NEWS ROUNDUP

Cascade PBS layoffs | Shutdown looms | Kimmel’s back (kinda)

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From the St. Louis Business Journal — Boeing open to ‘constructive discussions’ to end strike, company lobbyist tells lawmakers — “Boeing has received an email and hard copy of our membership-ratified proposal and request for meeting dates and times. What’s not real is Boeing’s claim that it values its workforce while refusing to recognize the will of the very people who give their blood, sweat, and tears to produce the finest planes and other defense equipment that keep our nation and men and women in uniform safe,” Bennett said in a statement

 

LOCAL

► From KUOW — Seattle’s Cascade PBS announces layoffs, end of online long-form journalism — A spokesperson for the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, which represents journalists at Cascade PBS, said in a written statement that the union was “deeply disappointed that Cascade PBS is choosing to eliminate its newsroom and lay off its reporters at a time when we need good, thoughtful journalism more than ever.” The statement continues, “We do not yet fully understand why this decision was made and we will be meeting in Cascade PBS executives and management in the coming days to discuss the impact on our union members and the reasoning behinds these decisions.”

Editor’s note: this is a devastating local journalism loss for Washington. Sending solidarity to our union siblings at Cascade PBS who have provided invaluable coverage and investigative reports on so many issues that impact working people.

► From the Wenatchee World — Displaced in the fields: Domestic farmworkers and the cost of immigration shifts in the Pacific Northwest — Many local workers, documented and undocumented, say they are in the middle of two powerful forces: immigration enforcement threats and the expansion of the H-2A guest worker program, which allows foreign people to work temporarily in the U.S. with a visa. Giovanni is a farmworker from Quincy, Washington, who has worked in agriculture for over 20 years. He said workers do talk among themselves about their fears…Edgar Franks is the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a labor union based in Skagit County, Washington. Franks said narratives about ICE and immigration detentions are having an impact on the entire community, regardless of documentation status. He said the fear among the community is not because of rumors, but lived experiences.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Left Voice — These Non-Profit Workers Are Fighting Trump’s Attacks On Immigrants While Fighting for a Better Workplace — The International Rescue Committee is the largest non-profit organization providing services for refugee communities around the world. It is also the site of a growing union campaign. Two years ago, workers at the organization’s office in Dallas, TX won an NLRB election, becoming the first office to unionize. Since then, over one dozen more offices throughout the United States joined the union. For the past year the union, IRC Workers Unite — affiliated with OPEIU: Office and Professional Employees International Union — have been bargaining for a contract…These workers also spoke in depth about how attacks from the Trump administration have directly impacted their frontline work with vulnerable immigrant communities, how their co-workers have been caught up in the attacks, and how this has shaped conversations with IRC management.

Editor’s note: Seattle workers are part of this effort — read their story here.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Kaiser Permanente workers across Southwest Washington, Oregon vote to authorize strike — The Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals AFT Local 5017, AFL-CIO, represents about 3,700 Kaiser Permanente employees across Southwest Washington and Oregon, including registered nurses and lab professionals. Those employees are currently bargaining alongside 60,000 other members of the Alliance of Healthcare Unions, a federation of 23 local unions representing workers everywhere Kaiser Permanente operates. The strike authorization vote began Sept. 15 and concluded Friday. Of 92 percent of union members who voted, 97 percent voted to authorize a strike, according to a Friday news release from the union.

 

NATIONAL

► From Black Press USA — Trump’s Attacks on Federal Workers Are Attacks on Black Workers. The Labor Movement Is Fighting Back — Attacks on federal workers aren’t just a problem for their families or their unions—they hurt all of us and jeopardize the essential government services we rely on daily. These workers make sure our food and water are safe and our communities are free from pollution. They protect our families during public health emergencies, care for our veterans, and monitor extreme weather and natural disasters. When workers can’t speak up on the job and make sure their offices are serving the American people, we are all at risk. For Black Americans, Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce threaten to reverse decades of progress

► From the AP — ABC ends Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and his show will return Tuesday — Kimmel’s suspension arrived in a time when Trump and his administration have pursued threats, lawsuits and federal government pressure to try to exert more control over the media industry. Trump has reached settlements with ABC and CBS over their coverage.

Editor’s note: the show won’t be back on in Seattle, as Sinclair Broadcast Group apparently wants the late night host to donate to far-right political group Turning Point USA before agreeing to put him back on their 38 ABC affiliates.

► From the AFL-CIO:

► From Bloomberg Law — Starbucks Illegally Fired Staff for Meeting With Union in Cafe — Starbucks Corp. must reinstate and compensate baristas at a Wisconsin store after a National Labor Relations Board judge concluded the company had engaged in a “scorched earth campaign” against their unionizing workforce. Starbucks violated federal labor law by firing four baristas at a Madison, Wis. cafe in 2022 and refusing to consider one of them for rehire, said NLRB Administrative Law Judge Melissa Olivero in her ruling Monday. Workers at the store began organizing with Starbucks Workers United in March 2022 and held an organizing meeting in the cafe with a union representative.

