AFGE grows | Unions protest Rotschy | Deportations & construction

Monday, February 10, 2025

STRIKES

► From OPB — Nurses at 7 Providence hospitals reject latest offer — According to ONA, 83% of members from all seven bargaining units voted to reject the agreement. “ONA frontline nurses have spoken — with a unified voice — and it is clear they are willing to sacrifice more to get the contract they deserve,” read a statement from the ONA. “Nurses know Providence can do better and they are committed to continuing this strike until Providence responds to their demands.

LOCAL

► From the Northwest Labor Press — Child labor violator gets Port of Longview contract — Last year, non-union North Vancouver construction contractor Rotschy racked up more than $200,000 in fines for serious safety and child labor violations after a 16-year-old boy was dragged beneath a trencher and lost both legs. On Jan. 22, the Port of Longview awarded the company a $44.7 million public contract to build and expand railroad tracks. “This is absolutely shameful for us to move forward with this,” said port commissioner Evan Jones before the vote. Jones, a member of IBEW Local 48, was encouraged by his union to run for port commissioner and won election last year.

► From the union-busting Columbian — ‘It never seems to be enough’: Clark County residents earning a bit over minimum wage struggle to pay bills, stave off homelessness — Although Washington’s minimum wage went up to $16.66 an hour Jan. 1, Clark County workers earning that — and even a bit more — describe triaging bills and bunking with other families to make ends meet. “Unless you’re making six-plus figures, you’re not surviving,” said Vancouver resident Heather Johnson, a roadwork flagger. “You’re crawling to the finish line.” The income needed to afford the average one-bedroom apartment in Clark County is about $34 an hour, or $71,000 a year, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. About a third of Clark County’s households make below that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — ‘Here in Sunnyside, it’s important.” Community members rally to support immigrants — “If there are no immigrants, the Yakima Valley is basically dead,” Ramon said, noting the importance of the agricultural industry and migrant farmworkers to the region’s economy. Nailea Rojas said she is an immigrant. She added that she loves the United States. “A lot of people think we don’t want to be here, that we don’t love it, but we do love it. It’s the thought of being removed that’s scary,” Rojas said. Alex and Ramon, two other community members who did not want to publish their last names, said people wanted to get legal status and be a part of the community.

► From the Spokesman Review — Rumors and sightings of heightened ICE activity in Spokane circulate across the county; here’s what we know — Jennyfer Mesa, executive director of Latinos en Spokane, said ICE and Border Patrol agents are targeting Latino businesses in Spokane. She said that wasn’t happening prior to Jan. 20, the day Trump promised to begin what he said would be the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history. “What’s happening is (federal agents) are picking people up in the city of Spokane – residents of Washington state, people who are here paying taxes, who are contributing to our local economy and who were once considered the heroes and essential workers” of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mesa said.

Editor’s note: you can help keep working people safe by documenting and reporting ICE activity. Here’s a guide from WAISN on how to do so safely.

► From the Bellingham Herald — ‘No one left to save us but ourselves’: Bellingham crowd protests ICE arrests, deportations — More than 100 people gathered at the Whatcom County Courthouse on Sunday to protest U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The peaceful protest was held to send a message of solidarity with undocumented community members facing deportation threats and action under the Trump administration, attendees told The Bellingham Herald.

AEROSPACE

► From MSN — Something Is Wrong With the SpaceX Craft Meant to Fly the Next Mission to the Space Station — And while SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently blamed the Biden administration for the more-than-eight-month delay, his space company is encountering serious issues while securing the spacecraft for their return flight. As Ars Technica‘s Eric Berger reports, engineers ran into battery problems plaguing the fifth-and-final generation Crew Dragon spacecraft, dubbed C213, which was supposed to make its maiden voyage to take the two stranded astronauts home sometime next month.

ORGANIZING

► From the Minnesota Reformer — News Federal employees union grows to record size amid DOGE attacks — and other labor news — Marsh voted for President Trump in 2016 and 2020 because of her Catholic convictions on abortion, but lost faith in him after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. “In all my years, we’ve been in and out of administrations on both sides of the aisle, and it’s never really changed our lives that drastically,” said Marsh, who is also executive vice president for AFGE Local 3129. “I feel like our government is being taken over and nobody is doing anything about it.” The ranks of federal employee unions are swelling as they attempt to shield their members from a barrage of executive orders from President Trump, who with billionaire advisor Elon Musk, has launched an unprecedented assault on the federal workforce aimed at reducing its size and weeding out “disloyal” civil servants.

► From KGW 8 — Nurses at 3 Portland Legacy hospitals vote to unionize with Oregon Nurses Association — There are about 599 nurses at Randall Children’s Hospital, 1,095 nurses at Legacy Emanuel and 596 nurses at Good Samaritan who are now represented by the union. “This victory is about nurses standing together for the future of our profession, our patients, and our hospitals,” said Emanuel nurse leader Sarah Zavala in a news release. “We’re ready to build a strong contract that protects and empowers nurses so we can continue to provide the best care possible.”

NATIONAL

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — How will Trump’s mass deportation plans affect construction industry? — Nationally, foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, fill an estimated 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles. The U.S. construction industry, meanwhile, employs an estimated 1.5 million undocumented workers – or 13% of its total workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. A highly publicized raid in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, last week was billed as targeting members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, but immigration advocates and witnesses said federal agents detained people who were not gang members or criminals. “There’s absolutely a concern, even a fear on some of the job sites,” said Mark Thompson, a senior representative with the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters union. “Definitely people are laying low and being very cautious.”

