NEWS ROUNDUP
Mass firings illegal | Sbux contract talks | Wildland fire fighters
Monday, September 15, 2025
STRIKES
► From PBS News — Boeing workers reject latest contract offer, extending strike at three Midwest plants –The vote on Friday refusing the latest proposal sends the workers back to the picket lines, according to the union representing the 3,200 striking workers who build fighter jets, weapons systems and the U.S. Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned aircraft. Fifty-seven percent of members voted against the proposal, the union said. “Boeing’s modified offer did not include a sufficient signing bonus relative to what other Boeing workers have received, or a raise in 401(k) benefits,” the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 837 said in a statement.
► From the Pittsburgh Union Progress — ‘We need to support our siblings’: Several Guild units donate their union organizing prizes to ease Pittsburgh strikers’ expenses — Every two years the Communications Workers of America Convention recognizes locals that have organized at least 100 new members with award plaques along with $1,000 prizes. This year’s weeklong meeting took place last month at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, and several of the winning locals used the award to pay it forward, donating the money to help with the longest current strike in America — that of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
LOCAL
► From the Washington State Standard — Wildfire veterans furious at DHS claim that raided crews were not firefighters — Many political figures and media outlets have repeated the claim, even though public documents show the crews have firefighting classifications and were assigned to key frontline roles battling the blaze. “Everybody in the profession sees through it, but the public doesn’t and that’s concerning,” said Riva Duncan, a former wildland fire chief who served more than 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service. “It’s a lie. Everybody I’ve talked to is very upset about it. It does not just those two crews a disservice, but it does all firefighters a disservice.” In planning documents drafted by the management team overseeing the fire and posted to a public federal database, the crew from contracting company ASI Arden Solutions, Inc., is listed as a “CR2I” crew. That’s shorthand for a Type II Initial Attack wildland firefighting crew. “They’re just one level below a hotshot crew,” Duncan said. “[Saying they’re not firefighters] is incredibly insulting to them.”
► From Cascade PBS — A guide to navigating the immigration court system in WA state — To help you make sense of the immigration court system, Cascade PBS spoke with immigration attorneys and advocates in Washington to answer questions regarding recent federal changes and our region’s unique challenges. This information may help you better understand why you have been summoned to court, or how you can seek help if facing potential arrest and detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
► From the Washington State Standard — Insurance rates on WA health care exchange set to surge — Premiums for individual insurance bought on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange through the Affordable Care Act are set to rise an average of 21% next year, state Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer announced this week…Nearly 300,000 residents buy health plans through the exchange, which serves people who don’t get coverage from their work or don’t qualify for public programs like Medicaid, known in Washington as Apple Health, or Medicare.
► From the Seattle Times — Microsoft layoffs continue into 5th consecutive month — Microsoft is laying off 42 Redmond-based employees, continuing a months-long effort by the company to trim its workforce amid an artificial intelligence spending boom. More than 15,000 Microsoft employees companywide have been laid off since May. With Monday’s layoffs, disclosed in a state regulatory filing, the number of Washington-based workers affected has passed 3,200.
AEROSPACE
► From KUOW — FAA seeks to fine Boeing $3.1 million for safety violations, door plug blowout — The proposed penalty is for safety violations that occurred from September 2023 through February 2024, the FAA said Friday. In June, the National Transportation Safety Board said its 17-month long investigation found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the FAA, led to the door plug blowout.
CONTRACT FIGHTS
► From Market Place — Unionized Starbucks workers are still without a contract after more than a year of bargaining — Michelle Eisen is a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and worked as a Starbucks barista for 15 years. She spoke with host David Brancaccio. The following is an edited transcript of their interview…Michelle Eisen: That would be zero are currently working under a union contract, but we are very, very close. Brancaccio: You’re making some progress? Eisen: I mean, we were making significant progress under the previous CEO. We were actually bargaining with the company for a solid nine months and making significant progress in solidifying this first contract. And, unfortunately, under this current CEO, that has stalled out.
