NEWS ROUNDUP

Food prices | 32-hr work week | MLK Day

Friday, January 16, 2026

STRIKES

► From the Progressive — Louisiana Starbucks Workers: ‘No Contract, No Coffee!’ — Since November 13, thousands of unionized workers have walked off the job at roughly forty-five store locations nationwide, in an unfair labor practices strike they’re calling the “Red Cup Rebellion.” The employees allege that Starbucks management has failed to finalize a fair union contract and engaged in union busting tactics, such as firing a group of workers known as the Memphis 7 for their organizing activities in 2022…Krista Hanson, a barista and SBWU strike captain, told me she feels “really good” about the impact of the Red Cup Rebellion. “We’re standing up for ourselves and our partners all around the country,” Hanson said. “We’re fighting for a better company, for us and for customers. If I could say anything to the CEO, I would just tell him that we want a better company for everybody.”

► From Starbucks Workers United:

Unlike other businesses in Minneapolis, Starbucks is allowing ICE agents into stores against the concerns of baristas and our community.

That’s why our union is taking action. Across Minnesota, baristas are demanding that Starbucks update their guidance around ICE immediately. pic.twitter.com/iN0TuCK8DJ

— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) January 14, 2026

LOCAL

► From KING 5 — 32-hour work week goes full-time in San Juan County — The county experimented with the concept for two years. Most county employees get the same pay for the same amount of work with the same level of productivity expected, but working just four days per week instead of five. This year it became official policy. It has allowed Venegas, a married mother of two, much more freedom, along with a break from the burdens of expensive and difficult to find daycare on the island.

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — Edgewood construction company fined over $200,000 for workplace safety breaches — An Edgewood construction company faces four workplace safety violations and $258,514 in fines after multiple inspections, the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries shared in a press release. Modern S Construction LLC has been inspected six times over the last three years and cited for not protecting its workers from falls, the release read. Two of the violations are classified as willful serious, meaning the employer knowingly failed to comply with the legal requirement and the hazards would likely have resulted in death or physical harm.

► From OPB — ICE arrest outside Clark County courthouse interrupts jury trial — Federal immigration officials took a man facing charges related to a domestic dispute into custody hours after his trial began in Clark County Superior Court this week, in a move some observers say may be unprecedented in Washington state. Video of the Jan. 12 arrest shows five masked ICE officers handcuffing 26-year-old Brayan David Morales Bermudez on the sidewalk outside the Clark County courthouse. The arrest puts an immediate halt to the trial just as it was getting underway, and strains public resources already invested in the case, Clark County Superior Court Judge Camara Banfield told OPB.

► From the Columbia Basin Herald — Community dinner, silent auction, march planned for MLK weekend — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is Jan. 19, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee is hosting its annual freedom march [in Moses Lake] that day at 4:30 p.m. This year, the committee is expanding the celebration with a community dinner and silent auction taking place Saturday at 5 p.m.

► From My Northwest — Your guide to Seattle’s holiday weekend: MLK events, music, family fun — It is Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and on Saturday, there will be a march followed by a celebration here in Seattle. The 2026 MLK March and Celebration starts at 11 a.m. with speeches and entertainment. Then at 12:30 p.m., the youth-led march from the park to the Rainer Community Center begins. Following the march, there will be live music, art, food, and opportunities to learn about Dr. King’s work and message.

► From My Northwest — Hundreds protest ICE raids at Boeing Field — Hundreds of protesters gathered to protest ICE and the deportation flights that take place at the King County International Airport. Many are carrying signs and chanting. The event was sponsored by La Resistencia, a group that has also called for the closure of the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The participants, many of whom are just parents or grandparents, claimed the time to resist a “tyrannical government” is now.

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing warned 15 years ago about part problem at center of UPS crash — More than a decade before a deadly crash last year, Boeing warned MD-11 operators that a part securing the cargo plane’s engines to their wings had failed four times, while insisting it did not pose a safety risk. Now, that piece is the focus of an investigation into the UPS Flight 2976 disaster in Kentucky.

ORGANIZING

► From NW Public Broadcasting — More workers at Lumen Field are now union members ahead of World Cup — The stadium where the Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC all play is now staffed by a majority union workforce. That wasn’t the case three years ago, when only 17% of Lumen Field staff were unionized. But now, ahead of the city and stadium hosting six matches of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, many workers have organized. About 80% of the workforce at Lumen now belong to one of a dozen unions representing workers at the stadium. “ I think all of us saw what happened in Qatar and we wanted to ensure that workers were not being taken advantage of while there was this massive event taking place in our city,” said Katie Garrow, executive secretary-treasurer of the Martin Luther King, Jr. County Labor Council.

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Food Prices Keep Climbing, Rattling Consumers and Trump — The price of beef has risen 16.4 percent over the last year. The price of coffee is up a whopping 19.8 percent. The price of lettuce is up 7.3 percent and frozen fish 8.6 percent…Data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the cost of food at home rose 2.4 percent overall in the previous 12 months and 0.7 percent in December alone, the fastest single-month increase since October 2022. That month-over-month gain stood out in an otherwise subdued inflation report.

► From Workday Magazine — How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Chills Organizing and Erodes Conditions for All Workers — When someone who fought so successfully for workers—both immigrants and non-immigrants—is detained, “it sends a chill through all the workers in the non-union companies that are trying to stand up and get their rights enforced,” Nammacher said. (I am not sharing the identity of the worker to protect the privacy of his loved ones.) “When the workers who are stepping up to try and reveal violations are silenced, the standard comes down for the whole industry.”