► From the Seattle Times — This CEO is replacing his workers with AI, and bragging about it — For his part, Siemiatkowski said AI had allowed [Klarna] to largely stop hiring entirely as of September 2023, which he said reduced its overall head count to under 4,000 from about 5,000. He said he expected Klarna’s workforce to eventually fall to about 2,000 as a result of its AI adoption. His claims about hiring may have been overblown, too. The website TechCrunch searched through Klarna’s job listings more than a year after the company supposedly stopped hiring and found more than 50 openings in a variety of jobs.

► From the Seattle Times — Your employer might be spying on you. Here’s how workers can check. — While there’s no foolproof way to know whether you’re being monitored, some techniques could provide insight, according to privacy and security experts. It also may be a good time to consider locking down your personal communications, too, with office mandates taking effect and the government gaining access to federal workers’ sensitive information.

► From the New York Times — A California Battery Plant Burned. Residents Have Gotten Sick, and Anxious. –The plant, located in Moss Landing, an unincorporated community in Monterey County, is the largest facility in the world that uses lithium-ion batteries to store energy. “People are in a such big moment of stress that they say it’s one thing and another,” Maria Tarelo, who works packing berries, said of the fears of federal raids and the battery plant fire. Ms. Tarelo has advised her fellow workers to take precautions by wearing masks and gloves, as they face the potential of working land that could turn out to be hazardous to their health. For many men and women who labor in the fields, the pressing concern is that contaminated crops could result in less work.

POLITICS & POLICY

Editor’s note: it’s important to track what billionaires and bought politicians are up to in D.C. — and equally important not to get overwhelmed. So here’s quick updates on stories The STAND is tracking, with more federal news below: 

• Judge lets DOGE access sensitive records at Labor Department (Washington Post)
• Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team (NY Times)
• Judge blocks Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on leave (CBS News)
• USAID staffers turned away from offices even after court suspends leave order (Seattle Times)

► From Cascade PBS — Washington legislature considers strengthening youth labor laws — Fosse’s legislation would target safety lapses in school work-for-credit programs by banning companies with three or more serious, repeat or willful safety violations or youth labor citations from hiring minors. The bill also requires more oversight from L&I when issuing student learner variances, which allow companies to assign teen workers otherwise prohibited tasks under close supervision. “Granting minors the ability to gain work experience is important, but we must remember that the people being addressed in this bill are still children,” said Diana Winther, general counsel for IBEW Local 48.

► From Cascade PBS — Seattle businesses have spent $500K against social housing tax — If passed, Prop 1A would levy a 5% “excess compensation” tax on employer payroll expenses for each Seattle-based employee paid over $1 million in annual compensation. Employers would pay a 5% tax on any dollar over $1 million in total employee compensation. The tax would generate an estimated $50 million a year that would go to the newly created Seattle Social Housing Developer to pay for construction of housing meant for lower-income to upper-middle-income residents.

Editor’s note: Prop 1A is endorsed by MLK Labor. 

► From the AP — Trump says he will announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs Monday, and more import duties are coming — President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week. Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce “reciprocal tariffs” — “probably Tuesday or Wednesday” — meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases in which another country has levied duties on U.S. goods.

► From Common Dreams — Sanders Says Attack on NLRB Proves Trump Is Enemy of the Working Class — “For months, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two wealthiest men alive,” said Sanders, “have been working overtime to abolish the NLRB. Why is that? These notorious anti-union billionaires want the absolute power to exploit their workers and violate labor law. The lower the wages they pay, the more money they make. Since Election Day, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have become $184 billion richer and are now worth $669 billion. But, apparently, that’s not enough.”

► From Semafor — DOGE protesters to Democrats: ‘Do something!’ — “They’re just on their back foot playing defense,” Chakrabarti argued. “Instead, look at what the Republicans did with something like Hunter Biden’s laptop or Hillary Clinton’s emails — both complete non-issues that they turned into issues. The Democrats have the advantage of having real stuff to talk about – a billionaire, Elon Musk, going in and leaking the information of every CIA employee in an email to the White House, canceling Head Start programs around the country, collecting people’s social security numbers without their consent.”

► From CBS News — Former National Labor Relations Board member who was fired by Trump speaks out — Wilcox is asking a judge to declare her removal unlawful and reinstate her as a member of the board. In the filing, she acknowledged that Mr. Trump may try to use the litigation as a “test case” for the courts, suggesting that if her firing is upheld, it could set a precedent that would expand presidential power.  But, at the same time, she says if she didn’t take legal action, it would render the laws protecting the independence of agencies like hers meaningless.

► From the New York Times — 36 Hours After Russell Vought Took Over Consumer Bureau, He Shut Its Operations —  [The CFPB] has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims. President Trump on Friday appointed Russell Vought, who was confirmed a day earlier to lead the Office of Management and Budget, as the agency’s acting director. Mr. Vought was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for upending the federal government that called for significant changes, including abolishing the consumer bureau.

► From the AP — Can Trump bring unions into the GOP fold? His labor nominee presents a major test — “When I was asked to be on that committee, I let them know ahead of time that I would be somewhat challenging maybe some of the views and they are OK with that,” Chavez-DeRemer said during a 2023 interview with the union-run Northwest Labor Press. Union leaders took notice. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest labor unions in the country, is supporting Chavez-DeRemer and said she hopes Trump “gives her the power that President Roosevelt gave Francis Perkins,” the trailblazing labor secretary who oversaw the New Deal.

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