NEWS ROUNDUP

Transit worker safety | Portland worker organizing | 47 ways

Thursday, January 15, 2026

 

STRIKES

► From ABC 7 NY — Negotiations set to resume as New York City nurses’ strike enters day 4 — The New York City nurses strike entered its fourth day, and negotiations are expected to resume Thursday evening at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital…As for when a deal will be made, that remains unclear. A mediator will oversee talks with NewYork-Presbyterian. Hospitals are calling some of the union’s demands reckless and unreasonable. Nurses say it’s not unreasonable, and they show no signs of leaving the picket line.

► From Starbucks Workers United:

 

LOCAL

► From the Daily — One year after Shawn Yim’s killing, safety still poses concern for transit workers — The December 2024 killing of transit operator Shawn Yim in the U-District prompted discussions of transit safety, along with the allocation of resources to improve safety on public transportation for workers and riders alike. Now, more than a year later, workers have yet to see significant changes implemented…Greg Woodfill, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 (ATU), mentioned that although the task force is an important step, it’s just the beginning of improving feelings of safety for transit workers. “It’s a critical step, but it’s just the first step,” Woodfill said. “For my membership … they don’t see all that, and they don’t see the change yet. They’re not feeling it yet.”

► From the Seattle Times — Here are real solutions to WA’s child care crisis — Let’s be real. Fraud is not the biggest challenge facing working families in America. It is the child care crisis in Washington state and across the country, and racist attacks targeting Somali child care providers won’t solve it…I’ve been an early childhood educator for more than 20 years. I’m 62 years old, but I can’t afford to retire, ever. I work in a wealthy area of Seattle, but wages for child care providers aren’t enough for workers even to afford a studio. I see young volunteers from the University of Washington come to our center. They start out happy, they love working with kids; but they soon decide to try something else when they realize this is hard work and they will be poorly paid for it.

► From My Northwest — Tesla faces lawsuit over Autopilot after fatal motorcycle crash in WA — In 2024, Jeffrey Nissen, a 28-year-old man, was riding a motorcycle when he was killed in a crash with a Tesla vehicle that was using the company’s self-driving feature. Now, Nissen’s family is suing Tesla, claiming the car’s system caused the deadly crash. Nissen was a Stanwood resident. Jeff Nissen, Jeffrey’s father, said Tesla misled people into thinking cars can do more than they can, according to The Seattle Times. The family wants damages and for Tesla to stop selling its Autopilot feature until it’s proven safe.

► From OPB — Portland State agrees to reinstate laid off faculty — After a drawn-out labor dispute, Portland State University says it plans to restore the jobs formerly held by 10 non-tenure-track faculty. PSU announced late Tuesday afternoon that it will fully comply with a recent arbitration decision that ordered the university to reinstate the positions and “make whole” the affected faculty members. In November, an independent arbitrator found that Portland State had violated its labor contract with the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors when it terminated the faculty last school year.

► From the Seattle Times — Portland shooting highlights controversial Border Patrol tactics — A U.S. Border Patrol officer’s firing into a side window of a moving truck was the very tactic that policing experts more than a decade ago advised the federal government to halt to avoid increasing risks to public safety. Yet the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy appears to still allow its officers to do what the Border Patrol agent did in Portland on Jan. 8…The FBI did note that one other Border Patrol agent drew his gun but held it down because he didn’t feel he was in danger, according to the affidavit. And another agent backed away from the moving truck and told FBI investigators that he was concerned for the safety of nearby civilians, the affidavit said.

