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NEWS ROUNDUP

Labor tackles childcare | Alaska FAs TA | Trump vs. judges

Monday, March 3, 2025

 

LOCAL

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Labor council in Pierce County wants to establish flexible child care facility for laborers — “Any conversation on workforce, within twenty minutes you’re talking about child care,” Lawver said. So, when one of the labor unions he works with as part of his council work mentioned they wanted to buy an old Tacoma elementary school and operate it as a partial child care facility for their members, but that they didn’t have the money, it got Lawver thinking. Now the council, with commitment from the city, trade school partners and some area nonprofits, has a goal to buy the old Willard Elementary School in east Tacoma and test it out.

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — Possible Medicaid cuts raise concern in Yakima County — Renee Navarez, a registered nurse at the center, agreed. Staff just want the resources to take care of the residents, she said. “They should be secure in these years of their life,” Navarez said. “For us to allow this to happen, where some of them could be put out in the street, it’s unethical.” Nearly 50% of Yakima County residents received health insurance through Medicaid and Apple Health in 2023, according to the state’s most recent data. That same year, Medicaid dollars paid for more than 30% of admissions at MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital and Astria’s Sunnyside and Toppenish facilities.

► From Cascadia Daily — Hundreds gather at North Cascades National Park headquarters to protest job cuts — An ecologist who works on salmon restoration, Moran said her anger led to taking action “about the firing of park service employees, and the continued illegal firings of our federal agency staff that works to protect our public natural resources.” Moran said she never imagined a day she would need to join a demonstration to support national parks. Riling-Anderson also worries the moves are nothing more than a giant land grab for corporations. “The public lands are an American value, and they’re trying to get rid of that value by getting rid of the offices and the people,” he said. “If that value doesn’t exist, there’s not really any way to stop them from selling off land.”

► From KUOW — NOAA firings in Seattle include orca-saving employee of the year — On Thursday afternoon, while on vacation in Hawaii, the federal biologist opened her work email on her personal phone to find she no longer had a job. “The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs,” the email from Vice Admiral Nancy Hann, Deputy Under Secretary for Operations, reads.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Immigration enforcement concerns farmers and farmworkers in WA — Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworkers’ union in Skagit County, said farmworkers in the western part of the state have similar feelings. Franks said the state protections under the Keep Washington Working Act are good but need to be reinforced. “Nobody really takes into consideration everything immigrants and farmworkers did during COVID to keep the food from coming to our tables and the economy from collapsing. So farmworkers have done a lot,” Franks said.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Seattle Times — Alaska flight attendants approve tentative contract — The Association of Flight Attendants, the union representing Alaska’s flight attendants, said on Friday that 95% of members who voted approved the contract. Turnout among the 6,900 Alaska employees was 91%. “This contract will immediately and significantly improve the lives of Alaska Flight Attendants,” said Jeffrey Peterson, AFA President at Alaska Airlines, in a news release. “Alaska Flight Attendants’ solidarity pushed management to recognize our critical role to the safety and success of this airline.” All Alaska flight attendants will receive immediate pay raises of between 18% and 28%, depending on how many years they’ve worked.

► From News 4 San Antonio — San Antonio hospitality workers rally for livable wages ahead of Final Four — The union plans to survey visitors during the Final Four to gauge their views on a living wage for hospitality workers. “The first step is in the Final Four on April 5, we’re going to be surveying the guests that are coming to the city to ask them how they feel about a living wage for those workers that welcome them to this city,” Gonzalez said.

 

ORGANIZING

► From People’s World — Translators for deaf seek support for unionization drive — “It’s about dignity, justice and ability to communicate” by the deaf and hard-of-hearing with people they interact with every day, explained Meg, a 10-year worker at Sorenson. “We face rising demand, stagnant wages and pressure. We might get a call from a bank, followed by a call from a mechanic, followed by a parent-teacher conference, followed by a 9-1-1 call,” all in rapid succession. “We are the voice for deaf lawyers, small business owners and everyday regular people.

 

NATIONAL

► From Newsweek — Teachers Union Leader Aims to Hit Elon Musk Where It Hurts — he American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teacher’s labor union, is looking to hit billionaire Elon Musk in his pocketbook by requesting major asset managers to review Tesla’s valuation, citing a drastic drop in its stock price. Tesla hit a peak valuation of $479.86 per share on December 17, 2024, and as of the end of February the stock has dropped to $293.04 per share—a roughly 22.74 percent drop since January 1’s valuation.

► From Reuters — US consumer spending posts first drop in almost two years — U.S. consumer spending fell for the first time in nearly two years in January and the goods trade deficit widened to a record high as businesses front-loaded imports to avoid tariffs, setting up the economy for weak growth or even a contraction this quarter.