► From Reuters — Largest US rail union endorses Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern merger — The largest U.S. railroad union said Monday it will support Union Pacific’s (UNP.N),  $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern (NSC.N), helping to advance a deal that surprised competitors and had been expected to face resistance from labor and regulators. The endorsement marks a shift from the initial opposition by SMART-TD, the transportation division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers. When the merger was announced in July, the union said it would oppose the deal on concerns about job security, competition and infrastructure access. SMART-TD said its members working in train and yardmaster services will have job protection for the length of their careers following the transaction. “For generations, railroaders have worried about what mergers might mean for their jobs. Today, we can say with confidence that the biggest railroad and the biggest rail union in America are breaking new ground,” SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson said in a press release.

► From CNBC — Spirit Airlines to furlough 1,800 flight attendants to cut costs in bankruptcy — The airline will first offer voluntary furloughs, so the final number of cabin crew members who will be affected wasn’t immediately clear. Flight attendants can apply for voluntary furlough leaves of six or 12 months and will retain medical benefits, their union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said in a note to members on Monaday that was also reviewed by CNBC. AFA said it is working with union chapters at other airlines to help affected flight attendants get “preferential interviews” with other carriers. Involuntary furloughs will take effect on Dec. 1, AFA said.

► From Wired — $3,800 Flights and Aborted Takeoffs: How Trump’s H-1B Announcement Panicked Tech Workers — Conflicting messages poured out of the White House, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other government social media accounts. “Things are changing every hour, every 30 minutes,” says Steven Brown, an immigration attorney at Reddy Neumann Brown PC. Lutnick claimed the $100,000 fee would be charged annually, others said it’s a one-time charge; the original proclamation did not exempt current visa holders, but the follow-up announcements did. The contradictions and new developments left legal immigrant workers, their families, and employers unsure what to believe over the past weekend.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Government Executive — As shutdown looms, federal agencies have no public plans for one –Typically, agencies publicly post their “contingency plans” in advance of a potential shutdown that detail which workers would be furloughed and which would remain on the job. Large swaths of the federal workforce are exempted from shutdown furloughs due either to the nature of their jobs or because they are funded through means other than annual appropriations…While not every agency complied with that mandate historically, the most recently updated plans were always made publicly available on OMB’s website. Earlier this year, OMB took down those plans. It has not yet restored them and OMB did not respond to multiple inquiries into their status.

► From the Wall Street Journal — USDA Puts Food Researchers on Leave — “Several employees represented by AFGE were placed on administrative leave today after the public learned of USDA’s cancellation of food security data collection,” Dodson said. “The American people deserve transparency and honest data—not retaliation against the workers who provide it.”

► From the Washington Post — Judge deals Trump’s war on wind its first major setback — A judge on Monday temporarily lifted the Trump administration’s order to halt construction of Revolution Wind, a massive offshore wind energy project that would power hundreds of thousands of homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut…District Judge Royce Lamberth in D.C. wrote in his ruling that the developers of the project are likely to succeed in their lawsuit against the administration and are “likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.” He also wrote that “maintaining the status quo by granting an injunction is in the public’s interest.”

► From the Washington Post — Supreme Court allows Trump to fire Democratic member of trade commission — The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the high court also said it will hear arguments in December on overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to set up independent, nonpartisan agencies insulated from political interference by the president if they do not wield executive power…“The majority, stay order by stay order, has handed full control of all those agencies to the President,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “He may now remove — so says the majority, though Congress said differently — any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies’ bipartisanship and independence.”

► From NBC News — White House bullish after a long string of Supreme Court victories — While President Donald Trump’s aggressive use of executive power has resulted in a flurry of lawsuits, administration officials have won a series of high-profile victories at the Supreme Court in part due to careful case selection aimed at securing the backing of the conservative majority. The White House has won 19 times at the Supreme Court since Trump took office and is on a 16-case winning run. The last loss was in May.

► From Reuters — Amazon sues to block New York state labor law — Amazon.com sued the New York State Public Employment Relations Board on Monday to block it from enforcing a new law that the online retailer considers an attempt to illegally regulate private sector labor relations. In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, Amazon accused New York of engineering an “unconstitutional power grab” by letting the regulator known as PERB usurp the National Labor Relations Board’s primary authority to address union organizing, collective bargaining and workplace disputes.

► From Bloomberg — Punching In: California Fills Wage Protection Hole Left by DOL — Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law last week a bill that enshrines overtime pay requirements for live-in domestic workers and direct care workers that assist elderly or disabled people. A United Domestic Workers local based in California said the new law will establish a state right to overtime pay for 770,000 home health providers in the state. “Members of our union fought hard to gain overtime pay and we weren’t about to let Trump take it away—particularly because domestic workers have been historically excluded from labor protections,” said Doug Moore, Executive Director of United Domestic Workers.

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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