WA’s May Day | Interpreters & AI | Spirit’s collapse

Monday, May 4, 2026

LOCAL

► From the Yakima Herald — PHOTOS: May Day march and rally at Miller Park in Yakima

► From KUOW — Seattle May Day rally unites labor and migrant groups, and present with past — Rigo Valdez was in attendance in 2006 at the Great American Boycott, a one-day boycott of U.S. business and schools by immigrants also known as the Day Without an Immigrant…Twenty years later, Valdez now works as an organizer for MLK Labor in Seattle, and helped organize Friday’s May Day march in Seattle. “Twenty years after a day without immigrants, we see the same kind of attack, and even a more direct and more aggressive attack against communities of immigrants, and workers,” Valdez told KUOW…“The government has tried to break us, but they have only made us stronger,” Maximo Londonio told a crowd of union, labor, and immigrant groups before the march Friday afternoon in Cal Anderson Park…“Migrants’ work is hard work,” Londonio said. “We take the toughest job. We face harsh conditions, and too often we are treated like our lives matter less than our labor.” Londonio recounted a night when he was detained and taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. It was cold and he tried to sleep on a metal bunk. “All I felt was fear,” he said. “Fear of not knowing what, when I would see my family again.”

► From the Seattle Times — May Day protests for immigrant, worker rights draw thousands across WA — Protesters rallied and marched through city streets in Washington state, including in Tacoma, Vancouver, Yakima and Tukwila, demanding the ICE detention center in Tacoma be shut down and that ICE agents be barred from this summer’s World Cup events in Seattle…April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, urged the hundreds of “working people” at Cal Anderson Park to unite against the “billionaires and the politicians who serve them.” Sims’ organization is one of the largest AFL-CIO state federations in the country, representing most of the estimated 615,000 union-represented workers in Washington. “They want us divided, they want us powerless, but look around. Are we powerless?” Sims shouted, to loud “Nos” from the crowd. “We have power because we are united and we are unstoppable.”

► From the Daily UW — Students rally for May Day, call for labor rights and immigration protections — Among the demands raised at the rally were a $30 per hour minimum wage for student workers, the use of UW Alerts to notify the campus community of immigration enforcement activity, and the creation of a legal defense fund for students and university employees affected by detention. Alongside labor demands, student groups raised concerns about how the university would respond to a potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on campus. Ferdeen Poptiya, a fourth-year student and member of YDSA, described the inadequacies of the university’s preparedness for immigration enforcement on campus.

► From Go Skagit — Anacortes residents rally at ‘May Day Strong’ demonstration — While May Day has been a significant labor advocacy day since the 1800s, this year the focus is on placing greater importance on workers than on billionaires. Indivisible National’s event description says, “Mass noncooperation takes coordination, training, and sustained effort. It takes all of us, talking to our neighbors, building relationships, and getting organized. And then, at a certain point, it becomes real and substantial enough to make a mass change. Noncooperation is simple in principle: we withhold our labor, our money and our participation.”

► From the Olympian — North Thurston board pauses layoffs after public outcry — The layoff proposal would retain three mental health specialists at each of the district’s comprehensive high schools – Timberline, North Thurston and River Ridge – but would leave its middle and elementary schools without them. That proposal produced a standing-room-only crowd at Lakes Elementary in Lacey, the location of Tuesday’s board meeting. More than 100 people were at the meeting, including many dressed in red — the signature look of the North Thurston Education Association, the union that represents teachers.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

►  From Oregon Live — REI union calls for national boycott during outdoor retailer’s big spring sale — “REI has refused to offer us a fair contract, despite our willingness to compromise, and instead has insisted on provisions that would prevent more workers from joining the REI Union and that would ban us from speaking out,” Alex Pollitt, a REI worker at the co-op’s Bellingham store, said in a news release. “Their anti-union stance is deeply incompatible with the values REI claims to profess. The company has left us no choice but to boycott.”

► From the Seattle Times — REI CEO sees ‘clear path’ to profitability, after shrinking losses  — Out of around 200 stores across the country, 10 other locations, including one in Bellingham, have joined in their efforts to push for wage bumps, increased staffing and job protections. Those employees rejected a proposed contract in February, with the union calling it “inadequate.” In April, they approved a boycott of the co-op’s anniversary sale, which takes place this month, union spokesperson Rich Smith said Friday. “To date, 70,000 REI members pledged to join workers and support the boycott.”…One customer, Denise Diskin, has followed the unionization campaign closely…“It has changed my shopping patterns,” Diskin said. “I think really carefully and look for other options before I go to REI to purchase things.”