 

AEROSPACE

► From CNBC — Inside Boeing’s factories: How the aircraft maker is trying to fix its safety and quality crisis — Inside the Renton plant, the 737 Max moves through a structured and methodical assembly process. Each aircraft passes through ten positions, advancing one position every day. Mechanics assemble the fuselage, wings, landing gear and other key components step by step until the aircraft is ready for delivery. While the facility has the capacity to produce up to 63 aircraft a month, Boeing is currently building around 42. The slower pace is intended to allow more time for inspections, quality checks and regulatory oversight…From Renton, the focus shifts north to Everett, home to Boeing’s wide-body aircraft programmes. The Everett factory is often described as the largest manufacturing building in the world, reflecting the sheer scale and complexity of aircraft production.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the New York Times’ Athletic — NWSLPA says new High Impact Player rule violates CBA, seeks ‘immediate rescission’ — The NWSL Players Association has filed a grievance against the league, arguing the NWSL’s implementation of the new High Impact Player rule violated terms of their collective bargaining agreement and federal labor law and called for the mechanism to be revoked. The NWSLPA on Wednesday said it is “seeking immediate rescission of the HIP Rule” and demanded the league enter into negotiations “in good faith” with the players association on any changes that impact player compensation.

 

ORGANIZING

► From the NW Labor Press — Providence Portland medical techs unionize — Around 270 medical techs at Providence Portland Medical Center unionized with the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) in a 181-49 vote Jan. 7. The new unit includes more than a dozen occupations, including surgical technicians, respiratory therapists, occupational therapy assistants, and technologists who operate ultrasound, MRI and mammogram equipment. Priorities for the new unit include increasing staffing levels and fair wages and benefits, ONA spokesperson Myrna Jensen said in an email to the Labor Press.

► From the NW Labor Press — Student workers at Portland State form a union — More than 1,400 student workers at Portland State University (PSU) are on track to become union members…The proposed student worker union would include resident assistants in dorms, child care providers, tutors, lab assistants, recreation center workers, and others. SEIU Local 503 represents more than 70,000 Oregon workers in state agencies, home care, nursing homes, and higher education. PSU would be Local 503’s first unit of student workers.

 

NATIONAL

► From Fortune — U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947, at least — Labor share, or the portion of the U.S.’s economic output that workers receive through salary and wages, decreased to 53.8% in the third quarter of 2025, its lowest level since the BLS started recording this data in 1947, according to its labor productivity and costs report published last week. In the previous quarter, labor share was at 54.6%. This decade, the labor share average was 55.6%. That’s despite corporate earnings skyrocketing, with profits for Fortune 500 companies hitting a record $1.87 trillion in 2024. The U.S. GDP grew 4.3% in the third quarter last year, exceeding economists’ predictions.

► From Wired — Tech Workers Are Condemning ICE Even as Their CEOs Stay Quiet — It’s been largely business as usual for Silicon Valley over the past year…But after an ICE agent shot and killed an unarmed US citizen, Renee Nicole Good, in broad daylight in Minneapolis last week, a number of tech leaders have begun publicly speaking out about the Trump administration’s tactics. This includes prominent researchers at Google and Anthropic, who have denounced the killing as callous and immoral. The most wealthy and powerful tech CEOs are still staying silent as ICE floods America’s streets, but now some researchers and engineers working for them have chosen to break rank.

► From the AP — Court ruling jeopardizes freedom for pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil — A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist. The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional.

► From the Seattle Times — Judge skeptical on ICE agents wearing masks in case that could have national implications — “Why can’t they perform their duties without a mask? They did that until 2025, did they not?” [Judge] Snyder said. “How in the world do those who don’t mask manage to operate?”…“It’s obvious why these laws are in the public interest,” California Department of Justice lawyer Cameron Bell told the court Wednesday. “The state has had to bear the cost of the federal government’s actions. These are very real consequences.” She pointed to declarations from U.S. citizens who believed they were being abducted by criminals when confronted by masked immigration agents, including incidents where local police were called to respond.

