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NEWS ROUNDUP

Wilcox reinstated | Tariffs & Eastern WA | Int’l Women’s Day

Friday, March 7, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From Variety — SAG-AFTRA Video Game Performers Hold Picket Outside WB Games as Strike Continues: ‘We Are Still Fighting’ — While SAG-AFTRA and the video game companies’ bargaining committee (which includes Activision Productions, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, Electronic Arts Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take 2 Productions and WB Games) were able to find common ground on 24 items in a 25-item proposal, the ongoing sticking point surrounds the uses of generative AI in games, particularly in regard to motion and performance capture.

 

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — More DOGE layoffs: Workers fired from CDC’s mining safety lab in Spokane –Jessica Perkins thought she was safe from being fired because she was no longer considered a probationary employee. When she transferred from a civilian Department of Defense job at Fairchild Air Force Base to an equivalent administrative position at the Centers for Disease Control’s mining research lab in Spokane last summer, she was told her time at the old job would count toward tenure. Her two-year probation from the first job ended in January. She was fired along with two experienced researchers on Feb. 14, she said, as part of President Trump and Elon Musks’ mass firings across the federal workforce…“Our positions each specifically focused on preventing mining disasters as well as preventing workplace injuries and illnesses,” she said.

► From the Seattle Times — REI union says co-op is turning ‘corporate’ with new board members — The union representing hundreds of REI workers has a simple ask for the Issaquah-based co-op’s members: Vote no on board candidates. REI members began voting Monday on the outdoor gear retailer’s candidates for its board of directors. The election runs online through May 1. As tensions rise between the union and the co-op, the former held a news conference in front of the Seattle flagship store on Monday urging members to vote “withhold” on all of the nominees.

► From the Tri-City Herald — ‘A nightmare for our farmers.’ Eastern WA growers could take big hits from tariffs — Half of the agriculture workers in Washington are in a four-county region in South Central Washington, consisting of Yakima, Benton, Franklin and Grant counties where the Yakima Valley and Columbia Basin growing regions form the center of the state’s growing industry. Policies that target agriculture and food production will have an out-sized impact on this side of the state and manufacturers in the Tri-Cities.

 

AEROSPACE

► From Forbes — Elon Musk Wants SpaceX To Fix Air Traffic Control. Here’s Why It Won’t Work. — That creates obvious and serious conflicts of interests, with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency currently burrowing into the agency that acts as SpaceX’s primary regulator. But worse, it makes no sense. Starlink may be suitable to connect remote FAA facilities, but it doesn’t currently have the bandwidth or reliability to serve as the backbone of the agency’s nationwide communications network. Plus, SpaceX has no apparent experience in serving as a prime contractor for a solution incorporating a mix of communications technologies.

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing CEO Ortberg warns needed culture shift will be ‘brutal to leadership’ –Asked what specifically needs to change in the culture, he said Boeing needs to improve its interactions with employees. Ortberg described the talent at Boeing as “awesome” and said employees are engaged and “want to be a part of turning the company around” but indicated management must change how it treats employees…“Most of the time, we write it off,” [a Renton worker] said. “It becomes a box to tick. Management has mandated that I have to take the time to listen.” Suggestive of the difficulty Ortberg faces in repairing Boeing’s damaged culture, the mechanic added that he and his peers need action, not words. “The only thing that matters to us is what we see on the factory floor.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Variety — Walt Disney Animation Studios Production Workers Ratify Historic First Union Contract — This agreement comes after an intense organizing effort that saw a supermajority of production workers vote to unionize in February 2023. The agreement was overwhelmingly ratified by the unit with 96% voter participation and ratified with 93% support. Under the contract, production workers will now receive protections including pension and health benefits. Additionally, substantial wage increases to the minimums have been secured: a 24% increase for production managers, a 29% increase for production supervisors, and a 35% increase for production coordinators — the lowest-paid workers in the unit.

