Worth $0.40 | Tumwater paras | Rural ballots uncounted

Thursday, September 3, 2026

STRIKES

► From Real Change News — OPINION: One job should be enough — In early January of this year, this hotel became the No. 1 hotel in Seattle on Tripadvisor, out of every hotel in this city…Five months after the ranking, we walked out on strike. Because when the time came to give us more than a verbal thank-you — a thank-you that goes into a contract and shows up in a paycheck — what the company offered was an immediate raise of 40 cents. Forty cents an hour. The rest of it strung out across five years — $5.35 in total, most of it years away for the people who need it now. In January, we were the best hotel in Seattle. In June, we were worth 40 cents…A lot of people on the internet have decided they know who we are. So we will say it plainly: many of us are immigrants, and our papers are in order. We are documented. We are citizens and residents and immigrants with work permits. We are not asking anybody to hide us, because there is nobody to hide. What we asked the hotel for is information and a protocol. If U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Department of Homeland Security agents come onto this property, tell us…That is the whole demand. It costs the company nothing.

LOCAL

► From the Daily — UW Medical Center employee allegedly detained by ICE last week, transferred to three facilities within western United States — Robert Sidhe, who came to Seattle from Kenya and was hired at UW about two years ago, was initially taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), then reportedly, according to UW state employee union president Paula Lukaszek, was transferred to Arizona, then California, before being brought back to NWIPC…Lukaszek, President of WFSE Local 1495, described Sidhe as no danger to the community: He volunteers at a homeless shelter, has deep local ties, including a fiancée and family in Seattle, and holds a valid work permit. Union advocates say there is no clear reason he was detained.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From OPB — Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative workers to return after reaching agreement with utility — Nearly 40 employees represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 125 went on strike Aug. 24, alleging unfair labor practices, including standby requirements and employee discipline. In a joint statement from OTEC and union members, a tentative agreement was reached the morning of Sept. 1 and was ratified that evening. Travis Eri, business manager for IBEW Local 125, said the joint agreement between the union and the electric company includes wage increases and the reinstatement of one lineman who was fired.

► From KOMO — Tumwater paraprofessionals approve contract, cancel planned strike — Members of the Tumwater Association of Paraprofessionals voted to approve the agreement with the district, the union said in a statement. The union had previously planned to strike Wednesday morning. TAP thanked parents, students and the broader community for their support and said its members look forward to seeing students in school.

► From the Seattle Times — How Seattle Schools got the deal done to avert a teachers strike — Union members will vote on the tentative agreement at a general membership meeting on Sept. 11 at McCaw Hall, in Seattle Center. But it’s clear that negotiations resulted in two noteworthy wins for SEA, the union representing 6,000 SPS teachers, paraprofessionals, secretaries, counselors and other staff. After weeks spent deadlocked over the district’s proposed changes to special education staffing and structure, the tentative agreement creates an 18-month “community-centered process” to develop a new approach to special education programming…And the contract secures a cost of living increase “plus more” for all union members, with additional increases for paraprofessionals, certain office and clerical staff, and other classified staff — meaning those who don’t hold a state certificate, according to the union email.

► From KVAL — City of Corvallis at impasse with union representing nearly 250 employees — Labor negotiations between the City of Corvallis and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have entered a new phase after the union declared an impasse on Sept. 1, a required step before a strike can be called. The declaration came a few days after AFSCME took a strike authorization vote. The city and the union have been working since January on a new contract for city employees represented by AFSCME, with a total of about 246 represented employees across all departments. The previous contract expired June 30, 2026.

NATIONAL

► From the Wrap — NY Times Union Calls on Publisher to Abandon Potential Athletic-Kalshi Deal, Citing ‘Journalistic Independence’  — The NewsGuild of New York sent a letter Wednesday to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, The Athletic publisher David Perpich and senior editors demanding that the prospective partnership not move forward. “Any partnership between Kalshi and The Athletic would threaten our journalistic independence across the company,” the union wrote. “Despite management’s claim that The Athletic and The New York Times are separate business entities, the journalism and the work are intertwined, as any reader can see.”

► From Reuters — Starbucks dress code didn’t violate NYC workers’ labor rights, US court rules — A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday reversed a federal labor board ruling that said Starbucks broke ​the law by barring workers at a flagship Manhattan store with a “steampunk hipster vibe” from wearing ‌t-shirts or multiple pins supporting a union…The 2nd ⁠Circuit on ​Wednesday overturned the decision and sent the case back to the ​labor board “to apply a more evenly measured balancing test.” The five-member board had a Democratic majority when it first decided the case and now ​has a 3-1 Republican majority appointed by President Donald Trump.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Uncounted late ballots jump in WA as fears of Postal Service delays intensify — Over 20,000 ballots in Washington’s primary election last month were rejected because they came in too late, thousands more than in 2024.  This comes as election officials have raised the alarm over the U.S. Postal Service not postmarking mail-in ballots on the day they’re received due to reduced service and faraway processing centers. Officials here have encouraged Washingtonians to use ballot drop boxes or mail their ballots at least a week before election day to ensure they’ll be counted…Rural counties appeared to be affected the most, according to state election data. Lewis, Pend Oreille, Franklin, Okanogan and Yakima counties saw a tripling of late ballots that couldn’t be counted. In Mason and Stevens counties, the number quadrupled. In about half of Washington’s counties, it doubled.

► From the Seattle Times — Seattle Times recommends ‘No’ on I-638, ban on trans girls in sports — The Times editorial board recommends voters say “no” to fearmongering and vote “no” on an initiative that would only exclude more student athletes from sports…The ballot initiative states that athletes “must provide, as part of the required routine sports physical examination, a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal healthcare provider that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” Aside from the humiliation and violation of privacy, testing for genes and hormones isn’t cheap, which would keep girls without means out of competitive sports.

► From the Huffington Post — Trump Proposes Pay Freeze For Federal Workers While ICE Gets A Raise — Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, called the proposal “a slap in the face to the dedicated civil servants who keep our nation running.”

► From the New York Times — Judge Blocks Trump’s Second Try to Restrict Birthright Citizenship — The judge ruled that the Supreme Court had already settled questions reopened by an executive order Mr. Trump signed in August. While the decision was limited to children born after Feb. 19, 2025, including those born in the future, Judge Deborah L. Boardman wrote that the order would likely affect babies the Supreme Court had already defined as citizens. The ruling delivered a sharp rejection of the president’s renewed efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, after the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in July that a previous, more sweeping executive order from 2025 was unconstitutional. “No presidential executive order can undo what the Supreme Court has done,” she wrote.

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