NEWS ROUNDUP

Job cuts hit WA | Union analyzes FAA safety | DOGE can’t count

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From the New Republic — The Underestimated Alliance That Could Beat Back Trumpism — Americans were unmoved by Democratic appeals to “defend democracy” because they don’t experience much of it in their daily lives: Leaders make major policy decisions without the public’s knowledge or approval, take away rights a majority voted to keep, and fund wars a majority oppose. These conditions explain why so many are alienated from politics—more Americans simply didn’t vote in 2024 than voted for Trump or Harris—and why working people cannot put their faith in electoral politics alone. The labor movement is the best vehicle for defending all of our rights and advancing society, and it’s even more urgent to strengthen it under Trump.

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Trump’s job cuts lead to closed trails, staff shortages in WA — Federal workers in the Pacific Northwest who protect water and air quality and keep public lands open and clean are among the thousands fired without cause as President Donald Trump slashes jobs across the country. Some federal agencies are bracing for even deeper cuts that cover a wide range of services. These agencies keep public lands clean, find lost hikers, help fight wildfires and pick up debris once the blazes tear through towns, regulate toxic industries, and sell and distribute vast quantities of electricity to serve the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

► From the Washington State Standard — 30 Bonneville Power workers get jobs back amid hundreds of layoffs and buyouts — BPA’s laid-off employees include electricians, lineworkers, cybersecurity experts and engineers, according to Washington U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s office. But after calls for justification from several U.S. senators and former BPA leaders amid concerns over increased blackouts, the Trump administration offered 30 of Bonneville’s “mission critical” workers their jobs back…U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican who represents central Washington, said Tuesday he told the Trump administration “there should be a more nuanced approach to terminations and furloughs,” referring to cuts at Bonneville as well as the Hanford nuclear cleanup site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

► From the Bellingham Herald — Federal investigation finds Bellingham restaurants owe workers $82K for OT, tip violations — Managers at two well-known downtown Bellingham restaurants have been improperly taking tips intended for dozens of servers, cashiers and others — and those employees are owed more than $80,000 in back pay, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report. La Fiamma Wood Fire Pizza and Fiamma Burger are the two restaurants named in an investigation that started with a complaint filed in May 2023 and concluded in 2024.

► From the Seattle Times — White House’s gleeful video shows chained deportees at Boeing Field — The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement video, shot at Boeing Field two weeks ago, shows the deportees being thoroughly frisked. ICE officers then laid out chains on the ground, lined up as if for a chain gang, before the men were individually chained hand and foot. “Instead of being ashamed that people are treated this way,” [La Resistencia’s Maru Mora Villalpando] said, the administration promotes such chain gang images to equate immigrants and criminals in the minds of the public. “It’s a civil system treated as a criminal one,” Mora Villalpando said. “But if they were criminals they would have lawyers, which they don’t.”

► From Cascade PBS — WA sheriffs respond to Trump’s immigration enforcement plans — In a survey conducted by InvestigateWest and Cascade PBS, the majority of Washington sheriffs said they would focus their resources on public safety and local laws, not federal immigration enforcement. But some responses were less clear-cut. “The Pierce County Sheriff Office will abide by all enforceable U.S. immigration laws and legal mandates,” wrote Sheriff Keith Swank, who took office on Jan. 15. “Law enforcement agencies are obligated to honor applicable federal detainers. I believe there will be more legal guidance in the near future.”

AEROSPACE

► From Yahoo News — US aviation sector calls for emergency funding for air traffic technology, staffing — Airlines for America, the Aerospace Industries Association, International Air Transport Association and others including major aviation unions urged Congress in a joint letter on Wednesday to take action, noting the Federal Aviation Administration faces serious technology needs and is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels.

NATIONAL

► From the Hill — Air Traffic controllers union to analyze FAA firings’ impact on safety — A late-night email on Friday notified probationary workers they were fired from the FAA. One air traffic controller said the impacted workers include employees hired for the FAA’s radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.

► From FOX 32 — Chicago’s Pullman porters formed first all-Black labor union 100 years ago — “If it wasn’t for A. Phillip Randolph and Pullman porters, there wouldn’t be E.D. Nixon,” [Dr. Lionel] Kimble Jr. said. “Nixon was the person who invited a 26-year-old minister from Atlanta to lead the movement in Montgomery,” Kimble Jr. said. Kimble says if it wasn’t for E.D. Nixon, we might not have had a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, deeper dives below:

► From KIRO 7 — Seattle City Council leaders discuss transit safety following bus violence — For two months now, King County Metro bus drivers have demanded safety changes after a bus driver was brutally murdered on his route. And just yesterday, a shooting on a metro bus once again put bus safety in the spotlight. This morning, union leaders and community members gathered at a Seattle City Council committee meeting to advocate for increased transit safety. Greg Woodfill, one of the leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union local chapter, spoke out during the council meeting, “We need to end the finger-pointing, and start working together. We need every city to take some responsibility for their citizen’s right to use — safely use — public transit!”

► From Jacobin — Can Federal Workers Stop Trump? — “I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,” said Mark Smith, a patient educator at the Veterans Affairs (VA) in San Francisco and the president of National Federation of Federal Employee (NFFE) Local 1. “I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on a crisis line. So I don’t trust a billionaire to decide what happens to our public services — and that’s why we’re fighting to get this billionaire’s hands out of them.”

► From the Nonprofit Quarterly — Federal Workers to Hold Public Actions in Multiple US Cities on Wednesday — Organizers are calling the coordinated events Save Our Services Day of Action…workers and unions are seeking to build a broader network of support. The demands motivating the upcoming demonstrations are clear: no cuts to vital services; no mass layoffs: respect union workers’ contracts; and end the funding freeze. “Right now,” [AFGE steward Paul Osadebe] added, “we are trying to focus on organizing all the people that have been fired. We don’t want them to just leave the movement and think that everything is over and there is nothing that can be done.”

► From Semafor — Trump’s Labor pick will likely need unusual help to get confirmed — “You can do the numbers,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the committee overseeing her nomination, told Semafor. “We need a majority. We need somebody else to vote if Rand’s going to vote negative … Rand is a chair of the right-to-work caucus. So once he establishes something, it’s hard to move him off.” Cassidy said he’ll try to sway Paul on Chavez-DeRemer, but Democratic support may be an easier path. The committee’s 11 Democrats include several with bipartisan inclinations, and Chavez-DeRemer will have to convince some of them that she’ll stand up for the Labor Department even if Trump comes for it — one of the last flashpoints left as Trump stocks his adviser ranks with loyalists.

► From the Seattle Times — DOGE says it’s saved $55 billion; data show much less — The federal cost-cutting effort dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency says it has saved $55 billion in federal spending so far, but its website only accounts for $16.6 billion of that. And that’s before factoring in an error in the data published on DOGE’s website that mislabels a contract as $8 billion, which was later corrected in the federal database to only be $8 million. But DOGE’s accounting raises questions about the reliability of their self-reporting and their level of accountability.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy. But experts warn they come at a price — Experts worry that Malaysia, and others like Vietnam, Indonesia and India vying for billion-dollar investments from tech giants, may be overstating data centers’ transformative capabilities that also come at a price: Data centers gobble up land, water and electricity while creating far fewer jobs than they promise. Most data centers provide 30 to 50 permanent jobs while the larger ones create 200 jobs at most, according to a report by the American nonprofit Good Jobs First.

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