Private prisons | Grocery strike vote | CEO pay

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

LOCAL

► From the Everett Herald — Providence Everett plans to reduce certified nursing assistants — “Members had relevant, important questions about how this decision was made, who was involved, and how many CNAs might be impacted,” wrote representatives from the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 8 in an email to nursing assistants Monday. “Providence was unable or unwilling to answer the majority of these questions during the meeting.” On Friday, the union issued a demand to bargain letter over the details of the severance package. Later that day, Providence management acknowledged they received the demand letter, Simpson said, but did not set a meeting date.

► From KING5 — Washington DNR warns of challenging wildfire season following NOAA and NWS layoffs — Matthew Dehr, a wildland fire meteorologist with the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR), works closely with federal and state agencies to forecast wildfire behavior and pre-position resources for wildfire management. Staffing was already in bad shape before the layoffs, he said. “We have less incident management teams available in the region today than we did two years ago. Folks are getting overworked already,” Dehr told KING 5. “I’m just a little scared for what this summer might look like without full capabilities from both our incident management teams and our incident meteorologists.”

► From the Guardian — Seattle Sounders protest Club World Cup bonus structure with MLSPA support –The Seattle Sounders wore shirts in the warm-up for the team’s game against Minnesota United on Sunday reading “Club World Ca$h Grab,” in protest over the manner in which bonuses from participating in the Club World Cup are being distributed. Afterwards, the MLS Players Association released a statement expressing solidarity with the Sounders players who, according to the statement “demanded a fair share of Fifa Club World Cup prize money.” “Fifa’s new tournament piles on to players’ ever-increasing workload without regard to their physical well-being,” the statement read, before pointing out that Fifa will pay MLS teams large amounts (about $9.5m) to participate in the tournament. “Despite this windfall, the league has refused to allocate a fair percentage of those funds to the players themselves.”

► From the union-busting Columbian — Rotschy employee suffers traumatic injuries when excavator bucket falls on him at Woodland work site — A man working in a trench suffered traumatic injuries Tuesday morning when an excavator bucket fell on him near Lewis River and Insel roads in Woodland. The man suffered injuries to his lower extremities, and he was taken by Life Flight to a hospital, according to a statement from Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue. Authorities did not release the worker’s name. A spokesman with Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue said the man works for Vancouver-based Rotschy Inc., which is under scrutiny for worker safety concerns.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From UFCW 367:

► From The Wrap — Vox Media Union Pledges to Strike Without New Deal Addressing AI, Rising Costs — The strike threat was made on Tuesday by the Writers Guild of America East, which said 95% of its bargaining members approved of the plan. Vox is the parent company of outlets like New York magazine, The Verge and Vulture. “We, the undersigned members of the Vox Media Union, are unwavering in our commitment to securing a collective bargaining agreement that fairly addresses the current economic environment, the rapidly evolving digital media landscape and other issues that our unit has deemed as critical,” the guild said.

NATIONAL

► From the AP — Supreme Court to hear private prison company appeal in suit over immigration detainee $1-a-day wages — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from a private prison company facing a lawsuit claiming immigration detainees were forced to work and paid a $1 a day in Colorado. The GEO Group appealed to the high court after a judge refused to toss out the 2014 lawsuit saying the detainees had to perform both unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.

► From More Perfect Union:

► From the AP — CEO pay: Find out how much time it would take for you to make as much as these highly paid CEOs — It would take someone making $85,000 more than 1,900 years to make as much as the highest paid CEO in this year’s AP CEO compensation survey. Want to know how long it would take you to match the pay of CEOs at Apple, Netflix, Citicorp and other top global companies? Input your salary below and find out.

► From WAMU — Government job cuts have disproportionate effect on Black federal workers — Reuters estimates more than 260,000 federal jobs will ultimately be eliminated this year through firings, early retirements and buyouts initiated by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. The economic impact of this mass downsizing has a particular impact on African Americans in civil service, as government employment has long been seen as a reliable pathway to Black middle-class prosperity…“You will not become wealthy [working for the federal government],” [AFGE Local 252 Pres. Sheria] Smith said. “You will experience protections in your benefits. And that allows you to plan for things, like a mortgage payment. Black federal workers earn more than many other Black Americans. Many of us are helping to support our family members who make even less.”

