Multicare strike ends | ‘Life or death’ for TSA | NAFTA’s cost

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

STRIKES

► From Jacobin — Thousands of Colorado Meatpacking Workers Are on Strike — UFCW Local 7’s Cordova said that companies in the industry have long counted on a workforce vulnerable enough to accept conditions other workers might refuse. “We have never had a labor dispute at this plant,” Cordova, who was a union organizer when the plant workers first unionized in the early 1990s, told the Guardian. “The industry hasn’t had a labor dispute for a very long time, and it’s because they hire a very vulnerable workforce and the expectations are they keep their head down. They’re doing the work no one in this country wants to do.” “Some people are scared, because we’ve never been through this before,” Rodarte said. “The emotions are everywhere, but people are ready.” What those workers are confronting is not just a single employer but an entire industry organized around a handful of enormous companies.

Editor’s note: you can donate to the workers’ strike fund here. 

► From OPB — Portland Community College strike continues as staff unions conduct all-day mediation — Today, the parties are meeting again for what’s scheduled as a 12-hour mediation session. “Our members are committed to staying strong and on the picket line until we settle a contract,” Cushing wrote. “We’re up against a broken model of higher education. It’s time to put students, workers and the community first, and to build a college system that serves the common good.” PCC board member Kien Truong shared a post on Instagram Tuesday, saying that the school’s financial picture is a bit rosier than it’s been portrayed. Unlike other colleges, PCC has seen growing enrollment in recent years, and the cuts higher education feared from the state did not come to pass. “In my view, the financial crisis framing does not match PCC’s reality, and we owe our community an honest conversation grounded in actual numbers,” Truong wrote.

LOCAL

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — Strike ends, bargaining continues for MultiCare Yakima Memorial workers — A strike that lasted roughly two months has ended for technical and technologist employees at MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital, and bargaining will resume Tuesday on a new contract for those workers. Officials with Teamsters Local No. 760 notified the hospital they were ending the strike on Sunday, after walking out in mid-January due to an impasse in contract negotiations…Although the strike did not immediately result in a new contract, Simmons said the community is well aware and supportive of both Teamsters Local 760 members and other employees at the hospital. “We had a number of people stop by on the strike line, including other union members in the community, and offer us coffee, food and encouragement,” Simmons said. “They understand that MultiCare is trying to effectively monopolize health care in Yakima … and they’re very supportive of the hospital workers.”

► From Range Media — Six years later, COVID symptoms linger for many Latino farmworkers in Washington — Long COVID among Latino farmworkers has become a recurring story in Washington. According to research from the University of Washington Latino Center for Health, an estimated 41.2% of agricultural workers report long COVID – one of the highest rates compared to other professions…Another study conducted as part of the 2022 California Farmworker Health Study, reports poor living conditions (especially those living in farmworker housing) and high prevalence of illnesses, like diabetes and obesity, can increase the risk of severe COVID-19 and long COVID.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Washington state sues a Yakima Valley farm over use of guest worker visa program –A H-2A worker can only work for the employer who has facilitated their visa. Dimmitt Gnam said this gives farms access to employees who are ready to work as soon as they are needed. Even if there isn’t enough work or if the conditions are poor, that worker cannot find employment elsewhere in the country due to the conditions of their visa. Dimmitt Gnam said she thinks that’s one reason why growers might want to use the program in favor of local workers. “ So even if that company doesn’t have work available for a few weeks, or isn’t paying them appropriately or is treating them badly, they can’t go anywhere,” Dimmitt Gnam said. “Local workers, like any local workforce in any industry, get to vote with their feet. So if there’s not work available, if they’re not being paid fairly, if they’re being mistreated, if they can’t make a living at the job, they will go find other work.”

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From USA Today — WNBA CBA live update: Monday deadline passes, marathon meetings continue — Per multiple reports, during a break on Monday, WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson and WNBPA outside counsel Deb Willig spoke with on-site media. Both Jackson and Willig conceded “big issues” remained. Willig mentioned that “progress ” had been made, and she “would hope” a CBA term sheet could be completed within the next “15 to 20 hours.”…“This has been an extraordinarily unusual set of labor negotiations, and I’ve been doing this for over 50 years,” said Willig. “The why, frankly, is because the league underestimated, seriously, the resolve of the players and what they sought to achieve.”

► From NBC — New union head says 2027 MLB work stoppage could disrupt plans for big leaguers at 2028 Olympics — The Major League Baseball Players Association is negotiating with Major League Baseball, the IOC, the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the World Baseball Softball Confederation on the six-nation baseball event, scheduled for Dodger Stadium from July 15-20 during what could be an extended All-Star break. MLB and the union also are preparing for the start of bargaining in April or May for a labor contract to replace the current five-year agreement that expires Dec. 1. A management lockout is expected to start Dec. 2.

