NEWS ROUNDUP

Starbucks strike | Fed workers’ sacrifice | Apprenticeship growth

Thursday, November 13, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From USA Today — I’m a Starbucks barista. I’m striking because I want ‘the best job in retail.’ — When I clock in for the morning rush at Starbucks, there’s already a line of cars and regulars whom I know by heart, including the teachers, nurses and construction workers who need the extra espresso before starting work. Starting Nov. 13, I’ll be on the picket line outside my store in Chicago to demand that Starbucks finally settle a fair union contract and resolve hundreds of unfair-labor complaints that we have filed. Employees are striking because we want Starbucks to live up to the values it markets to the world. Starbucks claims it offers the “best job in retail.” As someone doing one of those jobs day in and day out, I can tell you that’s not true. But it has the potential to be.

► From Starbucks Workers United:

Editor’s note: Starbucks workers are rallying today at 4pm in front of the former Roastery in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Neighborhood. Find other actions here. 

► From the Seattle Times — Sen. Murray urges Starbucks to reach a union contract as strike looms — Michelle Eisen, a Workers United spokesperson and barista of 15 years, cheered the move by Murray. “We want Starbucks to succeed,” she said Wednesday. “Turning the company around and bringing customers back begins with listening to and supporting the baristas who are responsible for the Starbucks experience.” Murray, who said she’s been bolstered by calls from constituents, backed the union’s effort to finalize its first contract. Her letter comes ahead of a strike planned to begin in some Starbucks stores on Red Cup Day, a major holiday promotional event, Thursday.

 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Why apprenticeship programs are seeing growth in WA — Washington’s most popular apprenticeships, enrolling 40% of apprentices, are in the building and construction trades, with the Washington State UBC JATC and Northwest Laborers Apprenticeship Committee being among the primary sponsors. Electrician and firefighter apprenticeships are also popular. Research shows there are economic benefits to both the apprentice and the employee. One 2022 study from the Urban Institute shows that for every dollar an employer spends on an apprentice, they receive $1.44 back. The same study showed apprentices earned 43% more on average after 2 ½ years of enrollment compared to what they made a year before starting. In a comparable group of workers who weren’t in apprenticeship programs, that figure was closer to 16%.

► From KING 5 — JBLM janitorial workers remain unpaid weeks after furlough — Ansara works for Tessera, a janitorial company that employs people with disabilities to clean buildings on base. According to the Tacoma News Tribune, Tessera regional vice president Jessica McLoughlin reported to the state’s Employment Security Department that 85 workers would be furloughed. Weeks later, none of the workers have received unemployment benefits. The waiting period and paperwork delays have left many relying on savings or nothing at all. “Some people do not have savings. Some are single moms trying to figure out how to pay rent, dealing with daycare. One of my coworkers thought she was going to get evicted,” Ansara said…With the government shutdown now over, Ansara says she hopes the process will move quickly so employees can return to their jobs. “We’re just waiting, hoping this gets sorted out quickly,” she said.

► From KUOW — UW loses federal funding for migrant students — The U.S. Department of Education has found that students who take part in CAMP are far more likely to stay in school. But the Trump administration has questioned the effectiveness of migrant education programs and called them “extremely costly.” This summer it cut funding for migrant students, including CAMP grants…Xitlaly Mendoza says CAMP is the reason she applied to the UW. She won a Presidential Scholarship, and is now considering graduate school for public policy. To her, getting rid of CAMP is terrible public policy. “How is me learning more about class registration, financial aid, and job opportunities a harm to you or anyone else?” Mendoza said.

► From My Northwest — Redmond City Council votes to keep Flock cameras turned off amid privacy concerns — The 5-0 decision makes official what happened last week, when council members asked the mayor and police chief to deactivate the Flock camera system immediately, citing concerns from the public regarding privacy and system access. Last week, the police department temporarily shut down the city’s Flock license plate reader systems (automated license plate reader) after learning that the U.S. Border Patrol improperly accessed Auburn’s Flock system last month.

► From OPB — Portland State University violated faculty labor contract amid budget cuts, independent mediator rules — Portland State University and its local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, PSU-AAUP, are still at odds over whether the university followed its labor contract with the union when it laid off several faculty members last school year. But in a Nov. 6 labor grievance decision, an independent arbitrator has made her position clear: “I find the union has met its burden of proof and established that the university failed to adhere to contractual terms in laying off 10 of its non-tenure track faculty.” As part of the award, the 10 faculty members in the complaint are to have their previous jobs restored and “made whole.” Impacted faculty said they are ecstatic about the decision.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the New York Times’ Athletic — MLB meets with union as salary cap, lockout talk swirls: Source — Preliminary meetings are not unusual ahead of formal negotiations, which will likely not begin until the spring. In advance discussions, the sides typically share their overall views of the game and its economics. Unsurprisingly, the players and owners do not share the same perspective at this point, sources said. Both the union and the league have been preparing for the upcoming negotiations. When the annual general managers’ meetings wrap this week in Las Vegas, the MLBPA’s annual agent meetings will begin. Then, next week in New York, MLB’s owners will convene for their regular November meeting, where they will discuss their bargaining approach.

