Trades pressure Rotschy | AI job impacts | Support for TX

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

STRIKES

► From Common Dreams — ‘Holding The Line’: Municipal Workers’ Strike Enters Second Week as Philly Refuses to Pay Living Wage — [Mayor Cherelle Parker (D)] has offered a pay increase of 8.75% over the next three years, which she described as historic. But DC 33 president Greg Boulware said that’s far too little for municipal workers, many of whom are among the city’s “working poor,” to survive. “It’s not like as if our members are making $80,000, $90,000 a year,” Boulware said…The average municipal worker in Philadelphia makes around $46,000, which is $15,000 less than the median income in the city and less than half of what a single adult needs to live comfortably, according to a study by SmartAsset. “We got people that work and repair the water mains and can’t afford their water bill,” Boulware said at a rally last week.

LOCAL

► From the NW Labor Press — Trades stand vigil at Rotschy — For months, local construction unions have been warning anyone who will listen about Rotschy Inc., a non-union Vancouver general contractor with a long record of safety incidents and violations. Now they’re getting louder.  Since June 18, led by Operating Engineers Local 701, officers and staff of as many as a dozen construction unions have kept an almost daily presence outside Rotchy’s headquarters and at Rotschy work sites. Their very-public vigil has gotten the attention of passersby, workers and project owners, and local news organizations.

► From the Spokesman Review — ‘We just need him back’: Injured Coeur d’Alene firefighter faces ‘long, hard road’ to recovery — Tysdal suffered a shotgun blast to the right of his back that penetrated his body and destroyed his left clavicle, or collar bone. He also suffered a couple broken ribs, Loney said. While he is in stable condition after three surgeries, Tysdal can’t yet move below the chest…Eckert, the union head, said Tysdal needs support to make it back to the station, which is situated near the base of Canfield Mountain, where the shooting took place.

► From the union-busting Columbian — WA households can’t afford basics, even if they’re not poor, report says — Over a quarter of households in Washington earn more than the federal poverty threshold but still struggle to afford necessities like housing, child care, transportation and more, according to a recent report on affordability in Washington…“The federal poverty level is an outdated instrument that does not consider the wide variation in cost of living by location,” wrote the authors of the report. As a result, measurements based on the federal poverty level “sharply underestimate the true extent of financial hardship in the U.S.”

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing continues production ramp-up, with 42 MAX deliveries in June — Boeing continued on its path to recovery in June, recording its highest number of 737 MAX deliveries since the end of 2023 and its best delivery rate for the first half of the year since 2018. In a monthly recap of airplane orders and deliveries, Boeing said Tuesday it delivered 60 airplanes last month and 150 planes in the second quarter of the year, which includes April, May and June. In the first six months of 2025, Boeing delivered 280 planes, the company continued, marking its best second quarter and best first half of the year since 2018.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Hollywood Reporter — Food Stylists in the Writers’ Union? That’s a Reality in an Innovative New Labor Deal — On Monday the Writers Guild of America East announced that its members at Garden Slate Productions, formerly called BSTV Entertainment, had unanimously ratified a first union contract with the cuisine-focused entertainment company…But in a move befitting a shingle that’s behind shows like Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, Big Restaurant Bet and Feasting With the Stars, the pact also covers some unprecedented roles for the WGA East, like food stylist, culinary producer and culinary assistant. (Other atypical roles that are included? Art director, art production assistant, assistant art director and prop stylist.)

NATIONAL

► From the Seattle Times — Behind Microsoft’s layoffs: A new attitude shaped by AI — The Redmond-based tech giant laid off more than 6,000 employees in May, followed up by an additional 305 in early June. The company kicked off its fiscal year in early July by eliminating 9,000 more workers. Explanations as to why the world’s most valuable company is shedding workers at a pace rarely seen in its history have been vague and, for the employees who might be next, unpersuasive…As former Microsoft employees searching for work feel the squeeze, some who survived the layoffs feel a shift in the company’s culture in the wake of the launch of ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, in late 2022.

