PNW farmworkers | SBWU rally | Backpay threatened

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

STRIKES

► From On the Line:

Unionized Hilton hotel workers in Houston with @unitehere23 @unitehere have been on strike for over a month now, demanding a just contract that keeps up with the rising cost of living. They’ve built a tourist industry that brings in billions, now is time to get a fair share pic.twitter.com/WLPIjD4byl

— On the Line (@laborontheline) October 6, 2025

LOCAL

► From the Yakima Herald — The impossible choice: How immigration enforcement is affecting Pacific Northwest farmworker families — The number of people in ICE detention in Tacoma increased from 718 in mid-January to 1,180 as of Sept. 15, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Until recently, detainees weren’t allowed to post a bond as they had in the past, Contreras added. “Many of the people detained from our communities do not have criminal records. They have lived here, some of them, for nearly decades,” Contreras said. “They have raised their children in our school districts. They are members of our churches and of our school systems, and they are detained indefinitely without the possibility of getting out on bond and returning to their families; therefore, they give up.”…“My entire family was in the United States, including my parents and siblings, but we saw the increase in raids everywhere and we did not want my brothers to go through the trauma of family separation. So we decided that my parents should leave the United States and return to Mexico. And that’s what they did,” said Juárez Zeferino.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Trump’s $7.5B energy cuts take $157M out of prized Richland project — The Trump Administration’s move to cut what it calls wasteful spending on green energy projects has blown a $157.3 million hole in Richland’s dream of building a major fertilizer plant. Atlas Agro, which has plans to construct a $1.3 billion plant near the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was set to receive federal funds via the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub. The cuts affected blue states, but the pain is being felt in red counties. Donald Trump handily won voter support in Benton and Franklin counties in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, typically with 55%-59% of the vote. The Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub is a collection of projects meant to inspire investment in alternatives to fossil fuels. DOE approved it as one of a handful of such hubs in 2023, following a competitive process.

► From My Northwest — Starbucks workers protest mass store closures, layoffs outside Seattle HQ — “It’s crazy to wake up and learn from social media that you lost your job before your company tells you,” Trent Lytle-Hogue, a barista at the Reserve Roastery for two years, said. “Family was texting asking if I’m OK and I barely knew a thing from the 5-minute prerecorded call. Thankfully, our union were the people who cared, who worked to get us more information, who immediately bargained for better severance. Our rally is, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all!’ So Starbucks better be ready for massive actions, even strikes, if they’re not going to finish the contract.”…“While we remain outraged at how callously Starbucks handled these closures, we are proud that we have forced the company to make this process fairer for impacted union baristas,” Michelle Eisen, Starbucks Workers United spokesperson and a barista for the past 15 years, said. “These measures to support baristas show the power and strength of our union.”

► From the WSLC:

► From the Seattle Times — How King County Metro aims to boost rider safety — King County Metro Transit is planning to hire more police, security guards, behavioral health teams and bus stop cleaners in the coming two years, as the price for the county’s security plan grows. In addition, King County Executive Shannon Braddock is seeking up to $9 million in the 2026-27 budget for Metro to study and launch a new tool — an app for the public to report dangerous situations, when calling 911 might not be appropriate. Sound Transit already provides such a service by text aboard light rail trains. The Metropolitan King County Council heard elements of the safety proposal Monday during an update from a transit safety task force, formed after an angry rider fatally stabbed Metro driver Shawn Yim last December in Seattle’s University District.

► From KUOW — Seattle, King County offer food vouchers for WIC recipients if shutdown continues — The city and the county have partnered to dedicate nearly $2 million to provide one-time vouchers to an estimated 30,000 clients in King County who rely on WIC…The state Department of Health, which administers the program statewide, estimates it has enough funds to sustain WIC for the next two weeks. The department says once the money runs out, it will force a full closure as DOH does not have the means to continue running it.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From USA Today — Adam Silver addresses WNBA labor negotiations: ‘We will get a deal done’ — The WNBA has experienced rapid growth recently, spurred in part by the 2024 draft class that included Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. The league turned in its most-watched regular season in 24 years and recorded its highest attendance in 22 years this past season. However, that progress could come to an abrupt halt if the league and the players can’t agree on a new CBA, especially if it leads to a work stoppage.

ORGANIZING

► From WDIO — UMD workers join forces to organize union with the SEIU — The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) held a union drive at the University of Minnesota Duluth to push for building a union. The union would cover nearly 3,000 workers across multiple job classifications and campuses in the U of M system, including Duluth, Crookston, Morris, the Twin Cities, and Rochester campuses. Employees in IT, Marketing, Communications, Student Services, and Grants and Contracts decided to join forces and organize a union to create a university where workers can thrive and students get the educational experience they deserve.