► From ESPN — What’s at stake for every WNBA player in the CBA negotiations — Solidarity has been a core principle among WNBA players well before these CBA talks. Still, like any labor negotiation, they face different realities. Some are millionaires thanks to their off-court endorsements. Others rely primarily on their on-court salaries from the WNBA — which in 2025 ranged from $66,079 (the minimum) to $249,244 (the supermax) — or other leagues. Some are on rookie deals, others are nearing retirement. There are parents, international players and soon-to-be WNBA draftees waiting in the wings. And, in a more recent development for this round of negotiations, some players have equity in, or even co-founded, other professional leagues.

► From the OC Register — 19,600 UC employees reach tentative contract, averting strike — One of three big unions planning to strike the University of California on Nov. 17-18 has reached a tentative agreement, leaving more than 60,000 left to continue with plans to picket at 18 campuses and medical facilities statewide. After 17 months of negotiations, UC and the University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Workers of America Local 9119, which represents 19,664 healthcare, research and technical professionals, agreed to a tentative deal Nov. 8, according to a UC statement.

 

ORGANIZING

► From Labor Notes — Indiana Casino Dealers Are Bringing Back the Recognition Strike — It’s a rare, courageous, throwback tactic. Ninety years ago this was the main way unions were formed. But ever since the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, another option has become the norm: If the employer doesn’t acknowledge your majority support on union cards, you file for a government-supervised election to prove your majority a second time. You grit your teeth through weeks of anti-union pressure, win the vote, and the government orders your boss to get with the program. That’s how the 200 dealers at the Horseshoe Casino, part of the Caesars chain, had planned to do it…Then on October 1, the federal government shut down. The election was postponed indefinitely. The union proposed to bring in a neutral party to conduct the vote; the boss wasn’t interested. So Local 135 leaders talked with the casino workers about their options. They could wait in limbo while the company honed its anti-union talking points and diluted the unit with new hires. Or they could take a big risk and do it the old-fashioned way. The workers voted by 92 percent to go for it.

► From the NW Labor Press — Plasterers hires first organizer to fuel growth in booming Boise — Local 82 has long represented plasterers in Oregon and Southwest Washington and added Southern Idaho to its jurisdiction a few years ago. Local 82 has just 110 members but business is booming in the Boise area with projects like the Micron chip plant, giving it an opportunity to grow…“The local here (in Oregon) has been established for quite some time, but over there, we’re kind of starting from fresh,” DePoppe said. Idaho, a right-to-work state, has far less union activity than Oregon across industries. Union members make up just 5% of workers in Idaho, compared to 16% in Oregon.

 

NATIONAL

► From the AP — Workers take on side jobs to combat stagnant salaries and insecurity about employment — Some are drawn to side jobs because of instability in their workplace, or the perception that they may lose their income. Still others, reluctant to trust one employer to provide a steady job that lasts, are supplementing their main roles with gig work on apps such as Uber and Grubhub…“We have seen stagnant salaries, we’ve seen inflation, we’ve seen the cost of living overall increasing, even beyond our inflation measures,” said Alexandrea Ravenelle, sociologist and gig economy researcher at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “So people are looking for ways to supplement and to build themselves a little bit of a safety net.”

► From KUOW — ‘We need to get out of here’: Trump’s immigration crackdown is quietly reshaping where immigrants live in America — E. asked that we only use her first initial, because she and her husband are both undocumented. She says she’d like to go back to Guatemala as soon as possible. Her daughter, who recently started high school, wants to stay in Florida. So does her husband, who feels that after some 20 years living in the U.S., this is home. But under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has embarked on one of the strictest immigration crackdowns in the nation, vowing to lead the way in President Trump’s campaign. Her husband’s workplace – a construction site – was recently raided. He just happened to be out that day. And the family knows multiple people who’ve been deported, including their own church pastor. For now, the family has decided to leave Florida for a small town in Michigan. A neighbor friend, also an immigrant, just moved there. “She called me recently,” E. says, and she told me, ‘why don’t you come up here? Things are quiet here. You don’t hear about raids. And I can find you a job.'”

