Organizing Amazon| Kidnapping caregivers | Carbon market

Thursday, September 24, 2026

LOCAL

► From KUOW — WA Kenyan community, health care workers alarmed by uptick in ICE arrests — Oyoo and Sidhe are both health care workers. They said other Kenyan immigrants who were detained are also health care workers, or related to one…“Kidnapping caregivers and our families from our communities will not make our country better but instead will cause real harm to seniors and people living with disabilities,” wrote Adam Glickman in a statement to KUOW. Glickman is the secretary-treasurer of SEIU 775, a union for medical care workers at home care, nursing homes, and residential facilities.

► From My Northwest — 9 Seattle firefighters injured in North Seattle house fire as union warns of budget cuts — The fire came one day after Seattle Fire Fighters Union President Kenny Stuart criticized Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed 2027-28 budget, warning that cuts to the department could affect staffing and emergency response…Stuart said the proposal would reduce funding for the Fire Department and rely on rotating closures of fire engines, fire trucks, and fire stations. He also said fewer firefighters would be on duty each day.

► From KNKX — WA teachers feel strain from budget pressures as fewer staff return — The Franklin Pierce School District, where Kellogg works, is starting the fall with about 50 fewer positions, many of them educators. And as president of their local Education Association, Kellogg will be the first person to say that having fewer staff in public schools negatively impacts students…“Educators are feeling the strain from low funding from the state and federal government,” Kellogg said. “And despite all of that, we’re still here for the kids. We show up and do our best every day. We love what we do.”

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing’s white-collar union shows early support for new contract offer — “They addressed a lot of the concerns that we had,” said one employee, a quality assurance investigator in Everett. “I don’t know if you’re ever going to have (a contract) where everybody is going to be fully happy, but I think this is a pretty fair one.”…With the outcome of the vote uncertain, union members were still preparing for the possibility of a strike, the worker said.

ORGANIZING

► From In These Times — Amazon Workers Keep Walking Out — For Cadena, 26, who has worked at DJT6 for just over a year, the incident pushed him deeper into an organizing campaign with Teamsters Local 1932 that had gone public in December. Since then, workers have walked out four times, pressed management over safety issues and demanded that Amazon recognize and bargain with their union — which the company has so far refused to do. The Teamsters say a majority of workers at the facility have now signed union authorization cards…Workers also began holding what they call ​“marches on a manager,” approaching managers in groups on the warehouse floor about problems they want addressed. “At this point, if there is an issue, we’re going to do something about it,” Kazsuk said. ​“We’ve taken back a lot of the power in the warehouse.”

NATIONAL

► From People’s World — UNITE HERE report shows workers can take on tech giants and win — When workers have control over the tools that we collectively produce, technology can be shaped to serve our needs and make our jobs and lives easier, and not just increase corporate profits…In 2018, contracts covering nearly 100,000 hotel workers were set to expire. The [UNITE HERE Local 226] fought for, and won, contract language that created a process it calls “midcycle bargaining.” Under the new language, management must give up to six months’ notice before deploying new technology, provide the union with information about what it does, and negotiate before implementation. The contract language also defined technology broadly. It covered everything from robots to software, apps, and AI, and required management to negotiate over both “labor-replacing” and “labor-transforming” technologies.

► From the AP — Air traffic control calamity disrupting hundreds of US flights spotlights the aging system –Communications failures that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast on Monday have put the spotlight back on the aging systems that air traffic controllers rely on in the U.S…The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the controllers who were on duty Monday did an exceptional job making sure everyone remained safe even when they lost their radios and radar. “No controller starts their shift with the expectation that the equipment will fail them, but when it does they display professionalism and skill,” the union said in a statement.

► From Wired — AT&T Is Automating Away Jobs—and Its Old Telecom Empire — AT&T, which already shed more than half of its workforce over the past decade, says it’s going to continue laying off staff as it gears up for the AI era…Jobs in the US telecommunications industry have been declining for 25 years, according to government data, but the potential for AI to accelerate the trend and boost profits has captivated investors.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington nears final step in joining California-Quebec carbon market — A Washington-California-Quebec carbon market will put the same price on greenhouse gas emissions across an economy that ranks as the third largest in the world, said Caroline Halter, communications manager at Washington’s Department of Ecology. “Linkage isn’t just good climate policy — it’s smart economics,” said Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson in a press release. “Linking will unlock greater emissions reductions, lower the cost of clean technologies, and create good‑paying jobs in high‑growth industries.”

► From the Washington Post — Trump officials cut 760,000 enrollees from ACA, claiming fraud — “Throwing three quarters of a million people into this bucket of ‘Your coverage is canceled’ and then having to figure it out later is a big concern,” said Levitis, who is now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. He said the administration could have adopted a more structured approach, such as taking lessons from states that run their own ACA insurance exchanges and have reported less fraud in their programs.

► From the NW Labor Press — Portland looks at ban on AI-driven grocery pricing  — [Councilor] Zimmerman said he first heard about the issue from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. He then asked the Northwest Grocery Retail Association for input. Under Zimmerman’s proposed ordinance, retailers and third-party delivery services like Instacart would be barred from changing prices for any product more than once per day. They’d also be prohibited from using personal data about a specific customer to set prices, except for discount and loyalty programs in which they offer lower prices to seniors, veterans, loyalty card holders, and others.

► From the Seattle Times — OPINION: Trump rolls out a Trojan horse to destroy Head Start — Under the guise of reform, the Department of Health and Human Services has proposed sweeping new regulations that would gut the proven and popular early education program that serves more than 700,000 children across the nation, including more than 14,000 in Washington state…The goal of this proposal is the elimination of Head Start, one of the more popular programs among Democrats, and many Republicans, since its birth in 1965. How do we know? The far-right conservative plan Project 2025, a guide for so many of the Trump administration’s policies, calls for its elimination. Last year the administration proposed eliminating all Head Start funding.

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