► From the Sahan Journal — Metro Transit workers decry ICE activity at transit stops — On Jan, 10, federal agents forced people out of vehicles in front of a bus stop at Bloomington Avenue and East 31st Street in south Minneapolis, according to Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005 President David Stiggers. The incident shocked the driver and passengers, he said, and significantly delayed the bus…One ATU member originally from Somalia was detained by ICE for more than a month before being released without explanation, Stiggers said. The driver was arrested on Dec. 2 on his way to work, then held in detention in Iowa and Nebraska before being released, Stiggers said. He was reunited with his family on Jan. 6, according to the ATU.

► From the New York Times — U.S. Says It Erred in Deporting Student Traveling for Thanksgiving — Any Lucia López Belloza, 19, a freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., was detained at an airport and deported to Honduras in late November after trying to surprise her family with a visit for the holiday. Despite the administration’s rare admission of error, the government has not moved to drop the case, and it has generally sought maximum authority to detain and deport noncitizens.

► From the Minnesota Star Tribune — Minnesota’s biggest companies starting to feel heat from ICE surge — Bill George, a longtime Medtronic CEO who sat on the board of several companies, including Target, said business leaders’ top obligation is to protect employees’ well-being. The times are “extremely stressful” for businesses, he said. The surge in federal officers, George said, “is certainly not helping growth, jobs or innovation in” Minnesota. Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Matt Varilek said in a statement that ICE’s actions are having a “negative impact” on “businesses large and small.”…

► From the Guardian — Judge to protect noncitizen academics involved in case from ‘authoritarian’ Trump — A federal judge described Donald Trump as an authoritarian and accused his administration of “an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people” in its aggressive pursuit of non-US citizen, pro-Palestinian activists on American college campuses. The judge in Boston, who was appointed by the Republican president Ronald Reagan, said on Thursday that he would issue an order aimed at protecting academics who challenged the arrest and deportation of such activists, including some of the highest-profile cases such as those of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the AP — Judge hands offshore wind industry another victory against Trump in clearing way for NY project — District Judge Carl J. Nichols, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled construction on the Empire Wind project could go forward while he considers the merits of the government’s order to suspend the project. He faulted the government for not responding to key points in Empire Wind’s court filings, including the contention that the administration violated proper procedure…It’s the second developer to prevail in court against the administration this week.

► From the New York Times — Trump Outlines Health Care Proposals as Prices and Premiums Rise — The plan was short on specific details and left much of the direction for how to finalize it up to Congress. It amounted to a few paragraphs on a webpage, released with a video of Mr. Trump promoting what he called “the great health care plan.” The plan rejects efforts to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act benefits that expired at the end of the year and have been the subject of intense debate on Capitol Hill.

► From the Government Executive — Judge: TSA ‘plainly’ violated court order with renewed union busting push — A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday put a halt to the Trump administration’s renewed effort to strip Transportation Security Administration workers of their collective bargaining rights, finding that a gambit to replace a policy document undergirding the initiative with a more detailed one “plainly” violated a 2025 court order.

► From Bloomberg Law — NLRB Affirms Regional Directors’ Power When Board Lacks Quorum — Federal labor law permits regional directors to exercise delegated authority when the board falls below the three-member minimum needed necessary to fully function, the NLRB said in its Thursday ruling. The ruling rejecting Satellite Healthcare’s challenge comes a little over a week after the board regained its quorum Jan. 7. The board also released another tranche of unpublished rulings resolving routine matters in cases involving Starbucks Corp., the Washington Post, Trader Joe’s, and a handful of other employers.

► From the Seattle Times — Congress rejects Trump cuts, funds major WA projects — The three-bill package includes $5 billion specific to Washington state, including $3.2 billion for Hanford, the Central Washington nuclear cleanup site, and $190 million for construction at Howard A. Hanson Dam, a project supporting fish passage and flood risk reduction along the Green River near Seattle that the Trump administration shirked in its funding proposals. “I said I would tear up Trump’s budget and write a new one — and I did,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, which is tasked with drafting the federal government funding bills.

► From the Tri-City Herald — $5B in federal funds for WA would stop layoffs at Tri-Cities’ biggest employer –Projects across Washington state are poised to get federal funding under an appropriations bill package that the U.S. Senate passed Thursday. The Senate passed the package 82-15, with more than $5 billion going to Washington state, according to Sen. Patty Murray’s office. That includes record funding for the Hanford nuclear site and $190 million for the Howard Hanson Dam.

► From My Northwest — New WA bill would bar most police from wearing face coverings, masks — Washington lawmakers are moving forward with a bill that would limit when police officers can cover their faces while interacting with the public. Senate Bill 5855 cleared the Senate Law and Justice Committee Thursday. It now moves to the Senate Rules committee…The proposal also gives people a new legal option. Anyone detained by an officer who violates the rule could file a civil lawsuit, seeking damages, attorneys’ fees, and court orders to stop future violations.

► From Insider NJ — New Jersey Labor Unions Announce New Coalition Dedicated to Climate Action, Affordability, and Union Jobs — Climate Jobs New Jersey launched, announcing it will work with the incoming administration to tackle the energy affordability crisis and help New Jersey take back control of its energy future by creating good union jobs and building more clean energy in the state.

JOLT OF JOY

TJ Sabula and his supporters gave me 800,000 reasons to smile this week. What can I say, I love a well-timed (dare I say fact-based?) expression of free speech. And in the words of folk hero and UAW sibling Sabula: