NEWS ROUNDUP

Lelo’s hearing | The VA | Labor organizers

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From Cascadia Daily News — PeaceHealth union launches hardship fund to help striking workers — A PeaceHealth union preparing to strike starting May 12 is asking for community support through a hardship fund to help unpaid workers on the picket line put groceries on the table and pay bills that week. In March, caregivers told Whatcom County Council stories about co-workers sleeping in their cars and relying on the “Dove Pantry” — an in-house food bank at St. Joseph Medical Center — “filled and emptied by co-workers daily.” Those same PeaceHealth employees will go unpaid by the hospital the week they’re on strike.

 

LOCAL

► From My Northwest — WA concerned federal government won’t help fight wildfires this year — State officials are sounding the alarm over a lack of federal resources and support in a year the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) predicts will be an “above-average” year for wildfires, especially across Eastern Washington. “DNR is very concerned by the level of preparedness potential from our federal partners this year,” said Thomas Kyle-Milbrandt, the communications manager for DNR. “The federal agencies that we partner with each and every fire season have jurisdiction over approximately 43% of public lands in Washington State.”

► From Community to Community: “We learned yesterday afternoon that detained Farmworker leader Alfredo ‘Lelo’ Juarez’s Immigration Bond Hearing is scheduled for tomorrow Thursday May 8, 2025 at 8:30am at the NW ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wa. The address is 1623 E J St, Tacoma, WA 98421. Let’s show Lelo that we continue to stand with him! Join us in the Courtroom!”

► From Cascade PBS — Washington’s immigrant rights orgs mobilize amid deportation push — The group, Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest, provides reentry assistance to those released from the [Northwest Detention Center]. One newly released man broke ahead of the others as he recognized his brother waiting for him. The released man, who asked to be identified as “H” due to fear of retribution from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, went in for a tight embrace. “Ta’ala … ta’ala” — “Come here, come here,” H said in Arabic, as his brother burrowed his head into the small of his neck. AIDNW and its reentry services help anchor a web of independent community-based organizations around the state that work to backfill support gaps and monitor detainee treatment throughout the immigration enforcement system.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Supporters stage ‘eat in’ at food truck after ICE detains Tri-Cities business owner — Sergio Cerdio Gomez was arrested April 24 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during what they called a routine interview for his pending immigration application filed three years ago. Community members and groups have been organizing “eat ins” at the food truck at 7425 W. Clearwater Ave. On Tuesday, Indivisible Tri-Cities, an anti-Trump coalition, organized dozens of supporters to come out to rally along the street and to bring the family some business. Several proudly held signs and sported “Free Sergio” buttons.

► From the Yakima Herald — Yakima school board hears concerns about librarians and other staff cuts — The board approved a staffing plan last month that cuts 48 positions and $5.6 million from the district’s budget. Through a process outlined in labor contracts, the district sent out notices to about 100 people concerning this year’s reduction in force. In the first two weeks of the process, the district has 18 certificated positions that have not yet been called back, administrators said Monday. [Hoover Elementary School reading interventionist Tracy Sawyer] said she questions the district’s priorities: “What you cut shows what you value.”

 

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — EU plans to hit Boeing with tariffs if US trade talks fail — The duties would be part of an EU plan to hit about €100 billion ($114 billion) in US goods with additional tariffs, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. That list of products will be shared with member states this week and could change over the next month during consultations. Slapping Boeing with tariffs would also punish America’s biggest manufacturing exporter should the EU decide to counter unilateral levies imposed by President Donald Trump on the bloc along with dozens of other US trading partners. The simultaneous US tariff war with China has also caught Boeing in a squeeze, with Beijing telling airlines not to accept deliveries from the US planemaker.

 

NATIONAL

► From In These Times — The Indispensability of the Labor Organizer — If democracy in the United States is to be preserved and extended, then we need to honor those whose efforts are indispensable to building the one institution that truly stands as a bulwark against economic powerlessness and political defeat: the labor union. Labor organizers are essential to the growth of the union movement, but even more importantly, they demonstrate something at the heart of working-class life — how ideas and determination can be transformed into collective power, essential for the advancement of democracy itself, in the workplace and society at large.

► From Truthout — NIOSH Upheld Workplace Safety for Millions in the US. Trump Is Dismembering It. — One of the NIOSH units monitors firefighters suffering from cancers caused by exposure to toxins; another, based out of Morgantown, West Virginia, studies respiratory diseases that coal miners are prone to. Still another works on the health risks faced by first responders at the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 attacks. It runs a lab that certifies respiratory equipment used by firefighters and coal miners…If any agency ought to have bipartisan support, it’s one that helps sick firefighters — several research projects in recent years have found that firefighters have a statistically more significant likelihood of developing cancer than does the population at large, though the exact numbers are somewhat hard to quantify.

► From MSN — FAA Moves to Bolster Newark Airspace Strained By Failures — The US aviation regulator plans to upgrade technology infrastructure and staffing levels for air-traffic controllers that oversee flights bound for Newark Liberty International Airport after a critical outage led to more than week of severe flight disruptions. In addition to the technology improvements at Newark, the FAA said that it will increase staffing at the Philadelphia facility. Currently, there are 22 fully certified controllers at the site and 21 controllers and supervisors in training — 10 of which are receiving on-the-job training now, the regulator said.

