SEA rally | Türkiye’s lessons | Trump backs PLAs 

Friday, June 13, 2025

LOCAL

► From the Washington State Standard — Trump breaks historic Columbia River deal between U.S. government, tribes, Northwest states — “This move by the Trump administration to throw away five years’ worth of progress is shortsighted and reckless,” said Mitch Cutter, a salmon and energy strategist at the Idaho Conservation League, in a statement. “The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement was a landmark achievement between the federal government, states, Tribes and salmon advocates to find solutions for salmon and stay out of the courtroom. Now, it’s gone thanks to the uninformed impulses of a disconnected administration that doesn’t understand the Pacific Northwest and the rivers and fish that make our region special.”

► From the Spokesman Review — Two refugees came here legally. They were detained anyway, sparking Spokane’s mass immigration protest — They both qualified for asylum and were following the legal court process, O’Quinn said. Alvarez Perez qualified for the juvenile asylum process because he came to the U.S. younger than 21. They even had a court hearing scheduled for October, and it left O’Quinn optimistic about where things were headed. In Minneapolis on a work trip, she was stunned when she got the call that chaos had broke out on the streets of Spokane because the men were detained by ICE. Alvarez Perez’s sponsor, former city council president Ben Stuckart, had taken the two to their check-in when authorities detained them instead.

► From Seattle Education Association:

AEROSPACE

► From the New York Times — Boeing 787 Crash Brings Fresh Scrutiny to Plane Maker’s Safety Record — Manufacturing issues may ultimately have little to do with what went wrong, but the episode — the first fatal crash involving a Dreamliner — could still lead to more scrutiny into concerns about Boeing’s production practices that go back years. “Our deepest condolences go out to the loved ones of the passengers and crew on board Air India Flight 171, as well as everyone affected in Ahmedabad,” Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement. Mr. Ortberg also said that he had spoken with N. Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Group, the conglomerate that owns Air India, and offered Boeing’s support. The company said it had a team ready to help with the investigation, which is being led by India’s aviation regulators.

► From Wired — Air Traffic Control in the US Still Runs on Windows 95 and Floppy Disks — Most air traffic control towers and facilities across the US currently operate with technology that seems frozen in the 20th century, although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing—when it works. Some controllers currently use paper strips to track aircraft movements and transfer data between systems using floppy disks, while their computers run Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system, which launched in 1995…While the vintage systems may have inadvertently protected air traffic control from widespread outages like the CrowdStrike incident that disrupted modern computer systems globally in 2024, agency officials say 51 of the FAA’s 138 systems are unsustainable due to outdated functionality and a lack of spare parts.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Denver7 — UFCW Local 7 terminates contract extension with Safeway, gives 72-hour strike notice –The union that represents 7,000 Safeway/Albertsons employees in Colorado terminated its contract extension with the company on Wednesday. The termination will take effect at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, meaning United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 members who have already voted to strike could begin as early as Sunday. UFCW Local 7 president Kim Cordova warned of an imminent strike on Monday, telling Denver7’s Nicole Brady that the company had “one shot” left before they took such action.

► From Progressive Grocer — SoCal Grocery Workers Authorize Strike — Members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local unions representing 45,000 grocery store workers at Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions locations across Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to authorize their bargaining team to call for an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike in response to alleged labor violations during contract negotiations.

► From the Wrap — Vox Media Union Members Vote to Authorize Strike With Midnight Deadline — Terms of the pending deal were not shared. Vox employees represented by the Writers Guild of America East threatened to strike last week unless the company — which is home to outlets like New York magazine, The Verge and Vulture — offered better pay and protections against artificial intelligence taking their jobs.

NATIONAL

► From Fast Company — AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler on the value of Trump: “The best organizer is a bad boss” — Liz Shuler has a tough job. It’s not just tough to do. It’s tough even to define. As the president of the AFL-CIO, a 70-year-old federation of 63 national and international unions representing more than 15 million workers, she is the leader of the American labor movement. But “labor” is not a monolith. She represents NFL players, government workers, Hollywood writers, hotel janitors. Shuler, who became the first woman to run the AFL-CIO when she was elected in 2021, doesn’t negotiate pay rates or mediate disputes between workers and management.

► From the Seattle Times — How immigrants and labor, long joined in L.A., set the stage for protest — Los Angeles is a city of immigrants. It is also a city of unions. And in California, those two constituencies have essentially melded into one. So it should come as no surprise that federal immigration raids on workplaces around Los Angeles County this week set off the largest protests to date against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

► From the AP — Immigration officers intensify arrests in courthouse hallways on a fast track to deportation — The playbook has become familiar. A judge will grant a government lawyer’s request to dismiss deportation proceedings. Moments later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — often masked — arrest the person in the hallway and put them on a fast track to deportation, called “expedited removal.” President Donald Trump sharply expanded fast-track authority in January, allowing immigration officers to deport someone without first seeing a judge. Although fast-track deportations can be put on hold by filing a new asylum claim, people can be swiftly removed if they fail an initial screening.