► From the Daily Tarheel — Editorial: Unionization votes in The Triangle signal a shift in Southern labor relations — After a five-day election, 2,447 Amazon workers in Garner, N.C. voted against unionization. Despite frustrations around the RDU1 vote failing, increased organizing activity in The Triangle is something we should celebrate and approach with optimism. Simply because it happened, any vote, even a losing one, is a good vote. North Carolina, like the rest of the region, is one of 26 right-to-work states. Right-to-work is a labor policy allowing workers to choose whether or not join the union which represents their workplace. Misleadingly positive, RTW policies primarily serve the interests of business owners by preventing unionization.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From the Seattle Times — 12 bills that died as WA Legislature faces cash crunch — Friday was the deadline for bills to pass through fiscal committees, like Senate Ways and Means and House Appropriations. With a multibillion-dollar deficit hanging over the session, bills creating new or expensive programs have proved to be a tough sell. Immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits. Senate Bill 5626 and House Bill 1773 intended to change that, creating a separate unemployment safety net using state dollars.

► From the Washington Post — White House seeks data on federal staffers’ union work, raising alarms — In a memo issued Thursday to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, the Office of Personnel Management requested data on the amount of government time and funds spent on union matters, such as contract negotiations and grievance proceedings. It also requested detailed information about federal employees with union responsibilities enshrined in collective bargaining contracts, including their pay, telework authorization, and work time spent on union matters.

► From the New York Times — Federal Judges Are Ordering Trump to Slow Down. Will He Listen? — Trial court judges have tried to block the unilateral firing of civil servants, the access that Elon Musk’s team has enjoyed to sensitive agency data, the relocation of transgender women inmates to men’s prisons, the pursuit of immigrants inside houses of worship, and the freezing of up to $3 trillion in federal funding to the states. In response, the Trump administration has been recalcitrant. Officials appear to be slow-walking the implementation of some judicial orders and finding loopholes to avoid complying with the spirit of others. Two judges have issued “motions to enforce” because the government failed to heed their initial orders.

► From KSMU — The Social Security Administration says it plans to cut some 7,000 jobs — Advocates say long wait times for services have plagued the agency for years, and its current staffing is already at about a 50-year low. “The public is going to suffer terribly as a result of this,” the source wrote to NPR. “Local field offices will close, hold times will increase, and people will be sicker, hungry, or die when checks don’t arrive or a disability hearing is delayed just one month too late.”

► From the Washington Post — How DOGE detonated a crisis at a highly sensitive nuclear weapons agency — But the firings did not appear to be driven by a plan to improve the agency. Instead, department leaders compiled a list of all the people who could be fired because they were in their probationary period of employment, and then terminated most of them. The list included many highly specialized experts with advanced degrees who had recently been promoted from another position or joined the agency from the private sector, according to administration officials who were involved. Even after rehirings at the nuclear agency, nuclear experts warn that remaining cuts expose the nation to risk. Dozens of workers who oversaw cleanup of contaminated sites where weapons were developed during the Cold War have not been brought back.

► From the CNBC — Trump administration, Musk’s DOGE plan to fire nearly all CFPB staff and wind down agency, employees say — Doe said the plan from CFPB leaders and DOGE was to cut the bureau’s workforce in three phases. It would first eliminate probationary and term employees, then carry out a wave of about 1,200 layoffs, leaving a skeleton crew of a few hundred workers. “Finally, the Bureau would ‘reduce altogether’ within 60-90 days by terminating most of its remaining staff,” Doe said.

► From the New York Times — Judge Appears Skeptical of Claims That Musk Isn’t Driving DOGE — Mr. Musk is “the most powerful principal officer currently in the government alongside the president, and one of the most powerful in our country’s history,” Norm Eisen, one of the lawyers, said. He added that historically, no figure in the executive branch, not even the White House chief of staff who is the president’s top aide, has acted with as much authority as Mr. Musk. That meant that Mr. Musk’s actions in the case of U.S.A.I.D. — dispatching teams to shut down programs, cut off systems access to employees and contractors and comb through sensitive and confidential agency data — amounted to “a grave violation of the separation of powers,” Mr. Eisen said.

► From the AP — China eyeing U.S. farm exports for retaliation, report says, as importers rush to beat tariffs — The Global Times, a newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, said Monday that Beijing was studying both tariffs and non-tariff moves to counter Trump’s higher tariffs. Asked about that report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that “China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard own legitimate rights and interests.”

► From Sen. Bernie Sanders:

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