Immigrant firefighters | Evergreen strike | 445,000 federal workers

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

STRIKES

► From KOIN — Evergreen Public Schools strike keeps students home — “We started negotiations in March and have worked diligently thoughout the process trying to get this done before school,” said Evergreen Schools Employee Union President Mindy Troffer-Cooper. “Last contract we worked until December before we finally came to a deal, and we decided that that wasn’t the way we wanted to go this year.”…Teachers are not on strike but are supporting the classified staff by not crossing the picket lines, which will be visible again on Tuesday. However, both sides will be back at the bargaining table on Tuesday, this time with a mediator.

► From the Washington State Standard — Strike delays start of classes in southwest Washington school district — The district has been understaffed for many years, which has resulted in classified employees being stretched thinner than is safe for them and the students in their care, said Mindy Troffer-Cooper, president of the Evergreen chapter of the union. Paraeducators at the middle and high school level have been donating their time to help their colleagues with school bus pickups and drop offs and other situations where understaffing would cause danger to students and staff. The union tried to negotiate a fix into last year’s contract, which resulted in classified staff working without a contract for five months before they ultimately agreed to sign one that didn’t address their concerns.

► From KTVI — STL Boeing strike continues on Labor Day — More than 3,000 Boeing defense workers remain on strike at plants across the St. Louis region. The walkout, now in its fourth week, is the company’s first defense-sector strike since 1996. Workers say they want to keep building America’s defense aircraft, but only with a contract that values their experience…“Earlier this year, our CEO had a strong focus on culture within the company. As soon as contract negotiations start, he has now stated we are only 2%. It’s insulting and even more demoralizing to hear that from your own company. We demand respect! We demand it now! At least we give a damn!” the striker said. Union leaders warn that without contract changes, experienced employees could leave for competitors.

LOCAL

► From the Washington State Standard — Firefighters question leaders’ role in Washington immigration raid –The Washington State Department of Natural Resources, the state’s lead wildfire response agency, said federal officials did not notify their state counterparts about the investigation. “DNR was not informed of the incident until well after the fact,” said Ryan Rodruck, wildfire on-call public information officer with the agency. Rodruck noted that the fire response was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Press officers with the Forest Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Multiple wildfire sources said the crews would not have been sent to the staging area where they were ambushed without the knowledge of top leaders on the fire’s management team…Duncan, the former Forest Service firefighter, said it was likely not a coincidence that two crews with many brown-skinned members were targeted in the raid.

► From Cascade PBS — Immigration raid at WA wildfire could hurt firefighter recruitment — Many contract crews rely heavily on immigrant labor. “[Immigrants] make up a huge portion of forestry and fire, they’re an integral part of this industry,” Polhamus said…The effects of workers being detained could go well beyond those individuals, experts said. If a crew loses two or three members, it may no longer meet the specifications it needs to fulfill its contract. That could result in the entire crew being grounded — without pay — until replacements arrive. “We utilize thousands and thousands of contract firefighters,” Scopa said. “It absolutely could impact our ability to manage fires if we’re losing crews.”

► From the Seattle Times — ICE fears contribute to construction labor shortage in WA — Monty Anderson, executive secretary of the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council, has a different perspective on the reported reasons behind the shortage. He believes there isn’t a lack of qualified workers but a lack of companies willing to pay competitive wages. “Sometimes, we get this idea that there’s no workforce,” he said. “Well, there’s no workforce if you’re going to pay the bare minimum and not provide any training or any benefits.”…No matter their documentation status, many immigrant workers are expressing fear over increased immigration enforcement, not just for themselves, but for their families, Anderson said. He said he has come across undocumented construction workers in Seattle who are being paid in cash. Companies will hire undocumented workers, who often work for less, to cut down on their costs, he added. “Some of these companies give more regard to the cost of concrete and Sheetrock than they do to human beings,” he said.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Washington is one of the best states for workers, new study says. Here’s why — The Evergreen State came in at No. 5 on Oxfam America’s “Best States to Work in the U.S. 2025” index, which includes all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The nonprofit based its rankings on wage, worker protection and right to organize laws and policies. In the category of wage policies, Washington state did especially well, coming in at No. 2. The state ranked fourth for worker protection policies and 13th for rights to organize.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — South End town hall participants express anger, frustration over Fred Meyer loss — Michael Hines, president of Local UFCW 367, which represents workers at the store, said workers are being reassigned to other stores, but “obviously there’s a domino effect. People end up displaced. You can’t just shut down a store of 200 members and then put them in other stores and not have some kind of a domino effect.” He suggested the state look into incentives to attract more grocers.

