NEWS ROUNDUP

Dockworkers’ contract | GOP attacks Medicaid | We paid Musk $38 billion

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From AFSCME Local 3299:


 Editor’s note: More than 30,000 workers in the University of California system are on ULP strike as of today. 

► From UPTE-CWA 9119:

 

LOCAL

► From the Tri-City Herald — Are border crossings in WA down amid US-Canada tensions? Early data shows sharp decline — According to the Canada Border Services Agency, 68,146 Canadian citizens crossed into the U.S. at one of British Columbia’s 16 southern border crossings, 13 of which it shares with Washington, between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8 – the week the tariffs were slated to go into effect. That number represents a 26.5% drop from the previous week, when 92,707 people crossed the border, and a 29.6% drop from the week before. According to State of Washington Tourism, nearly a quarter of the $2.45 billion a year that international visitors spend in Washington comes from Canadian residents visiting Seattle.

► From the Seattle Times — Second wave of seasonal flu hits WA hospitals, fills ERs — Flu activity remains elevated nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, this season is now classified as “high severity” for all age groups — the first since the 2017-2018 year, when more than 80,000 people in the U.S. died. Largely isolating and wearing masks kept flu spread low in 2020 and 2021. But in 2022, after the omicron variant had started to wane and mask mandates were relaxed, the state’s death count for influenza jumped tenfold.

Editor’s note: read more about the flu vaccine from the CDC. Thanks to the ACA, most insurance companies fully cover flu shots. 

► From Cascade PBS — Podcast | A people’s history of the Columbia River — In 1996, some of the oldest human remains ever found in North America were discovered along the banks of the Columbia River, ultimately illuminating Indigenous presence in the region since time immemorial. Long a crucial source of sustenance, culture and trade, the Pacific Northwest’s largest river has continued to be a vital part of human civilization, whether through its salmon or its many hydroelectric dams.

 

AEROSPACE

► From the American Machinist — Boeing Layoffs Now Exceed 5,000 — According to published data, most of the job cuts to date have hit Boeing plants in Washington State, where nearly 2,600 positions have been eliminated since December. Boeing’s troubled 737 MAX program is centered at Renton, Wash., but it has been operating below full capability due to the ongoing effort to stabilize safety and quality control standards. Boeing Defense locations in Missouri implemented 692 layoffs in January, and the Boeing operations in California saw 593 layoffs in January and February.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the AP — US dockworkers approve 6-year contract, averting a strike  — The contract calls for a 62% pay hike over six years that would lift hourly wages at the top of the union pay scale from $39 an hour to $63 an hour. ILA President Harold Daggett, who served as the union’s chief negotiator, was quoted in the statement as saying the agreement is “the ‘gold standard’ for dockworker unions globally.”

 

ORGANIZING

► From the Chronicle of Higher Education — Trump’s Changes to NLRB Could Slow Momentum of Campus Unionizing — Between election day and Trump’s second inauguration, a handful of groups of academic employees withdrew their petitions to form unions before the NLRB. Several labor organizers said they wanted to preserve previous rulings favorable to the unions; each case reviewed by the board presents an opportunity to reverse precedent. Those include a 2016 decision by the NLRB classifying graduate students working at Columbia University as employees with the right to form unions, which opened the door for students at private colleges to unionize.

 

NATIONAL

► From the Nation — How Healthcare Workers Are Defending Their Transgender Patients from Trump’s Attacks — Within this climate, many workers, like Quinn, are mobilizing in private. Others are taking action in the open as union members, participating in protests against hospitals that roll back services or staging creative actions to show support for their patients. While no one is free from fear of repercussions, those organizing as union members seemed more comfortable going on the record, and those who are retired especially so. “I have seen what not providing gender-affirming care looks like, and objectively speaking, it results in worsening mental health issues, can result in increased mortality, and can worsen patient outcomes,” Andrea Soto López, a pediatrician for a Los Angeles–area hospital, told me over the phone.

► From the SF Public Press — Mass Deportation Threats Put Caregivers, Seniors, Disabled People on High Alert — Local and state-level advocates, as well as a union representing care workers, fear that mass deportations and the removal of certain immigrant protections could affect care workers’ ability to work and remain in the United States, including those with documentation. Many expect this to worsen staffing shortages and reduce access to services that older adults and people with disabilities rely on…Even if caregivers, such as in-home support workers, are residing in the country legally, they may have family members who are not, meaning they could see their loved ones deported. De La Cruz noted that raids have created a lot of fear and anxiety in immigrant communities, and in particular affect children who may face separation from their parents.

