NEWS ROUNDUP

SAM VSO strike | Medical bills | Boeing surveillance

Friday, December 6, 2024

STRIKES

► From KUOW — Seattle Art Museum guards strike for better pay and benefits — Workers walked off the job after rejecting SAM’s latest contract offer. “It’s also very important to us to get a union shop so that we can maintain the future of the union because we know we’re not going to win everything in this bargaining,” [a worker] said. If the contract includes a provision establishing a union shop, also called a union security clause, employees in the department are required to belong to the union and pay dues. “It feels like they’re hoping that not everyone will pay dues and slowly over time the union will fade away,” Davis said.

► From the Northwest Labor Press — OSU grad student workers on strike since Nov. 12 — Current minimum rates work out to $25.41 per hour for a graduate student worker who is supposed to work 16 hours per week. Under the previous contract, graduate student workers can only work up to half time. But the positions are salaried, and most of the graduate teaching assistants and research assistants end up working more hours than they’re paid for, said CGE executive council member Rachael Garcia. Corvallis is the most rent-burdened city in Oregon according to the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. More than 39% of renters in Corvallis spend at least half of their income on rent.

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — High medical bills in WA mean ‘all kinds of sacrifices’ — In the U.S., an estimated 20 million people have medical debt, owing a total of around $220 billion, according to KFF. An estimated 14 million of them owe more than $1,000 and about 3 million owe more than $10,000. From surveys between 2019 and 2021, KFF estimates that an average of 6.5% of Washingtonians, or 380,000 people, carried medical debt in a year. Medical debt is driven by America’s exceptionally high cost for medical care and escalating patient out-of-pocket costs in health plans. The average annual per person out-of-pocket cost increased 23% from 2002 to 2022 based on adjusted inflation figures, KFF estimated, meaning people have been shouldering a bigger share of their medical costs.

► From KOMO — Fire training crucial for ferry staff as WSF strives to regain pre-pandemic service levels — “You’re not going to get a huge batch of new people and in six months promote them all,” Adams said. Severe staff shortages are part of why the ferry system is still not operating at 100%, causing reductions in service and missed sailings. “I understand the frustration as a 25-year employee. I remember when we didn’t encounter the delays or the cancellations that, unfortunately, we deal with today,” Perry said.

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing pauses surveillance plan to track employees at the office — Hours after The Seattle Times asked Boeing about a program to install digital surveillance sensors in its Everett offices, the company said it has “paused our pilot program at all locations and will keep employees updated.” For people already concerned about how their internet and cellphone use can be tracked outside work, this new form of workplace surveillance proved unwelcome, despite Boeing’s insistence that it doesn’t invade anyone’s personal privacy.

► From the Northwest Labor Press — How to fly union — When the Labor Press started tracking airline unionization in 2012, the top airlines ranged from 70% to 85% union; today they’re 80% to 87% union. Delta — the largest airline by passenger miles traveled — remains the one big exception, with just 20% of its employees represented by a union.

► From the Seattle Times — Judge tosses Boeing plea deal opposed by families of MAX crash victims — The families who lost loved ones in the MAX crashes had earlier asked O’Connor to reject the deal, arguing that it did not go far enough to hold Boeing and its executives accountable for the deadly crashes. Those opposed to the deal said it allowed Boeing too much input in the selection of the independent monitor, including the ability to strike one of the candidates.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Northwest Labor Press — City of Portland could be inching toward labor disputes — Union contracts representing nearly 1,300 City of Portland workers expire Dec. 31, on the eve of the city’s shift to a whole new leadership structure. Richard [of AFSCME 189] also said city negotiators have a past pattern of not reaching agreement until the existing contract has expired and the union has taken steps toward a strike. “But membership has made it very clear to all of us that they do not want to play the games with the city anymore,” Richard said. “We want a contract done as quickly as possible. So that means we will be moving in the strike direction much more rapidly than ever before.”

► From the Northwest Labor Press — After Thanksgiving eve strike, New Seasons union announces boycott — In charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board, New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU) alleges that management has failed to bargain in good faith. New Seasons clerks currently start wage at $16.25 an hour, 30 cents above Portland’s $15.95 minimum wage. In a November 9 Instagram post, NSLU called the company’s wage proposals “disrespectful and insulting.” The union is now calling on customers to boycott all New Seasons Market locations until workers get a fair contract.

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — For Those in Need of a Job, Landing One Might Still Be a Challenge — The unemployment rate, which ticked up slightly to 4.2 percent in November, remains low by historical standards. But under the surface, there are signs that it can be difficult to land a job. The share of unemployed workers finding jobs has been falling, and the average duration of unemployment has been rising — two indications of mounting strain for job seekers.

► From the AP — Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reverses decision to put a time limit on anesthesia — One of the country’s largest health insurers reversed a change in policy Thursday after widespread outcry, saying it would not tie payments in some states to the length of time a patient went under anesthesia. In mid-November, the American Society for Anesthesiologists called on Anthem to “reverse the proposal immediately,” saying in a news release that the policy would have taken effect in February in New York, Connecticut and Missouri. It’s not clear how many states in total would have been affected.

► From the AP — Federal appeals court upholds law requiring sale or ban of TikTok in the U.S. — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law — which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January — and rebuffed the company’s challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment. “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion, which was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

► From NBC News — USDA orders testing of milk for bird flu — The national milk supply must be tested for bird flu under a new federal order announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.“ Among many outcomes, this will give farmers and farmworkers better confidence in the safety of their animals and ability to protect themselves, and it will put us on a path to quickly controlling and stopping the virus’ spread nationwide,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday in a press release.

► From the Rolling Stone — (throwback) Liquid Mike Are the Best Midwestern Indie-Rock Band Fronted by a Mailman You’ll Hear All Year — Meet Mike Maple, a mailman in the small college town of Marquette, Michigan who spends his time walking the postal beat dreaming up relentlessly fun punk-rock tunes to play in his band Liquid Mike. “Given what you know/The American dream is a Michigan hoax,” he informs us on their excellent new album Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Bill offering wildfire survivors relief from taxes and fees passes Congress — The bill, which is likely to be signed by President Joe Biden, would exempt people who have survived a wildfire between 2016 and 2026 from paying federal income taxes on disaster recovery settlements and fees paid to lawyers that were received or paid between 2020 and 2026. The disaster act would also provide relief for natural disaster survivors since 2020 in the form of a casualty loss deduction. That means that those who only received partial payments from insurers on home damage and other residential property damage could deduct those uncovered losses on their federal income taxes without itemization.

► From People’s World — GOP resists Biden and AFL-CIO-backed plan to raise disabled workers’ pay — “The AFL-CIO believes every worker is entitled to fair pay and a living wage for their labor. The subminimum wage treated people with disabilities like second-class workers, enabling exploitation and abuse without consequence. Ending this practice is the right thing to do—as it also has wide popular support.”

► From Cascade PBS — Strickland takes Congressional Black Caucus leadership role — U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA 10) has been elected to serve as secretary of the Congressional Black Caucus, the group announced this week. When Congress starts in January, the Congressional Black Caucus will have a record-high 62 members in the House and Senate. The group was founded in 1971 to advocate for African Americans and other underrepresented communities in the United States.

INTERNATIONAL

► From Reuters — South African Airways cancels some flights as pilots go on strike — SAA pilot Sibusiso Nxumalo, representing the SAA Pilots Association (SAAPA) and the National Transport Movement Pilots Forum, told public news broadcaster SABC that beyond monetary value, their demands centred around better working conditions and conditions of employment.