► From the Washington Post — How much are WNBA players worth? The league’s future lies in the answer. –But beneath the surface, tension between the players and team owners threatens to derail that progress. It stems from a seemingly simple yet actually tricky question: How much are WNBA players worth? Players and some economists say it’s straightforward: Players should earn roughly 50 percent of the league’s revenue, just as the athletes in the big four U.S. men’s sports leagues do. The WNBA and its owners say … almost nothing, at least publicly. The league office declined to make any executives available for interviews, and all 13 teams declined or did not respond to interview requests. “I can’t talk to you,” one member of an ownership group said when reached by phone. “No one should be talking to you.”
ORGANIZING
► From the Hollywood Reporter — Children’s Animation Writers With Fred Rogers Productions and Spiffy Pictures Gain Union Coverage — The Writers Guild of America East is joining the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. The East Coast-based branch of the Hollywood writers’ union has won voluntary recognition for union coverage of public children’s animation programming from Fred Rogers Productions, the former home of the iconic PBS show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Spiffy Pictures. The union announced the deal on Friday.
NATIONAL
► From Cascade PBS — Wildland firefighters can wear masks after reports on smoke risks — According to new guidance the agency posted on Monday, the Forest Service will provide N95 respirators in the standard set of equipment for workers on a fireline – acknowledging that the masks can “provide some level of protection against exposure to particulates in smoke.” Prior to that, the agency had approved only bandanas for facial covering. The move comes after The New York Times spotlighted the acute health impacts of prolonged wildfire smoke exposure among firefighters – many of whom, the Times found, are “developing cancer or lung disease at young ages,” while some are dying.
► From Newsweek — Black Unemployment is Surging Under Donald Trump — According to seasonally adjusted data published Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the unemployment rate for Black Americans rose from 7.2 percent in July to 7.5 percent in August, now at its highest level since October 2021. This compares to 4.3 percent for the wider labor force and is more than double the rate for white Americans (3.7 percent). While this disparity is a perennial feature of the U.S. labor market, the changes since the start of the year are particularly notable. White unemployment has risen by 0.3 percent since January but during that time Black unemployment has climbed 1.3 percent, with the bulk of this occurring over the past three months.
► From the New York Times — Lawsuit Accuses Trump Officials of More Wrongful Deportations — Lawyers for five migrants deported to Ghana last week accused the Trump administration on Friday of ignoring court-ordered protections for their clients, the latest legal challenge to a campaign that has been carried out with remarkable speed and a lack of transparency. In an interview on Friday evening, the lawyers said the case bore similarities to that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to his home country of El Salvador earlier this year and who continues to fight a labyrinthine legal battle as the administration tries to deport him to various African countries.
► From the Cascadia Daily News — Ruling in Whatcom County case will impact detained immigrants nationwide — That means up to millions of people will have to wait in detention for potentially prolonged periods as they face deportation proceedings. The Board of Immigration Appeals published the decision, which applies nationwide, on Friday, Sept. 5. Gabriel Harrison, lawyer for the detained resident, said the ruling was a major departure from decades of precedent. Previously, he said, those who had entered without authorization but “established a life” for themselves in the U.S. could get released on bond based on whether a judge thought they were “a flight risk or a danger to society.”
► From Deadline — Sean Astin Elected To Succeed Fran Drescher As SAG-AFTRA National President; Michelle Hurd Wins Secretary-Treasurer — The actors union announced the results Friday evening, revealing that Astin was elected to succeed Fran Drescher with 79.25% of the vote. He will serve a two-year term alongside Michelle Hurd, who was selected for secretary-treasurer with 64.77% of the vote. Both begin their terms immediately.
► From the Washington Post — A new challenge for emergency workers: Learning how to handle a robotaxi –Training sessions like the one Zoox held in Las Vegas last fall are becoming a new ritual for emergency workers across the country as autonomous vehicles begin to spread beyond the handful of cities that served as initial testing grounds. The vehicles’ operators claim they drive more safely than humans, but anything can happen on public roads, and first responders need to know how to intervene if a robotaxi is caught in a collision that traps passengers, catches fire or gets caught doing something that demands a traffic stop.
