NEWS ROUNDUP

Anti-union retaliation? | ICE surge | Wealthiest 0.00001%

Thursday, July 2, 2026

 

STRIKES

► From UNITE HERE Local 8:

 

LOCAL

► From the Cascadia Daily News — Skagit Regional Health switched staffing contractor. Physicians are leaving because of it — Four hospitalists and non-hospitalist physicians who spoke with CDN claim the majority of the hospitalists who weren’t offered contracts with Vituity or had their offers rescinded were the same workers who led unionization efforts last year while employed by Sound Physicians or testified to the state in favor of the union’s unsuccessful joint employment bid, which Skagit Regional opposed. Since Sound Physicians’ contract wasn’t renewed after the providers unionized and Vituity has an employment model that likely prevents unions, the decision drew allegations of anti-unionism. Physicians question why all interested providers weren’t retained when Vituity is still hiring for multiple physician positions at Skagit Regional as of July 1, according to its careers page.

► From the Seattle Times — WA attorney general’s office begins probe into Longview mill disaster — The attorney general’s office said Wednesday it has been given permission by the Cowlitz County prosecuting attorney’s office to examine what occurred when a tank at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility ruptured, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of white liquor, a highly caustic chemical. Eleven workers died and at least eight other people were injured. “Washington deserves a thorough investigation to make sure a tragedy like this never happens again,” Attorney General Nick Brown said in a news release.

► From Oregon Labor — Oregon Families Need to Earn Over Double Minimum Wage, Despite July Increase — On July 1, Oregon’s three minimum wage levels will increase by 50 cents, bringing the hourly minimum wage to $16.80 an hour in the Portland Metro Area, $15.55 in standard counties, and $14.55 in non-urban counties. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a living wage for a dual income Oregon family with two children is  at least $33.77 an hour to support their family.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From KNKX — Pacific Northwest newspapers secure contract with McClatchy — According to a news release, McClatchy agreed to consider merit raises for employees on an annual basis. If a pay raise is not awarded to an individual, they must be told why. This may not be enough to keep up with the region’s high cost of living, according to Most. “Honestly, a lot of us are still scraping by and this is not enough to live in Tacoma [or] to live in Washington,” she said. “Some of us will have to leave the news industry.” Still, Most said this contract was a hard-fought victory for journalists at McClatchy papers in Washington and Idaho. She said reporters from other outlets have expressed interest in their agreement, especially regarding the AI protections.

► From ESPN — MLBPA seeks larger roster sizes, demotion protection in proposal — The MLBPA pitched league owners on increasing roster sizes from 26 to 28 for the first 15 days of the season, preventing established big leaguers from being over-worked early in the season and giving players more opportunities to land on Opening Day rosters coming out of spring training. The union also proposed allowing placement on the 60-day injured list, which opens additional spots on the 40-man roster, as soon as the November tender deadline, three months earlier than under the current system. The MLBPA also said it made presentations on earlier Rule 5 draft eligibility, as well as service time and salary protections for pitchers who are the victim of roster manipulation.

 

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Immigrant Arrests Surge to 10,000 in 5 Days as ICE Clamps Down — The surge has occurred without the fanfare of highly visible operations last year, in which officials announced their intentions ahead of time to target cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, and send officers pouring into the streets. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, pledged to mount a quieter enforcement campaign following the chaos of a monthlong operation in Minnesota, where federal officers killed two U.S. citizens…Arrests topped out on Saturday when authorities detained over 2,400 people, according to documents obtained by The Times. The detention population inside ICE facilities has jumped nearly 4,000, to more than 63,000 in the agency’s custody as of Tuesday, according to internal documents.

► From the Guardian — As billionaires’ wealth soars, US workers struggle: ‘The rich keep getting richer for no good reason’ –The day that Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, Gilberto Rubio, a security officer in the San Francisco area, said he was thinking about how to cut back on meals to save money…The wealthiest 0.00001%, about 20 individuals, hold wealth equal to 12% of the US’s gross domestic output, according to data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, about four times greater than levels seen during the gilded age….In 2025, US workers took their smallest share of gross domestic product on record since 1947, falling to 53.8% of GDP in the third quarter. The US inflation rate hit 4.2% in May 2026, wiping out 3.4% in wage growth for the past year.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New Republic — How Trump Plans to Crush Fast-Food Workers — Now the second Trump administration is taking another whack at a Labor Department joint-employment rule, and if any substantive difference exists between Trump’s earlier version and this new one, I can’t see it. Once again, the regulation contradicts the language of the Fair Labor Standards Act by saying that indirect control over employees isn’t good enough to establish that Company A is a joint employer…Fast-food franchisors used to argue that it didn’t matter how much Company B abused its workers because they were just kids working after-school jobs. But that stopped being true some time ago. Now fast-food employees are mostly grown-ups, often with families, and their best recourse, if they can’t make ends meet, is to go on welfare. Trump’s proposed joint-employer rule will impoverish these workers even more.

► From Common Dreams — ‘A National Outrage’: Days After Monsanto Ruling, Trump EPA Approves More Forever Chemical Pesticides — The Trump EPA on Tuesday finalized its approval of using two PFAS pesticides, diflufenican and epyrifenacil, on corn and soybeans, the two most widely grown crops in the United States. The agency also expanded its allowances for another previously approved forever chemical pesticide, bifenthrin, and greenlighted the first food use of chlormequat, a non-PFAS pesticide tied to reproductive issues..

► From the UFW:

► From Reuters — Judge blocks US Postal Service’s proposed restrictions on mail-in voting — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s proposed restrictions on mail-in voting, finding that they violated a settlement with a leading civil rights group that required expedited mail-in ballot handling. The decision by Washington-based U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan marked the second defeat in the courts in as many weeks for U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to severely restrict mail-in voting ahead of the ⁠November 3 midterm elections, with his Republican Party locked in a tight battle to maintain control of both houses of Congress.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From Labor Notes — Mexico’s Gig Workers Fight Efforts to Hollow Out Their Employee Status Win — The National App Workers Union (la Union Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación, UNTA) said the work stoppage included workers in five states and Mexico City. They were joined by app workers in at least 15 countries who held similar stoppages during peak hours…Luis Fernando Mora Reyes, an app worker for seven years and the union’s Secretary of Training and Culture, said he took inspiration from the Flint Sit-Down Strike at General Motors in 1936-7, a landmark in the organizing of auto workers in the U.S.

 

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From People’s World — OPINON: What, to the working class, is the Fourth of July? — What does the Fourth of July mean to the multiracial working class in the United States in 2026? As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and all the events recognizing it, we should also grapple with the meaning of the holiday to our diverse class…But we also acknowledge that the bourgeois revolution was for its time, though incomplete, objectively a step forward, even though it was subjectively a step backward for the victims of colonialism. Lenin viewed the American Revolution as one of the few great, genuinely liberating and revolutionary wars in history. Predating even the French Revolution, it overthrew colonial rule and dismantled the vestiges of feudalism…We must continue to work toward democratic full equality for all and to build united working-class power.

 

JOLT OF JOY

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