► From KING 5 — Olympia woman says husband was held by ICE for ‘no reason’ — Crystal Londonio says federal officials held her husband for two months, and the family is not sure why. In May she said agents took Maximo Londonio into custody after he arrived at Sea-Tac after a flight from the Philippines. He was released two months later, without an explanation from the federal government, Crystal Londonio said at a Labor Day Rally in front of the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. Protesters raised serious concerns about conditions inside the facility, claiming detainees are not receiving proper food or medical care. “A lack of compassion, a lack of care when it comes to necessities, basic needs, you know good water. Quality water,” Crystal Londonio said.

► From KOMO — Labor Day protests in Puget Sound highlight threats to democracy, call for workers’ rights — Cascade Playground is next to the offices of Palantir Technologies, which protesters said is providing the tools to support the government’s immigration raids. “The kind of work they do is they track down immigrants to be able to funnel that information to ICE to be able to find them, detain them, and deport them, ultimately separating families, and even people who have legal status in this country,” said Katie Garrow, the executive secretary-treasurer of MLK Labor.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Spokesman Review — Strike averted in Mead as teachers union, district reach tentative agreement on new contract — After around 90 hours spent at the bargaining table the past two weeks and a total of 18 meetings since May, the district and staff union Mead Education Association have reached a tentative agreement on a new teaching contract. The agreement averts the possibility of a teacher strike, authorized by union membership on Thursday. In the meantime, students will return to school for the first day Tuesday. Union president Toby Doolittle said his members are eager to welcome kids. “They’re just really excited to start the school year; they’re going to have a lot of energy,” he said.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Vancouver Public Schools classified employees set Sept. 11 for potential strike vote — Dozens of paraeducators, clerks, secretaries and other classified staff rallied Thursday afternoon outside Vancouver Public Schools’ district office as contract talks with the district continue. The union’s contract with the district expires Sunday. The Vancouver Association of Educational Support Professionals — which represents about 600 workers including paraeducators, clerks, secretaries, aquatic coordinators and technical support staff — organized the rally…Since negotiations between the union and the district began in April, the union has seen little progress, said Chipo Sowards, president of the Vancouver Association of Educational Support Professionals. “So far, we’ve not seen a comprehensive proposal,” Sowards said. Sowards said the union’s top priorities include better staffing ratios, higher wages and more paid time off.

► From KOIN — Still no contract for Legacy Good Sam hospitalists — More than 200 hospitalists represented by Northwest Medicine United across the Legacy Health system have been bargaining for 18 months without a contract. Organizers said this Labor Day rally highlighted how short staffing and rising workloads threaten connections between doctors and their patients…It’s been two months since Legacy had a bargaining session with this union. At this time, no bargaining session is on the calendar, union leaders said.

ORGANIZING

► From WHAS — ‘We clearly won’: Dispute continues over BlueOval SK union election pending federal review — Todd Dunn, speaking in his role as president of the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council, says not to be surprised if the federal review of the 41 outstanding ballots takes several months. “It’s just another hurdle we’re gonna have to get through on a group that wasn’t identified appropriately,” Dunn told WHAS11 on Monday. “We won the election. We should be able to come in. They should recognize us as a union.”

► From Game Spot — Blizzard’s Diablo Developers Vote To Unionize After Mass Layoffs — This week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced that more than 450 developers of Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo team have voted to unionize under the CWA. The successful outcome of this effort means workers will now be represented by CWA Local 9510 in Irvine, California; Local 1118 in Albany, New York; and Local 6215 in Austin, Texas. The newly formed union will represent a wide range of jobs across Blizzard, including designers, engineers, artists, and support staff. Microsoft, Blizzard’s parent company, has officially recognized the union.