► From the Hollywood Reporter — SAG-AFTRA Agrees to Tentative Labor Deal With Studios — Performers’ union SAG-AFTRA and the bargaining representative for studios and streamers, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, announced that they had struck a tentative agreement on a new deal on Saturday. The parties did not go into detail on the terms of the agreement but said they would divulge more information at a later date. “SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement on terms for a successor contract to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Contracts covering motion pictures, scripted primetime dramatic television, streaming content and new media,” the union said in a statement.

► From WANE — NIPSCO reaches agreement with United Steelworkers, ending month-long lockout — The Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) has reached an agreement with United Steelworkers (USW), ending a lockout that had been in place for an entire month…In total, the lockout kept more than 1,600 employees from work and prompted strikes across northern Indiana.

► From WHBL — USL, players’ union reach tentative CBA deal — The league and the USL Players Association wrote ‌in ​a statement that ⁠the agreement represents “a ⁠significant step forward for the league and its players, reflecting a shared commitment to the continued ​growth of the game and the advancement of professional ⁠standards.” The deal would ⁠run through 2030, with ​an option to make it go ​an extra year depending upon talks ‌surrounding health insurance.

ORGANIZING

► From NPR — How algorithms wreaked havoc with these workers’ schedules and cut their pay — To try to counter these changes, Valerus and some of her fellow workers are trying to unionize with the Communications Workers of America. Among their other concerns, their company has announced that it’s experimenting with using AI to do basic interpretation work. Valerus and her colleagues are some of the latest workers to encounter the effects of algorithmic scheduling. Over the past decade or so, hourly workers across an increasing number of industries have been grappling with erratic schedules that their employers put in place using technology designed to minimize labor costs and maximize productivity.

► From Bloomberg — UAW Plans Strike Authorization Vote at Stellantis Truck Plant — The United Auto Workers union plans to hold a strike authorization vote next week at a Stellantis NV pickup truck plant in suburban Detroit as it seeks to escalate grievances over alleged outsourced work. The vote will be held on May 7 and 8 for members of UAW Local 1700, said Mike Spencer, president of the chapter that represents about 6,000 workers at Stellantis’ Ram 1500 pickup plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

NATIONAL

► From the IAFF:

► From CNBC — ‘Godspeed my friend’: Inside the final hours of Spirit Airlines — Some 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs as a result of the airline’s collapse, the carrier said. “The pain of this decision will not be felt in boardrooms. It will be felt by pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers, and ground crews, and by the families and communities that depend on them,” the Air Line Pilots Association’s international president, Jason Ambrosi, wrote Saturday. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union of Spirit’s roughly 5,000 flight attendants, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, urging them to try to help ensure that flight attendants are paid and compensated for earned vacation and per diems as the case works its way through bankruptcy court.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Trump’s new conditions on DEI, immigration could cut off states’ wildfire funding — A new effort to force states to affirm the Trump administration’s views on DEI, transgender athletes and immigration when signing contracts with the U.S. Forest Service is threatening millions of dollars in wildfire grant funding and fire reduction projects on federal lands. Already, at least one state is reporting that the new rules have stalled work to reduce wildfire risk and assist with projects on national forest lands…“We’re kind of at an impasse,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “It’s already starting to slow down or shut down work.”…Washington state has been unable to issue the latest round of Community Wildfire Defense Grants, a federal program that helps neighborhoods and towns reduce fuels and fortify homes in wildfire-prone areas.

► From Reuters — How redistricting and the Supreme Court have cut voters out of US House races — The number of competitive U.S. House of Representatives districts in this fall’s midterm elections was already near historic lows before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday opened the door to even more aggressive efforts to draw district lines for political gain. The court’s ruling, which arrived amid what was already an unprecedented national fight over congressional redistricting, may usher in a new era of nakedly partisan gerrymandering that results in still fewer competitive elections, leaving voters with less power than ever, experts said.

► From WJXT — DeSantis signs union decertification bill; teachers union calls it ‘betrayal’ — The Florida Education Association pushed back sharply. FEA President Andrew Spar called the signing of SB 1296 “yet another entry in a long line of betrayals of working Floridians by Gov. DeSantis in favor of out-of-state, billionaire-backed, special interest groups.”…The Florida AFL-CIO also condemned the signing, pushing back on the governor’s characterization of teacher unions as partisan actors. The organization noted that more than 30% of Florida’s union members are registered Republicans, with nearly another third identifying as independent or unaffiliated.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Iran war has put foreign workers in the Gulf at greater risk while raising the cost of going home — Tens of millions of foreign workers have helped build the Gulf Arab states’ modern, oil-fueled economies — with many not fully sharing in their prosperity. Now they face an even sharper dilemma: Keep working in the Mideast, where wages are far higher, hoping that a shaky ceasefire endures; or return to already poor countries where prices have soared because of the conflict. Mamun’s choice was made for him. He arrived home in a coffin earlier this month. “We don’t know what we will do next,” said his widow, Sadia Islam Sarmin.

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