Striker healthcare | Earthquake risk | WA primaries

Monday, September 30, 2024

MACHINISTS STRIKE at BOEING

► From KOMO — Striking Boeing machinists to lose employee health care benefits Tuesday — Boeing factory workers who are currently on strike in the Puget Sound region will lose company-paid health care benefits “effective end of day” Monday if they don’t return to work. Under Washington state law, workers who lose health insurance due to a strike or labor dispute can apply for health and dental insurance through the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. Workers who lose coverage due to a strike have a 60-day special enrollment period before and after employer coverage ends, according to Senate Bill 5632, which went into effect in June.

► From the AP — Latest talks between Boeing and its striking machinists break off without progress, union says — No further negotiation dates were scheduled after Friday’s session led by federal mediators, IAM District 751 said. The union added that it remained “open to talks with the company, either direct or mediated.” The strike by nearly 33,000 machinists now is in its third week, and negotiations also stalled earlier in the walkout that has halted production of Boeing’s best-selling airplanes. The strike will not disrupt airline flights anytime soon, but has put more pressure on a company that has already faced a series of financial, legal and mechanical challenges this year.

► From Simple Flying — Boeing Machinists Strike Affects US’ Gross Domestic Product By Estimated $1 Billion — Boeing’s books have a large backlog in orders, and the manufacturer’s shareholders will bear the current knock-on effects of the strike. Direct costs to Boeing’s employees are estimated to be around $207 million alone. The Union’s current members have struggled with just an 8% wage increase in the last decade despite high inflation and increased cost of living in recent times.

STRIKES

► From the Daily Item — Workers are on strike at Philadelphia’s major sports venues — Over a dozen deliveries of food and beverages arriving to South Philadelphia sports stadiums on Monday weren’t fulfilled, according to union staff attorney, Dermot Delude-Dix. Teamsters Joint Council No. 53 has sanctioned the strike, meaning that union truck drivers can decline to cross the picket line and not make a delivery. At 5 p.m., long lines of fans stretched outside the third-base gate entrance, as people waited to enter the park. Some who carried bags of food said they did so to help the union, while others said they brought sandwiches and water to avoid paying stadium prices.

► From the Washington Post — National Symphony Orchestra strike ends after less than a day — The musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra went on strike Friday morning, and reached an 18-month labor agreement with the Kennedy Center by midafternoon. The brief strike, which threatened to disrupt the orchestra’s 94th season, followed a unanimous vote to authorize such an action reached by the musicians union Sept. 20. The work stoppage, which lasted approximately four hours, had threatened the orchestra’s Season Opening Gala, scheduled for Saturday.

LOCAL

► From the Washington State Standard — Earthquake risk data for Washington public schools is incomplete and out of reach — In the last school year, more than 378,000 students attended schools with buildings constructed before the adoption of modern seismic codes and that have no risk evaluations or retrofits, according to data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction obtained through a public records request. The majority of seismic risk data collected by school districts and the state is not shared with the public.

► From KOMO — FIFA Club World Cup coming to Lumen Field in Seattle, what does it mean? — “Hosting the FIFA Club World Cup at Lumen Field is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our fans and our organization. Never before have we faced the world’s top club sides in expanded competitive play, and the fact that the first edition of this new tournament is being played in our country and our city is historic” said Sounders Majority Owner Adrian Hanauer.

Editor’s note: in June, Lumen Field signed a Labor Harmony deal covering thousands of workers and 16 local unions.

► From Columbia Insight via the Washington State Standard — The grid is insufficient for renewables. BPA has a $2 billion plan — Building new high-voltage transmission is expensive, complex and complicated, but without it compliance with government clean-energy mandates will be difficult to achieve – maybe impossible. Transmission adequacy is an issue across the West, where states, utilities and local governments have adopted clean-energy policies in response to the impacts of climate change.

► From the Spokesman Review — Avista initiates first public safety power outage for over 1,500 customers on windy Sunday — This combined with relatively low humidity and a dry cold front passing through the Pacific Northwest prompted the service to issue red flag warnings for wildfires in every county east of Wenatchee and into North Idaho. Also wary of new fire starts, Avista Utilities shut off power to about 1,500 customers in the Indian Trail Neighborhood on Sunday afternoon. The service provider utilized a last-resort public safety mechanism to cut power during extreme wildfire risk conditions as a preemptive measure to avoid fire starts from power lines.