► From the NY Post — Workers at 3 NYC Barnes & Noble stores unionize after 2-year push — “When we started organizing, we were making minimum wage in unacceptable work conditions,” according to a statement by senior bookseller, Aaron Lascano, who works at the Union Square location. “Now we’re looking forward to finally having guaranteed raises, excellent union health care coverage, protections from layoffs and stores closure.” Each store has a separate contract, but their pay and many benefits are the same. Wages will increase to a minimum of $19 per hour and rise to $21 over three years but some positions will pay as much as $23 to $25 per hour by the end of the contracts, according to RWDSU.

► From the Hollywood Reporter — These Unionized Reality TV Workers Have Been Seeking a Contract For More Than a Decade — On Thursday the union delivered a petition to ITV management signed by roughly 500 members, including Nosferatu filmmaker Robert Eggers, American Psycho writer-director Mary Harron and Saturday Night Live writer Bryan Tucker, that calls for ITV America to negotiate these stalled contracts “in an expeditious manner.” Added the petition, “Long delays, proposals that are out of line with industry standards and refusals to respond to important proposals do not reflect well on the company’s stated principles.” The move follows an unfair labor practice charge filed by the WGA East against Leftfield on Feb. 13, alleging failure to bargain in good faith.

 

ORGANIZING

► From Capital and Main — The Southern Women Handling 1-800-MEDICARE Calls Still Want a Union — Last spring, after seven years of Maximus workers campaigning for a union, the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden announced it would ask Maximus to reapply for its $6.6 billion, nine-year contract to run customer service lines for Medicare and the Health Insurance Marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. The company was asked to re-apply for a new contract that included a labor harmony agreement. Maximus fought the request and filed a lawsuit in objection. In late November, a few weeks after Donald Trump won election to a second presidential term and with Biden still in office, the department canceled its request.

 

NATIONAL

► From NBC News — DOGE onslaught pushed layoff announcements to highest point since 2020 — U.S.-based employers shed 172,017 jobs in February altogether. That’s the most in a month since July 2020, when 262,649 cuts were announced and the economy was in the throes of Covid-related shutdowns, according to a report Thursday from the global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It’s the biggest count for any February since 2009.

► From Spectrum News — Discussing the impact of the U.S. Department of Education — “This is something that actually, if the funding is taken away, will impact our local school districts because we won’t have the funding then for these critical positions,” [AFT Massachusetts President] Tang said. “Whether it be the early intervention educators or the special education teachers, services like occupational therapy, physical therapy.” Without the Department of Education, Tang said nationally, about 26-million students would lose critical services and about 70.5-million students with disabilities would lose access to special education.

► From the New York Times — Trump’s Cuts to Federal Work Force Push Out Young Employees — The firings of young people across the government could have a long-term effect on the ability to replenish the bureaucracy with those who have cutting-edge skills and knowledge, experts warn. Donald F. Kettl, a former dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, says that young workers bring skills “the government needs” in fields like information technology, medicine and environmental protection. “What I am very afraid of is that we will lose an entire generation of younger workers who are either highly trained or would have been highly trained and equipped to help the government,” Mr. Kettl said. “The implications are huge.”

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From Common Dreams — ‘An American President Is Not a King’: Judge Reinstates Labor Regulator Illegally Fired by Trump — A federal judge on Thursday reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, and suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her was an example of the Republican testing how much he can exceed his constitutional powers. She stressed that “an American president is not a king—not even an ‘elected’ one—and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here.”

► From the Washington Post — EPA pauses Biden’s new chemical disaster protections — The EPA asked the D.C. Court of Appeals to pause legal challenges to safety regulations introduced during the Biden administration while it “undertakes a new rulemaking,” without specifying how it would change them. The stricter standards established under the Biden administration were set to go into effect next year, and be fully implemented by May 2027. The new updates to the federal “Risk Management Program,” first reported by the Hill, would force operations with the most hazardous substances to evaluate and implement safer technologies, and require all facilities to account for how to respond to natural disasters in their emergency plans. It also required companies to provide more transparency about the chemicals they store with local communities and first responders, and to offer greater employee protections.

