Trump rescinds funding freeze | 16 million unionists | GM profits

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

STRIKES

► From the Rogue Valley Times — ONA, Providence say they are returning to ‘intense, in-person mediation’ to end historic statewide strike — In a joint news release Wednesday morning, ONA and Providence said Kotek requested the move and, “Both sides are engaging in every effort to get this dispute resolved as expeditiously as possible and get people back to work.”

AEROSPACE

► From CNBC — Boeing CEO upbeat on recovery plan after company’s biggest annual loss since 2020 — “We’re a little ahead of where I expected,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” He said Boeing will likely turn cash-flow positive in the second half of the year, after burning through more than $14 billion in 2024, and that the company is set up to reach production of 38 Max aircraft a month. Boeing’s shares gained 1.5% on Tuesday.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Hollywood Reporter — ABC News Agrees to AI Protections for Writers in Latest Contract — Staffers who belong to the Writers Guild of America East have voted to ratify a contract that offers some employment safeguards if the newsroom adopts the technology, the union announced on Tuesday. That includes an agreement that the company will not lay off current staff employees due to the use of generative AI. The new three-year pact additionally requires management to give union members advance notice if the company plans to make the use of generative AI systems a requirement of their jobs. The company will be obliged to negotiate any impacts of the technology with the union and meet with the labor group semi-annually to review its employment of the technology.

► From Northwest Public Broadcasting — Starbucks and its workers’ union still haven’t reached a collective bargaining agreement — In bargaining for future wage increases, the company would not offer an increase in the first year, and for any subsequent years, only offered a guaranteed increase of 1.5%. The union said amounts to less than 50 cents an hour for most baristas. Workers have said that’s not enough. “ They aren’t keeping up with the cost of living, and my coworkers and I struggle to make ends meet,” Federspiel-Baier said.

NATIONAL

► From Reuters — US labor union membership slips in 2024 to record low — The notion of stagnation in overall union membership was challenged by the labor group the AFL-CIO. In a statement, its president Liz Shuler said the numbers of union elections had doubled since 2021, with 1,800 coming last year. “Many of these victories are not reflected in the numbers released today because employers are exploiting a broken system to delay bargaining a first contract,” Shuler said.

► From the Economic Policy Institute — 16 million workers were unionized in 2024: Millions more want to join unions but couldn’t — Research shows that 60 million workers would join a union if they could. The disconnect between the growing interest in unionization and declining unionization rates can be explained by the fact that there are powerful forces blocking the will of workers: aggressive opposition from employers combined with labor law that is so weak that it doesn’t truly protect workers’ right to organize. Decades of attacks on unions both on the federal and state levels have made it hard for workers to form and maintain unions. Further, weaknesses in federal labor law have made it possible for employers to oppose unions, contributing to this decline.

► From NBC News — ICE makes close to 1,200 arrests in one day — Data first obtained by NBC News shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a total of 1,179 people on Sunday, which is more than the 956 arrests that the agency posted on X on Sunday night. At least 566 people arrested Sunday had not committed any crimes and were only detained because they lacked legal authorization to remain in the United States. Being undocumented is considered a civil offense, not a crime.

► From the Detroit News — GM profit sharing: Here’s the record amount UAW members will get for 2024 — General Motors Co. will deliver record profit-sharing payouts of up to $14,500 this year to about 48,000 eligible hourly workers, according to the company’s financial results released Tuesday. For every $1 billion GM makes in North America, the automaker’s hourly U.S. employees receive $1,000, according to the Detroit automaker’s agreement with the United Auto Workers. GM made about $14.258 billion in North America in 2024, up 18% year-over-year. “Our membership performed beyond all expectations,” [UAW Vice President] Booth wrote. “It is our members’ skillfulness that made this profit possible, as they produce the finest products in the world., right here in the U.S.A.”

► From NBC News — Tech stocks fall as China’s DeepSeek sparks U.S. worries about the AI race — The sell-off was sparked by advances claimed by China’s DeepSeek, whose outstanding qualities became evident this weekend. The open-source model was first released in December, when the company said it took only two months and less than $6 million to create. Those claims would be far less than the hundreds of billions of dollars that American tech giants such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and others have poured into developing their own models, fueling fears that China may be passing the U.S. in the scale and efficiency of their AI investments. DeepSeek’s app is now the top free app in the Apple App Store, pushing OpenAI’s ChatGPT into second place.

Editor’s note: 

i cant believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI

— terminally onλine εngineer 🇺🇦 (@tekbog) January 27, 2025

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — Trump Executive Orders and Federal Funding Freeze: Latest Updates — The White House rescinded an order on Wednesday that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans and sparked mass confusion across the country, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, called the White House’s decision to rescind the order “an important victory for the American people,” commending those who spoke out against the original order for putting pressure on the White House. She accused the Trump administration of sowing chaos through “a combination of sheer incompetence, cruel intentions and a willful disregard of the law.”

► From the Washington State Standard — Trump’s attempted funding freeze stirs backlash from WA leaders — In the fiscal year that ended June 30 last year, federal funding accounted for about $27 billion, or roughly a third, of Washington’s state budget, according to the state’s Office of Financial Management. But it’s unlikely that full amount would be covered by the Trump administration memo. For instance, about $13 billion came in the form of Medicaid reimbursements. “While it’s not clear exactly what is covered by the memo, it is safe to say that it would apply to billions of dollars in federal funding for Washington,” the office’s director, K.D. Chapman-See, said in an email.

► From the Spokesman Review — Washington joins 21 other states to block federal freeze that could disrupt $27 billion in funding — The lawsuit from the 22 states was filed in the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island. Minutes before the order was set to take effect Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked the order from taking effect following a separate lawsuit from nonprofit and public health groups. The order will expire on Monday. The complaint Washington joined seeks to prevent the federal government from implementing the order and requests a judicial declaration that the memo is unlawful.

► From NBC News — Trump administration offering buyouts to nearly all federal workers — “Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government,” AFGE said in a statement. “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to,” the group said.

► From the Huffington Post — Trump Fires NLRB Officials, Setting Up Likely Court Battle — Under standing precedent, presidents cannot fire members of the agency’s five-member board, like Wilcox, without neglect of duty or malfeasance at play. There were already two vacancies on the board. So Wilcox’s firing leaves it with just two sitting members: Marvin Kaplan, a Republican, and David Prouty, a Democrat. Having just a pair of members leaves the agency without a quorum to decide cases — a gridlock that generally benefits employers over unions, since cases involving union-busting allegations can drag on even longer than normal without resolution.

► From the Seattle Times — $1 billion shortfall in WA transportation budget imperils projects — The biggest projects the state is currently working on — from rebuilding highways to electrifying the ferries — have grown in cost by $1.3 billion. Couple that with a new forecast predicting the state will bring in $2.2 billion less over 10 years than anticipated, and legislators are looking at $1 billion in red ink for transportation funding in the upcoming 2025-27 biennium, which begins July 1.

► From the AP — Trump fires two Democratic commissioners of agency that enforces civil rights laws in the workplace — The two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, confirmed in statements Tuesday that they were fired late Monday night. Both said they were exploring options to challenge their dismissals, calling their removal before the expiration of their five-year terms an unprecedented decision that undermines the agency’s independence.

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