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NEWS ROUNDUP

600 Seattle Sbux layoffs | Judge halts fed firings | Greek general strike

Friday, February 28, 2025

 

LOCAL

► From MyNorthwest.com — Starbucks corporate layoffs will hit more than 600 in Seattle — According to a notice filed with Washington’s Employment Security Department on Thursday, more than half of the affected employees were based at Starbucks’ Sodo neighborhood headquarters. While employees were officially let go this week, the company will continue to provide pay and benefits through May 2.

► From Starbucks Workers United:


► From the Seattle Times — Medicaid spending is under scrutiny. Here’s what that means for WA — Any such cuts would be felt across Washington, where roughly one in five people — 1.8 million total — are enrolled in Apple Health, the state’s Medicaid program. If the federal government scales back funding, states will have to face difficult decisions about how to make up the difference. In Washington, if the federal government scaled its 90% reimbursement for expanded Medicaid coverage down to 50%, the state would need to spend $42 billion over 10 years to cover the gap, according to a KFF analysis.

► From the Kitsap Sun — Small fraction of shipyard workers opt for ‘fork in the road’ buyout offer  — President Trump’s plan to reduce staff in federal agencies has hit the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, one of Kitsap County’s major employers and one of the nation’s four public shipyards that averages 14,600 to 14,900 civilian workers. Fewer than 2% of PSNS & IMF’s workforce, which would be less than 300 workers total, have opted to participate in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), according to an email sent from Captain JD Crinklaw, commander of PSNS & IMF, to staff on Thursday, reviewed by Kitsap Sun.

► From Investigate West — ‘Fear and uncertainty:’ Advocates, immigrants on edge following flurry of contradictory orders — In the cases that de la Cruz-Correa handles, he said, children have fled violence or danger in their home countries, and now with the uncertainty that the Trump administration has brought to the immigration legal system, they also fear deportation. “The question that I don’t feel like I have a good answer to is: Will immigration enforcement come for me at school?” he said. De la Cruz-Correa has clients as young as 11.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Deadline — Actors’ Equity And The Broadway League Reach Agreement On Thorny Issues Around New Work Development — The National Council of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theatre, announced today that it had voted to ratify a new five-year Development Agreement, concluding an eight-month strike against The Broadway League, the trade organization representing theater producers and owners.

 

NATIONAL

► From the Washington State Standard — ICE awards $1B contract to private prison firm for major immigrant detention center — On a Thursday earnings call, executives for one of the largest private prisons, GEO Group Inc., told investors they expect “unprecedented opportunities” under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown by providing detention bed capacity and increasing electronic monitoring services of immigrants. [CEO] Zoley said he expects an opportunity for GEO to be able to bid for more government contracts about halfway through the year after Congress passes a massive package through reconciliation that could provide billions for border security and immigration enforcement.

► From Common Dreams — Fueled by Anger at Trump and Corporate Greed, Economic Blackout Underway — “We have the power. We don’t have to accept corporate monopolies. We don’t have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics,” said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “We don’t have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don’t have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs.”

► From CBS News — Unemployment claims rise to 242,000, the highest in 3 months — Applications for U.S. jobless benefits rose to a three-month high last week but remained within the same healthy range of the past three years. The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time rose by 22,000 to 242,000 for the week ending Feb. 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts had projected that 220,000 new applications would be filed. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From KUOW — No new taxes, for now: WA Gov. Ferguson details plans for budget cuts — Ferguson laid out his team’s ideas that would lead to new savings of roughly $4 billion – from state employee furloughs and scaling back funding for various programs. Some of those ideas would be made through direction to state agencies, while others would require action from the Legislature.

► From the Cascadia Daily — WWU: Governor’s proposed 3% cut would ‘significantly worsen’ institution’s financial woes — The impact on Western could be “devastating,” the professor of 30 years told Cascadia Daily News. Declining physical and personnel infrastructure means “morale among faculty, students and staff has never been lower,” Lyne wrote in his letter. “A cut to university funding will only make things irretrievably worse.” Students also rallied in Red Square on Feb. 21 against the governor’s proposed cuts, and the proposed federal cuts to the U.S. Department of Education.

► From the New York Times — Judge Says Trump Administration Memos Directing Mass Firings Were Illegal — A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to retract directives that prompted the firing of thousands of federal workers, saying that those directives were “illegal” and suggesting that the layoffs be stopped…Judge Alsup found that the government’s human resources division had exceeded its authority when it issued a pair of memos outlining steps to fire an estimated 200,000 probationary workers.

► From Bloomberg Law — Judge Orders Musk’s DOGE, Agency Staff to Testify in Lawsuit — US District Judge John Bates on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to produce witnesses for depositions, as well as produce records and answer questions in a lawsuit brought by labor unions and nonprofit groups. Bates, a George W. Bush appointee in Washington, overruled objections by the US Justice Department. He wrote that key facts related to the legal fight, including about DOGE’s structure and authority, “remain opaque.”

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the New York Times — No Trains, No Planes, and Huge Protests: Strike Brings Greece to a Halt — The 24-hour walkout, called by Greece’s two main labor unions, was the latest in a series of public protests over a dragging judicial investigation into the crash, in which 57 people were killed. A report by an independent rail and air investigation authority set up after the tragedy, whose results were made public on Thursday, found that delays in installing electronic signaling and remote surveillance systems played a key role in the collision, as did chronic understaffing and underfunding resulting from cutbacks enforced during Greece’s decade-long financial crisis.

 

JOLT OF JOY

Reading about Elon Musk everyday day Does. Not. Spark. Joy. But seeing people all over the U.S. and across the globe protesting at Tesla facilities to disrupt the rampaging oligarch’s profits absolutely does. I particularly enjoy the directness of a locally planned action; Let’s Help Musk Lose Sales!

 

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