► From the Washington Post — This lab is key for tracking deadly waves. Its sensors are about to go offline. — After NOAA ceased funding to the lab that’s been monitoring seismic activity for more than 25 years, nine stations tracking tsunami-causing earthquakes for the agency will go offline by the end of the month…The lack of funding could have widespread repercussions for the entire Pacific coast and poses safety concerns for remote communities living on these Alaskan islands who rely on the speedy warnings made possible from this data, according to local leaders and seismologists…“The system doesn’t collapse if you lose one measurement,” said the senior official. “But it creates holes in the network of observations.” An earthquake-caused tsunami heading for Hawaii could eventually be picked up, but maybe 20 minutes later, the official noted. And when it comes to tsunamis, seconds matter.

► From Wired — DHS Kept Chicago Police Records for Months in Violation of Domestic Espionage Rules — For seven months, the data—records that had been requested on roughly 900 Chicagoland residents—sat on a federal server in violation of a deletion order issued by an intelligence oversight body. A later inquiry found that nearly 800 files had been kept, which a subsequent report said breached rules designed to prevent domestic intelligence operations from targeting legal US residents. The records originated in a private exchange between DHS analysts and Chicago police, a test of how local intelligence might feed federal government watchlists.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Seattle Times — Federal workers question whether the longest government shutdown was worth their sacrifice — Jessica Sweet spent the federal government shutdown cutting back. To make ends meet, the Social Security claims specialist drank only one coffee a day, skipped meals, cut down on groceries and deferred paying some household bills. She racked up spending on her credit card buying gas to get to work. But the whiplash of the past six weeks, coupled with the concern that the longest shutdown ever may not be the last they face, has shaken many in the workforce. “Stress and hunger are great tactics for traumatizing people,” Sweet said. For Sweet, the feelings of frustration are only compounded by a feeling that she was betrayed by the Democratic-aligned senators who broke with the party on the health care subsidies…Adam Pelletier, a National Labor Relations Board field examiner who was furloughed Oct. 1, said he is glad the compromise includes rehiring laid-off workers, but “the agreement that was reached almost feels like the Charlie Brown cartoon where Lucy holds the football and pulls it out from them.”

► From the New York Times — As Shutdown Ends, When Will SNAP and Air Travel Be Back to Normal? — Federal law requires that federal workers whose paychecks were paused during the shutdown be made whole. In the past, it has taken about a week for unpaid workers to receive back pay, though the Office of Personnel Management said it varies by agency. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that air traffic controllers will receive the first 70 percent of their back pay within 24 to 48 hours of the shutdown ending, but it is not clear if other parts of the government will be on a similar schedule…Though the Trump administration fought efforts to force them to use contingency funds to pay out benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, during the shutdown, a spokeswoman for the White House’s budget office insisted this week that beneficiaries will see their accounts fully restored within hours of the federal government reopening.

► From Politico — House Dems to launch effort to force Obamacare subsidies extension — House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) announced in a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday that leadership would pursue the extension through a procedural move known as a discharge petition, according to five people granted anonymity to share private party strategy. This maneuver would allow rank-and-file members to bypass GOP leadership and compel a vote on the House floor on underlying legislation if the discharge petition can get 218 signatures. While the tactic is rarely successful, Democrats hope to pressure swing district Republicans to lend their support.

► From the New York Times — Lines at the Food Pantry, Billionaires at the White House — Democrats forced the shutdown to put Republicans on defense over the rising cost of health care, then caved without securing a tangible policy victory. But the shutdown also highlighted the striking difference in the president’s treatment of the rich and the poor, practically laying out his opponents’ attacks on a gilded platter as they race to hammer the administration more broadly over America’s affordability problem…Trump is a president who rose to power by fashioning himself as a populist, and who won a second term in part by promising to lower costs. Democrats have long struggled to poke holes in this image — but they might not have expected him to poke a few himself during the shutdown.

► From the Washington State Standard — End of shutdown ignites new round of sparring among WA’s congressional lawmakers — Gluesenkamp Perez’s vote didn’t cost her the backing of DelBene, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of House Democrats. “The reason we win is because we have representatives who are authentic to their communities,” DelBene said. “Unlike Republicans who are blindly loyal to Donald Trump, we have representatives who are going to make the decisions they think are best for their community.”

► From Politico — Trump administration declares CFPB funding illegal — The Trump administration has formally determined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s current funding mechanism is unlawful, a move that puts the agency on track to close in the coming months when its existing cash runs out. The decision, disclosed in a court filing late Monday, marks the administration’s most direct effort yet to dismantle the consumer watchdog and sets up a new front in the ongoing legal battle over its future. The administration said it now considers the CFPB legally barred from seeking additional money from the Federal Reserve, which is the agency’s typical source of funding…That argument gained traction in conservative circles as a new way to attack the CFPB after the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 2024. But several federal judges have rejected that theory when companies raised it to dismiss CFPB lawsuits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, similarly rejected the premise that the CFPB can only be funded through Fed profits.

The Stand posts links to local, national and international labor news every weekday morning. Subscribe to get daily news in your inbox. 

Related Topics:
Exit mobile version