45k on strike | Hotel workers win | Shutdown pain

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

STRIKES

► From Hawaii News Now — Thousands of Kaiser Permanente employees to go on five-day strike — According to union members, they are demanding fair wages, safe staffing, and a stronger voice for caregivers in workplace decisions. “This contract fight isn’t just about wages, it’s about ensuring the staffing, resources, and respect needed to provide the best possible care for every patient,” said Moises Alarcón, UNAC/UHCP executive treasurer and emergency department nurse.

► Bay Area NBC — 5-day Kaiser strike expected to start Tuesday — The United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, which represents the workers, said the walkout will be the largest strike in its history. The workers authorized the strike a couple of weeks ago after their contract expired on Sept. 30. The union workers claim Kaiser is cutting retirement benefits and said pay isn’t keeping up with inflation and the rising costs of living, even though the union claims Kaiser has $66 billion in reserves. Workers claim Kaiser facilities are understaffed, which has lead to burnout and unsafe working conditions.

► From WISTV — SC Waffle House workers begin strike over pay and working conditions, union says — The Union of Southern Service Workers said union workers at a location on Five Chop Road in Orangeburg began a four-day strike on Sunday. The union claims Waffle House automatically deducts at least $3 per shift from workers’ paychecks for a “meal credit” – regardless of whether they have a break or eat a meal. In a statement, the union says the Orangeburg workers are among “other Waffle House cooks and servers who say this unfair deduction, taken even when they are denied the right to take food home, takes away the money workers rely on to get by.” According to the union, workers also reported feeling threatened, harassed and ignored by management when they came to them with concerns about safety at work.

► From St. Louis Public Radio — Boeing’s strike response more aggressive in St. Louis than Seattle, labor expert says — The company has also felt mounting pressure from politicians, including Sens. Josh Hawley and Bernie Sanders, but Rosenfeld said this strike has not garnered the national attention that last year’s machinists strike in the Pacific Northwest did. “I think the company has benefited from a lack of broader attention to this particular strike,” Rosenfeld said Monday on St. Louis on the Air. “That has helped them kind of really dig in and really hold the line against workers’ requests.”

LOCAL

► From KGW — Battle Ground teacher faces termination over student’s Charlie Kirk text message — Several teachers attended the Battle Ground School Board meeting Monday to support an educator they said was fired by the district over a student’s text message containing false information. In September, Battle Ground Education Association leaders said one of Amanda Gonzales’ students sent a text message to his mother stating that Gonzales had called the late Charlie Kirk a Nazi during class. That text was then widely circulated on social media, triggering public backlash. Association president Mary Mendoza-Haensel said it led to death threats aimed at Gonzales. She also said the student who sent the text message later recanted it when questioned by district officials. The union is now asking the board to reinstate Gonzales to her position as a social studies teacher at Battle Ground High School.

► From the Seattle Times — Inside WA ICE detention center, where you could be held for days or years — Already, the Northwest detention center’s surging population is putting a strain on the facility, exacerbating long-standing complaints and generating new ones, according to interviews with people currently and formerly held there, court declarations and accounts from lawyers and advocates. Many, like Juarez, tell stories of undercooked food and meals arriving in the middle of the night. They also cite erratic access to outdoor recreation, little to no provided toiletries like soap, unclean uniforms and stained underwear, and long waits for medical care and legal visits. The atmosphere, they said, is tense amid new policies that offer little chance of getting out beyond being deported. Sometimes, even those ready for that outcome can’t leave quickly.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — These Washington billionaires are some of the richest in the country for 2025 — They live in and around Seattle, and they have a combined net worth of more than $340 billion, per Forbes. To put that in perspective, their combined wealth is more than four times the state’s roughly $78 billion operating budget for 2025-27. In all, the 400 people on the list are worth $6.6 trillion, according to Forbes, which published its list in September and used interviews, financial and legal documents, news reports and more to determine the ranking, it said. Of the Washingtonians on the list, the highest-placed cracked the top 10 at No. 7.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Government shutdown furlough talk sends shiver through Hanford workforce — More than 700 workers at the Hanford site in southeast Washington state could be furloughed because of the U.S. government shutdown. A letter Wednesday from a major Hanford contractor called Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, or H2C, to the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council union, detailed the possible furloughs that would come by Oct. 20. But H2C pulled the writing back, rescinding the letter just a day later. Still, the possibility of furloughs has sent a shiver down the spine of much of the Hanford workforce.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Houston Public Media — After 40 days on picket line, union workers at Hilton Americas-Houston end strike — The workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 23, negotiated a contract with Hilton that will raise employees’ hourly wages to $22 by the end of the contract. A union spokesperson told Houston Public Media the contract will last for three years. “This victory is an attestation of our members’ strength, their will, and determination,” Franchesca Caraballo, Texas chapter president of UNITE HERE Local 23, said in a news release. ”They held the line for over a month in the heat and rain, as they fought to secure better standards after being left behind for so long.” Union leaders said the contract includes “strong job security protections,” better workloads for housekeepers and increased job safety.