► From USA Today — Trump’s expanded ICE raids are causing big problems for some schools — “Permitting law enforcement to conduct raids on school grounds or in hospitals and clinics, potentially forcibly removing people in front of children, will break trust between families, law enforcement and your administration, as children will be traumatized by the spectacle,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers warned President Donald Trump. “This will indelibly scar native-born American families as well as immigrant families; the impact and harms will be absorbed by entire communities.”

► From the AP — Lawsuit filed by 17 states against abortion accommodations in the workplace can proceed — Led by Republican state attorneys general in Tennessee and Arkansas, the 17 states sued the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April challenging its rules on how to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a 2022 bipartisan law requiring employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant or postpartum employees.

► From Wired — Your Boss Wants You Back in the Office. This Surveillance Tech Could Be Waiting for You — Scan the online brochures of companies who sell workplace monitoring tech and you’d think the average American worker was a renegade poised to take their employer down at the next opportunity…These technologies, and more sophisticated worker location- and behavior-tracking systems, are expanding from blue-collar jobs to pink-collar industries and even white-collar office settings. Depending on the survey, approximately 70 to 80 percent of large US employers now use some form of employee monitoring.

► From the Hollywood Reporter — MSNBC Layoffs Set to Impact 99 Union Staffers, Guild Claims — “The MSNBC Union demands the Company not lay off any of the employees it has slated to be laid off but rather reassign them as needed,” the group wrote. “In the event that any employees are not retained, we demand the Company follow the layoff provisions of the collective bargaining agreement that it entered into with the Union.”

Editor’s note: respect to Rachel Maddow for using her show to call out network bosses for treatment of staff. In her words, “[Workers] are facing being laid off. They are being invited to reapply for new jobs. That has never happened at this scale…presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people.” 

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From the Spokesman Review — Democrats release details of what ‘all cuts’ budget could look like in Washington — “This is really stark stuff. Everyone in this state will be impacted,” Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Monday. “All of us know someone who needs help once in a while. If we have to make these kinds of cuts, that help probably isn’t going to be there anymore.”

► From the Front — BRIEF: Protect the Pie rally unites student workers — The rally aimed to gather support for Washington legislature’s House Bill 1570 and its companion Senate Bill 5119. If passed, the bills would extend collective bargaining rights to student employees who are not already covered at Western, as well as at Eastern Washington University, Central Washington University and The Evergreen State College.

► From the New York Times — House Passes G.O.P. Budget Teeing Up Enormous Tax and Spending Cuts — Extending the 2017 tax law will cost roughly $4 trillion over a decade, while several other desperately desired business tax breaks will eat up another couple of hundred billion…The plan instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare, to come up with at least $880 billion in cuts. While some Republicans denied that they would slash programs for the poor, the amount of revenue they are calling to raise would all but certainly necessitate some cuts to at least one of those programs.

► From the New York Times — Slashing Medicaid to Pay for Trump’s Tax Cuts Could Lead to Vast State Shortfalls — House Republicans hunting for ways to pay for President Trump’s tax cuts have called for cutting the federal government’s share of Medicaid spending, including a proposal that would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act’s 2014 expansion of the program. Cutting Medicaid spending, which is expected to be central to fulfilling the budget plan that House Republicans adopted Tuesday night, could result in millions of Americans across the country losing health coverage unless states decide to play a bigger role in its funding.

► From the AP — Trump administration sets stage for large-scale federal worker layoffs in new memo — Agencies are directed to submit by March 13 their plans for what is known as a reduction in force, which would not only lay off employees but eliminate the position altogether. The result could be extensive changes in how government functions.

► From Bloomberg Law — Trump’s Federal Workforce Cuts Hit Labor Department Enforcement — The White House and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s various attempts to tempt resignations among federal employees or outright terminate them comes as some critical DOL subagencies were already facing historically low staffing numbers. The Wage and Hour Division, which oversees minimum wage, overtime, and child labor laws, had only 650 investigators on board as of October, the lowest number on record since at least 2007. “It sends a message to employers that accountability is going to be even less than it was before,” Ruckelshaus said.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the NW Labor Press — Canadian union announces Amazon boycott  — Rather than accept a union contract, Amazon announced Jan. 22 it will close all seven of its warehouses in Quebec, Canada, by March and lay off 4,700 workers. The closure comes after 230 workers at Amazon’s DXT4 warehouse outside Montreal became the first-ever Amazon workers in Canada to unionize. That was the backdrop for the closure announcement, which Amazon claims is unrelated to the unionization. The company said it will switch to third-party delivery services rather than do its own delivery in Quebec.

 

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From the Washington Post — Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding — Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. The total amount is probably larger: This analysis includes only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government. SpaceX has been developing spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, the Pentagon’s spy satellite division, according to the Reuters news agency. The Wall Street Journal reported that contract was worth $1.8 billion, citing company documents.

Editor’s note: in related news, Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system

 

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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