► From Cascade PBS — WA raises workplace safety fines to catch up with national rates — Health and safety fines in Washington state have lagged behind the national average since 2019. The most recent data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration show the state’s fines for serious violations fell to a little over half of the national average in 2023. L & I implemented the new rates on Feb. 17. Penalties imposed in response to inspection conducted after that date will see fines increased by 2%. Starting next year, fines will grow based on the inflation rate.

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington lawmakers consider uncapping tax on big tech companies to fund higher ed — The “advanced computing surcharge” applies to firms with global revenue above $25 billion — think Microsoft and Amazon. But the amount each taxpayer owes is limited to $9 million a year. House Bill 1839 would eliminate that cap. It’s a move that could more than triple the collections seen from the surcharge in each of the past three years, pushing up revenue by around $200 million annually, according to estimates attached to the legislation.

► From the NW Labor Press — Lawsuit aims to strike down Oregon’s new cannabis labor peace law — Measure 119, sponsored by UFCW Local 555, passed in November with the support of 57% of voters. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — filed Feb. 12 in U.S. District Court in Portland — are Bubble’s Hash, a marijuana processor on 4605 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy., and Ascend Dispensary at 13836 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland. Fisher Phillips, one of the nation’s top union-busting law firms, is handling the case, assigning attorneys Stephen M. Scott, Todd Lyon, and Janelle Debes.

► From the AP — Trump has dropped a high-profile abortion case in Idaho. Here’s what that means — Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department had argued that emergency-room doctors treating pregnant women had to provide terminations if it was needed to save their lives or to avoid serious health consequences. Yet a little more than a month after taking over the White House, Trump’s decision to abandon the legal fight signals how the Republican administration plans on interpreting federal law designed to protect urgent care when up against states’ abortion bans.

Editor’s note: the crux of this case is whether state laws can supercede federal law, in this case the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires that any hospital receiving medicare funding provide lifesaving care. Weakening EMTALA threatens access to emergency care for all of us. 

► From Bernie Sanders:

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — International Women’s Day is a celebration and a call to action. Here are things to know –International Women’s Day is observed on March 8 after a massive protest in Russia on Feb. 23, 1917, that led to the country’s eventual withdrawal from the war. At the time, Russia had not adopted the Gregorian calendar and still used the Julian calendar. “On Feb. 23 in Russia, which was March 8 in Western Europe, women went out on the streets and protested for bread and peace,” said Kristen Ghodsee, professor and chair of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “The authorities weren’t able to stop them, and then, once the men saw that the women were out on the streets, all of the workers started coming and joining the women.”

► From Starbucks Workers United:

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From the LA Times — After ‘Parasite,’ Bong Joon Ho could have played it safe. Instead, he made ‘Mickey 17’ — Beneath its retrofuturistic design, “Mickey 17” offers a pointed critique of how capitalism treats workers as replaceable — sometimes literally. “They’re printing Mickey out so that he can die, and in that concept is all the comedy and tragedy of the film,” Bong says. “In real life, you see a lot of jobs that end in fatal accidents. When that happens, the worker leaves, another worker comes. The job remains the same — it’s just the people who get replaced. You can call it the capitalist tragedy of our times, and in this film it’s even more extreme.” Yet for all its heavy, sometimes downright bleak themes, Bong considers “Mickey 17” his funniest film. “I think in real life, humans are just funny creatures,” he says. “No matter how harsh or depressing reality can get, people always manage to have a laugh.”

 

JOLT OF JOY

My hope is this section gives you a bit of a lift to make it easier to heed Sander’s call not to hide our heads in the covers. The thing that gave me a good laugh this week? The cutest union logo I’ve ever seen.

Solidarity with the workers as they fight for union recognition and against layoffs.

 

 

 

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