OR nurses end strike | Student workers | Postal workers protest

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

STRIKES

► From OPB — Providence nurses across Oregon approve deal to end strike — The deal, which was announced Feb. 21, included some retroactive pay for nurses with contracts that expired before December 2024 – a key sticking point in the negotiations. It guarantees backpay for 75% of the hours worked and paid time off since the contract expired, according to the nurses’ union. The agreement includes a wage increase over time, ranging from 20% to 42% over the duration of the three-year contract, and an immediate increase of 16% to 22%.

► From Oregon Nurses Association:

AEROSPACE

► From the New York Times — Nominee for Deputy Transportation Secretary Comes Under Fire for Handling of Boeing — “You were responsible for overseeing the department’s regulatory actions and implementing President Trump’s regulatory reform agenda,” Ms. Cantwell said of Mr. Bradbury’s time in the previous Trump administration. “In this role, you orchestrated the rollback of multiple safety requirements under the guise of advancing a reform agenda.”

ORGANIZING

► From Jacobin — Interns and Residents Are Unionizing at a Rapid Clip — CIR has doubled in size since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, now 37,000 strong. CIR president Taylor Walker believes that the pandemic was “the spark behind this huge wave of physician unionization,” but also that the pandemic simply exacerbated existing instability.

READY FOR A VOICE AT WORK? Get more information about how you can join together with co-workers and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!

NATIONAL

► From Bloomberg Law — Picketing May Have Peaked but Union Strike Totals Remain High — Unions led fewer strikes against US employers last year than in 2022 or 2023, according to Bloomberg Law labor data. But the 236 walkouts called in 2024 still represent the third-highest annual total in almost two decades, suggesting that the post-pandemic trend of labor unrest is still far from over.

► From Rewire News — Analysis: Student Worker Unions Are a Force for Reproductive Justice — Between 2012 and 2024, the number of unionized graduate student workers have increased by 133 percent and since 2022, 45,000 student workers have unionized. In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and the re-election of Donald Trump, student unions are increasingly bargaining for reproductive health and gender-affirming care coverage and protections, too.

► From Bloomberg Law — Apple to Push for Free Speech Tests in Labor Case at Fifth Cir. — Apple Inc.’s federal court appeal of an NLRB ruling that it illegally interrogated a worker includes an effort for new legal standards that would make it more difficult for the agency to police employers’ coercive questioning of employees.

► From the AP — US consumer confidence plummets in February, biggest monthly decline since 2021 — U.S. consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in more than four years, a business research group said Tuesday, with inflation seemingly stuck and a trade war under President Donald Trump seen by a growing number of Americans as inevitable. Markets on Wall Street immediately dropped. The S&P 500 fell 0.6% in midday trading, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat. The Nasdaq declined 1.1%. Respondents to the board’s survey expressed concern over inflation with a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs, the board said.

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

• Judge blocks Department of Education, federal personnel office from sharing data with DOGE (NBC News)
• Federal workers sue over Musk’s DOGE email soliciting updates (Axios)
• Judge limits ICE raids in places of worship involved in suit against Trump administration (Washington State Standard)
• Lawsuit targeting Trump’s refugee ban to go before federal judge in Seattle (KUOW)
• Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Musk’s DOGE are expected to produce no savings (AP)
• Live updates: 21 employees resign from DOGE, refusing to ‘dismantle critical public services’ (AP)

► From the Bellingham Herald — WWU crowd protests proposed state budget cuts as university faces $18 million shortfall — WWU student employees spoke at the rally on Friday. Several expressed concern that if the legislature did not fully fund Western’s budget needs, some of the most vulnerable and lowest-paid employees could be heavily impacted. “Fully funding WWU would allow all of its workers to be paid a living wage without being threatened with lay-offs and austerity measures,” said WWU student employee Mattie Horne at the protest. “Unfortunately, funding for higher education is on the chopping block in Washington State and beyond. These proposed budget cuts are a threat to all of us.”

► From the Washington State Standard — Plan to close facilities for people exiting Washington prisons draws backlash — Advocates say these Department of Corrections facilities, serving people in the final year of their prison sentences, provide a soft landing back into the outside world from their structured life in prison, allowing people time to get a job, go to school and secure services. Research has shown Washington’s work release facilities reduce recidivism and are more cost-effective than housing people in state prisons.

► From the New York Times — Government Watchdog Moves to Protect Probationary Federal Workers — A government watchdog lawyer whose dismissal by President Trump has been stalled by the courts announced on Monday that his office would seek to pause the mass firings of some probationary federal workers. In a statement posted to the agency’s website, Mr. Dellinger said that the decision to fire probationary employees en masse “without individualized cause” appeared “contrary to a reasonable reading of the law,” and that he would ask a government review board to pause the firings for 45 days.

► From Common Dreams — ‘Hell No!’ Postal Workers Protest Illegal Trump Takeover Scheme — Monday’s rally followed protests over the weekend in Portland, Oregon, where postal workers voiced concerns about the future of the USPS under Trump’s leadership. “People in rural areas wouldn’t be able to get their medications that they depend on, they might not get mail at all, if it’s privatized,” Jae Burlingame, a longtime mail carrier, told a local media outlet on Sunday.

► From MSNBC — Trump’s Medicaid flip-flop should worry any American on Social Security — The “full America First agenda” that Trump is so jazzed about will cost around $4.8 trillion, a combination of lower revenue and spending cuts. The vast majority of that — $4.5 trillion — comes as tax cuts, mostly an extension of the 2017 tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited wealthy Americans. To make that cost more palatable to the far right’s deficit hawks, the budget asks approximately half a dozen House committees to find $2 trillion in spending cuts. The largest reductions — $880 billion — will come via the Energy and Commerce Committee, with most or all of that figure likely to come from Medicaid.

► From Axios — How Trump and DOGE’s government firing spree is hurting veterans — “This is the largest attack on veteran employment in our lifetime,” says William Attig, executive director at the Union Veterans Council, a labor group that represents many of these workers. Attig, who was deployed in Iraq from 2003 to 2009, has been talking to newly unemployed members, trying to get a tally of everyone who’s lost a job.

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