► From ABC — WNBA’s CBA negotiations: Biggest issues, lockout potential, more — The 2025 season is in the books. A new champion has been crowned. But as the offseason starts, the focus shifts squarely back on collective bargaining negotiations. The current collective bargaining agreement expires on Oct. 31. Both commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the WNBA Players Association (WNBPA) have said their goal is a “transformational” CBA, but the two sides reportedly remain far apart in negotiations on the biggest issues. What are those priorities? What happens if a new CBA isn’t reached by the deadline? How realistic is a lockout? Here’s a run through everything to know.

► From Deadline — Actors’ Equity & Broadway League “Still Very Far Apart” As Two-Day Mediation Yields No Agreement; Talks Will Resume As Union Prepares For Strike — Al Vincent Jr., Equity’s Executive Director, said in a statement to Deadline: “We made some progress during our two days of mediation, but Equity and The Broadway League are still very far apart on some of our most pressing issues. We plan to resume talks on October 17. In the meantime, we will continue strike preparations in case we need to take that step.”…Equity, which represents stage actors and stage managers, and The Broadway League, the trade organization of producers and theater owners, have been in negotiations for a new production contract since August 25. The most recent three-year contract expired September 28.

► From SEIU 925:

ORGANIZING

► From UNITE HERE Local 8:

Lavish Roots dining workers held an informational picket at Meta’s Bellevue campus✊🪧When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back! Sign our petition to Lavish Roots: https://t.co/7eIS2EsGjV pic.twitter.com/Sl6dNArqFM

— UNITE HERE! Local 8 (@UniteHereLocal8) October 13, 2025

NATIONAL

► From the Guardian — ‘Using us as political pawns’: federal workers reel over threats of firings and withheld back pay — After a brutal year for the federal workforce, employees who spoke to the Guardian expressed growing anxiety over their pay – and the future of their jobs. “This is the third time I’ve been furloughed in my federal career,” said Priscilla Novak, a furloughed federal employee researcher. “But this is the first time there were threats of having people be fired en masse. I’ve been checking my email every day to see if I’m fired yet.”…“Not knowing when my next paycheck is going to get here is definitely very daunting,” Farruggia, also executive committee chair of AFGE Local 2883, which represents CDC workers, added. “But at least I paid rent this month, so that was probably the most important thing. If some of my other bills go by the wayside, then it is what it is, and I don’t really have any other options to seek out.”

► From the Spokesman Review — Goldman sees U.S. consumers paying more than half of Trump tariffs — U.S. consumers will likely shoulder 55% of tariff costs by the end of the year, with American companies taking on 22%, the Goldman analysts wrote in a Sunday research note to clients. Foreign exporters would absorb 18% of tariff costs by cutting prices for goods, while 5% would be evaded, they wrote. For now “US businesses are likely bearing a larger share of the costs” as it takes time to raise prices, economists Elsie Peng and David Mericle wrote in the note. “If recently implemented and future tariffs have the same eventual impact on prices as the tariffs implemented earlier this year, then US consumers would eventually absorb 55% of tariff costs.”

