Contract at Legacy | ACA subsidies | Tax reforms

Friday, January 9, 2026

STRIKES

► From KOIN — Legacy strike ends after unionized advanced practice providers ratify contract, ONA says –Following an almost month-long strike, advanced practice providers have reached an agreement with Legacy Health. The Oregon Nurses Association revealed the employees had “overwhelmingly voted to ratify their first union contract” with the health system on Friday. More than 100 APPs launched an open-ended strike against Legacy in early December, advocating for additional pay, staffing retention and more…The now-ratified contract “includes across-the-board pay raises, accelerated timelines for raises, and new protections for APPs if Legacy makes unilateral decisions about the workplace,” according to ONA.

LOCAL

► From My Northwest — Disaster assistance opens for Lewis, Pierce county residents — Washington has expanded disaster funding to qualifying residents in Lewis and Pierce counties who suffered storm and flood damage. The $2.5 million is through Washington’s Individual Assistance program and is part of $3.5 million unlocked with Governor Bob Ferguson’s disaster declaration, the governor’s office announced. Funding was previously unlocked for King, Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom counties.

► From the Seattle Times — Citizenship interviews canceled in Seattle amid Trump crackdown — Dozens of green card holders in Washington have seen their naturalization interviews canceled in recent weeks, despite not hailing from countries targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, local advocates and lawyers said…Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs operates a program supporting 10 community-based organizations to provide citizenship assistance like legal representation and classes. Since early December, all of them have seen citizenship interviews and oath ceremony appointments abruptly canceled for their clients, including over 80 naturalization interviews. Before the holidays, nearly all interviews scheduled through Jan. 17 were also abruptly canceled, affecting people of all nationalities and beyond the expanded travel ban list, according to city staff.

► From OPB — DHS identifies people shot by Border Patrol in Portland; 6 arrested in protests after shooting — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released the identities of two Venezuelan nationals shot by Border Patrol agents in Portland Thursday afternoon. They’re identified as Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras…One of the wounded was taken to Legacy Emanuel and one was taken to Oregon Health & Science University, according to a spokesperson for the Oregon Nurses Association, who said the union learned the information from one of its members.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the NW Labor Press — OHSU reaches tentative deal with AFSCME — After an 18-hour bargaining session that ended after 5 a.m. Dec. 17, Oregon’s largest hospital and the state’s largest local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) reached tentative agreement on a new contract. AFSCME Local 328 represents around 8,000 workers at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). The union reached the tentative agreement nearly a month after workers authorized a strike. The proposed contract gives raises of at least 10.25% over three years and sets a wage floor of $25 by the time the contract expires June 30, 2028.

► From Variety — Hollywood Unions Pencil in Bargaining Dates as AI and Health Funding Issues Loom — The Hollywood unions are penciling in bargaining dates for the coming months, as they prepare to negotiate with the studios about thorny issues like artificial intelligence and health coverage. SAG-AFTRA told members last month that its negotiators will sit down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Feb. 9. Those talks are due to run through March 6. The Writers Guild of America is expected to begin talks 10 days later, on March 16. The WGA contract expires on May 1, and those negotiations typically go down to the wire.

► From ESPN — Breanna Stewart says no extension in WNBA labor talks — New York Liberty star and WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart said the players’ association and WNBA will not agree to another collective bargaining agreement extension after the deadline passes Friday. The two parties instead will enter a period of “status quo,” in which the current CBA would be maintained, and the league and union can continue negotiating.

ORGANIZING

► From News Center Maine — Northern Maine Medical Center nurses vote to keep union — Registered nurses at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent voted Wednesday night to re-certify their union, rejecting an effort backed by hospital management to dissolve the group, according to the Maine State Nurses Association. The nurses, who formed the union in 2024, are represented by the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United. The re-certification vote marks the second time nurses have voted in favor of union representation.

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Announces It Will Cease Operations — The Post-Gazette has been mired for years in a legal battle with its union workers, who went on strike for more than three years, beginning in 2022, after the newspaper changed the terms of their employment. A federal court had awarded a legal victory to the union in November; on Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to halt that order.

Editor’s note: The union released a statement reading in part, “Today the Block family admitted that they don’t have the skill to run a business and also follow the law,” said NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss. “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Blocks spent millions on lawyers to fight union workers, fight journalists, and break federal labor law. They lost at every level, including now at the Supreme Court. Pittsburgh deserves better, and we will continue to fight to make sure all news companies follow the law and serve our communities.”

► From the Huffington Post — Border Agents ‘Interrogated’ Striking Workers In Chicago, Teamsters Say — Teamsters Local 705 shared video of strikers interacting with an officer in a U.S. Border Patrol uniform who appears to be Bovino. The soundless video shows the official, flanked by agents, pointing at the camera and laughing. Nicolas Coronado, an attorney for the union, told HuffPost that Bovino had asked the worker shooting the video if he was a U.S. citizen. He alleged that the interaction was a violation of the workers’ right to protest their employer, Mauser Packaging Solutions, without fear of retaliation. “It was very clearly protected concerted activity, and [agents] took it upon themselves to start asking [the workers] and interrogating them about their status,” said Coronado, adding that the interaction lasted between five and 10 minutes.

