in Washington state are set to start the first strike at the company in 16 years. And right now, the chances of a deal don’t look good, according to the head of the union local. “We’re far apart is on all the main issues — wages, health care, retirement, time off,” Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751, told CNN this past week. “We continue to work through that, but it’s been a tough slog to get through.”

ICYMI: Machinists bargain for Boeing’s future (The STAND)

â–ș From Yahoo — Why Boeing Stock Is Flying Lower Today — Boeing’s woes are well known. A pair of fatal crashes grounded the company’s 737 MAX for 18 months and sparked an in-depth look at the company’s manufacturing practices that has led to significant delays in other aircraft programs as well. The company has fallen behind its internal production goals, causing problems for customers and leading airlines to look elsewhere.

â–ș From Fox Weather — Source of ‘strange’ sounds from Boeing Starliner identified –The space agency revealed Monday that the mysterious noise was the result of a specific audio configuration between the space station and the Starliner spacecraft.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

â–ș From Oregon Live — Portland-area Fred Meyer workers end strike as planned but without new contract — Two days of bargaining sessions scheduled during the strike were held as planned Thursday and Friday, continuing through the night and into Saturday, the union said, but didn’t result in a settlement to end the strike or a new contract. The two sides are set to return to the bargaining table Sept. 11 and 12, according to the union.

â–ș From Denver7/ABC — Travelers shocked to learn United Airlines flight attendant strike is looming — “As Labor Day travel begins, United management is reminded what’s at stake if we don’t get this done,” said Ken Diaz, president of the United chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, in a statement last week. The strike strategy United flight attendants would use is called CHAOS, which stands for Create Havoc Around Our System. The system means “when, where or how we strike — nobody knows,” said one local spokesperson for the flight attendants.

 

NATIONAL

â–ș From the Washington Post — Biden administration moves to end subminimum wages for disabled workers — For almost 90 years, disability activists have pushed to end a federal law that allows employers to obtain a certificate that enables them to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Some workers in the program make as little as 25 cents an hour.

â–ș From the Spokesman Review/Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Report: Home Depot spent billions on its own shares instead of raising pay — Lowe’s and Home Depot ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on stock buybacks from 2019 to 2023, money that could have more than doubled the annual pay for a median worker at the two huge home improvement retailers, said the left-of-center Institute for Policy Studies, which advocates overhauling CEO compensation and narrowing the pay gap between workers and top executives.

â–ș From The New York Times — Kamala Harris Says U.S. Steel Should Stay American-Owned — “U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh on Monday, prompting cheers from the audience. Since it was announced in December, the bid by Tokyo-based Nippon Steel to acquire U.S. Steel has been opposed by the United Steelworkers union, which is based in Pittsburgh.

â–ș From The Washington State Standard — ‘Perfect storm’ of crises is leading to cutbacks in abortion care, advocates say — Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, which includes northwestern states as well as Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky, also said it is facing financial challenges that put access to care at risk. Great Northwest includes Idaho, where there is a near-total abortion ban and which was at the center of a recent U.S. Supreme Court case over whether emergency room physicians could be prosecuted under the state law for providing an abortion in the case of a medical emergency.

â–ș From the Washington Post — A nationwide 30-hour workweek? It almost happened. — After Roosevelt won the election but before he took office, Sen. Hugo Black (D-Ala.) introduced a bill backed by the American Federation of Labor to temporarily shorten the workweek drastically, to only 30 hours — six hours a day, five days a week.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

â–ș From the Detroit Free Press — AFL-CIO president: Union workers are powerful. We will decide this election. — Our workers are powerful because they have something that is so rare today — the trust of those around them. Union members are credible political messengers. They can connect with each other and with the people in their communities in a way no one else can.

â–ș From KACU/NPR — The labor movement could prove pivotal this election year — In a speech delivered ahead of Labor Day, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler noted that union workers make up 1 in 5 voters in swing states. Keep in mind that nationwide only 1 in 10 U.S. workers are union members. That statistic suggests a far higher concentration of such workers in states where the election will be decided.

â–ș From PBS — WATCH: Walz speaks with union members at Labor Day campaign rally in Milwaukee 

â–ș From the Detroit News — Kamala Harris in Detroit on Labor Day: ‘Thank a union member’ — “Everywhere I go, I tell people, ‘Look, you may not be a union member, you better thank a union member for the five-day work week,'” Harris told the crowd. “You better thank a union member for sick leave. You better thank a union member for paid leave. You better thank a union member for vacation time. “Because what we know is when union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”

 

INTERNATIONAL

â–ș From NPR —Israel’s labor strike over hostages is called off after court order — A nationwide general strike shut down large parts of Israel on Monday, as calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal escalated dramatically across the country. Israel’s Labor Court ordered the strike to come to an end by Monday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. local time. The Histadrut union said it abided the decision and called off the strike.

The Stand posts links to local, national and international labor news every weekday morning. Subscribe to get daily news in your inbox. 

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