NEWS ROUNDUP

Chavez-DeRemer rejects PRO Act | NOAA workers rally | BHM & unions

Thursday, February 20, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From CCC News — Public pressure pushes Providence into mediation; HR Nurses enter 41st day of strike — They are now missing paychecks as negotiations are dragging on. “We’ve been working on an expired contract for over nine months… We’ve always had retro pay… and this time they just said ‘No.’ No explanation, no rationale—just no,” said Craig, while striking out front of the Hospital in Hood River on Monday, Feb. 17. Providence’s most recent offer to nurses on the weekend of Feb. 8 & 9 was resoundingly defeated in a vote amongst ONA members.

 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Fearing Trump cuts, NOAA workers in WA hold ‘Save Our Science’ rally — Scientists on the picket line support some of the largest commercial fisheries in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska — studying and defining a sustainable pollock harvest, surveying halibut populations and providing data for fisheries managers. Potential firings, they say, could upend surveys and science necessary to inform fishers and maintain fisheries that rural communities rely on — seafood stocks that feed America.

► From the Washington State Standard — Bracing for impacts on land, water and wildlife after feds fire thousands — For people on the ground in mountain communities, small towns and rural areas, the cuts were nothing short of devastating. They came with no explanation, warning or discernment, and the impact on public land and wildlife, observers say, will be felt for years. And adding insult to injury, everyone HCN talked with received the same email stating that they were being fired for performance issues. The email from Forest Service Human Resources Director Deedra Fogle read, “You have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.” But each person HCN spoke with who was fired also stated their annual reviews were all positive, and some hope to work with unions and attorneys to challenge the terminations.

► From the Washington State Standard — Litigation grinds on over WA’s power to regulate immigrant detention center — The Washington attorney general’s office last week asked a federal appeals court to restore a state law regulating the federal immigrant detention center in Tacoma, calling conditions there “abhorrent.” It was the latest chapter in a legal fight between Washington and the company operating the facility over whether the state should be able to conduct inspections and other oversight there. If the state succeeds in defending its law, it could provide a new degree of transparency and state-level regulation at the center, which is the largest immigrant detention site in the region.

 

ORGANIZING

► From KUOW — The steep climb to unionize REI — The retail sector has long resisted unionization. It’s a slow, sometimes tedious process, requiring organizers to go store-by-store at companies that could have hundreds or thousands of outlets. Turnover is high, making it difficult for union campaigns to gain momentum. “ If you had told me five or 10 years ago that we would see successful union campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, REI, I’d say, you’re crazy,” said John Logan, director of labor studies at San Francisco State University.

 

NATIONAL

► From Word in Black — Erasing Black History? These Unions Say Not on Their Watch — Black Wall Street, the Red Summer of 1919, redlining, the truth about what happened after Reconstruction, how the March on Washington was organized — there’s plenty of Black history most of us weren’t taught in our middle and high school U.S. history classes. But what happens if teaching Black history becomes illegal nationwide? Some experts worry that’s the goal of the Trump administration and other conservatives who have spent the past several years censoring Black history in schools. But while politicians attempt to suppress the truth, teacher unions are saying, “not on our watch.”

► From WSB-TV 2 — ‘We’re trained for situations like this’: Flight attendant leader responds to Delta plane crash — Nelson told Channel 2’s Tom Reganthe two flight attendants on board the plane were laser-focused on getting everyone off the plane in 90 seconds or less. “It’s not normal to end up, upside down as you’re starting an evacuation, but we’re also trained that anything can happen. The first and most important thing we need to do is to make sure that we have a safe passage out of the aircraft,” said Nelson.

► From Fortune — Alphabet AI workers were illegally silenced about pay, complaint alleges — The complaint accuses GlobalLogic of creating a policy prohibiting discussion of wages in its online internal forums, while allowing employees to discuss other non-work topics in those “online social spaces.” The company created the policy in response to employee Ricardo Levario raising pay issues, and then fired him for it, according to the complaint, which said his termination “resulted in a chill” on his co-workers’ willingness to exercise their rights.

► From the Pittsburgh Union Progress — Labor Action Tracker report shares some striking facts about 2024 –The number of work stoppages nationwide declined last year from the previous year, but the number continued to exceed 2021 levels. Researchers said the decline “overwhelmingly” is due to fewer one-day strikes, which is “attributable in large part to the decrease in the number of strikes by Starbucks Workers United in 2024 as compared to 2022 and 2023.”

Editor’s note: the Pittsburgh Union Progress is the creation of striking workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who have been on strike since October 2022. You can donate to support their work here. 

► From the Spokesman Review — ‘Public lands will suffer’: Idaho, home to seven national forests, loses integral forest service employees across the state to Trump terminations — Since he was 15 years old, Shea said he has been dedicated to the Northwest’s parks and lands – he spent time in Yellowstone, then in Idaho and Montana building trails. He worked in wilderness advocacy. And, when he turned 20, he landed his dream job with the U.S. Forest Service. Three years later, he received a letter via email along with thousands of other Forest Service employees that they were fired for poor performance. His time as a river ranger in the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area in Riggins, Idaho, was over.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From MyNorthwest.org — Should work zone safety be prioritized in driver’s ed? — Kati Durkin represents the Washington Federation of State Employees. She testified in favor of the bill. “Two out of three construction workers reported a crash in a construction zone in the state in 2024,” she said. “The safety crisis is impacting every community, every county, and every legislative district. Members have been hit clearing roadkill from rural stretches of highway near Spokane, performing planned maintenance on I-5 in Seattle, and every scenario in between.”

► From Fox News — Trump’s nominee for Labor secretary walks back support for PRO Act, embraces Republican Right-to-Work laws — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-V.T.) began the hearing by questioning if Chavez-DeRemer would stand by her pro-union values or bend the knee to Trump’s “authoritarian” rule. “You will have to make a choice. Will you be a rubber stamp for the anti-worker agenda of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other multi-billionaires who are blatantly anti-union?” Sanders asked.

► From Common Dreams — As DeJoy Quits, Critics Fear GOP-Led Postal Board Will ‘Find Someone Worse’ –“DOGE is a question of billionaire oligarchs trying to figure out how to get more money into their private profits. So all of this stuff about efficiency is really a cover for that, and that also carries over to those who want to privatize the Post Office,” APWU president Mark Dimondstein told Mother Jones‘ Alex Nguyen in an interview published in the magazine’s March-April edition. “The Post Office takes in about $80 billion a year in revenue,” Dimondstein added. “Those on the private side of the industry want their hands on that money because when it’s in the public domain, they can’t use it to generate private profits.”

► From the Spokesman Review — Trump, Musk could ‘crater’ Social Security, former commissioner Martin O’Malley says — “I don’t know if it’s their plan to crater it, or if they’re just so ignorant of how stressed it is that they don’t realize they could interrupt benefits,” O’Malley, a Democrat and former Baltimore City mayor and Maryland governor, said in an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” The Social Security Administration, based in Woodlawn, Maryland, is operating with staffing that is at a 50-year low, O’Malley said, adding that the agency is a lifeline for 72.5 million Americans and “half of all seniors living alone depend entirely” on the benefits they receive from it.

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

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