► From the Grio — Government shutdown is having an outsized impact on Black Americans — The impact of the government shutdown on Black federal employees also comes as the Black unemployment rate continues to climb (7.5%) and amid ongoing inflationary strain for households. Kelley noted that, for decades, the federal government has been an economic driver for Black Americans, which is now in jeopardy following previous mass layoffs and attacks on DEI.” “The fact that they are dismantling the federal government, don’t think that it’s not intentional because they know that this has been the way that many African Americans have been able to get into the middle class,” he told theGrio.

► From the Hollywood Reporter — CBS News Union Cautions Staffers Against Responding to Bari Weiss Memo About Work Activities — On Friday representatives of the Writers Guild of America East suggested their members refrain from replying until they get more information about the message. “Many of you have expressed concern to us about the purpose of the email, and we share those concerns,” wrote the director of the union’s broadcast/cable/streaming news division and three field representatives…The memo in question, sent Friday, asked staffers to detail how they spend their working hours and to offer their thoughts on “what’s working; what’s broken or substandard; and how we can be better” at the legacy news organization.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — The pain from the government shutdown is about to hit the public — The ongoing government shutdown will collide with the U.S. economy this week, as missed paychecks and the absence of billions of dollars of government services reverberate beyond federal workers and sting the broader public…The shutdown has already caused nationwide flight delays, closed taxpayer help lines at the Internal Revenue Service, snarled permitting approvals at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department, and shut off access to national parks…The first wave of missed paychecks is likely to hurt the underlying economy in many communities. And the longer other services remain shut off, the more the shutdown’s effects will spread. Consumers are already facing mounting economic uncertainty. The last government shutdown — a 34-day closure during Trump’s first term, the longest closure in U.S. history — shaved $11 billion off the country’s economic output, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

► From the AP — Government shutdown could be the longest ever, House Speaker Johnson warns — Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Monday the federal government shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands and reopen. Standing alone at the Capitol on the 13th day of the shutdown, the speaker said he was unaware of the details of the thousands of federal workers being fired by the Trump administration…The House is out of legislative session, with Johnson refusing to recall lawmakers back to Washington, while the Senate, closed Monday for the federal holiday, will return to work Tuesday. But senators are stuck in a cul-de-sac of failed votes as Democrats refuse to relent on their health care demands.

► From the AP — Firings of federal workers begin as White House seeks to pressure Democrats in government shutdown — An official for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers and is suing the Trump administration over the firings, said in a legal filing Friday that the Treasury Department is set to issue layoff notices to 1,300 employees. The AFGE asked a federal judge to halt the firings, calling the action an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress. “It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement.

► From USA Today — Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says — The U.S. Department of Education fired nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in a wave of new layoffs that began Friday, according to the union representing the agency’s employees. Without an official estimate from the agency, it wasn’t immediately clear how many people in the division were fired…An Education Department staffer told USA TODAY the agency laid off just about every employee who works to administer funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, the primary federal law supporting students with disabilities. He was unsure how those programs will exist moving forward.

► From the Huffington Post — 700 CDC Employees Reinstated After Layoff Notices Sent In Error — The layoff notices were originally sent to some 1,300 workers at the CDC, but 700 of those were errors, according to CNN. About 600 CDC staff members were still laid off…National President Everett Kelley of the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union representing more than 800,000 federal workers, condemned the mass firings on Friday, calling them illegal. “It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” Kelley said in a statement.

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington’s paid leave program heads toward a fiscal cliff — The problem is that state law caps premiums for the paid leave program at 1.2%. The state is projected to reach that cap in 2027 and stay there. That plateau means the program likely won’t be able to keep up with rising claims for benefits and increased payments as wages grow. The program has been steadily growing since its launch in 2020. From July 1, 2024, to June 30, over 320,000 applications were submitted for paid leave, up 15% from the previous year, according to a report this month. Over 240,000 Washingtonians received more than $2 billion in total benefits, a year-over-year increase of about $300 million.

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