► From the New York Times — Trump Administration Will Try to Deport Abrego Garcia Before His Trial, Justice Dept. Says — The Justice Department said on Monday that Trump officials would immediately begin the process of expelling Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the country again if he is released from custody next week on charges filed after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador in March…There has been persistent confusion about what might happen to Mr. Abrego Garcia almost from the moment he was brought back from his erroneous expulsion to El Salvador. Much of the confusion has stemmed from ambiguous and contradictory statements from the Trump administration and from what appears to be dueling views from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security about how to handle the case.

► From the New York Times — Will A.I. Replace New Hires or Middle Managers? — Some experts argue that A.I. is most likely to affect novice workers, whose tasks are generally simplest and therefore easiest to automate. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the A.I. company Anthropic, recently told Axios that the technology could cannibalize half of all entry-level white-collar roles within five years…But other captains of the A.I. industry have taken the opposite view, arguing that younger workers are likely to benefit from A.I. and that experienced workers will ultimately be more vulnerable.

► From the AP — US adults want the government to focus on child care costs, not birth rates, AP-NORC poll finds — The survey finds that only about 3 in 10 Americans say declining birth rates are a “major problem” in the U.S., and just 12% say that encouraging families to have more children should be “a high priority” for the federal government. Republicans also see affordable child care and health outcomes for pregnant women as higher government priorities than promoting more births, indicating that even as conservatives push pronatalist policies, they’re not getting much buy-in from the GOP base.

► From the AP — Debate erupts over role job cuts played in weather forecasts ahead of deadly Texas floods — Former federal officials and outside experts have warned for months that President Donald Trump’s deep staffing cuts to the National Weather Service could endanger lives. After torrential rains and flash flooding struck Friday in the Texas Hill Country, the weather service came under fire from local officials who criticized what they described as inadequate forecasts, though most in the Republican-controlled state stopped short of blaming Trump’s cuts.

► From the Texas AFL-CIO:

As Texans recover from the recent floods, we have compiled a list of resources for affected counties, available to both union members and the general public.

Visit https://t.co/yXrF605qga to view the list.

— Texas AFL-CIO (@TexasAFLCIO) July 7, 2025

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — Veterans Affairs reverses course on large-scale layoffs — In a news release, VA said that it was on pace to reduce its total staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of this fiscal year, a push that the department said eliminates the need for a “large-scale reduction-in-force.” The announcement marks a significant reversal for the Trump administration, which had planned for months to cut VA by roughly 83,000 employees, according to plans revealed in an internal memo circulated to agency staffers in March.

► From Bloomberg Law — Punching In: DOL’s Quiet Regulation Rollback Raises Eyebrows — With little fanfare the US Labor Department advanced more than two dozen proposals last week, including rules to cancel minimum wage and overtime eligibility for certain health aides, anti-discrimination requirements for apprenticeship, and the regulations underpinning the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. DOL officials dropped notice of the major de-regulatory push last week without a press conference or public announcement…[Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)] in particular raised concern about the limited details surrounding a child labor rulemaking pending at the White House budget office. Currently only a title of the proposal is available, but it indicates the DOL plans to revise rules that set limits on the hours children can work and restrictions on the types of occupations minors can work in.

► From NPR — LISTEN: Medicaid’s many different names may cause confusion about who’s losing coverage — An estimated 16 million Americans could lose their health care coverage with funding cuts and policy changes in the federal reconciliation bill. That is according to a nonpartisan government analysis. About half of that loss is expected to come from changes that could lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts. Health care advocates and experts warn that people may not know they are losing their coverage until it’s too late.

► From HR Dive — DOL tosses Biden effort to end subminimum wage for workers with disabilities — The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday withdrew a Biden-era rule that aimed to phase out a section of the Fair Labor Standards Act that allowed employers to pay certain workers with disabilities wage rates that fall below the federal minimum wage.

► From the New York Times — Planned Parenthood Wins a Temporary Injunction Over Medicaid Funding — Planned Parenthood won a temporary injunction on Monday that allows its clinics to continue to receive Medicaid funding for services that are unrelated to abortion. The organization sued the Trump administration earlier on Monday over a new law that essentially bars Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving federal Medicaid payments, claiming that the legislation is an unconstitutional attack on Planned Parenthood’s national organization and its locally run health care clinics.

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