$1.5 bil to fight unions | Union-busting Wizards | Pope on AI

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

**Today’s News Roundup will not feature any articles from the Bellingham Herald, ID Statesman, Olympian, Tacoma News Tribune or Tri-City Herald, respecting striking journalists’ picket line**

STRIKES

► From My Northwest — Journalists at four WA newspapers walk off the job Tuesday in one-day strike against McClatchy — “To have experienced eyes and ears in your community, you need journalists who can stick around and build a life instead of bouncing from job to job,” the Idaho and Washington State News Guilds stated. “Nobody expects to get rich in this line of work, but it should not be out of reach to have a family, to dream of buying a home, or to save for retirement. A sudden car repair or an unforeseen medical bill should not be a crisis.” A GoFundMe strike fund has been created to support the striking local news journalists. Donations can be made to the strike fund here.

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Seattle immigrant soccer fans, workers face ICE fears as World Cup nears — For immigrants already at the financial margins, they have “a very difficult decision to make,” Garcia said. “There are workers who are like … ‘I am concerned about being able to pay rent, I’m concerned about being able to put food on the table, but I’m extremely concerned about the risk that is going to be put on our shoulders during the World Cup here,’” Garcia continued.

► From the AP — Trump’s no-bond policy for immigrants in custody played out for years in Tacoma, Washington — Immigration lawyers in Tacoma were stunned. They scoured the nation for anything similar and found nothing. “It was from our perspective, a pretty blatantly prosecutorial push to keep people locked up,” said Matt Adams, an attorney for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which sued over the practice. The case has not yet been scheduled for trial. The lawsuit, filed in March 2025, alleges that the Tacoma judges ignored decades of precedent.

► From the Yakima Herald Republic — Toppenish School District to cut staff positions for the next school year — Katie Lee, teacher and union representative, said the Toppenish district no longer has the sense of family it once had.  “Right now, it feels very much like we have been put into silos,” she said. “And there’s not that sense of family anymore.” Lee said that she and others were “devastated” to learn that six high school teaching positions were cut, adding that it will hurt students and labor management. “The cutting of those educators does not make our district better,” she added. “And this is sitting on top of all of the inconsistency that we’ve experienced with the high school administration this year.” District changes led to issues with the master schedule, and about 850 students needed to have their schedules rechecked to ensure that they had the right classes, Lee said.

► From OPB — Multiple people injured in Longview chemical explosion — Multiple people were injured in a major chemical tank implosion at a Southwest Washington paper mill Tuesday morning, according to the Longview Fire Department. There are no threats to the city or surrounding areas, Battalion Chief Mike Gorsuch said. “Multiple people suffered chemical burns and other injuries and were transported by ambulance to PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center in Longview and PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver,” the fire department posted on Facebook. “The extent of the injuries is not fully known at this time.”

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From ESPN — WNBA, players’ union finalize long-form collective bargaining agreement — The WNBA and Women’s National Basketball Players Association have completed and signed the final long form version of their new collective bargaining agreement, the parties announced on Friday. The execution of the long form signals the formal adoption of the transformational agreement, the terms of which were previously ratified by the WNBA board of governors and the WNBA players in late March.

ORGANIZING

► From PC Gamer — 3 years on from laying off over 1,000 people, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are sending daily emails and physical letters encouraging the survivors to not unionise — Those daily emails have now escalated to physical letters, per several WoTC employees on Bluesky: “For two weeks, arena folks have been getting daily anti-union emails from the company fearmongering about how scary unions are,” writes Xib Vaine, a producer on MTG Arena. “Now, they’re sending letters to our homes.”…In an interview with Polygon earlier this month, Vaine told the site that “the thing that really kicked off the union conversations were the 2023 layoffs, where Hasbro laid off about a thousand people. Everybody I talked to couldn’t understand why Arena was hit by those layoffs. By every metric, we were succeeding.”

► From Becker’s Hospital Review — Clinicians push to unionize amid staffing, burnout concerns — Clinicians across the U.S. are increasingly seeking union representation, arguing that organizing can help address staffing shortages, burnout and retention challenges that they say ultimately affect patient care. At least 10 groups at hospitals and health systems nationwide have announced plans to unionize or voted to join unions so far in 2026, reflecting continued labor organizing across healthcare.