► From the Atlantic — Breakfast Is Breaking — Breakfast can symbolize an entire nation: the full English, the French omelet, Belgian waffles. In many ways, America’s plate chronicles the nation’s history. But if breakfast was once a story of American innovation and plenty, it is now something different. No food captures the changes better than eggs. Since 2023, bird flu has wiped out henhouses, leading to egg shortages that have intermittently made buying a carton eye-wateringly expensive. Profiteering in the egg industry may also be keeping prices high: “When there are these horrible bird-flu outbreaks, the producers are actually making a lot more profit,” Miller said.

► From the Spokesman Review — Washington veteran says Supreme Court decision on trans troops will hurt readiness — “If someone’s like a supply sergeant or like myself who was a medic – and you suddenly have those individuals pulled out of those units – those units are no longer mission capable, because those people who have been trained to do the jobs within those units are now pulling them away,” said Goldston, who served in the military for 18 years. “That’s experience, money and everything else that is pulled from the units.” She said of the transgender service members who are serving, more than 53% of them are senior noncommissioned officers, meaning they have between 12 to 20 years of service .

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From the Government Executive — Axed federal employees sit on Capitol steps urging lawmakers to protect public services they used to provide — Dozens of former federal employees have been meeting weekly on Tuesdays on Capitol Hill to urge members of Congress to reverse President Donald Trump’s staff and programs cuts across government, which often have been carried out by the Elon Musk-backed Department of Government Efficiency. “I can say that we’re going to go back into Congress and do everything that we can. And that’s going to be slightly meaningless to say that I’m going to go in there and do that,” said Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. “What I’m going to promise is I’m going to go out and do it. I’m going to tell your stories outside so that people understand what this administration is actually doing, so they know whose side they’re supposed to be on.”

► From the Washington State Standard — WA governor pressed to veto $1.8B piece of Democrats’ tax bill — Paring that sum would force lawmakers to meet in special session to revise spending in the next budget that begins July 1, said House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-West Seattle. Fitzgibbon said he has not spoken with Ferguson about this legislation. The House bill, which passed over the strenuous objections of Republican lawmakers, would permanently increase the state’s two primary business and occupation tax rates on gross proceeds — 0.471% and 0.484% — to 0.5%, starting Jan. 1, 2027. Those would be the first increases to what’s known as the B&O tax rate since 1983, according to Democrats. About 300 taxpayers with more than $250 million in annual revenue would be subject to the additional 0.5% surcharge for three years starting Jan. 1, 2026.

► From the Spokesman Review — Patty Murray grills VA secretary over planned layoffs, handling of computer system rollout — Washington Sen. Patty Murray grilled Collins about a lack of transparency under his leadership, including a new policy that prevented her from meeting with veterans and health care providers at the Seattle VA hospital in April. She also questioned his goal of cutting 15% of the department’s workforce while accelerating the rollout of the electronic health record system that has hamstrung Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center since it became the testing ground at the end of the first Trump administration.

► From Jacobin — Trump Is Waging War on Veterans Affairs Workers’ Unions — [Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Doug Collins] helped win broad bipartisan approval for his nomination from a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC) that includes Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by mentioning that he belonged to the United Food and Commercial Workers, while working for five years at a Georgia grocery store chain. Four months later, there’s little evidence of Collins and VA unions working together on anything. Instead, Collins has been an eager implementer of Trump’s attempted cancellation of collective bargaining rights for most VA union members — on the grounds that they’re engaged in “national security work.”

► From the Washington Post — At Trump’s urging, USPS board to name David Steiner as postmaster general — President Donald Trump and the U.S. Postal Service’s governing board are expected to name FedEx board member and former Waste Management CEO David Steiner as the nation’s next postmaster general, according to two people familiar with the decision, helping solidify the White House’s control over the historically independent mail service. Steiner emerged in recent days as a leading candidate for the role at FedEx’s recommendation, according to three people familiar with the search process, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal.

► From People’s World — AFL-CIO’s Shuler, 100 days in, challenges Trump refusal to follow Constitution — Yet 100 days ago, Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That same Constitution, defining the presidency, says the president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Neither Shuler nor the majority of poll respondents believe Trump obeys those limits. “Democracy does not defend itself,” Shuler told a conference of like-minded organizations, gathered in the last week of April to discuss Trump’s first 100 days.

► From Editor & Publisher — CWA, NABET-CWA and NewsGuild-CWA condemn unlawful executive order interfering with press freedom for public media — “President Trump’s attack on public TV and radio stations is an attack on workers and an attack on our communities,” said Claude Cummings Jr., president of CWA. “This country — of the people, built by the people, for the people — relies on an independent and free local press. Working people are at the heart of local news stations, covering the stories that matter most to their communities. And with our communities under attack, working people will stand together and fight back.”

► From the Orlando Weekly — Worker advocates manage to kill Florida bill that would have eliminated labor protections for temp workers — In a rare win for the little guy in state politics, Florida lawmakers temporarily postponed and effectively killed a measure that sought to gut labor protections for nearly 1 million temporary workers in the state who do odd jobs in construction, janitorial services, and other industries with a low bar to entry.

► From KUTV — Utah Lt. Gov. Henderson issues stay to ‘union buster’ bill after signature collection — Utah Lt. Gov. Deirdre Henderson has issued a temporary stay that will keep the “union buster” bill passed by the State Legislature from becoming law. She made the announcement in a social media post Tuesday afternoon. The bill, officially known as HB 267, would block teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees from collective bargaining contracts – essentially taking away state employees’ right to negotiate for higher wages.

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