NEWS ROUNDUP

Wage crisis | Microsoft ULPs | Election lies

Friday, July 17, 2026

 

STRIKES

► From KOMO — Striking Seattle hotel workers seek unemployment benefits under Washington’s new law — A new Washington law that took effect earlier this year allows eligible workers to receive up to six weeks of payments while participating in a labor strike. Union leaders with UNITE HERE Local 8 said approximately 90% of the 117 striking workers have applied for unemployment benefits and expect payments to begin next week if the strike continues.

 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Homeowners of color pay higher insurance costs in WA, nationwide — Washington had one of the country’s worst gaps between white and Hispanic homeowners, a finding that left the state’s insurance oversight office “deeply concerned.” The disparity represents one of the many ways homeownership remains far from equal in America, even decades after the country banned redlining and other forms of explicit housing discrimination. Other research finds homeowners of color and especially Black homeowners can face higher mortgage rates, higher mortgage denial rates, and discrimination during the property appraisal process.

► From the Alaska Beacon — ICE arrests and detains Alaska state attorney — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested an Alaska state attorney in Anchorage and is holding him in an ICE detention facility in Washington state, according to an agency spokesperson…Yang is an attorney with the Alaska Department of Law’s labor, business and corporations section, according to the state employee database. Yang was admitted to the Alaska Bar Association and licensed to practice law in the state in June 2025.

 

NATIONAL

► From the New Republic — We’re in a Wage Crisis Too — Saru Jayaraman, who leads One Fair Wage and also worked on the Fight for $15 campaign, said that her organization used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator to arrive at a minimum of $25: Nowhere in the country is the living wage lower than that figure, which shows just how much the economy has changed in the 14 years since this fight began. “When we were running the Fight for $15, we were talking about maybe 15, maybe 20 percent of the population that was earning less than $15 an hour,” she said. “Now we’re talking about a $25 living wage for all, and literally 50 percent of working Americans earn less than $25 an hour.”

► From Labor Notes — ‘Give Me a Chance to Survive’: Workers, Employers Dread Deportations’ Effect on Health Care — The Brooklyn nursing-home worker is one of some 50,000 health care workers in the U.S. who have TPS, 1199SEIU Executive Vice President Andy Cassagnol told a press conference at the union’s Manhattan headquarters July 10. The mass revocation of their protected status, the health care union says, “could cause chaos in an industry already plagued with worker shortages.” “Without immigrants, you will not have nurses,” said Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nurses Association, who is also a Haitian immigrant…Sabine French said that her 91-year-old mother is “terrified” that the aide who takes care of her, a Haitian immigrant in her sixties, will be forced to leave.

► From Game Developer — Unions take legal action against Microsoft for allegedly mishandling Xbox layoffs — As noted on the National Labour Relations Board (NRLB) website, a ULP charge has been filed against Microsoft and subsidiaries including Xbox, ZeniMax Media, Inc, id Software, Bethesda Game Studios and more for allegedly failing to provide information to labor union Communications Workers of America (CWA) and engaging in bad faith bargaining…The union claims Microsoft also engaged in “coercive actions” and modified employee contacts by making “unilateral changes.” The CWA filed the UILP against Microsoft and numerous Xbox subsidiaries on July 15, 2026.

► From the Business Insider — Google employees are organizing around a new concern: keeping their jobs — Dozens of Google employees from around the country gathered in the shadow of the company’s Mountain View headquarters on Thursday, holding signs reading “Googlers for Job Security” and demanding stronger protections against layoffs…Many wore matching black shirts. Others held Alphabet Workers Union placards or helped unfurl a long white banner covered with the names of more than 4,500 employees who signed a petition about job security addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai and three senior executives.

► From Capital & Main — The ‘Mega Masters’ Tactic: Mass Immigration Hearings Inside Crowded Courtrooms — Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that her organization is hearing from lawyers across the country who are struggling to reopen cases of people who didn’t find out about their hearings until after judges had ordered them deported in absentia. “It is physically impossible for a judge to get through 100 cases in one morning or afternoon slot and give every case the individual attention that it needs to ensure the correct due process guardrails have been followed, that proper notice was given,” said Dojaquez-Torres.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — Multiple Investigations Refuted Trump’s Claims That Fraud Altered the Outcome in 2020 — The Department of Justice and Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, William P. Barr, found the claims lacking. Cybersecurity agencies declared the 2020 election the most secure in history. States undertook audits and hand recounts, with none finding what Mr. Trump was alleging…Georgia conducted a full hand recount, a machine recount, signature reviews and an investigation by the secretary of state. At every turn, officials found, Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud were exaggerated or based on faulty data.

► From the Government Executive — Why Social Security’s uncertainty is becoming a federal workforce issue — The PROMISE Act tackles the long-term finances of Social Security’s retirement program by moving reform out of endless discussion and into an actual legislative process. The bill itself does not raise payroll taxes, reduce benefits, change the retirement age or alter eligibility rules. Instead, it creates a framework in which those options, or some combination of them, could be evaluated, amended and put to a vote.

► From the American Prospect — How Donald Trump Created the Worst Diarrhea Outbreak This Century — One can’t demonstrate that one of the food safety experts fired by Musk, Russ Vought, or Kennedy would have discovered its source and thus squelched the outbreak by now, precisely because they weren’t on the job. But the circumstantial case is overwhelming. On the food side of the equation, Trump has wreaked havoc on American food safety infrastructure. As part of his initial wholesale attack on state capacity in February 2025, he dissolved the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, which was set up under President Reagan in 1988 to provide scientific advice and coordinate best practices for defending against dangerous microbes at all levels of government.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — A measure to increase tax revenue for Pierce Transit will be on the November ballot — The Pierce County Central Labor Council endorsed the measure. Nathe Lawver, secretary-treasurer for the labor council, pointed to how reliable transit can be a more affordable option. “ Workers keep our communities running, and they deserve a transit system that they can count on,” Lawver said. “Strong transit strengthens our workforce, supports local businesses and makes our communities more affordable and more connected.” If voters approve the measure, the transit entity would begin implementing changes in 2027, and these would be fully operational by 2032.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From Ars Technica — Fear of humanoid robots spurs human workers to strike at Hyundai auto factory — The partial strike at Hyundai’s automotive production complex in the city of Ulsan in South Korea represents “the car industry’s first factory stoppage addressing humanoid robots,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Workers have already ended their day and night shifts two hours early at the world’s largest automotive plant from July 13 through July 15, and plan to start staging four-hour strikes from July 20 to 22 after 15 rounds of negotiations failed to reach an agreement, The Korea Times reported.

► From the Chosun Daily — Starbucks Korea Forms First-Ever Labor Union — The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions Korean Chemical, Textile and Food Workers’ Union announced on the 16th that it has established the Starbucks branch.

 

JOLT OF JOY

Cue Alanis Morrisette:

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