Dam short-staffing | Darth Vader ULP | DOGE job interview

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

LOCAL

► From the Washington State Standard — Fears over Columbia Basin dams, hydroelectricity grow as agencies lose hundreds of employees — Critical operations at the dam are going understaffed following President Donald Trump’s orders, executed by the Office of Personnel Management, to cut probationary federal employees, freeze new hiring at federal agencies and offer incentives to get employees to retire and resign early. It’s a problem at several agencies that oversee the system, which have lost hundreds of employees and could collectively lose hundreds more by fall, and it has regional electric utilities concerned about the safety, reliability and future of the region’s power transmission.

► From the Spokesman Review — Supreme Court rules to revoke deportation protections for Venezuelans; Spokane leaders raise concern over decision — Many of the 350 Venezuelans living in Spokane could be affected by Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that the federal government can revoke temporary deportation protections. Sam Smith, an attorney at Manzanita House in Spokane, said the organization is currently working with 50 Venezuelans in the area, some of whom will have family members affected. He also noted that those who have already started the process of applying for asylum or permanent residency will be able to continue. Still, he described the ruling as a setback. “It’s incredibly disappointing and just leaves a lot of lives and people in disarray,” Smith said.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive collects 82,000 pounds of food in its 33rd year — Letter carriers and volunteers collected about 82,000 pounds of food for the 33rd annual Clark County Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive on May 10. The food drive, which was originally strapped for volunteers, ended up with 28 participants who offered to help after reading The Columbian’s previous article, lead organizer Don Young said. The Vancouver branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers has also pledged to donate $10,000 to Clark County Food Bank in order to serve more people experiencing food insecurity.

► From the Tri-City Herald — New leadership announced for WA’s Hanford nuclear site — The Department of Energy has picked Brian Harkins the acting manager of the Hanford site in Eastern Washington just weeks after naming him acting deputy manager. The former DOE Hanford manager, Brian Vance, resigned for reasons he did not make public, and his last day of work was April 24. His resignation was announced in late March, a day after the last day on the job for DOE’s deputy manager of the Hanford nuclear site, Brian Stickney, who reportedly applied for the deferred resignation offered by the Trump administration.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — Trump cuts threaten mental health resources for Tacoma school students — Pierce County’s biggest school district had been using the funds, which it was supposed to receive in roughly $1 million chunks each academic year, to provide around 3,000 students at Tacoma Public Schools with access to mental health care, according to the district. The Department of Education has notified districts that were receiving the money that they will have until Dec. 31 of this year to utilize the funds, meaning the mental health resources will remain in place until then. But TPS won’t receive the remaining $2,655,740 it was supposed to receive for 2026 and 2027.

► From the Seattle Times — Hit hardest in Microsoft layoffs? Developers, product managers, morale — At Microsoft, employees describe an increased emphasis on AI in their daily work. Some said they’ve felt a shift over the past year, with more pressure to incorporate AI into their role rather than view it as a helpful tool. In April, CEO Satya Nadella said in a fireside chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that 20% to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI.

NATIONAL

► From the Hollywood Reporter — SAG-AFTRA Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Over Darth Vader AI Voice in ‘Fortnite’ — The union claimed that a signatory to its collective bargaining agreement, Llama Productions, made “unilateral” changes to terms and conditions of employment when Fortnite began employing the use of an AI-powered Vader voice starting Friday without giving the union notice or the ability to negotiate. In its filing to the National Labor Relations Board on Monday, SAG-AFTRA argued that using this generative AI voice essentially displaces “bargaining unit work” — suggesting that actors could have been employed to play the Star Wars character — for the massively popular games platform.

► From Jacobin — Making Expensive Cities Into Union Towns — California boasts some of the most expensive cities in the country. Union organizing can help workers afford to live in those cities…The second-largest win of the month was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA), where 371 workers voted to form their union, Monterey Bay Aquarium Workers United, with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57…With Monterey County being the fourth–most expensive place to live in the United States, wages and affordability were understandably at the top of the list of MBA workers’ concerns. “A lot of people dream of working at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but those who do often can’t afford to live in Monterey,” Anderson said.

► From Occupational Health & Safety Online — FAA Hosts Industry Forum to Advance Ramp Worker Safety Nationwide — The goal of the forum was to identify hazards and explore innovative safety solutions by fostering collaboration and sharing best safety practices. The 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act mandated a review of airport ramp worker safety and ways to reduce accidents.