NATIONAL

► From the Seattle Times — Flight delays begin as air traffic staffing shortages worsen — Later in the evening, Hollywood Burbank Airport near Los Angeles reported average incoming delays of about 2 1/2 hours, according to a Federal Aviation Administration advisory. The air traffic control tower that serves Burbank had no controllers working Monday night, so management of incoming flights was being assumed by counterparts at Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control in San Diego, one of the busiest air traffic facilities in the world.

► From the NW Labor Press — Local 16 says NW College of Construction flouts state law –Using public records, Local 16 was able to obtain the names of committee members for seven of the nine programs run by Northwest College of Construction. Local 16 found that the people listed by the apprentice programs as employee representatives include supervisors, company owners, manager-level employees of participating construction contractors, construction contractor office staff who don’t have skills in the trade, and even staff and trainers at the Northwest College of Construction itself…In its complaint, Local 16 says these aren’t just technical violations of the law: “Employer domination of NWCOC’s apprenticeship committees enables other violations that drastically affect the pay, safety, training, and welfare of apprentices.”

► From the New York Times — Judge Poised to Free Abrego Garcia if Officials Can’t Supply Deportation Plans — At a hearing in Greenbelt, Md., Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for Maryland expressed exasperation at Justice Department lawyers’ failure to answer “basic questions” that could determine Mr. Abrego Garcia’s fate. She questioned whether the government was using a “trick bag” to detain him indefinitely by claiming he needed to remain in immigration custody because of an imminent deportation when in fact it had not solidified any such plans.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From Politico — White House memo says furloughed workers might not get back pay — The memo appears to contravene the 2019 “Government Employee Fair Treatment Act,” signed by President Donald Trump during his first term after a partial shutdown that stretched over 35 days. And it paints a cloudy economic picture for the 750,000 federal workers currently under furlough…Sen. Tim Kaine pointed out that it was Trump who signed the law guaranteeing federal back pay in the first place. “The president’s team is suggesting that he break his own word and punish people,” he said. “I mean, I hope they’ll remember that this was a bill that he signed. He should implement it.”

► From the New York Times — Trump Aimed Shutdown Cuts at Democrats, but G.O.P. Districts Are Hit, Too — “A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” Mr. Trump said last week. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.” But the energy cuts also appear to have done collateral damage to projects championed by House Republicans in competitive districts in blue states from New York to California — the kind of seats that built the G.O.P. majority, and whose loss could wipe it out. It is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s aggressive moves to bend the government to his will have threatened his own party’s political standing.

► From NPR — ‘Really, really frustrating’: Furloughed federal workers share their stories — One employee at risk is Mark Cochran. He is a tractor driver and arborist at Gettysburg National Military Park. He’s also a union rep. He represents National Park Service employees in the northeast as president of AFGE Council 270. MARK COCHRAN: My daughters just started college. You know, the whole hopes of, oh, I have a vacation, you know, that’s gone out the window because pretty much any extra money I may have is going towards her education. You know, I’ll try and see if I can find some side work to bring some cash in.

► From CNN — Inside the Trump administration’s unprecedented purge of immigration judges — Ashley Tabaddor, who served as an immigration judge for 15 years as well as president of the union four years during the first Trump administration, described terminations in the past as “exceedingly rare,” and usually based on performance. “You cannot look at this in a vacuum. This is part and parcel of a very, very grand scheme of creating a very frictionless deportation machine,” Tabbador said.

► From Axios — Bill Nye leads charge to save NASA science from deep Trump cuts — The gathering in DC stems from the Trump administration’s plan to gut funding, while a government shutdown has already furloughed 85% of NASA staff…NASA science isn’t just about exploration — it’s economic and geopolitical. NASA pumped $75 billion into the U.S. economy in 2023, supporting 300,000 jobs across all 50 states. People who are critical of the cuts say ending missions prematurely would waste $12 billion in taxpayer investments in still-healthy spacecraft.

► From People’s World — Workers’ agenda, not Wall Street’s can win Rust Belt — The CWCP study, surveying 3,000 voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, found that “economic populist messaging yielded net support of +45 points.” Critically, messages that “directly named corporate greed and economic elites as the problem outperformed the softer, ‘populist-lite’ alternative.” Think of “populist-lite” as a critique of just a “few bad apples” among the capitalist class that are simply “not fair,” which characterized the Democratic Party campaigns of 2020 and 2024. On immigration, the pollsters asked these 3,000 voters if they would support “granting legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for three years and not been convicted of any felony crimes.” Remarkably, a whopping 63.3 percent supported that statement.

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