Immigrants rally | SBWU enters mediation | Live longer in a union

Friday, January 31, 2025

CONTRACT FIGHTS

SBWU bargaining team. Photo: SBWU via Facebook

► From Bloomberg — Starbucks, Union Agree to Mediation to Help Get Talks Over Finish Line — The company and Workers United “have made progress over the last nine months of bargaining, and we are committed to continuing to work together – with a mediator’s assistance – to navigate complex issues and reach fair contracts,” Starbucks and the union said in a joint statement emailed to Bloomberg News. The union is “optimistic that Starbucks will move off of their fixed position on wage and benefits improvements in this next phase of negotiations,” barista and bargaining delegate Michelle Eisen said in a separate statement from Workers United.

► From KIRO 7 — Teamsters, Costco return to the bargaining table — The Costco Teamsters National Master Agreement expires on Friday. “The Teamsters are committed to securing a fair and reasonable agreement but are prepared to take action if the wholesale giant fails to deliver,” they told KIRO 7 in an email. While Costco is known for paying its employees higher wages than its competitors, the union is accusing the company of not sharing its recent success with workers.

► From OPB — Portland reaches contract agreement with its largest labor union, cooling off strike threat — The deal isn’t final. An AFSCME representative told OPB that the union will need its members to vote on the agreement before it’s official. Portland City Council will also need to vote to approve. The deal only deters one potential city labor strike. The District Council of Trade Unions, which represents about 200 city employees, gave the city a strike notice Monday. That union’s members could walk off the job as soon as Feb. 6.

NATIONAL

► From the Minnesota Reformer — Want to live longer? Consider joining a union. — We found that union membership was a key predictor of mortality. Each additional year that a respondent spent as a union member associated with about 1.5% lower odds of mortality after the age of 40. Furthermore, these union mortality effects were concentrated among the groups that Case and Deaton have flagged as at risk and largely driving America’s mortality crisis: people without a college degree, and the white men who once comprised the bulk of union membership.

► From the Huffington Post — REI’s Union Worker Push For Spots On The Co-Op’s Board — The United Food and Commercial Workers union is promoting two pro-labor candidates for the ballot in REI’s board elections slated for March. The UFCW and its sister union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, have organized 11 of REI’s roughly 190 stores since 2022 in a workplace battle that’s prompted union-busting allegations and shaken the company’s progressive reputation. One, Shemona Moreno, is the director of the climate advocacy group 350 Seattle, based right in REI’s backyard. The other, Tefere Gebre, is the chief program officer at Greenpeace and a labor leader who previously served as the AFL-CIO labor federation’s executive vice president.

► From the New York Times — Clues From D.C. Plane Crash Suggest Multiple Failures in Aviation Safety — But the catastrophe already appeared to confirm what pilots, air traffic controllers and safety experts had been warning for years: Growing holes in the aviation system could lead to the kind of crash that left 67 people dead in the Potomac River in Washington. A chronic shortage of air traffic controllers has forced many to work six-day weeks and 10-hour days — a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it could impede controllers’ abilities to do their jobs properly. Few facilities have enough fully certified air traffic controllers, according to a Times investigation in 2023. Some controllers say little has improved since then.

► From the NPR — People with intellectual disabilities do lots of jobs — but they don’t direct air traffic –Despite what President Trump said at a press conference Thursday — “They can be air traffic controllers” — that’s not how disability hiring works, says Chai Feldblum, a disability lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Disability employment law, she says, requires “that the person with a disability must be able to perform the essential functions of the job.”

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Hundreds rally in support of immigrants at Washington state Capitol — Despite threats that immigration enforcement agents might show up, more than 500 immigrant rights advocates from across Washington marched to the state Capitol in Olympia on Thursday. They were there to show support for two bills pending before the Legislature this year that would expand safety net benefits — including health care coverage and unemployment insurance — for immigrants who are in the country without legal authorization.

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — Local lawmakers fight proposal to close Yakima Valley School near Selah — Yakima Valley School serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and provides respite care and crisis stabilization beds. Its budget for 2025 is $29.3 million, and it has a staff of 260 and 37 long-term residents.

Editor’s note: WFSE, which represents the workers at this facility, is asking folks to send an email to their legislators to voice opposition to this proposed closure. 

► From the Washington Post — White House eyes fight to expand Trump’s power to control spending — President Donald Trump is laying the groundwork for a landmark confrontation over his authority to strike federal spending and regulation, as the White House looks to reconfigure vast swaths of the U.S. government even without approval from Congress. “What is at stake is the most important structural foundation of our federal government, which is the separation of powers,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, adding that the power of the purse “is how Congress represents us.”

► From Becker’s ASC Review — Nurses union urges Senate to reject Robert Kennedy Jr. for HHS secretary — “For nurses across the United States, memories of COVID’s deadliest days are still painfully fresh, and we know that having strong leadership in the federal agencies tasked with protecting public health is a matter of life and death,” Nancy Hagans, RN, the union’s president, said in the letter, published Jan. 29. “Kennedy has a long track record of anti-science positions and opposition to measures that keep people healthy and safe. He’s the wrong candidate for the job, his nomination puts lives at risk, and our patients deserve better. Kennedy would be one of the most dangerous individuals to ever hold the top U.S. health care office, say nurses, given his longtime opposition to lifesaving vaccines and his willingness to spread medical disinformation and unfounded health care conspiracy theories.”

► From the National Law Review — President Trump Removes EEOC Commissioners Without Cause — The move, which may face legal challenges, marks the first time that a president has removed an EEOC commissioner without cause prior to the expiration of their five-year term.  The removals leave the EEOC, a five-member Commission, with only two remaining commissioners:  Andrea R. Lucas, a Republican tapped by President Trump last week to serve as Acting Chair, and Kalpana Kotagal, a Democrat appointed by former President Biden, whose term is set to expire on July 1, 2027.

► From the Nieman Journalism Lab — What will a conservative National Labor Relations Board mean for news unions? — A right-ward power shift on the already cash-strapped and short-staffed NLRB will likely make the agency more employer-friendly and union organizing more difficult, the labor board’s observers say. Workers across industries, including in journalism, will have to be their own best advocates if they can’t expect enforcement of federal laws.

JOLT OF JOY

Well. It’s been quite the week! A friend sent me this reddit thread full of federal employees discussing the “buyout” memo sent by President Musk Trump. Spoiler alert: it’s backfiring.

Scroll through for a potent reminder of the resiliency, humor, and righteous stubbornness that powers working people.

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