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NEWS ROUNDUP

Session 2025 | PeaceHealth picket | LA wildfire solidarity

Monday, January 13, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From the Oregon AFL-CIO:

► From News 3 Las Vegas — Culinary Union members march from The Strip to Virgin — The march follows a unanimous vote by the officers of the Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG), which represents over 1,400 members, to support the Virgin Las Vegas workers on strike and to refrain from crossing the picket line.

 

LOCAL

► From Cascade PBS — Crowd gathers to mourn slain King County bus driver Shawn Yim — Woodfill said the union has been calling for safety improvements on buses, but feels like the calls mostly fell on deaf ears prior to Yim’s death. “So here we are again, on a day we all knew was coming,” he said in his remarks. “[We’re] left heartbroken, fearful, angry, distrustful and anxious. Our demands for safety after this painful tragedy must be met this year. We won’t wait again for another 26 years or another murder.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Cascadia Daily — Unionized PeaceHealth workers picket amid drawn-out bargaining process — “It is the right fight. It is the right thing that we asking for, and we are not going to stop until we get it,” said Jane Hopkins, the president of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. “We are not going to stop because our community needs this. Our patients need this. We’re not just doing it for us.” The two sides remain far apart on issues including wages, safety issues stemming from short staffing and medical benefits, a SEIU news release stated. Williams pointed out that the lowest-paid workers are now making less than the Bellingham minimum wage of $17.66, which took effect on Jan. 2 this year.

► From OPB — Portland’s newest leaders work to ease labor tensions as city strike looms — Portland’s new city council entered office amid tense, drawn-out labor negotiations between several different public labor unions and the city. Now, after a week on the job, some elected officials are trying to turn down the heat as 1,200 city employees consider striking next month. “It’s time we signal that this new city council is a labor council,” said Councilor Mitch Green, who represents Portland’s west side and some southeast neighborhoods in District 4.

 

ORGANIZING

► From People’s World — At MLK conference, unionist tells how she had to duck to avoid bullets — That hostility isn’t stopping many low-paid, exploited and ill-treated Southern workers, said Service Employees President April Verrett, whose two million members include sanitation engineers, janitors, fast food workers, airport workers and other sufferers from greed of the corporate class. “They’ve never had a union, but the workers in the South are going to stand up and act like they’re in a union, even in a [legal] structure that prevents it. That’s the type of initiative and organizing we must do.”

► From Jacobin — The Video Game Industry Is Unionizing — Last month, 461 video game workers with Microsoft’s ZeniMax Online Studios announced they were unionizing with the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees–Communications Workers of America (CODE-CWA). ZeniMax employees join over six thousand workers across the tech and video game industry in the United States and Canada who have now unionized with CODE-CWA since its creation in 2020. That now includes unions at major video game studios like Sega of America, Blizzard, and Bethesda, as well as games like World of Warcraft.

 

NATIONAL

► From LA Labor Federation:

► From Variety — IATSE and Other Guilds Offer Assistance to Those Displaced by Wildfires — Fires continue to rage across the Los Angeles area, destroying hundreds of buildings and causing mass evacuations. Over 15,000 acres have burned in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu since a fire started Tuesday morning, while in Altadena, the Eaton Fire has burned through more than 10,000 acres. A third blaze, the Hurst Fire, has burned more than 700 acres at the top of the San Fernando Valley.

Editor’s note: Los Angeles Labor Community Services, in partnership with the LA County Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, is running a Los Angeles Fire Relief Fund to support the thousands of Angelenos impacted by these fires. 

► From the Government Executive — EEOC: The federal gender pay gap gets worse with age — The report suggests that one possible driver of the late-career gender pay gap is simply the passage of time. “Cumulative disadvantage may help explain why the older age group had larger gender pay gaps,” EEOC wrote. “A cumulative disadvantage occurs when an initial advantage or disadvantage—for example, a relatively small pay gap at younger ages—leads to larger differences over time.”

► From the Electrical Worker Online — IBEW Volunteers Connect Navajo Nation to the Grid — Navajo Nation has thousands of homes that have never been connected to the power grid. Median household income is less than half that of the rest of the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “We wired up the house for Jenny Cody, who first asked for a connection when her son was 7 years old. He came by while we were working. He’s 48,” said volunteer team leader Tom McCann, a general foreman and inside wireman with New York Local 3.

► From the New York Times — Dementia Cases in the U.S. Will Surge in the Coming Decades, Researchers Say — The increase will primarily be due to the growing aging population, as many Americans are living longer than previous generations. By 2060, some of the youngest baby boomers will be in their 90s and many millennials will be in their 70s. Older age is the biggest risk factor for dementia. The study found that the vast majority of dementia risk occurred after age 75, increasing further as people reached age 95.

Editor’s note: while it goes unmentioned in this article, this is a major reason why labor is pushing for investments in long term care workers and the care economy. 

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — 2025 Washington state legislative session begins today — Beyond the budget, legislation to cap rent increases, debates over school funding, and bills to impose new gun restrictions are just a few of the other high-profile topics poised to come up in the weeks ahead. Plus, there are questions about how the Legislature might respond to federal policies in areas like immigration that the incoming Trump administration could pursue.

► From the Washington State Standard — Minimum wages are increasing in nearly half the states this year — The minimum wage will increase in nearly half the states this year even as the federal wage floor remains stuck at $7.25 per hour. In many states, the minimum wage is automatically adjusted upward as inflation rises. But voters in several states, including deeply red ones such as Alaska and Missouri, chose in November to significantly increase their minimum wages this year.

► From the Washington State Standard — WA bill would offer unemployment benefits to immigrants not authorized to work in U.S — State lawmakers have limited power over federal immigration enforcement. But in Washington’s upcoming legislative session, legislators will be looking at a bill to strengthen the safety net for immigrants working in the state without legal authorization. Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, D-Seattle, is re-introducing a bill this session to help these workers access unemployment insurance.

► From CNBC — Why Trump and GOP attacks on IRA can’t score a clean sweep in red states — The economic boost that hundreds of IRA-funded projects have given the country, beyond just the EV industry, are predominantly in red states — and the hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs linked to the IRA as well as the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. A vast portion of that workforce voted for Republicans in November, and jeopardizing their livelihoods could fuel a balloting backlash.

► From the Spokesman Review — Cantwell and Murray say they’ll push for amendments as Senate gears up to debate deportation policy in Laken Riley Act — “The bill, as written, would take away resources from detaining true threats to public safety, while ending due process for some people,” Murray spokesman Amir Avin said in a statement. “A Trump administration could abuse this law to deport Dreamers, farmworkers, and other essential workers who may never be convicted of a crime, and state attorneys general could abuse it to wreck major humanitarian relief pathways like Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan and Ukrainian nationals.”

 

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