► From People’s World — With labor under siege, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists to hold critical convention — As the Trump administration guts worker protections, breaks unions, undermines the Constitution, and escalates its attacks on oppressed communities, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists is strategizing on how best to continue in its historic role as a bridge between the labor and civil rights movements…The organization’s founding leadership was a who’s who of Black labor militants: AFSCME’s William “Bill” Lucy, United Auto Workers’ Nelson “Jack” Edwards, and Distributive Workers of America’s Cleveland Robinson, among others. Notably, Black women constituted over a third of the delegates, embedding the struggle for gender equality into CBTU’s organization from day one.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From Common Dreams — Nearly Half of US Kids—34 Million—Rely on Food, Health Programs Targeted by GOP — Specifically, the document details, “14 million people would lose their health insurance, and millions would lose SNAP or see their benefits drop precipitously, compared to current law. All who participate in Medicaid and SNAP would be at risk, including people with disabilities, seniors, and low-wage workers at jobs without affordable health insurance—but children would be disproportionately hurt: 44% of all American children benefit from Medicaid or SNAP, compared to 23% of adults under age 65.”

► From the Washington Post — How DOGE’s grand plan to remake Social Security is backfiring — As of this week, many of the major changes DOGE pushed at Social Security have been abandoned or are being reversed after proving ineffective, while others are yielding unintended consequences and badly damaging customer service and satisfaction. The problems come as the agency struggles to cope with a record surge of hundreds of thousands of retirement claims in recent months…Kathleen Romig, a former Social Security official who is now at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there were already safeguards in place to detect fraud through the agency’s phone service. DOGE’s efforts have only delayed claims processing and, like most of the team’s attempts to reshape Social Security, placed serious stress on the agency, she said.

► From Investigate West — Undermined: A small federal agency was investigating dangers to miners. Then came DOGE —  “NIOSH is going to identify what’s getting people sick and what’s killing people, and then they’re gonna help solve the problem,” [local union president Marshall] Cummings recalled thinking.  The investigative team never arrived. They’d been ousted due to sweeping federal budget cuts. “I’ve been fired in the cuts to NIOSH,” Foreman wrote in an April 9 email to Cummings. “I’m emailing you as a concerned citizen now. 92% of NIOSH has been eliminated — including everyone who runs the Health Hazard Evaluation Program.” The cuts to NIOSH have sparked alarm from Republicans, Democrats, coal miners, labor activists and academics. Beyond just conducting workplace investigations, NIOSH had run programs to test and treat miners for black lung disease, funded safety worker education and even certified the quality of n95 respirators.

► From Wired — What It’s Like to Interview for a Job at DOGE — The US DOGE Service, formerly the US Digital Service (USDS), has been interviewing potential candidates in recent weeks and months, even offering salaries on the highest end of the government pay scale. WIRED spoke with one person who made it through part of the DOGE interview process about what it was like. The interviewee, who had applied to USDS multiple times both before and shortly after the new Trump administration, says they weren’t sure how or why their application had caught the eye of the new DOGE Service. “Maybe they were just looking for a coder,” they say. Seeing USDS referred to as the “US DOGE Service,” the interviewee says, made them “want to barf” because “it represented the hollowing out of the organization I appreciated. I didn’t know what to make of it, since I applied on a lark and hated what DOGE was doing. But I was ready to learn what they wanted and to explore what impact I could have.”

► From the Seattle Times — WA’s growing diversity not reflected in elected officials, study finds — The report found that of the nearly 12,240 people who ran for office between 2016 and 2024, only about 10% were people of color. Less than 10% of winners were people of color, though people of color make up more than 35% of the state’s population. Across the state’s 39 counties, women won 37% of local elections, researchers found. Young people, defined in the study as people under 45 years old, make up an average of 53% of the population across the state’s counties but won just 20% of county-level elections.

INTERNATIONAL

► From Real Change News — Dismantling the myth of meritocracy one cat meme at a time — Why are people poor? If you read the mainstream press or tune into a “manosphere” podcast, you will get bombarded with messages that we all have agency, that the biggest decider of one’s material conditions is their own actions. That ending up homeless on the streets or addicted to drugs is due to personal failings, not structural factors outside your control. You just need to hustle harder — get that second or third job — to reach financial stability. Academic and activist Máximo Ernesto Jaramillo-Molina calls bullshit. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, Jaramillo-Molina sees commonly held ideas like meritocracy as propping up a cultural hegemony that preserves economic inequality while blunting calls for redistribution. Under the myths of capitalism, the discourse shifts from the need to rebalance the tax code to talking about how you, as an individual worker, can be more productive and make more money.

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