Labor sues DOGE | Hanford workers under fire | Birthright Citizenship

Friday, February 7, 2025

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Gizmodo — America’s Unions Sue DOGE, Launch the ‘Department of People Who Work for a Living’ —  A lawsuit filed Wednesday by America’s largest federation of labor unions says that Musk’s DOGE will imminently infiltrate the Department of Labor and that a court should halt this process, noting that DOGE has no legal standing to make operational decisions at the agency. “The speed of these efforts is core to the project,” the lawsuit states. “At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans.” As such, the litigation asks a court to halt DOGE’s invasion of the DOL.

STRIKES

Photo: Oregon Nurses Association

► From the OPB — Oregon nurses, Providence reach tentative deal to end 26-day strike — The proposed deal came after 26 days on picket lines at various Providence facilities stretching from Medford to Portland, and Seaside to Hood River. Both sides have been in mediation talks urged by Gov. Tina Kotek since last week. Tuesday’s deal applies to nearly all the bargaining units that had joined the strike. One group of unionized doctors working at St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland still have not reached an agreement on their contract.

LOCAL

► From the Yakima Herlad-Republic — Potential trade war could hit Yakima Valley agriculture — National economic experts and Yakima Valley agricultural leaders believe the threat or use of tariffs by President Donald Trump will create an uncertain outlook for the regional and national economy in 2025 and beyond. During Trump’s first term, tariffs on U.S. fruit were imposed by China and India in 2018 to retaliate against our nation’s steel and aluminum tariffs, resulting in far fewer agricultural exports from Washington state.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Trump’s new energy secretary’s squishy responses on Hanford cause for concern — The 580-square-mile site adjacent to Richland holds the toxic legacy of America’s efforts to win World War II and the Cold War. The site produced nearly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal during that period. Today, millions of gallons of radioactive and other hazardous waste are on the Tri-Cities’ doorstep. Wright comes out of the fossil fuel industry, so perhaps it should not be surprising that he is not up to speed on what is happening at Hanford. During his confirmation hearings, he mouthed some of the correct answers but acknowledged he needed to do more homework. We wish he had.

AEROSPACE

► From Northwest Public Broadcasting — Union believes Boeing violated its contract in layoffs — Rich Plunkett,  the director of strategic development for SPEEA, said the union wants to pursue these actions because they want to see impacted workers made whole, even if it will take time. “ We continue to hope for the best, but plan for the worst,” Plunkett said, in regards to working with Boeing to resolve labor issues moving forward. The grievances are about how the company chose to lay off some employees. Some of those were effective immediately, which the union said meant unfinished work. Other allegations from the union include that the company moved work to other sites against union contracts, as well as allegedly using outside work to complete union jobs.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From KGW 8 — Portland averts strike with last-minute tentative agreement for city workers — “After nearly 18 hours of mediation on Monday and another 14 hours today, the City of Portland and the District Council of Trade Unions (DCTU) are pleased to announce a tentative agreement has been reached on a new three-year contract. As a result, DCTU will not proceed with a planned strike Thursday, Feb. 6,” the city and union said in a joint statement.

ORGANIZING

► From CNBC — Amazon’s Whole Foods cites Trump’s NLRB purge as grounds for rejecting union win — In a filing submitted to the NLRB on Monday, Whole Foods argued that “in the absence of a Board quorum, the Regional Director lacks statutory authority to investigate objections or certify the results, or otherwise engage in representation case procedures, including investigating objections or conducting the objections process.” Wendell Young, president of UFCW Local 1776, the chapter representing the workers, said in a statement that the union “fully expected Whole Foods to try to stall this process. Amazon has a well-documented history of using baseless objections to undermine the rights of workers seeking representation, and this case is no different,” Young said. “Their goal is clear: they don’t want to bargain in good faith with their workers. But this fight is far from over.”

NATIONAL

► From the AP — VA nurses are in short supply. Unions say Trump’s deferred resignation plan could make things worse — “We’re already facing a staffing crisis in our hospitals,” said Irma Westmoreland, a registered nurse who heads the Veterans Affairs unit for National Nurses United. “We cannot afford to lose any more staff.” Nurses for the VA — the federal government’s largest employer — comprise the biggest single group of federal workers, numbering more than 100,000 and accounting for 5% of all full-time permanent employees, according to an Associated Press analysis of personnel data.

► From the Seattle Times — Stock market today: Wall Street slips as U.S. consumers get more worried about inflation — U.S. stocks are falling Friday after a discouraging report suggested U.S. consumers are bracing for much higher inflation, while a separate update gave a mixed picture of the U.S. job market. All the data taken together could keep the Federal Reserve on hold when it comes to interest rates. The Fed began cutting its main interest rate in September in order to relax the pressure on the economy and job market, but it warned at the end of the year that it may cut fewer times in 2025 than it earlier expected given worries about inflation staying stubbornly high.

