NEWS ROUNDUP

Unsafe @ UW | Newsguild surges | Air Canada TA

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From the Missourian — Local Boeing workers expect lengthy strike — The offers included a 20 percent wage increase over four years, and the first offer also included $5,000 ratification bonuses, according to the Associated Press. The company called it “landmark” offer. When over 33,000 Boeing workers in the Seattle area went on strike last year, their initial offer from Boeing had been a 25 percent pay raise over four years. The strike ultimately won Seattle workers a 38 percent wage increase over four years, as well as a choice between a $12,000 ratification bonus or a combination of a $7,000 bonus and a $5,000 401(k) contribution, CNBC reported at the time. Union resident [sic] and Boeing worker Joe Hodge said it was clear Boeing “came up short” in St. Louis as compared to the Seattle offer. Machinists in this area work on military defense, which generates more than one-third of Boeing’s revenue, according to the AP.

 

LOCAL

► From the Daily — UW psychiatric nurses report surge in safety incidents amid staffing crisis — Nurses at UW Medical Center – Northwest filed 41 complaints in June, reporting dangerous staffing conditions at the Center for Behavioral Health and Learning — nearly seven times the number reported just three months prior…They added that UW Medicine recently hired travel nurses to “float” in the unit with minimal training — sometimes just one day of orientation and no guidance on physical handling. “They try to gaslight us into thinking that this stuff is OK, but the staff who have been in health care for a long time know that this isn’t right,” the RN said. The RN recalled being punched twice by a patient while short-staffed. Security did not arrive for several minutes, while no other staff members were available to intervene because of how short-staffed the floors remain.

► From KING 5 — Sound Transit increases security presence to combat safety concerns — Ken Price, vice president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, which represents Sound Transit workers, acknowledged the complexity of the challenges staff encounter daily. “At Sound Transit, we have transit operators that drive some of their busses. We have the train operators. We have the custodians. We have supervisors,” Price said. “We’re not trained to handle some of these complex issues.”

► From the Lynnwood Times — UFCW300 Labor Brief: Grocery Store Workers Advance Rights for Themselves and Community — The good news is that me and my unionized co-workers tried to address these issues in our recent contract negotiation with Fred Meyer. After six long months, while we did not get everything we deserved, we made progress. Higher wages, protections for our union health care and retirement, and some 1st ever agreement about staffing. This was a good thing.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Tri-Cities’ largest single employer asks workers to volunteer for layoffs — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland has sent out memos offering voluntary layoffs to selected employees. Its goal is to “minimize the need for involuntary actions,” said recent memos to employees who are in operational units selected for voluntary layoffs. Earlier this month the Tri-Cities’ largest single employer told workers that it was preparing for cuts by attrition and “voluntary separation” in certain research programs due to uncertainty in the federal budget.

► From the PNW Newspaper Guild:

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From KPTV — Evergreen Public Schools union workers schedule strike vote for Thursday — The Evergreen Chapter of Public School Employees of Washington SEIU Local 1948 (PSE) represents 1,400 works [sic], including paraeducators, maintenance workers, bus drivers, and other staff. The union says members are asking for an increase in pay, along with changes to benefits and working conditions…“We hope the district will return to the table with a fair proposal before August 21, but our members are prepared to stand up for what’s right,” the union said in a release.

► From the Washington Post — WNBA’s labor battle gives young stars a crash course in business — There’s a long way to go before the sides agree on a deal. But when that agreement eventually nears its end, these negotiations will be valuable to the next generation — players such as Iriafen. These players might be uniquely prepared, given that they received lessons in the business side of sports as name, image and likeness issues erupted during their collegiate careers.

 

ORGANIZING

► From Labor Notes — Member-Organizers Drive a NewsGuild Surge — The Guild has transformed itself in recent years, thanks to rising rank-and-file militancy and innovative organizing tactics. Since 2020, the Guild has organized 210 workplaces, including some of the largest media organizations in the U.S. That includes 600 tech workers at the New York Times (the largest unionized tech unit in the country), 226 workers at Politico, and 180 workers at The Atlantic magazine, as well as smaller operations like 20 workers at the Anchorage Daily News.

► From Bloomberg Law — Unions ‘Wait and See’ on Elections as Trump Upends Labor Arena — A significant drop in union elections and petitions to the National Labor Relations Board in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term shows that organized labor is wary of risking disputes that could lead to unfavorable rulings with broader implications…The average number of newly certified unions per month dropped 22.3% between January and July this year, compared to the last six months of the Biden administration, according to data from the NLRB’s monthly election reports. There has also been a 15.8% drop in the number of representation petitions filed in the first half of fiscal year 2025 compared to the same period last fiscal year.