► From WKUFM — ‘Now they’re left in the rain’: BlueOval workers face Feb.14 closing date — About 1,600 workers have been given Feb. 14 as the last day of operations at the electric vehicle battery plant in Glendale. BlueOval SK announced last week the mega factory off I-65 would close and eliminate the entire workforce as Ford shifts its EV strategy…Ford says it plans to hire 2,100 workers in Glendale once it repurposes the plant for energy storage. But Musgrove says he has no desire to work for Ford again. “It was a waste of my time and I wish I had never applied there knowing what I know now and how they had done pretty much everybody, especially people that are pro-union,” Musgrove said.

► From the Fresno Bee — United Farm Workers has unionized eight farms under 2023 CA law. Here’s where — Agricultural workers at eight California-based growers, packing houses and greenhouses have unionized since a 2023 state law made it easier for farmworkers to vote for union representation. Between October 2023 through November 2025, the Agriculture Labor Relations Board has certified the United Farm Workers to represent hundreds of workers statewide, according to state records…The 2023 law made it easier for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing authorization cards, a process referred to as a “majority support petition” or “card check.” Previously, under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farmworkers could only vote for union representation in secret ballot elections conducted on their employer’s property.

► From the Washington Post — December jobs report to cap off worst labor market since 2020 — Employers added 50,000 jobs in December, notching a moderate gain for the economy but ending the worst year for the labor market since the pandemic-era recession…2025 marked the fewest jobs gained for workers since 2020 and the second worst year since the Great Recession. Employers added 584,000 jobs in 2025, an average of 49,000 jobs per month in 2025. That’s a significant drop from the 2 million jobs added over 2024 or 168,000 per month.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — House passes bill extending ACA subsidies, bucking GOP leaders — More than a dozen House Republicans joined every Democrat on Thursday to pass a bill to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years — the sharpest rejection by GOP members of the party’s leadership yet…Prospects for passage in the Senate are unclear, though, as the chamber has already blocked similar attempts to extend the subsidies…For House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), the vote is the starkest example yet of the difficulty of leading an incredibly narrow House majority. Republicans can only lose two votes if all Democrats are present and voting, after the resignation of former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and the death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-California).

► From the New York Times — House Passes Spending Package Before Another Shutdown Deadline — The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed legislation to reject steep cuts requested by President Trump and fund parts of the government including the Justice and Commerce Departments, in a bipartisan breakthrough before a Jan. 30 spending deadline. Action on the roughly $180 billion package signaled progress toward a broader agreement that could avoid the kind of bitter spending fight last fall that prompted the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history. The vote was 397 to 28, with 22 Republicans and 6 Democrats opposed.

► From The New Republic — Trump’s Childcare Funding Freezes Are Going to Hit All Kids Hard  — In recent days, the Trump administration has taken dramatic steps to make federal funds for childcare more difficult to obtain. A lack of clarity around how a slew of new requirements will be implemented has left childcare providers reeling, and raised the specter of facility closures even as childcare costs skyrocket. As providers work to sort through the confusion, experts are warning that no family will be immune from the impact of these policy changes.

► From Bloomberg — Trump Cuts Shrink Federal Workforce Across Nearly All Agencies — President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce in 2025 hit every major agency last year — with cabinet departments including Education, Housing and Treasury taking the brunt of the downsizing, according to government data released Thursday. More than 322,000 employees have left agencies since Trump took office, with departures outpacing new hires by more than three-to-one. The figures from the Office of Personnel Management — the most up-to-date snapshot of federal employment data — show the workforce undergoing its most dramatic transformation in decades. That followed Trump’s move to enact a hiring freeze on his first day in office and put Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk in charge of a wide-ranging effort to cut government spending.

► From the Seattle Times — WA lawmakers agree on the need for roadwork — not how to pay for it — Washington state legislators see a tough couple of months ahead for transportation spending. The short session begins Monday and won’t see massive changes to policy. Lawmakers have just 60 days to tweak the $15.5 billion transportation budget agreed to during last year’s 105-day session. In the meantime, roads continue to deteriorate, and the cost of the state’s megaprojects continues to rise, as does the plan to electrify the ferry system. Looming over it all is the deferred work to preserve and maintain the state’s tens of thousands of miles of road and thousands of bridges, which both sides of the aisle agree is the priority this year. State transportation officials warned in October there wasn’t enough money to keep up with needs, saying the state was in the “early stages of critical failure due to lack of funding.”

► From KUOW — ‘Our kids need help.’ Washington schools chief calls for tax reforms to fund education –That was state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal’s top message Thursday during his annual “State of Education” address. “It’s broken, and it’s time for Democrats to admit that. It’s time for Republicans to drop the rhetoric that all taxes are bad,” he said. “We have vital services in the state that have to be paid for. The economy will continue to grow for the next 100 years, but the share of it going to public services will shrink if we do nothing, and the frustration of putting that tax burden increasingly on middle-class families has got to change.”

► From the Tri-City Herald — ‘Record funding’ for WA nuclear cleanup passes House. Wins for other projects — The Congressional bill package that includes the fiscal 2026 spending plan for the Hanford nuclear site would increase its budget to a record level. It would boost money for Hanford by $277 million from the fiscal 2025 budget bill, for a $3.2 billion budget. That’s an increase of almost 9.4%, according to the staff of Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

► From KUNC — Colorado Democrats, labor unions revive push to ease unionization rules — Democrats in the Colorado legislature plan to introduce a bill during the upcoming legislative session that would make it easier for employees to form unions, reigniting a fight over labor policy with Gov. Jared Polis after he vetoed the same measure last year. The bill, dubbed the Worker Protection Act by supporters, would repeal a requirement that workers hold a second election before their union can operate fully, following a simple majority vote to unionize in the first place.

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