► From the AP — Forget saving the planet. Clean energy interests sharpen a different message: Money and jobs — “It’s a very winning message for outreach to conservatives because it’s really true,” said former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican who founded the conservative climate group RepublicEN.org. “If we play our cards right and lead the world to this, we can create a lot of wealth, create a lot of jobs here in America.”

► From the AP — Amazon to pay nearly $4M to settle lawsuit alleging it took tips from drivers — The settlement came four years after Amazon forked over $61.7 million to resolve a complaint the Federal Trade Commission brought over similar accusationsIn 2022, the office of DC’s attorney general at the time followed up with a lawsuit alleging Amazon violated the District’s consumer protection laws by misleading residents about how tips paid digitally were used. According to the lawsuit, the affected drivers were part of Amazon’s Flex business, which allows people to deliver Amazon packages with their own cars.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Seattle judge is second to indefinitely block Trump’s birthright citizenship order — On Thursday, Coughenour, who Republican President Ronald Reagan nominated to the federal bench in 1981, noted “how impressive” the court filings from Washington and the other states on its side have been, and commended [WA AG] Brown for his work. Speaking to reporters after the ruling, Brown thanked the lawyers “for helping remind this country we do not have a king. We have a president who must abide by the laws, and if they want to amend the Constitution, there is a process to which to do that,” Brown said. At a court hearing last month, Coughenour chastised the Trump administration’s attorney from the Department of Justice, calling the president’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.”

► From the Washington Post — Elon Musk’s DOGE feeds AI sensitive federal data to target cuts — Representatives from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to probe the agency’s programs and spending, according to two people with knowledge of the DOGE team’s actions. Feeding sensitive data into AI software puts it into the possession of a system’s operator, increasing the chances it will be leaked or swept up in cyberattacks. AI can also make errors, for example hallucinating incorrect information when summarizing data.

► From the Washington Post — Musk DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming officials — The records maintained by the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, amount to a repository of sensitive information about employees of most federal agencies — including addresses, demographic profiles, salary details and disciplinary histories. The moves at the OPM by members of Musk’s pseudo-governmental DOGE have coincided with similar efforts to gain access to sensitive systems at other agencies, including a Treasury Department system responsible for processing trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments — a development reported last week by The Washington Post.

► From the Washington Post — Judge temporarily pauses Trump administration’s federal worker buyout program — U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. said the administration could not take further action on the program until a hearing Monday afternoon, when both sides can present more arguments on the case. To comply with the order, the Office of Personnel Management extended the deadline for federal employees to Monday, Feb. 10, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, according to a post from the agency on X Twitter.

► From the 19th — Senate confirms Project 2025 architect to head OMB — During his first stint at OMB, an under-the-radar entity that wields immense influence over the federal government by crafting the president’s budget, Vought helped Trump come up with a plan to jettison job protections for thousands of federal workers and assisted with a legally ambiguous effort to redirect congressionally appropriated foreign aid for Ukraine. The chapter that Vought wrote for Project 2025 detailed how the budget agency could be used to withhold money appropriated by Congress and eliminate dissent within agencies by purging them of employees.

► From Cascade PBS — Burien voters could expand new $21.10 minimum wage to more workers — Labor groups and activists are backing Measure 1, a Feb. 11 ballot initiative which would remove many of those exemptions. It would tie Burien’s minimum wage to that of the neighboring jurisdiction of Tukwila, where the wage cap is currently $21.10, and set to increase with inflation. “The reality is, with the minimum wage the city of Burien passed, most workers in Burien are not getting a raise,” said Jennifer Fichamba, a Burien resident who is helping lead the Measure 1 campaign.

JOLT OF JOY

I’ve listened to The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess in a manner that could only be described as obsessive over the past year. So you can imagine my excitement, as a big believer in both workers rights and Chappell Roan’s genius, to wake up Monday morning to see Roan going viral for a Grammys speech calling out the exploitation of musicians in the industry. She really is — in the parlance of the kids — that girl.

Chappell Roan is completely correct! Musicians are workers, and we deserve fair payment & dignity in our workplace. UMAW introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act with Rep. Rashida Tlaib to build a fairer music industry and increase wages for musicians. https://t.co/qVssnV75Mh pic.twitter.com/f5FE46AXCL

— United Musicians and Allied Workers (@UMAW_) February 3, 2025

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