DHS funding | Kaiser strike | NIOSH Spokane

Monday, January 26, 2026

STRIKES

► From the Los Angeles Times — Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers launch open-ended strike — Up to 31,000 registered nurses, nurse anesthetists, pharmacists, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians and other specialty healthcare professionals are involved in the open-ended strike…Workers accused Kaiser Permanente of unlawfully undermining negotiations and attempting to intimidate workers by warning them about the consequences of striking and directing their peers to report union activity to management.

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — After 9 months of uncertainty, federal workplace safety agency NIOSH brings back workers at Spokane Research Lab — After being paid not to work for nine months, employees at a federal office in Spokane dedicated to workplace safety were reinstated on Jan. 13, but their research faces challenges and uncertainty after many left during the long layoff period…“I’m really glad to be back,” said Tristan Victoroff, a NIOSH epidemiologist and a union steward with the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1916. “We’re grateful and hopeful. It just seems that everybody has never been more hopeful and more leery at the same time, because we are seeing what we’re left with – and we’re missing a lot of good people.” Brad Seymour, another AFGE union steward and a research mining engineer, said roughly a quarter of staff at NIOSH’s Spokane Mining Research Division retired or left for other jobs since they were sent home last year.

► From the Olympian — Over 1,000 people in downtown Tacoma protest a year of Trump in office — Claudia Cabellon, one of the emcees leading chants at the rally, has seen the impacts of ICE firsthand. Besides their role as a member of Malaya Tacoma, a chapter of the national Filipino coalition Malaya Movement, they work in education. One of the parents of a student they work with was taken by ICE agents during winter break, they said. “It’s impacting all of us,” Cabellon said. “It’s happening in Minneapolis and right here in Tacoma. We’re all fighting the same issue.” Also emceeing the event was 14-year-old Negev Belnaker. His work organizing is partly motivated by his family’s history, he said. As a Jewish person, he lost many of his ancestors to the Holocaust.

► From OPB — Our reporting showed Washington ranks last in green energy growth. Now the state is working to speed it up — Most of the high-priority projects identified by the state and by Clean & Prosperous are waiting for approval to connect to Bonneville’s substations and transmission lines so that developers move toward construction. The federal agency’s review process historically has been sluggish and often puts the onus on a single energy developer to invest tens of millions of dollars in upgrades or else wait until another developer comes along to shoulder some of the cost. In addition, state officials in Oregon and Washington must also sign off on the location planned for new power lines and wind or solar farms — a process with its own bottlenecks.

► From Range Media — County tips off ICE contractor to records request — Less than a month after he requested records on an immigrant transport van from Spokane County, Jim Leighty found himself on the phone with Joan Mell. Mell is a well-known private lawyer, a board member of Washington’s most visible open government advocacy nonprofit and aspiring attorney of Keith Swank, the high-profile Pierce County sheriff who faces challenges to his certification. But Leighty had never heard of her. Mell said to Leighty, “I’m making sure you’re not going to hurt my peeps,” he recalled in an interview. Suddenly, it was clear why she was calling him. She also represents GEO Group, the prison contractor that runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma and the parent company of GEO Transport, which operates the van Leighty was interested in.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the UW Daily — UW resident physicians secure union contract with 10.5% pay and benefit increase — The collective bargaining unit, represented by CIR-NW, includes more than 1,500 UW-employed resident physicians, fellows, and dental residents in Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited programs within the UW School of Medicine and UW School of Dentistry. It also covers residents completing required research years in general surgery, otolaryngology, and urology. Trainees in non-accredited positions, those with faculty appointments, and “paid direct” trainees are not included in the bargaining unit.

► From the AP — 2028 Olympics could bring big wins for Los Angeles labor unions — Unite Here Local 11 co-President Kurt Petersen said his union has aligned more than 100 contracts that cover roughly 25,000 workers at hotels, airports, sports arenas and convention centers to expire in January 2028, mere months before the opening ceremony. The idea is to maximize bargaining power. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents workers in the health care, grocery and packing industries; and Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents more than 100,000 county employees, also plan to leverage contracts that expire in the first half of 2028.

NATIONAL

► From the Washington Post — Minneapolis mourns ICU nurse killed by a Border Patrol agent as a warmhearted neighbor and caregiver — Pretti, 37, was remembered as kind and warm-hearted by his family, neighbors and the loved ones of the ailing veterans he treated at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. A video posted to social media showed Pretti reading a final salute at the foot of the flag-draped body of Terrance Lee Randolph, an Air Force vet who died at the hospital in 2024. “Today we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti, wearing navy blue scrubs, says in the video. “We have to work for it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it.” Randolph’s son, Mac Randolph, remembered Pretti tending to his father in his final days and said he found the words “very on point” in the wake of Saturday’s deadly shooting.