► From the Washington State Standard — Judge weighs Trump administration limits on congressional visits to immigration facilities — U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb Wednesday probed whether the Trump administration has violated her court order, after Minnesota lawmakers said they were denied an oversight visit to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility following a deadly shooting by an immigration officer in Minneapolis. Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison of Minnesota said they were denied entry to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis last weekend…Cobb found Noem violated a 2019 appropriations law, referred to as Section 527, that allows for unannounced oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants. “If the government is using 527 funds to exclude members of Congress from (ICE) facilities, that does run afoul of my order,” Cobb said during Wednesday’s hearing.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From Common Dreams — 47 Ways Trump Has ‘Made Life Less Affordable’ in Second Term — The first section highlights that Trump (1) cut the minimum wage for nearly 400,000 federal contractors, (2) ended enforcement of protections for workers illegally classified as independent contractors, (3) slashed wages of migrant farmworkers in the H-2A program, (4) deprived in-home healthcare workers of minimum wage and overtime pay, and (5) facilitated the inclusion of cryptocurrencies among 401(k) investment options. On the job creation front, the president (6) paused funding for projects authorized under a bipartisan infrastructure law, (7) signed the Laken Riley Act as part of his mass deportation agenda, (8) revoked an executive order that created a federal interagency working group focused on expanding apprenticeships, (9) is trying to shutter Job Corps centers operated by federal contractors, and (10) disrupted manufacturing supply chains with chaotic trade policy.

► From the Federal News Network — HHS reinstates all laid-off employees at workplace safety agency NIOSH — Last April, HHS sent reduction-in-force notices to about 1,000 employees at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which focuses on workplace safety and health standards. HHS reinstated hundreds of NIOSH employees about a month after sending layoff notices. But according to the American Federation of Government Employees, the department “reversed course completely” on Tuesday, and revoked all layoff notices sent to NIOSH employees…Micah Niemeier-Walsh, a NIOSH employee and vice president of AFGE Local 3840, said NIOSH employees and unions “have been fighting relentlessly” to full reinstatement of terminated staff. “We still have a long road ahead of us. We have a lot of rebuilding to do,” she said. “It’s going to take some time to get projects moving again.”

► From the Guardian — Union leaders accuse Trump labor department of echoing Nazi rhetoric — Union leaders have accused the Trump administration of a “rhetorical shift towards white supremacy” after social media posts by the US Department of Labor drew comparison with a Nazi slogan. Recent posts from the agency include a video captioned “remember who you are, American”, with the phrase: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage.” Users of X, formerly Twitter, and Grok, the platform’s AI tool, highlighted a similarity with the Nazi slogan: “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“one people, one realm, one leader”)…Nazi propaganda featured “idealized smiling Germans with these grandiose slogans … about what your country is doing, how great your country is, what you can do for it, and it erases the other,” said Hayes. “The other, in the case of Germany, was the Jew.”

► From Federal News Network — Federal unions, employees urge Senate to take up bill restoring collective bargaining — Hundreds of federal employees, union members and other workforce advocates gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday afternoon to urge the passage of legislation that would restore their collective bargaining rights. After the Protect America’s Workforce Act cleared the House in December, federal unions have been pushing over the last several weeks for the Senate to take up the bill’s companion legislation…The Senate companion bill, first introduced in September and led by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), has gained the support of the entire Democratic Caucus. Two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), are also co-sponsors of the bill.

► From People’s World — House rejects attempt to enact PRO Act, then dumps GOP anti-worker bills — By a party-line 206-205 vote on a procedural move, the Republican-run U.S. House rejected Democratic attempts to open up debate and amendments to GOP anti-worker measures. The Dems wanted to attach the Protect The Right To Organize (PRO) Act, labor’s top legislation, to them. But then, in a complete and unexpected reversal for the House’s Republican leaders, six GOPers joined all the voting Democrats to kill several bills weakening worker protections—“messaging” measures favored by corporate chieftains and the radical right. And that in turn, prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who had lost control of his own party despite holding the key roll call open for 45 minutes, to postpone calling up a fourth pro-corporate anti-worker measure.

► From the Washington State Standard — How Washington state lawmakers want to regulate AI — State lawmakers are considering bills requiring AI detection tools and disclosures to address deepfakes and to establish new safeguards for children using the technology. They’re hoping the legislation will add guardrails for AI chatbots like ChatGPT, protect users from discrimination in algorithms, address the use of AI in school discipline decisions, and require union talks over government use of the burgeoning technology.

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

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