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NW federal workers | WNBA contract | AI at DOE

Friday, February 14, 2025

 

LOCAL

► From MyNorthwest — Bremerton shipyard cuts employee resource groups — “The executive order is certainly demeaning and a little derogatory,” Mark Leighton, president of the Bremerton Metal Trades Council, representing around 9,000 workers, told The Seattle Times Thursday. “We don’t have any token people here. You can either turn a wrench or weld a joint, do the work required, or you don’t work here.”

► From Northwest Public Broadcasting — Northwest federal workers are demoralized, but many are determined to keep their jobs — As a veteran, Ansell said he’s a federal worker because he wants to serve his country. He’s an electrical engineer who tests power systems for the military to make sure they are safe to use in the field. Many of his coworkers are also veterans, he said. Ansell added that most federal workers could be making more money in the private sector. “I think the overall goal is to drive a lot of the infrastructural work that the federal government does into private hands, for the sake of monetizing and turning a profit on some of the basic services that the government provides,” Ansell said.

► From From the Tacoma News Tribune — Trump administration’s reduction of federal workforce could hit hard in South Sound — The federal workforce has a significant presence not just in Pierce County but the region, with more than 41,000 civilian workers employed by the U.S. government within two local congressional districts. According to previous reporting by McClatchy, there were more than 56,000 federal civilian workers in Washington state as of December. That figure does not include federal contractors or uniformed military personnel, including those who work at Joint Base Lewis-McChord or Naval Base Kitsap.

 

AEROSPACE

► From U.S. News & World Report — Engine Maker Safran Upbeat on Boeing 737 MAX Production This Year –“Boeing had a very good start to the year in January,” CEO Olivier Andries said, referring to data that saw Boeing outpace European rival Airbus in deliveries for the first time in a single month in almost two years. “I have no doubt that Boeing will reach 38 (MAX aircraft produced) a month during the first half and that it will be at 42 (a month) before the end of the year.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Bloomberg — As Billions of Dollars Pour Into Women’s Sports, Players Seek a Bigger Cut — The WNBA is coming off one of its best years ever. Alongside the National Basketball Association, it reeled in a record broadcast rights deal. Its TV ratings have never been higher. For players, it’s a moment of opportunity. The union has outlined some of its goals. It wants a bigger slice of the league’s revenue, higher pay and improved retirement and pregnancy benefits. Players also want to codify the use of charter planes like the ones that shuttle male NBA players from city to city to get to away games. Last season was the first in which players traveled on private planes.

 

ORGANIZING

► From Jacobin — Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus” — We rightly pay a lot of attention to efforts to organize Amazon, Starbucks, and the foreign-owned auto plants in the American South. But graduate students at the Ivies and the big public universities…have also won National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election victories that have led to union recognition and first contract signings…On the West Coast, UAW Region 6, which used to represent upward of a hundred thousand auto and aircraft workers, now counts 90 percent of its membership from the University of California, the University of Washington, and other schools.

 

NATIONAL

► From Banking Dive — Wells Fargo faces labor board complaint over union vote — The labor board wants the bank to recognize and negotiate with the union despite the vote, based on a 2023 precedent case. The 2023 Cemex ruling strengthened the NLRB’s power to compel companies that violate labor laws to recognize unions.  However, Republicans and business groups oppose the precedent. The acting general counsel of NLRB, William Cowen, or his permanent replacement, could withdraw, amend, or settle the Wells Fargo complaint.

► From the Wrap — With Wildfires Contained, the Long Rebuild for Hollywood Workers Begins — Tobey Bays, business agent at IATSE Local 44, says that the core goal for support providers is to keep up with the evolving needs of wildfire survivors. The fair was created to help provide victims with the emotional, logistical and material support they need right after losing all they had in the fires. Currently, groups like the non-Hollywood-specific Labor Community Services are providing assistance in securing temporary housing.

► From the United Farm Workers:

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From Cascade PBS — Federal funding freeze could cost WA billions amid budget crisis — Washington’s legislative budget crunchers don’t know if billions of dollars will be yanked from them either before or after they map out how to raise and spend money from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2027. Right now, legislative leaders acknowledge that they have no control over federal appropriations and appear to have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Washington House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle, said at a press availability earlier this week that too many variables exist on what the Trump administration might do with funding to the states. “It’s impossible to plan for,” he said.

► From the New Republic — Federal Workers’ Unions Are Waging the Fight of Their Lives — “One thing to take from this episode is why unions are essential to preserving democracy,” said Michael Podhorzer, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former political director of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. “Once an election is over, union members are very attuned to their interests as workers,” said Podhorzer, citing previous union opposition to the Bush and Reagan presidencies, even as members might have supported those Republican presidents individually…Federal workers live all over the country—meaning that their economic interests affect communities in both red and blue states, and so lawmakers of both parties would theoretically be invested in their treatment.

► From the Washington Post — Trump administration orders most probationary federal workers to be fired — The Trump administration on Thursday moved swiftly to fire thousands of workers and directed agency heads to terminate most trial and probationary staff — a move that could affect as many as 200,000 employees…Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, said in a statement his union would “fight these firings every step of the way,” including by pursuing “every legal challenge available.”

► From the New York Times — DOGE Proposes A.I. Bot as Replacement for Financial Aid Help — The vision could be a model for other federal agencies, in which human beings are replaced by technology, and behemoth contracts with outside companies are shed or reduced in favor of more automated solutions. In some cases, that technology was developed by players from the private sector who are now working inside or with the Trump administration. Mr. Musk has significant interest in A.I. He founded a generative A.I. company, and is also seeking to gain control of OpenAI, one of the biggest players in the industry.

► From the Washington Post — Trump administration seeks more power to fire independent regulators — The Trump administration has told Congress it is prepared to disavow a long-standing Supreme Court ruling that has preserved the independence of certain government agencies and protected commissioners from being fired without good reason. It essentially put lawmakers on notice that the administration is willing to urge the justices to overturn the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., which has protected members of regulatory agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission.

► From the AFL-CIO:

Editor’s note: according to the NH AFL-CIO, anti-worker politicians have proposed “right to work union bust” legislation every year since 1948, but unions are still going strong. “Live free or die” indeed.

 

JOLT OF JOY

Shoutout to the sustaining power of spite:

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