Editor’s note: in solidarity with Minnesota, labor and community will rally outside the federal building in downtown Seattle today at 5pm. Details. 

► From the Guardian — Minnesota workers pressure employers to take action against ICE operations — Workers throughout Minnesota have been pressuring their employers to act following the death of Renee Good, an unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month. The killing on Saturday of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs Hospital ICU Nurse and member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), intensified those calls from labor unions against ICE. “ICE continues to make everyone less safe, and Minnesota’s Labor Movement repeats and amplifies our call for them to leave our state immediately,” said Bernie Burnham, Minnesota AFL-CIO President, in a statement. “Minnesota’s Labor Movement will continue to actively support and stand in solidarity with every worker who has been unlawfully detained. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Minnesotans in the face of a hostile federal government.”

► From Truthout — Minneapolis Health Care Workers Are Organizing to Defend Their Patients From ICE — Health care workers who spoke to Truthout report that the number of agents in hospitals has risen sharply since the beginning of the year, with ailing or injured detainees regularly brought into emergency departments at multiple city hospitals at all hours, including overnight. Meanwhile, workers told Truthout that those federal agents have intimidated hospital staff and disregarded federal law, medical best practices, and hospital policies, often with limited pushback from hospital administrators. Where administrators have seemed reluctant to intervene, however, rank-and-file health care workers are stepping up to protect their colleagues and their patients — thanks to organizing and training efforts that began long before agents descended on the Twin Cities.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From PBS — Funding deal begins to unravel as Senate Democrats vow to oppose DHS bill over Alex Pretti shooting in Minnesota — Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, in a social media post hours after the Saturday shooting, said that what is happening in Minnesota is “appalling” and that Democrats “will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”…Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and key negotiator on the funding package, had been pushing her colleagues to vote for the homeland security bill, arguing that Democrats had successfully fought off major increases to the ICE budget. But in the wake of the shooting, Murray said Sunday on X that “I will NOT support the DHS bill as it stands.” “Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” Murray wrote.

► From the AP — A federal judge hears arguments on Minnesota’s immigration crackdown after fatal shootings –A federal judge began hearing arguments Monday on whether she should halt, at least temporarily, the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that has led to the fatal shootings of two people by government officers. The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month, five days after Renee Good was shot by an Immigration and Customs officer. The shooting of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol officer on Saturday added urgency to the case.

► From Bloomberg Law — New NLRB Intake Protocol Delays When Investigations Get Assigned — Instead of being assigned to a board agent for investigation, new charges are sent to an unassigned case list pending a charging party’s submission of supporting documents, such as a timeline of events and a list of witnesses. Failure to provide that information within two weeks can result in a charge being tossed for noncooperation. A staffer in each regional office is designated as the “unassigned case list specialist” responsible for processing new charges, checking for required document submissions, and reviewing that information to determine whether the charges are valid or should be thrown out. Charges that pass those initial tests get assigned when there’s a board agent available who can investigate them in a timely manner.

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — Proposal would give WA agricultural workers more options to form a union –Several people who supported the bill are associated with Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a Washington farmworkers union that was born of strikes, boycotts and years of litigation, according to its political director, Edgar Franks. He told the committee that such a contentious process “caused economic harm to both the employer and the employee. That’s something that we don’t want.” SB 6045 “offers a remedy,” he said. “Predictability, I know, is a big thing for employers and also for workers, so we feel that this bill does that,” he said. “It also offers fairness for workers.”

► From My Northwest — WA AG says new agreement protects SNAP recipients’ data — Last year, the federal government tried to obtain SNAP recipients’ data to use for immigration enforcement. “The company initially told the Washington Department of Health and Human Services (DSHS) that it intended to turn over the personal data of SNAP cardholders in Washington,” according to a news release from Brown’s office. “After DSHS told Fidelity not to disclose the information, the company initially agreed not to, but then failed to respond to repeated requests from DSHS for confirmation.”

► From the Spokesman Review — Baumgartner ‘disturbed’ by ICE shooting, calls for congressional investigation — In the wake of the most recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting Saturday in Minneapolis, Republican House Rep. Michael Baumgartner has called for Congress to investigate the immigration enforcement agency…In his statement Baumgartner said he was “disturbed” by what he saw in video recordings of the shooting. Republicans who have publicly questioned ICE’s actions include Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

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