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

• White House formally sends its DOGE spending cuts request to Congress (CNN)

► From Newsweek — ‘Trump Flipped On Us’: MAGA Reacts to Potential National Citizen Database –Supporters of President Donald Trump expressed anger and disbelief online following reports that his administration had advanced plans to create a national citizen database with technology firm Palantir…”People are so quick to suggest that I flipped on Trump…No, no, no…I didn’t flip on Trump. TRUMP FLIPPED ON US. I’m just not willing to continue living in a LIE, and I will tell you the unfortunate TRUTH about it,” The Patriot Voice wrote on X to his 158,000 followers…”Shady, centralized dossiers on citizens are foundational for attacking civil rights and civil liberties—but paper files have long been replaced by a mishmash of electronic forms, biometrics, and data bought off data brokers,” Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Newsweek on Monday.

► From the Seattle Times — Trump tax bill will add $2.4 trillion to deficit and leave 10.9 million uninsured, CBO analysis says — The analysis comes at a crucial moment in the legislative process as Trump is pushing Congress to have the final product on his desk to sign into law by Fourth of July…Alongside the costs of the bill, the CBO had previously estimated that 8.6 million people would no longer have health care and 4 million fewer would have food stamps each month due to the legislation’s proposed changes to Medicaid and other programs.

► From the New York Times — Trump’s 50% Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum Imports Go Into Effect — U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports doubled on Wednesday, as President Trump continued to ratchet up levies on foreign metals that he claims will help revitalize American steel mills and aluminum smelters. The higher levies have already rankled close allies that sell metal to the United States, including Canada and Europe. They have also sent alarms to automakers, plane manufacturers, home builders, oil drillers and other companies that rely on buying metals.

► From Politico — Trump fired the heat experts. Now he might kill their heat rule. — When federal regulators were crafting a first-ever proposal to protect workers from extreme heat, they relied on government health experts who had been working on the deadly effects of high temperatures for years. Now that entire team is gone due to President Donald Trump’s personnel purges. The heat experts have been fired, placed on leave or forced out at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency, called NIOSH, was the first one to sound the alarm on the dangers that heat poses to workers. It recommended safety regulations in 1975, decades before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed the nation’s first heat rule last year.

► From the New York Times — Some House Republicans Have Regrets After Passing Trump’s Domestic Policy Bill — Now, Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer’s remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included. Last week, Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized. And as lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday after their weeklong break, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that she had been unaware that the mega-bill she voted for would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.

► From the Government Executive — Trump is planning to slash 107,000 federal jobs next year. See where –Agencies laid out their workforce reductions in an expanded version of President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget released on Friday, which includes both ideas they can implement unilaterally and proposals that will require congressional approval. If agencies follow through on their plans, the cuts will likely be even steeper, as the Defense Department and some other agencies did not include their announced cuts in the new budget documents.

► From the Guardian — Trump rescinds guidance protecting women in need of emergency abortions — The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance. Abortion rights supporters said on Tuesday that rescinding the Biden administration’s guidance will muddy hospitals’ ability to interpret [Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala)] and endanger pregnant patients’ lives. Since Roe’s collapse, dozens of women have come forward to say that they were denied medical treatment due to abortion bans. A reported five pregnant women have died after having their care denied or delayed, or being unable to access legal abortions.

► From the Washington State Standard — Replacement chosen for Washington state senator who died — Democratic state Rep. Victoria Hunt will move from the House to the Senate in the Washington Legislature after the King County Council appointed her on Tuesday to replace the late Sen. Bill Ramos. The Senate seat will be on the ballot in a special election in November, with the winner serving through 2026. Hunt is a candidate.

Editor’s note: the Washington State Labor Council has endorsed Victoria Hunt in the 2025 election.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Germans Are Buying More Electric Cars, but Not Teslas — Tesla sales in Germany dropped in May for the fifth month in a row, as demand for the electric vehicle maker continued to slide across much of Europe, despite Elon Musk’s efforts to turn his focus away from his U.S. government activities and back to his companies…In Germany, sales of battery-powered cars grew nearly 45 percent in May, compared with a year earlier. In Spain, overall sales of electric cars grew 72 percent, while Tesla sales slid 19 percent.

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