NATIONAL

► From the Guardian — US employers spend more than $1.5bn a year to fight labor unions, report finds — Employers spent company money hiring consultants and law firms specializing in union avoidance and on legal counsel, representation, and litigation services during union elections and organizing campaigns. US employers spend $442m on union-avoidance consultants annually, according to an estimate by the EPI. Amazon alone spent $26.6m in 2025 on union-avoidance consultants, based on filings with the US Department of Labor…“This is millions or even billions of dollars that’s not going towards workers and investing into their workplace,” said Margaret Poydock, a co-author of the report and a senior policy analyst at the EPI. Poydock attributed the decline of unionization membership and density over the past several decades, in part, to the role of these union-avoidance law firms and consultants.

► From ABC — As US stock market hits new highs, 2 of 3 Americans are cutting back on spending, survey shows — U.S. consumer confidence declined slightly this month as gas prices stayed high and inflation remained elevated, a sharp contrast to soaring stock prices hover near record levels…Tuesday’s consumer confidence survey showed that confidence grew among households with incomes at or above $100,000, while it fell for most others

► From the New York Times — Judge Dismisses Criminal Case Against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia — A federal judge on Friday dismissed the criminal case against the immigrant Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, ruling that the Trump administration had brought human smuggling charges against him as part of a vindictive effort to punish him for challenging his wrongful deportation to El Salvador last year. The ruling by the judge, Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., was a stinging rebuke of both the Justice Department and its top official, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general.

► From KUOW — Immigration courts are using a new tactic to speed up deportations — The new and unprecedented tactic was shared with NPR by immigration attorneys and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade association that tracks trends in these courts. Immigrants are now being scheduled for massive master calendar hearings — or “mega masters” — that include 100 or more people at a time…”The major concern is that [since] this is going to be a group of people without attorneys, that they’re not going to have gotten proper notice,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practicing policy counsel at AILA, adding that courts often lack enough seats for hearings with so many people at once. “So it’s almost like they are being designed to increase” how many people get deportation orders automatically, she said.

► From the New York Times — Waymo Suspends Service in Six Cities After Cars Drove Into Flooded Roads — Waymo said it was pausing its driverless taxi service in six cities in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia amid concerns that its cars might drive into flooded roads…The company took the action after videos emerged showing that two Waymo cars had stopped on flooded roads in Atlanta on Wednesday, when the city received 2 to 3.5 inches of rain, inundating some streets and the Downtown Connector, a highway in the city core.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — 61% of Americans Said They Had to Cut Back on Groceries — A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents said that they had changed their purchases from grocery stores to stay within budget in the last several months, according to polling from CNN. Another 59 percent of Americans said they had cut back on extras and entertainment. More than three quarters of Americans, including 55 percent of Republicans, said President Trump’s policies had increased the cost of living in their community.

► From Reuters — UAW urges tougher labor rules in US-Canada-Mexico trade talks — United Auto Workers leaders called for stronger pay standards and mandates that carmakers build where they sell, ahead of Washington’s upcoming talks on a new trade ‌deal with Canada and Mexico. UAW President Shawn Fain and others detailed the union’s hopes for the new pact during a Thursday presentation to media. Formal negotiations over changes to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement are expected to start between the U.S. and Mexico next week.

INTERNATIONAL

► From Common Dreams — Labor Unions Worldwide Applaud ICJ Ruling Affirming Workers’ Right to Strike — The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled 10-4 in an advisory opinion—meaning it’s not legally binding—that “the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected” under the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention of 1948, also known as International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 87…Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO—the largest US labor federation—said that “this decision affirms decades of judicial precedent and what workers around the world know: There is no right to organize and bargain collectively without the right to strike.”

► From Editor & Publisher — Financial Times workers stand together in the United Kingdom and United States — The following statement was released jointly by the News Media Guild and the National Union of Journalists. Both unions represent workers at the Financial Times in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively…In the U.S., the FT has demanded that union staff be excluded from pay talks under a contractually specified joint bargaining process, a stance that is in violation of U.S. labour law. In the U.K., it has previously intimated that it cannot enter pay bargaining unless the process excludes News Media Guild staff, a stance that effectively leads to a refusal to negotiate on pay with either of our two unions.

► From the AP — Pope calls for robust regulation of AI in manifesto that ponders the future of humanity — Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence…“It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”

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