NATIONAL

► From Common Dreams — Americans Take to the Streets for 1,000+ ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ Labor Day Rallies — AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said ahead of the protests: “Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country’s history—it’s not because we asked those in power. It’s not because they were handed to us. It’s because we fought for them relentlessly.”

► From the AP — 1.2 million immigrants are gone from the US labor force under Trump, preliminary data shows — Immigrants make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce and that data shows 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, according to Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer. About 30% of all construction workers are immigrants and 24% of service workers are immigrants, she added…Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said immigrants normally contribute at least 50% of job growth in the U.S. “The influx across the border from what we can tell is essentially stopped, and that’s where we were getting millions and millions of migrants over the last four years,” she said. “That has had a huge impact on the ability to create jobs.”

► From the AP — Abrego Garcia’s lawyers worry he can’t get a fair trial and request gag order for top US officials — The attorneys are asking a federal judge in Tennessee to order U.S. government officials involved with his case — including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — to hold back on their comments. “For months, numerous representatives of the same federal government that is responsible for prosecuting this case have publicly disparaged Mr. Abrego’s character and reputation,” his attorneys wrote in a filing on Thursday night, adding that officials have “expressed the opinion that he is guilty of the crimes charged and far worse.”

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — Trump Orders Have Stripped Nearly Half a Million Federal Workers of Union Rights — So far, nine agencies have terminated union contracts that covered more than 445,000 federal workers from the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, General Services Administration, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, and parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services. “This is literally the largest act of union busting in American history,” said Mike Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “There’s not another time when that many people lost their union.”

► From the Nation — “They Will Attack Every Organized Worker in America” — As Labor Day approached, The Nation spoke with Kelley—an Army veteran and Baptist preacher who worked for decades at an Anniston, Alabama, Army depot, before becoming the president of his union and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO—about how workers are struggling to survive Trump’s war on the working class…”I do believe that what this administration is trying to do is to put the government in a mission-failure position so that they can contract out these jobs. That would be devastating because [with privatization] it would not be about providing service to the American people. It would be about making a profit.”

► From Wired — No, Trump Can’t Legally Federalize US Elections — After nearly a decade of federal and state investment in election security and integrity initiatives, researchers and election officials working on the ground around the country have been clear that US election infrastructure is as robust and transparent as it’s ever been…“It’s right there in the Constitution from the very beginning, Article One, that the states set the time, place, and manner of elections. The states run the elections; Congress can add rules, but the president has no role,” says Lawrence Norden, vice president of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law. “Trump makes all these pronouncements that he’s going to end mail voting, that voting machines can’t be trusted, but he can’t do that. He certainly has the bully pulpit, though, to mislead and confuse the public—and the power to intimidate.”

► From the New York Times — Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border, removing, for now, one of the cornerstones of President Trump’s campaign to carry out mass deportations. The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.

► From Politico — Democrats press GOP leaders for meeting as shutdown looms — The Democrats first wrote to their Republican counterparts requesting a meeting on Aug. 4. Now, Congress is just weeks away from the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline, and the leaders are nowhere close to an agreement. Republicans don’t yet have a plan for how to handle the deadline that unifies their party. Senate GOP leaders, backed by members of the Appropriations Committee and other allies, have floated a short-term spending patch that would give them more time to try to reach a sweeping spending deal with Democrats and the White House. But some conservatives in the House and Senate are already talking about a full-year extension of current spending levels, likely sweetened with targeted spending cuts or other policy priorities — which they believe could get support from inside the administration.

► From the New York Times — In Trump’s Federal Work Force Cuts, Black Women Are Among the Hardest Hit — While tens of thousands of employees have lost their jobs in Mr. Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to shrinking the federal work force, experts say the cuts disproportionately affect Black employees — and Black women in particular. Black women make up 12 percent of the federal work force, nearly double their share of the labor force overall..The most recent labor statistics show that nationwide, Black women lost 319,000 jobs in the public and private sectors between February and July of this year, the only major female demographic to experience significant job losses during this five-month period, according to an analysis by Katica Roy, a gender economist. White women saw a job increase of 142,000, and Hispanic women of 176,000, over the same time period. White men saw the largest increase among groups, 365,000, over the same time period.

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