NEWS ROUNDUP

Apprenticeships | Strike solidarity | Rich get richer

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

 

STRIKES

► From UNITE HERE Local 8:

Editor’s note: walk the line with striking hotel workers from 6:30am-6pm at 255 South King Street, Seattle (picket support is especially helpful in the early AM & after 4pm)

 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Q&A: Finding the right WA-based apprenticeship gig for you — Getting a registered apprenticeship means the program has been vetted by the Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council, with guaranteed wage progression and a completion credential transferable across state lines. Six months out from completing an apprenticeship, the average salary is more than $100,000. And apprenticeships aren’t just limited to careers in the building and construction trades. The state is actively increasing apprenticeships in other areas like healthcare and education.

► From the Seattle Times — Longview paper mill implosion: What 3 investigations are examining — Investigators are focused on four key areas, Wingard said: mechanisms that led to the tank’s failure; the tank’s location at the facility; the paper mill’s maintenance and mechanical integrity; and relevant facility, corporate and industry standards. The investigation comes as the CSB manages nine active investigations nationwide, including Longview, amid what agency leaders describe as the deadliest streak of chemical incidents in the board’s history…The Longview investigation commences as the CSB faces recurring threats to its existence. President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to eliminate the agency, proposing since his first term to reduce its funding to zero.

► From the Chinook Observer — Union, patron coalition denounce TRL board president’s ‘desired outcomes’ — The union asserts that the “fundamental purpose of public libraries is to provide access to information, ideas, and stories that represent the diverse needs and experiences of its community. We oppose any proposals that would restrict or remove access to books and materials based on the identities they represent.”..The union added, “At a time when TRL is working to rebuild from significant financial challenges, we continue to advocate for a strong, well-funded public library system. Efforts to restrict access to materials and undermine principles of intellectual freedom moves us in the wrong direction.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the NW Labor Press — Is Major League Baseball heading for a lockout? — The current MLB-MLBPA collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1, 2026. In late May, the two sides traded initial proposals. The exchange revealed huge disparities. Players want more organizations to spend their money to field competitive teams. Owners want a salary cap to curb skyrocketing player salaries. With less than six months to go, the gap threatens a 2027 MLB season. The Labor Press spoke with MLBPA’s interim executive director Bruce Meyer about the negotiations.

► From Blue Mountain Eagle — Union representing Oregon Trail Electric workers issues strike notice to cooperative — The union that represents about 40 employees from Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative, including journeyman linemen, on Monday, June 22, issued a 30-day strike notice to the Baker City-based co-op. The union’s goal is to negotiate a new contract with OTEC, said Nick Simons, a lineman from La Grande who was among several union members who posted signs outside OTEC’s headquarters in Baker City on Tuesday morning, June 23.

 

ORGANIZING

► From the NW Labor Press — Dark Horse Comics agrees to recognize union — Interim CEO Jay Komas announced June 3 that Dark Horse Comics will voluntarily recognize its workers decision to be represented by CWA Local 7901. That came one week after Local 7901 announced that 59 of the company’s 102 workers had signed a union petition.

 

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Apple Just Closed Its First Unionized U.S. Store — The union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, noted in filings to the National Labor Relations Board that employees in the nonunion stores had been given the option to take similar positions at nearby stores. But Apple required the Towson workers to apply for jobs the way typical applicants would, without an easy transfer to another location. Partly because of this, more than half of the Towson store’s roughly 70 unionized employees will be terminated on Wednesday.

► From the Guardian — ‘This is injustice’: how leftist zines were used to sentence anti-ICE protesters to decades in prison — Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees…When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived…For the Sotos, this “material support” included owning a “printing press” used to print anarchist zines and being part of a leftist book club, the federal government argued. The couple had already left the scene by the time guns were drawn. All eight of the defendants sentenced so far have received unusually harsh sentences – 30 to 100 years – essentially life in prison…Hill and Morris received 50-year sentences for conspiracy to riot and ambush a law enforcement officer, even though they were not present when shots were fired.

► From the New York Times — Appeals Court Allows Trump to Resume Expedited Deportations Nationwide — A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to resume using a fast-track deportation process throughout the country that is typically reserved for people apprehended shortly after crossing the southern border. The decision revived a pillar of President Trump’s mass deportation plans, after a lower court ruled last August that attempts to use the procedure to potentially remove millions of people without immigration hearings most likely violated their due process rights and risked wrongful detentions.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Guardian — Cracks are showing in Trump’s white, blue-collar base — Trump’s blue-collar base didn’t get the lower prices that he promised; instead, they face painful 4.2% inflation, the highest rate in three years. Trump has utterly failed on another important promise to blue-collar Americans: to increase manufacturing jobs. Ever since Trump returned to office, the number of factory jobs has declined by 68,000…A New York Times headline captured the way many non-affluent Americans feel: Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy. That Times story noted that the same week Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report found that surging energy prices had erased 18 months of wage gains for the average American worker.

► From Newsweek — VA Benefits: Labor Group Issues Warning About Cuts Impacting 1.5 Million — The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL‑CIO), alongside at least 20 other labor groups, urged Congress to reject the sweeping veterans’ Take Care of America’s Veterans Act package, warning that key provisions could cut disability benefits for huge numbers of veterans. “This legislation cynically packages long-sought, well-deserved new benefits for disabled veterans with benefit cuts to other veterans and a slew of provisions designed to further privatize the VA healthcare system,” the groups wrote in a letter sent on Monday.

► From the Seattle Times — WA’s rich are leaving? Another tax on wealth smashes records — That conundrum that keeps happening with the rich is happening again. They are said to be leaving this state. Yet collections for a tax on wealth have smashed records — again…“This morning we got the updated numbers for fiscal year 2026 for capital gains … it came in at $1.5 billion,” economist Dave Reich told state lawmakers earlier this month. “So a very significant increase, quite a bit above our forecast from what we had before.”…The most logical explanation is simpler: The rich around here are just really rich and getting richer. Some are leaving but the rest are getting far richer, faster, than the tax estimators can keep up with.

► From the Yakima-Herald Republic — WA to agree to link carbon markets with CA, Quebec — The three governments intend to cement their plan Thursday, Washington state officials said in a news release. Their agreement marks the most tangible progress to date in what is meant to be the ultimate realization of the Climate Commitment Act, a landmark Washington law that aims to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest polluters in the state. This linkage, as it’s called, is also expected to further stabilize the carbon market. Ideally this should translate to lower prices at the pump for consumers, state officials have said, which would be good news for the market otherwise sent reeling by the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran.

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