POLITICS & POLICY
► From the New York Times — Mass Firing of Probationary Federal Employees Was Illegal, Judge Rules — A federal judge late Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s mass firing of probationary employees earlier this year was illegal, a victory for the labor unions and nonprofit groups that had sued the government over the terminations. The ruling did not call on the government to return the fired probationary employees to their jobs, as would be the “ordinary course,” Judge William H. Alsup of the Northern District of California wrote in a 38-page opinion. Because the Supreme Court allowed the administration to continue its purge for months while the case proceeded, he said, “too much water has now passed under the bridge.”
► From Politico — The ‘deep state’ is proving to Trump it’s a worthy foe — President Donald Trump and his team are crowing about the downsizing of the federal bureaucracy, which is set to shrink by tens of thousands more on Sept. 30 when workers who took a DOGE buyout hang it up. But if Trump’s goal was to dismantle the workforce he calls the “deep state” — and blames for the failings of his first term — he’s got a long way to go. Although he’s disrupted swaths of the government, the vast majority of career federal employees who avoided the firings of the past seven months are sticking it out, according to Labor Department statistics and the White House’s own admission.
► From the Government Executive — House NDAA would exempt Defense civilians from union ban — A provision to exempt civilian Defense Department employees from President Trump’s controversial executive orders aimed at stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights survived House debate on the annual Defense policy bill, which passed Wednesday by a vote of 231-196…Union officials said House leadership’s reticence to bring Onder’s amendment forward is a sign that there is not sufficient GOP support for Trump’s efforts to excise them from the federal workplace.
► From WLNS 6 News — New federal bill aims to safeguard union jobs in auto industry — A new bill introduced in the U.S. House would increase labor protections for auto workers. The bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., who said she proposed the legislation in response to Oshkosh Defense moving to non-unionized workers in South Carolina instead of union workers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to build the USPS’ new delivery vehicle.
► From ABC News — Shipping companies support 1st global fee on greenhouse gases, opposed by Trump admin — Nearly 200 shipping companies said Monday they want the world’s largest maritime nations to adopt regulations that include the first-ever global fee on greenhouse gases to reduce their sector’s emissions. The Getting to Zero Coalition, an alliance of companies, governments and intergovernmental organizations, is asking member states of the International Maritime Organization to support adopting regulations to transition to green shipping, including the fee, when they meet in London next month. The statement was shared exclusively with The Associated Press in advance.
► From the Washington State Standard — Debate on investing WA Cares funds in the stock market heats up — Senate Joint Resolution 8201, if passed in November, would amend the state constitution to allow assets of the program, known as the WA Cares Fund, to be handled similarly to pension and retirement accounts. That would lead to larger returns in the long run, ensuring premiums stay low and the program is sustainable, advocates said in a call with reporters Friday. “I think this is just a no-brainer,” said Greg Markley, secretary-treasurer of the Washington State Council of Fire Fighters.
► From the Tacoma News Tribune — Judge sends $20 minimum wage measure to ballot. Here’s when Tacoma will vote — Organizers with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367, Tacoma for All and the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America had been collecting signatures since February of this year to get a “Workers Bill of Rights” – also called Initiative 2 – on the ballot in Tacoma using Tacoma’s initiative process. Judge Philip E. Thornton ruled after a hearing in late August that the measure could not be placed on the November ballot, but in a detailed opinion issued on Sept. 9, he called for the measure to be placed on the ballot for a special election in February.
► From Bloomberg Law — NLRB’s Top Lawyer Plans to Sue New York Over State Labor Law — The general counsel’s office for the National Labor Relations Board is preparing to sue to block a New York law asserting state authority over private-sector labor disputes, Acting General Counsel William Cowen told Bloomberg Law. The state law is a direct attack on the “core jurisdiction” of the NLRB and is preempted under the National Labor Relations Act, he said. Supporters of the New York measure, which Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed Sept. 5, designed it as a response to the NLRB’s lack of a quorum after President Donald Trump fired Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox.
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