Strike-ready @ Kaiser | White collar unions | Shutdown continues

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

STRIKES

► From the Philadelphia Tribune — ‘Doing the work of three people’: Philly workers at two hotels strike drawing support from labor, elected officials — Gerald Byers began working at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown in 2017. The hotel employed 700 room attendants for the 765 guest rooms. Now, Byers is one of just 50 in the housekeeping department. “They’re doing the work of three people and only getting paid for one job,” he said of his colleagues. Byers was one of the UNITE HERE Local 274 workers picketing the hotel on Race Street on Monday morning. The strike began at the Sheraton and Hampton Inn Philadelphia Center City — Convention Center on Sunday. Union members have been without a contract for over a year.

► From WTOL — United Steel Workers continue on strike; host rally outside of the glass issues conference — Hundreds of union members gathered Tuesday morning in the Glass City for a rally supporting striking workers at Libbey Glass, marking what union leaders say is the company’s longest work stoppage in 50 years. The workers, represented by the United Steelworkers (USW), have been on strike for approximately 48 days. The rally was held just blocks from a major glass industry conference, where union leaders aimed to send a strong message to Libbey Glass and others in the industry.

LOCAL

► From My Northwest — AG Brown: WA has spent past year preparing for ‘unlawful’ National Guard deployment — Brown believes National Guard deployment to Seattle is unwarranted. “There’s certainly not an insurrection happening in Washington. There’s not anything in Seattle that would necessarily necessitate that kind of action. But we have to be ready for this sort of recklessness that we’ve seen from DC,” he shared. Brown added that the president’s actions violate the law. “It’s not lawful to do it in the way that the president is doing it. That is why multiple judges across the country have found it unlawful, including judges appointed by the president himself,” he explained.

► From the Seattle Times — Supreme Court shoots down challenge to WA carbon market  — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a high-profile challenge to Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, marking yet another victory for the state’s keystone climate policy. The lawsuit started with the private operator of a natural gas power plant in Grays Harbor County. The plant is required to buy pollution allowances to pay for the many tons of greenhouse gasses it emits into the atmosphere under the 2021 “Cap and Invest” law…The Supreme Court on Monday denied Invenergy’s petition outright. The justices did not publish any written justification for their decision.

► From KEPR — Starbucks will close multiple locations in Washington, 369 workers to be laid off — Starbucks has announced the closure of several locations across Washington state, resulting in the permanent layoff of 369 employees. The layoffs are set to begin on Dec. 5, 2025, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) database. The company filed the notice on Oct. 3, 2025.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Nurse.org — 31,000 Kaiser Nurses & Healthcare Workers Set to Strike in Massive Walkout — Strike notices have been issued by several unions, including UNAC/UHCP, United Steelworkers Local 7600, Hawaii Nurses and Healthcare Professionals, Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP), and Oregon Nurses Association. Although tens of thousands of employees are represented, not all are eligible to strike due to varying local agreements. UNAC/UHCP estimates about 31,000 of its members in California and Hawaii are eligible, and OFNHP represents nearly 4,000 registered nurses and other professionals across Oregon and Southwest Washington.

► From the Santa Barbara Independent — UC Workers Authorize Longer Strikes After ‘Last, Best, Final’ Offer –The University of California received a resounding message of rejection from its employees last week, as more than 21,000 members of the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) union — which represents UC’s healthcare, research, and technical staff — voted by a 97 percent margin to authorize longer, statewide strikes.

ORGANIZING

► From Public Books — Our Right to Our Union: Graduate Student Workers Under Threat — What if it was legal for private universities to refuse to recognize graduate student unions? Since the return of Trump, that’s the threat against which many of us graduate student workers are organizing. Fortunately, in July 2025, we achieved a victory in Rhode Island that shows at least one path forward for labor unions across the country. All it took was collaborating with other unions to secure a change in labor law in the state.

NATIONAL

► From the Washington Post — The future of white-collar work may be unionized — In 2024, a record-low 9.9 percent of U.S. workers were members of a union, according to the Labor Department, but interest is soaring. An August Gallup poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans approve of organized labor, and last year, unions filed twice as many petitions seeking elections compared to 2021, according to federal data. With layoffs and automation eroding the stability traditionally associated with knowledge jobs, the future of white-collar work might include some tried and tested ways to protect one’s job. “The introduction of new technologies has eroded both pay and prestige of these jobs, and I think that’s making workers feel that the kind of career path that might have been available to the generation before them is starting to seem less accessible,” says Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University.

► From the Conversation — From the pulpit to the picket line: For many miners, religion and labor rights have long been connected in coal country — In October 2025, Cecil Roberts will officially retire from his role as president of the United Mine Workers of America. A sixth-generation coal miner, he has led the union for 30 years. And there’s another way Roberts is steeped in Appalachian history: Before an audience of workers, observers have often noted, he speaks like a preacher. Roberts likens miners’ struggles to biblical stories, references the power of God and the teachings of Jesus, and speaks in the dynamic cadences found in an Appalachian church…Roberts’ style is a glimpse into a bigger story. For over a century, coal has transformed central Appalachia: from the shape of the landscape to place names, and from folk music and crafts to economic conditions.

► From Forbes — More Air Traffic Controllers Could Call In Sick As Shutdown Grinds On—Here’s What To Know — The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has warned its 19,000 members that organized “sick outs” are illegal. But union officials and individual air traffic controllers have told Forbes that missed paychecks will add to the toll of working in an already strained system. “Not paying the understaffed controllers we already have, and then getting upset they find this added stress untenable, is idiotic,” a veteran air traffic controller working at a major East Coast airport told Forbes on Tuesday. “Missing even one [paycheck] is a cause of stress—stress they don’t need and you don’t want controlling your airplanes. This will only get worse and escalate the longer this shutdown continues.”

