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St. Joe’s strike | 780k in WA | AI exploitation in the Philippines  

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From Cascadia Daily News — PeaceHealth hospital workers start strike, demand ‘fair contracts’  — The sidewalks outside Bellingham’s PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center were packed Monday morning with more than 300 people wearing union colors and waving signs as they launched a five-day strike. More than 1,000 employees are striking after months of failed negotiations between PeaceHealth and the two unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare 1199NW and Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD).

 

LOCAL

► From the Washington State Standard — Money crunch: Nearly 50 WA State Library employees facing layoffs — In the past two weeks, 47 workers at the main library in Tumwater and at the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in Seattle learned they are at-risk of losing their jobs, some in June and others in September, because of the lack of resources…Operating hours of the main state library in Tumwater will be trimmed and it may be closed entirely to the public, curbing access to its trove of historical and governmental collections. In addition, the Ask A Librarian program that receives thousands of calls each year could go unanswered, and email inquiries will not receive timely responses. Additionally, subscriptions to newspaper and genealogy databases will be discontinued, and the acquisition of new materials will be drastically limited, said deputy secretary of state Randy Bolerjack.

 

AEROSPACE

► From Bloomberg — China Removes Ban on Boeing Deliveries After US Trade Truce — Officials in Beijing have started to tell domestic carriers and government agencies this week that deliveries of US-made aircraft can resume, the people said, asking not to identified because the information is confidential. The resumption of deliveries to China will be an immediate boost to the Boeing. The thawing comes as the world’s two biggest economies agreed to a tariff truce, with the US lowering its combined 145% levies on most Chinese imports to 30% for 90 days. China agreed to slash its 125% duties on US goods to 10%, and remove other countermeasures taken against the US since April 2.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From AFA-CWA:

 

ORGANIZING

► From KHQ — Covington Safeway pharmacy staff push to unionize for better care — “Our patients and our community count on us every day,” said Sue Gratton, a 26-year veteran pharmacy technician involved in the union effort at the Covington location. “We’re forming a union so we can provide the safe, high-quality care our community deserves — and that starts with having the staffing, resources, and respect we need to do our jobs right.”

 

NATIONAL

► From Bloomberg — Addicted to ICE — Over the next few weeks, John will spend sleepless nights shivering in his cell. He’ll join an impromptu Bible study with other guys in his unit and watch the younger ones share their coats with older men during recreation time. He’ll eat in a room with a floor covered in feces. He’ll ask, many times, for supplies to clean it up. He’ll see a nurse for his back and his vision and his climbing blood pressure. He’ll receive nothing but Tylenol. He’ll participate in a hunger strike…This is an ICE town, after all: a community convinced that its financial survival depends on locking people up. Torrance County gets paid by ICE to detain immigrants, but it doesn’t keep the money. That flows to CoreCivic Inc., a behemoth in the private prison industry and the owner and operator of the detention facility. As much as Estancia is an ICE town, it’s a CoreCivic town too.

► From the New York Times — Avelo Airlines Faces Backlash for Aiding Trump’s Deportation Campaign — The Democratic governors of Connecticut and Delaware denounced Avelo, while lawmakers in Connecticut and New York released proposals to withdraw state support, including a tax break on jet fuel purchases, from companies that work with ICE…“Having an entire flight of people handcuffed and shackled would hinder any evacuation and risk injury or death,” the [Association of Flight Attendants-CWA] said in a statement. “It also impedes our ability to respond to a medical emergency, fire on board, decompression, etc. We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”

► From Bloomberg Law — Punching In: Google Union Members Make Asks in Antitrust Suit — The Alphabet Workers Union, affiliated with Communications Workers of America, is pushing a federal judge to include worker protections as he weighs how to remedy Google’s unlawful monopoly, according to an amicus brief filed May 9. Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia should ensure mechanisms for confidential reporting and anti-retaliation protections for employees who are critical of the company, the brief said.

► From the New York Times — Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm Made $198 Million Selling Stock as Profit Fell — The share sales raise questions about Ms. Denholm’s confidence in Tesla’s prospects. Her most recent sales, executed under a prearranged trading plan filed last summer, came as Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, took a time-consuming role in the Trump administration. Tesla’s car sales have plunged partly because Mr. Musk’s political activities have turned off some car buyers. The company’s quarterly profit fell in the first three months of 2025 to its lowest level in four years.

► From CNBC — McDonald’s announces plans to hire 375,000 workers with Trump Labor secretary — While McDonald’s has long been one of President Donald Trump’s culinary favorites, the company has been cozying up to his administration during his second term. The company likely hopes to stay in Trump’s good graces and avoid obstacles to its business, like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda or unfavorable regulation by the Department of Labor.

Editor’s note: so clearly the playbook here is to slash good, union jobs and promote hiring by corporations notorious for worker exploitation and abysmally low wages. A government-approved race to the bottom for working people. 