 

NATIONAL

► From the Boston Globe — ‘There is real damage being done’: Rising Black unemployment could signal deeper economic woes — Workers of color are often the first to feel the impact of a weakening economy, and with the nationwide Black unemployment rate hitting a near four-year high, economists warn it could be a sign of more job losses to come. In Massachusetts, the Black and Latino 12-month average unemployment rates have been rising since last fall, and while they have recovered slightly in recent months, at 6.8 percent in July, they are still the highest they’ve been in more than three years. Nationwide, Black unemployment has risen to 7.2 percent; the Latino rate has remained around 5 percent.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Trump wants states to feed voter info into powerful citizenship data program — Some Democratic election officials and opponents of the effort fear President Donald Trump wants to build a federal database of voters to target political opponents or cherry-pick rare examples of noncitizen voters to fuel a sense of crisis…SAVE was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, this spring refashioned it into a platform that can scan states’ voter rolls if election officials upload the data.

► From the Nation — As Progressive Elected Officials, We Choose Both Economic Populism and Abundance — At the local level, housing is the policy where you can most clearly see how abundance policy and economic populism work together. According to the view that abundance and progressivism are in inherent conflict, local officials should have to choose between pro-housing regulatory reform and policies like displacement protections and affordable housing investments. But in Seattle, local official Teresa Mosqueda has done both: She supported a citywide upzoning and crafted the JumpStart Housing Community Self-Determination Fund, which steers money from a new progressive payroll tax into anti-displacement projects.

► From the Huffington Post — Worker Protection Agency Is Ditching Its Judges To Satisfy Trump Administration — The Federal Labor Relations Authority has told Congress it will eliminate its administrative law judges as part of a reorganization scheme to comply with the Trump administration’s cost-cutting orders. The judges conduct hearings involving unlawful firings and union contract violations, and issue decisions that can be reviewed by the authority’s three presidentially appointed members.

► From Politico — A glimpse at the DOL regulations the White House doesn’t want you to see — The Trump administration on Friday outlined its roadmap for rules at the Labor Department and other federal agencies. And then it disappeared. Over the course of the day, the twice-annual regulatory agenda went from publicly available to locked behind a password-protected page to the website being down altogether…One policy with a less-certain future is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s proposed heat safety standard for workers. The Trump administration surprised some observers by holding a series of public hearings from interested parties on the sweeping proposal, but the regulatory agenda gives no timeframe for next steps. (There’s another curious item titled “OSHA Standards Improvement Project 2025,” though I failed to screengrab that in time.)

► From CNBC — Trump administration moves to ‘prevent benefits’ for some under popular student loan forgiveness program — The U.S. Department of Education said it issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on its regulations to halt loan forgiveness under PSLF for employees “of organizations that are undermining national security and American values through illegal means.”…For now, the language used by the Trump administration on how it will determine an organization is ineligible is vague, which advocates say could help it nix any nonprofit it doesn’t approve of. Organizations that provide support to undocumented immigrants or transgender people, for example, could be at risk, they say.

► From the Spokesman Review — Unions, contractors clash over proposal to require labor equity in Spokane projects — Councilman Paul Dillon, alongside several area unions such as Carpenters Local 59, Ironworkers Local 14 and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 73, unveiled the “Public Dollars for Public Benefit” act at a June news conference. Dillon and union supporters argue the new law would ensure better protections for construction workers on city projects, ensure a larger portion of local tax dollars are paid out to local workers and promote the development and retention of a local skilled workforce…“If a contractor won’t invest in their workforce, we must ask, are they the ones we want to build Spokane’s public projects?” asked Matt Chapman, a representative of Ironworkers Local 14.

► From KUOW — As DOJ threatens WA over sanctuary laws, state officials double down on protections — Washington Attorney General Nick Brown told KUOW the letter is an intimidation tactic that doesn’t rely on “a sound analysis of what the law actually requires.” “I just think the threats from the Department of Justice and from the Trump administration are fairly hollow when it comes to the actual law,” Brown said Monday. “I think the letter is bluster, but it’s a letter from the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country. So I, as the [state’s] attorney general, I need to take it seriously.”

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Air Canada reaches deal with flight attendant union to end strike, operations to gradually restart — The union said the agreement will guarantee members pay for work performed while planes are on the ground, resolving one of the major issues that drove the strike. “Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power,” the union said in a statement. “When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back — and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”

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

Related Topics:
Exit mobile version