► From the New York Times — Recruiters Use A.I. to Scan Résumés. Applicants Are Trying to Trick It. — As companies increasingly turn to A.I. to sift through thousands of job applications, candidates are concealing instructions for chatbots within their résumés in hopes of moving to the top of the pile. The tactic — shared by job hunters in TikTok videos and across Reddit forums — has become so commonplace in recent months that companies are updating their software to catch it. And some recruiters are taking a tough stance, automatically rejecting those who attempt to trick their A.I. systems.

► From the AP — ACLU says ICE is unlawfully punishing immigrants at a notorious Louisiana detention center — The lawsuit accuses President Donald Trump’s administration of selecting the former slave plantation known as Angola for its “uniquely horrifying history” and intentionally subjecting immigrant detainees to inhumane conditions — including foul water and lacking basic necessities — in violation of the Double Jeopardy clause, which protects people from being punished twice for the same crime. The ACLU also alleges some immigrants detained at the newly opened “Louisiana Lockup” should be released because the government failed to deport them within six months of a removal order. The lawsuit cites a 2001 Supreme Court ruling raised in several recent immigration cases, including that of the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, that says immigration detention should be “nonpunitive.”

► From the Seattle Times — Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee threatens rural schools and hospitals reliant on immigrant workers  — H-1Bs are primarily associated with tech workers from India. Big tech companies are the biggest user of the visa, and nearly three-quarters of those approved are from India. But there are critical workers, like teachers and doctors, who fall outside that category. Over the last decade, the U.S. has faced a shortage in those and other sectors. One in eight public school positions are vacant or filled by uncertified teachers, and the American Medical Association projects a shortage of 87,000 physicians in the next decade. The shortages are often worse in small, rural communities that struggle to fill jobs due to lower wages and often lack basic necessities like shopping and home rental options.

► From USA Today — Women are quitting work because of menopause. We need to talk about it — Even with more women 55 and older in the workforce than ever before, women often are afraid to talk about menopause in the office. They fear disclosing brain fog will make them appear less competent, that talking with younger or male coworkers who may not understand menopause will lead to discrimination…With 1 in 10 women leaving the workforce because of menopause, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, and another 1 in 5 considering retiring early, researchers say it’s become the menopause penalty. It can lead to fewer women leaders at a time when they make up fewer than one-third of the spots.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the AP — Federal government shutdown grinds into a second week, but quiet talks emerging — Behind the scenes, though, signs of discomfort are apparent. A loosely formed collection of senators, Republicans and Democrats, have bantered about options for addressing the health insurance problem. One, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, has offered her own plans. Two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, have said something must be done to stop the health insurance rate hikes.

► From the Government Executive — Trump says he can pick and choose which feds get back pay. Republicans in Congress mostly disagree — Trump’s comments followed the Office of Management and Budget stripping from its shutdown guidance that federal law requires agencies to provide back pay to furloughed workers, as Government Executive reported on Tuesday, and the White House subsequently drafting legal guidance arguing the statute does not, in fact, issue that mandate. Lawmakers of both parties on Tuesday pushed back on OMB’s view, suggesting all federal employees were guaranteed back pay when the government reopens…Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Congress “settled” the back pay issue with the 2019 law, according to Bloomberg Government. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., expressed an openness to the White House’s new interpretation.

► From Common Dreams — Trump Admin Weighs Privatizing Student Loans, Fulfilling Another Project 2025 Objective — The idea of bringing in private consultants to determine the value of the government’s debt holdings and selling some student loan debt to private investors was floated during the first Trump term, but never came to fruition. However, this idea was fleshed out more thoroughly in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, which states that “student loans and grants should ultimately be restored to the private sector.” While details of how exactly the administration may plan to sell off this debt are scarce, critics have warned that privatization will put even more borrowers in precarious situations.

► From Inside Higher Education — AAUP, Other Unions Sue Trump Admin Over H-1B Fee — The plaintiffs, which include the American Association of University Professors, UAW International and UAW Local 481, allege in the lawsuit that numerous researchers and academics will lose their jobs as a result of their institutions not being able to afford the new fee. (An H-1B visa previously cost $2,000 to $5,000.) Universities, along with national labs and nonprofit research institutions, were also exempt from the annual cap on the number of new visas, and it’s unclear whether the new fee will apply to higher ed. The New York Times reported that this lawsuit “appears to be the first major challenge to the new fee.”

► From Axios — AFL-CIO opposes major crypto legislation — Citing the “volatility of the assets class,” the labor giant says it worries about the retirement funds of its millions of members if cryptocurrency were to become more common in portfolios. The group argues that the bill, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, “provides the facade of regulation” that could cause cryptocurrency to become more mainstream in investment funds.

► From Vox — Are Trump’s voters turning against him? — So, what can we tell about the state of Trump’s 2024 coalition? At least three things: He’s losing the most support among groups he made the biggest gains with in 2024, specifically with Hispanic/Latino Americans and young people, an overwhelming majority of Republicans and conservatives still like what they see from Trump, perceptions of the economy, far and away, are still the biggest risk to this shaky alliance. And there are no clear signs that moods are shifting in Trump’s direction.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — OPINON: Tacoma’s political leaders must respect voters’ will on tenant rights — We, the undersigned leaders representing a multi-racial coalition of labor unions, faith groups, community organizations and elected officials are calling on you to preserve the Tenant Bill of Rights approved by Tacoma voters two years ago. We urge you to reject the rush by some council members to repeal tenant protections before the end of this year — a timeline and process that would lock out tenant voices.

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