► From the AP — Detained Columbia protester asks judge to order his release after government misses appeal deadline — The lawyers also say the government has declined to provide information about plans for Khalil’s release and hasn’t shown any other grounds for his continued detainment other than the reasons Farbiarz has already dismissed. “The deadline has come and gone and Mahmoud Khalil must be released immediately,” his lawyers said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the groups representing him. “Anything further is an attempt to prolong his unconstitutional, arbitrary, and cruel detention.”

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the AP — Sen. Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s news conference — Video shows a Secret Service agent on Noem’s security detail grabbing the California senator by his jacket and shoving him from the room as he tried to speak up during the DHS secretary’s event. Padilla interrupted the news conference after Noem delivered a particularly pointed line, saying federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to “liberate” the city from its “socialist” leadership…“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question … I can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community, and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said.

► From the New York Times — Trump’s Use of National Guard in Limbo After Court Rulings — In an extraordinary 36-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco severed Mr. Trump’s control of up to 4,000 National Guard troops, hundreds of whom are already deployed in the streets of Los Angeles on his orders. The judge said the administration’s seizure of them violated required procedures in a federal statute. The directive would have taken effect at noon Pacific time on Friday. But the Trump administration immediately filed a notice that it was appealing Judge Breyer’s decision. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed to stay the ruling while it reviews the case, temporarily blocking it from taking effect.

► From Bloomberg Law — Trump Encourages Federal Agencies to Use Union Labor Pacts — In a memo to be sent to executive branch agencies Thursday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said the Trump administration “supports the use of PLAs when those agreements are practicable and cost effective, and blanket deviations prohibiting the use of PLAs are precluded.” Unions have alleged that some federal agencies haven’t been enforcing the PLA requirement. “Over the last several months, some agencies have issued overly broad Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) deviations related to Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) and the use of those agreements,” the memo obtained by Bloomberg Law said. “The deviations have signaled an inconsistent Administration position relating to the use of PLAs.”

► From the AP — GOP tax bill would cost poor Americans, boost highest earners, CBO says — The cuts to the lowest-income households come from proposed cuts to social safety net programs including Medicaid and a food assistance program for lower-income people, known as Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program. The bill also proposes expanding work requirements to receive food aid and new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents to receive Medicaid. Some proposed tax breaks would be temporary, including a tax break on tips and overtime, car loan interest and a $4,000 increase in the standard deduction for seniors.

► From CNN — House GOP narrowly approves $9.4 billion package of DOGE cuts –Speaker Mike Johnson was on the verge of an embarrassing defeat on the floor: the narrowly divided GOP-led House was on track to reject billions in DOGE cuts. Then he pulled aside Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York centrist, who had just voted no. With the vote still open, several minutes of tense conversation followed before LaLota ultimately went to change his vote. Within seconds, the package of spending cuts narrowly passed.

► From the Labor Tribune — Trump killing energy projects will kill thousands of union jobs — The Labor Movement condemns the Department of Energy’s decision to cut $3.7 billion in funding for new energy projects and take away tens of thousands of good union jobs from America’s workers. President Trump promised a new era of American dominance in energy and manufacturing, but his administration is now taking away the jobs that are critical to making that happen.

► From the New York Times — Trump Tells Farmers ‘Changes Are Coming’ to Immigration Crackdown — “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years,” he said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.” He later said that there would be an “order” soon on the matter. The comments came as the Trump administration was accelerating its crackdown on immigration with a focus on workplaces with undocumented workers, such as farms, restaurants and construction sites.

► From the Bend Bulletin — Oregon lawmakers scale back proposal for unemployment strike payments amid blowback — Senate Bill 916 would have limited striking workers to receiving benefits for 26 weeks, in line with the current caps on unemployment checks for Oregonians. But after the Senate rejected an amended version of the bill on Tuesday, a bicameral conference committee voted Wednesday to set a new cutoff at 10 weeks after a two-week waiting period. Committee members voted along party lines, with the sole Republican present voting against the amendments. “I do feel like this is a massive compromise,” said Rep. Dacia Grayber, D-Portland, the bill’s lead author. “It’s not something I’m entirely thrilled with.”

INTERNATIONAL

► From Labor Notes — Take It from Turkish Workers: You Don’t Want a Strongman — What has happened to workers in Turkey since the country voted to concentrate power in one man, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, should be a warning flashing red to workers elsewhere…Now, arrests of union leaders are common. One DISK vice president spent time in jail recently, charged with “terrorist activities.” In Europe, only Belarus—where the dictatorship is official—has a worse record on repression of unions. “The arrests are a message to society,” Çerkezoğlu said, “not to speak out.” That message is unrelenting and pervasive. Two prominent movie actors were just sued by the government—for statements they made in 2013.

JOLT OF JOY

We’re headed back to 1977 for today’s iconic track, a timeless disco jam that has launched a thousand remixes:

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