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — ‘A Lot of Life Years Lost’: How NAFTA Shortened American Life Spans — A new paper adds to the understanding of NAFTA’s costs. In it, economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago found that American workers in communities that were more exposed to competition from Mexican imports saw a significant shortening of their life spans after the trade deal went into effect in 1994. The new study concludes, for example, that in the first 15 years of NAFTA, about 3 percent of 45-year-old men lost a year of their remaining life expectancy as a result of the trade deal. The researchers saw increases in mortality across most major causes of death, including illness, drug overdoses and suicides.

► From the Guardian — Anti-ICE protesters accused of being part of antifa found guilty of support for terrorism in Texas — It is undisputed that there was only one shooter, Song, but prosecutors said the event was a coordinated ambush in which the demonstrators used the fireworks to lure guards from the facility and police and then attack them. The defendants strongly disputed that, saying they planned for a peaceful protest that ultimately went awry. They say they brought the firearms – all purchased legally – for self-defense. The jury’s verdict signaled that they did not buy the government’s argument about an ambush, said Cody Cofer, a lawyer representing Hill, one of the defendants acquitted on attempted murder and firearms charges…Sanchez Estrada’s attorney, Christopher Weinbel, said he can’t believe jurors “came to this conclusion”. Weinbel said he was deployed as a member of the army several times in the defense of the US, and he’d hoped what he sacrificed “meant something”. “But I feel like it turned its back on justice with this, Weinbel said. “The US lost today with this verdict.”

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the WSBTV — TSA workers missing full paychecks face ‘life-or-death situations,’ union president says  — Four weeks into the partial government shutdown, TSA employees missed their first full paycheck this week. It’s the second time they’re facing a government shutdown, after surviving the longest government shutdown in American history at the end of 2025. “Most TSA workers as most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. So, to be going through this again, so close to the last shutdown is detrimental to a lot of officers,” added Barker in an interview with CNN. There are nearly 61,000 TSA employees around the country working without pay…They’ll get back pay once the shutdown is over. But for now, they’re feeling the pressure. “If gas prices are going up, who has the money? Where is the money coming from to put the gas in the car? To put food in the refrigerator or to pay that daycare? The money is not there.”

► From the Migrant Insider — Meet the Lobbyists Behind Migrant Detention — GEO Group told its investors that ICE contracts account for 43 percent of its revenue. CoreCivic — GEO’s chief rival, its partner in this particular American enterprise — pegs its ICE share at 30 percent. Together, the two companies are worth roughly six billion dollars. The day after Donald Trump won reelection, GEO’s stock jumped 41 percent. CoreCivic’s went up 29…Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, in a moment of candor that should have been a scandal and was not, recently likened the agency’s new mass deportation operation to “Amazon Prime, but with human beings.” He meant it as a compliment.

► From ProPublica — Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump — These were huge setbacks for the 54-year-old veteran of the Navy and Army Reserve. Nearly a decade ago, a spiral of depression and anxiety left him homeless and living on the streets of Spokane, Washington. A VA social worker threw him a lifeline, helping him apply for benefits, find housing and get into therapy. He still needs mental health care, he and his physician say. But bouncing from therapist to therapist has left him exhausted…In January, the department had around 500 fewer psychologists and psychiatrists than it had at the same time last year, ProPublica found.

► From the New Republic — Zohran Mamdani and the Rise of the Renter Politicians — Almost all candidates and elected officials around the country have been homeowners, at least until recently. A 2022 study from Boston University and the University of Georgia found that 93 percent of officeholders at federal, state, and local levels (in 190 of the country’s largest cities) were homeowners, many of them in single-family homes worth more than the median home value in their zip codes…Henry Mantel, who is running for Los Angeles City Council and is also a renter and a tenant rights attorney, said these second-order effects of the housing crisis—young people moving away to start families, and people having less money to spend in their community—matter to everyone, whether they rent or own. “The housing crisis really does relate back to every issue,” he said. With older voters, he tells them if they want to have grandkids living nearby, they need to support the construction of more affordable housing. And if California wants to maintain its number of Electoral College votes, and therefore its political power, it needs to stop the flood of people leaving the state for affordability reasons, he said.

► From La Resistencia:

 

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JOLT OF JOY

For the first generations of Irish Americans arriving the US in the 19th century, it would likely be unimaginable that Irish heritage would one day be celebrated across the country. Once considered society’s dregs, many Americans will don shamrock hats or raise a green pint tonight in celebration of one of our country’s largest immigrant communities. Paddy’s Day is a good time to remember that the US is a country of immigrants; we celebrate the Irish diaspora today and must continue fighting for the rights and dignity of all immigrants every day.

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