Labor in tech | 50k students | Manufacturing 

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

TODAY’S MUST READ

► From Lawfare Media — Organized Labor Is Key to Governing Big Tech — For decades now, the law has largely reacted to new tech, sometimes long after that tech has harmfully impacted everything from the individual social media user (consider how social media has affected youth eating disorders) to the national grip on democracy (think of how targeted advertising has enabled political campaigns to craft messaging for hypertailored audiences). The power of organized tech workers, it turns out, rivals that of the government when it comes to effecting change in Silicon Valley. From ensuring AI is not used in warfare to pushing regulation requiring transparency of AI-generated content, a thriving Silicon Valley labor movement could help create the guardrails for Big Tech that are desperately needed.

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — What could Trump’s second term mean for Seattle-based Amazon? — The new administration could also scrap a sprawling antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of acting as a monopoly in the e-commerce industry. And, it will likely set up a National Labor Relations Board that is less sympathetic to unions than the current one appointed by President Joe Biden, which could affect an ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Amazon’s warehouses.

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — More support for families in place to address crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in WA — State Patrol communications director Chris Loftis provided some statistics from the agency. At the end of October, there were 2,308 missing persons in Washington and 134 were Indigenous, he said. “That works out to 5.8% of all the missing persons in the state are from Indigenous communities. Indigenous communities make up 1.9% of the population of the state,” Loftis said. “So (Indigenous people are) three times disproportionately represented in the missing persons numbers.”

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — WA state’s court system back online following 2-week outage — A statewide outage that affected Washington state courts’ network for two weeks ended Monday. “The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is in the process of bringing up systems on the Washington Courts network, following successful work and testing throughout the weekend,” the office said in a news release.

AEROSPACE

► From FOX Business — Boeing to lay off roughly 2,200 Washington workers 5 days before Christmas — The aerospace giant started telling affected U.S. workers on Wednesday that they will stay on Boeing’s payroll until Jan. 17 to comply with federal requirements to notify employees at least 60 days prior to ending their employment.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From KDRV — Oregon Nurses Association holding solidarity rally amidst contract negotiations — These nurses are negotiating with Providence amidst contract negotiations, saying they have been fighting for higher wages, more benefits and more staff. ONA represents about 5,000 frontline nurses in nine Providence Health system facilities in the state. Last spring, nurses engaged in a five-day strike. Providence and the ONA nurses have continued to bargain, but a new contract has ultimately not come out of those talks.

► From the Wrap — Animation Guild Brings ‘March on the Boss’ Protests to Warner Bros. — The protest, which was estimated to have drawn hundreds of animators, was similar to the demonstrations staged in front of Netflix’s animation offices on Oct. 24 and the headquarters of DreamWorks on Nov. 12. The guild presented a petition signed by more than 62,000 Animation Guild members demanding a fair deal for their next bargaining agreement.

ORGANIZING

► From the Huffington Post — Graduate Students Are Unionizing In Massive Numbers — The new bargaining units include graduate student teachers and researchers as well as undergraduate housing and dining employees. More than 50,000 students who work at U.S. universities have unionized over the past two years, the National Labor Relations Board announced Monday.

► From the American Prospect — Establishing Workers’ Right Not to Hear Bosses’ Propaganda — Over the past four decades, captive-audience meetings have become standard management practice when workers seek to join a union. They are a prominent feature in the Union Busting 101 courses that anti-union attorneys and consultants provide to their business clients, both big and small. Union organizers have no tool in their arsenal that can match it: Not only can they not compel workers to do anything, but they’re also forbidden from organizing within the worksite. This asymmetry, the NLRB ruled, runs counter to the letter and spirit of the NLRA.

READY FOR A VOICE AT WORK? 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!

NATIONAL

► From the NABTU:

Young women know the power of a union apprenticeship

pic.twitter.com/zPeKzHmFBy

— The Building Trades (@NABTU) November 19, 2024

► From NPR — Accused of violating worker rights, SpaceX and Amazon go after labor board — A ruling in favor of the companies could make it much harder for workers to form unions and take collective action in pursuit of better wages and working conditions. Complicating matters is the fact that President-elect Donald Trump has named SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to co-lead a new commission focused on dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing spending and jobs. Whether the NLRB is one of the agencies Musk will advise on remains unclear.

► From the AP — Forget driverless cars. One company wants autonomous helicopters to spray crops and fight fires — Rotor has built two autonomous Sprayhawks and aims to have as many as 20 ready for market next year. The company also is developing helicopters that would carry cargo in disaster zones and to offshore oil rigs. The helicopter could also be used to fight wildfires. For now, Rotor is focused on the agriculture sector, which has embraced automation with drones but sees unmanned helicopters as a better way to spray larger areas with pesticides and fertilizers.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — DNC layoffs with no severance leave staffers scrambling, union says — The cuts were announced starting on Wednesday night and were effective Friday; and DNC leaders did not tell staff how the layoffs were determined or whether additional cuts are planned, according to the union. Those laid off included people who had been with the organization for 40 years, the union said.

Editor’s note: the union’s statement points out that decision makers in the DNC are keeping their jobs while lower-level staff who have worked endless hours and raised record-breaking funds for the party were let go with no severance (in contrast, the Harris campaign has provided severance for former employees.) 

► From the Washington State Standard — Manufacturing already has made a comeback — President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rebuild American manufacturing, and he won handily in most areas hollowed out by the movement of factory jobs overseas. But the rebound Trump promises has already been underway in many places: McLean County is part of an unusually strong jump in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 — the first time manufacturing employment has recovered fully from a recession since the 1970s, according to a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization in Washington, D.C.

► From the Government Executive — Trump’s ‘DOGE’ commission promises mass federal layoffs, ending telework — The Department of Government Efficiency—a non-government panel that Trump has vowed to stand up—will be able to move swiftly to implement the changes without congressional approval, Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News on Sunday, saying the president-elect can act through executive action. The entrepreneur and former presidential candidate added that recent Supreme Court precedent and its conservative makeup would provide legal backing to the ideas he and his co-lead, Elon Musk, will put forward.

► From the Washington State Standard — Democratic attorneys general prep for role as last line of defense in Trump era — As Trump prepares for a new term in office, 23 Democratic attorneys general will be a watchdog against any Trump-led initiatives that they believe are unconstitutional, illegal or both. The landscape has changed: Rosenblum is retiring from the role and former Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield will become the next attorney general. Ferguson was elected governor of Washington. The two are the last Democratic attorneys general who were in office when Trump started his first term.

► From the New York Times — Trump Defies the #MeToo Movement With Cabinet Picks Facing Accusations — When he takes the oath of office in January, Donald J. Trump will make history as the first court-adjudicated sexual abuser to assume the presidency. He knew that Matt Gaetz, the renegade Republican congressman, had been accused of all manner of sordid conduct, including sex with an underage girl, but tapped him to run the Justice Department anyway. He may not have known that Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host he named to preside over the Pentagon, had paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault, but has indicated that he will stand by him. Likewise, Mr. Trump has expressed no concern about accusations that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice for the health department, groped a family babysitter, or that Elon Musk, tasked with reinventing government, created a sexually charged workplace that treated women as objects.

Editor’s note: the thousands of women in federal agencies who will have to work with these creeps should get hazard pay…and probably some pepper spray. 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Journalists strike in Greece ahead of a nationwide walkout on Wednesday — Journalist unions in Greece launched a 24-hour strike Tuesday, joining broader labor unrest ahead of a nationwide general strike planned for Wednesday. Unions are demanding that the conservative government fully restore collective bargaining rights that were scaled back during a 2010-18 financial crisis and successive international bailouts.

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