► From On The Line:

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — GOP’s scaled-back Medicaid plan still threatens coverage for millions — Republicans’ plans to cut health care as part of President Donald Trump’s tax and immigration agenda could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years, according to an estimate from Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper in documents obtained by The Washington Post.

► From Sen. Maria Cantwell:

► From the Hill — GOP charges ahead despite deep divisions on Medicaid, SALT — The tax proposal would hike the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) tax deduction — one of the most contentious parts of the entire sprawling package — from $10,000 to $30,000 for those earning less than $400,000. For wealthier households, the cap is gradually reduced according to income. That proposal was rejected last week by moderate Republicans in high-income states, who are demanding the cap go much higher. It is far lower than the proposal key lawmakers floated earlier in the day: $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

► From the New York Times — In Trump Tax Package, Republicans Target SNAP Food Program — The proposal, included in a draft measure to be considered by the House Agriculture Committee this week, would require states to supply some of the funding for food stamps while forcing more of its beneficiaries to obtain employment in exchange for federal aid. The moves could result in potentially millions of low-income families losing access to the safety net program.

► From Wired — The EPA Will Likely Gut Team That Studies Health Risks From Chemicals — In early May, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would split up the agency’s main arm devoted to scientific research. This reorganization threatens the existence of a tiny but crucial program housed within this office: the Integrated Risk Information System Program, commonly referred to as IRIS. This program is responsible for providing independent research on the risks of chemicals, helping other offices within the agency set regulations for chemicals and compounds that could pose a danger to human health.

► From the Washington Post — Civil rights agency moves to fire judge fighting Trump directives — The federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights has moved to terminate a New York administrative judge who has resisted compliance with directives from the White House, including President Donald Trump’s executive order decreeing male and female as two “immutable” sexes. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in response to Trump’s order has moved to drop at least seven of its own pending cases representing transgender workers alleging discrimination, and is classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority , signaling a major departure from its prior interpretation of civil rights law.

► From NBC News — Elon Musk’s regulatory troubles have begun to melt away in Trump’s second term –Since the start of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink…In the past few months, Trump’s Justice Department has dropped a case against Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, and his Labor Department has canceled a planned civil rights review of his automaker, Tesla. Another regulatory matter against SpaceX has entered settlement talks with the National Labor Relations Board. And in more than 40 other federal agency matters, regulators have taken no public action on their investigations for several months or more.

► From CBS News — Federal workers spoke to reporters after DOGE fired them. Now they face investigation. — The workers, whose formal dismissal date was delayed after leaders encountered bureaucratic snags, received an email in recent days carrying the subject line, “Administrative inquiry.” The email accused them of having “engaged with the press/media without authorization” and threatened “disciplinary action” including “removal from the U.S. Agency for International Development.” “It’s total intimidation,” said Randy Chester, the vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, which is the union that represents USAID employees.

► From Axios — New Washington law targets private detention centers — The newly signed law allows the state Department of Health to inspect privately run detention facilities at any time to ensure they are meeting minimum standards, including for food safety, access to medical care, and adequate running water. Facilities that don’t meet those standards can be fined up to $10,000 per violation, or up to $1 million in total. The law included an emergency clause, causing it to take effect immediately upon receiving Ferguson’s signature…Right now, the state Department of Health isn’t inspecting conditions inside the facility, with state officials saying they have previously been denied entry.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From Equal Times — The Filipino workers at the sharp end of AI — “One of the conditions required of people by Remotasks when recruiting is that they must agree to work as independent workers. The business trains us and then gives us access to a site where you can apply for microtasks, each of which takes about five and 30 minutes to complete for less than the pay-rate you expect,” explains Mary Jones, a mother who works several jobs to bring up her two young children. “I work between 8 and 10 hours per day for an average of €6,” says Junbee, 22, who is from one of Cagayan de Oro’s slums. “It’s less than the legal minimum, and I have no social protection, but I don’t have a choice. In this part of the Philippines, there are very few jobs.”…In front of her little house on stilts facing the vastness of the ocean, Judy Mae Ravanera, 26, openly accuses Remotasks of cheating her. “My husband and I annotated data for them for about a year. Then, one fine day, they stopped paying our wages,” she tells me quietly inside her home. “Six months later we’d still not had anything. And because the business is based abroad, we’ve never been able to complain to the courts.”

► From the Seattle Times — Microsoft layoffs may hit 3% of global workforce — Microsoft confirmed Tuesday that it’s laying off thousands of employees across the company. The Redmond-based tech giant didn’t disclose how many employees it plans to lay off, but a spokesperson said up to 3% of Microsoft’s workforce could be affected. Microsoft has 228,000 employees worldwide, meaning more than 6,800 people could be laid off.

 

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

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