► From the Seattle Times — WA treatment plant whistleblower files $10M wrongful termination claim — A former employee has filed a $10 million claim against the city of Orting, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after bringing attention to problems with the city’s wastewater treatment plant, among other things. Bielka has various allegations against the city in his claim, but he told The News Tribune one of his primary concerns is that the lagoon of the city’s wastewater treatment plant routinely overflows near the city’s aquifer and near the Carbon River.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Common Dreams — AFL-CIO Warns House GOP Not to Interfere With Longshoremen’s Labor Battle — “Averting a strike is the responsibility of the employers who refuse to offer ILA members a contract that reflects the dignity and value of their labor,” AFL-CIO president Elizabeth H. Shuler wrote in response to the GOP representatives. “The fight for a fair contract for longshoremen is the entire labor movement’s fight.”

NATIONAL

► From WILX 10 — One killed and multiple UAW picketers injured after truck crashes into group — Donnie Huffman, UAW Local 475′s president, said two trucks were racing on E. Michigan Ave. when one of the drivers lost control and hit five members. “From what I’m hearing we lost one, and we had one critical condition, one serious condition and two more with non life threatening injuries,” said Huffman. The UAW 475 group hosted a candlelight vigil on Sunday night to honor the four injured and one lost.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — Dell has a rude awakening for employees over return to office — Dell appears to be following in the footsteps of Amazon, which recently informed employees that starting on Jan. 5, 2025, they will need to be working in the office five days a week, putting an end to its hybrid work policy. Dell has previously faced pushback from employees over its February return-to-office mandate. In June, a report from Insider alleged that about half of Dell’s employees have opted to ignore the company’s RTO policy and continue to work remotely full-time.

► From ABC News — FBI to pay $22M to settle claims of sexual discrimination at training academy — “These problems are pervasive within the FBI and the attitudes that created them were learned at the academy,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women. “This case will make important major changes in these attitudes.” One of the women said she was admonished to “smile more” and subjected to repeated sexual advances. Another said that an instructor leered at her and stared at her chest, “sometimes while licking his lips.”

► From the New York Times — Helene Has Killed More Than 110 People. Here Are Some of Their Stories. — The victims came from at least six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Many people drowned, and others were killed by falling trees, car crashes under heavy rains and a tornado produced by the storm. A lot of the victims were still unidentified. The toll is almost certain to rise as rescuers reach communities in the Appalachian Mountains, where devastating flooding and mudslides have decimated whole towns.

► From the Asheville Citizen Times — How to help Asheville, North Carolina storm and flood victims: Where to donate, what to do (and what not to) 

Editor’s note: The AFL-CIO houses a Union Community Fund for disaster relief. Contributions for Hurricane Helene will be distributed to support our union families in the impacted areas, in coordination with our state federations in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Any resources given above and beyond what is needed will be used to support future relief efforts. Contributions can be made via credit card: go.aflcio.org/relief

POLITICS & POLICY

► From Teen Vogue — OPINION: Republicans Have Anti-Worker Policies — They Are Not the Party of Labor — In my view, Vance’s support for workers hinges almost entirely on white Christian nationalism. He does not want to uplift the US working class in all its vibrant, multiracial, multigender beauty; he wants (white, male, Christian) workers to earn better wages so that their (white, female, Christian) spouses can stay home and raise more (white, Christian) children. Vance, like so many morally bankrupt Republican politicians before him, leans heavily on cultural signifiers — Diet Mountain Dew, anyone? — and racist dog whistles about immigration and birth rates to signal his support for certain (read: white) workers, but shies away from supporting worker-friendly policies.

► From the Yakima Herald Republic — WA regulators reject ballot initiative backers’ ‘bribe’ complaint — Asked at a news conference in late July about the criticism of the rebates as “bribes” to entice people to support the cap and trade program, Gov. Jay Inslee said there was no guarantee that Initiative 2117 would reduce energy prices. He said the Climate Commitment Act would assist people with energy bills. And it wasn’t the only way the state was helping people with the costs of energy, he argued: The Climate Commitment Act was funding more insulation, heat pumps, solar panels and free bus rides. (Kids ride on public transit for free via funding from the act.)

► From the New York Times — The Surprising Place Analysts Look to for Election Forecasting — There’s one predictive tool you may have missed: primary elections in Washington State, which took place last month. No state has Washington’s combination of primary structure, large voter numbers and late calendar date. Put them all together, and you get a high-turnout election with a broad, relatively diverse electorate just a few months before the rest of the country votes for president.

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