NEWS ROUNDUP

Emergency response ends | 40 cents | Big, Ugly Bill

Friday, July 10, 2026

STRIKES

► From KING 5 — Seattle hotel workers still fighting for new deal as strike enters fourth week — Adsuara said the last bargaining session between workers and management was about 10 days ago. “Every day, it’s frustrating but it only makes us more resolved to see this through. To see that they’re disrespecting us this much, only makes us willing to go one day longer,” Adsuara said…Local 8 Secretary Treasurer Stefan Moritz was joined by outside supporters and some hotel employees at a news conference Thursday. He said hotel management offered a raise of “only 40 cents to end the work stoppage,” which was met with a chorus of boos.

► From UNITE HERE Local 8:

 

LOCAL

► From KNKX — Emergency response into Longview disaster ends, but investigations continue — Andrew Wineke, a spokesperson at the Department of Ecology, said their work is ongoing. “We are beginning our compliance investigation, and we’ll be looking at potential violations of the facility’s permits and of state and federal environmental laws,” he said…”This was one of the largest losses of life in an industrial incident in Washington state’s history,” Wineke said. “You can’t overlook the human impact.”…Additional investigations are forthcoming from the state department of Labor and Industries and from the independent federal Chemical Safety Board.

► From the Washington State Standard — WA inspectors must be let inside Tacoma immigrant detention center, judge rules — The private company that runs a Tacoma immigrant detention center must allow state inspectors inside after years of refusing, a federal judge ruled Thursday. But U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle ruled the Florida-based operator of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, The GEO Group, doesn’t need to admit officials from the state Department of Health to administrative and medical areas run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Settle’s order takes effect in two weeks, giving GEO Group time to appeal.

► From Cascadia Daily News — Follow the money: PeaceHealth’s executive pay and rising legal fees, revenue — As PeaceHealth repeatedly laid off staff over the last year and listed or sold multiple properties while on the hook for large capital expansions, some have wondered about the Catholic nonprofit’s financial health…The health system’s top executive during the time, Liz Dunne, earned a total compensation package north of $4.4 million — a more than $1 million increase from the year prior, and over $2.6 million more than the position earned a decade ago. This places the compensation for the top executive of PeaceHealth — a nine-hospital system — well beyond that of comparable positions of even larger systems in the region…The tax documents also disclose that PeaceHealth provides first-class or charter travel, travel for companions, and housing allowances or residences for personal use for an undisclosed number of its top-compensated employees, according to the tax returns. The system as a whole spent nearly $13 million on travel in the year captured in the returns, more than double what the nonprofit spent five years prior.

► From KUOW — Hundreds of children ordered to appear at new ‘mega’ immigration hearings in Seattle — Seattle’s immigration court is packed with kids this week…Pilar Martinez, an attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, was part of a group of legal observers and volunteer attorneys who descended upon the hallways of Seattle’s immigration court to monitor the accelerated and condensed proceedings and their impact on youth pursuing legal status. “It’s just meant to create chaos,” Martinez said. “There’s still a lot of fear of people coming to court from what happened last summer.” In the summer of 2025, ICE began arresting people in the hallways outside the Seattle courtroom after their immigration hearings.

► From the NW Immigrant Rights Project:

 

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing starts building 737 MAX planes in Everett on new North Line — The North Line represents a $1 billion investment from Boeing, including upgrades to its Everett facility, workforce training and changes to its production system, the company said. The North Line will start operating with 1,000 employees and grow its workforce as it increases its production rate over time, according to Jennifer Boland-Masterson, senior director for the 737 North Line.

 

ORGANIZING

► From the Sacramento Bee — Now eligible for a union, legislative staffers are organizing across California — The effort to unionize legislative staff is underway in California’s Capitol — and across the state — after a 2023 bill went into effect last week allowing these public employees to organize…Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the California Labor Federation and a former assemblymember who proposed legislation nearly a decade ago to allow these workers to unionize said organizing the Legislature presents unique challenges. Organizers need to talk with people working in Assembly and Senate district offices spread across California, in addition to the legislative employees who work in the Capitol. This “highly dispersed” workplace could make organizing more difficult than other job sites, Gonzalez said.

 

NATIONAL

► From Cal Matters — Kaiser nurses say technology is making their jobs — and patient care — worse — Kaiser Permanente nurses who answer advice and triage calls say their duty of care for patients is being increasingly threatened by workplace surveillance…In addition to tracking call length, they said Kaiser uses software that tries to predict on a daily basis whether they’re being unproductive or failing to answer calls quickly. Artificial intelligence systems have also been used to rate their empathy and tone of voice.

► From the Washington Post — Migrants who saw man killed by ICE in Houston say he did not ram officers — The three men who were arrested during an immigration operation that resulted in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo said a federal officer fired at them almost immediately after exiting his vehicle and that at no point did the driver veer in his direction…Balderas-Ibarra spoke to Rojas, Daniel Tirado Pantoja, 43, and the shooting victim’s brother, Victor Salgado, 44, and said he heard the same story from each as he interviewed them separately. The men are not being housed together, the attorney said…ICE’s account of his killing echoed many of the statements the agency quickly issued in other shootings that resulted in fatalities or injuries to undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens. In several instances, however, video evidence and testimony from witnesses contradicted the agency’s initial accounts

► From People’s World — Union Steamfitters prevent catastrophic midtown Manhattan building crash — In all the worries and angst over loss of jobs nationwide, what is often overlooked is that there are certain skills, observations, and alertness only humans can perform—such as preventing a catastrophic building collapse in midtown Manhattan. That’s what happened at 235 East 42nd Street on July 7, when two members of Steamfitters Local 638 discovered buckling beams, sagging floors, and falling concrete at a massive condo conversion project’s 21st story. They alerted supervisors, got out, and got every other worker—union and non-union—out, fast…The Steamfitters and the Elevator Constructors are the only union workers on the condo conversion project.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Labor Tribune — OPINION: Harms to working people in one year of the Big Ugly Bill — It’s been one year since President Trump signed the worst job-killing bill in American history. It was made possible by every senator and representative who voted to sell out working people and pick their pockets to hand another payday to corporations and billionaires. Since the passing of the Big Ugly Bill, the U.S. economy has had one of the worst years of job growth in decades. Black workers have been hit the hardest, with an unemployment rate now more than double the rate for White workers. Millions of Americans have lost their health care and access to the food programs they rely on, all while dealing with higher costs on everything from gas and groceries to electricity. 

 

JOLT OF JOY

It’s a bittersweet one this week. RIP to Welsh legend and daughter of a coal miner Bonnie Tyler, who leaves behind some of the most powerful pop vocals ever recorded. Don some shoulder pads and jam to ’80s classics in her honor.

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

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