IAM strikes MultiCare | 925 member detained | SBWU win

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

STRIKES

► From KING 5 — Workers at Parkland emergency clinic striking over stalled contract negotiations — Michelle Zaun, an emergency services technician, says the staffing challenges have already affected patient care. “It’s affecting patient care because we’ve lost 19 employees over the course of this,” Zaun said. “We’re in healthcare because we care… we love our patients, we want to make sure everyone is taken care of. It’s not fair that we have continued short staffing ratios, and we’re losing employees because of what’s going on.”

► From the AP — Thousands of city workers go on strike in Philadelphia, affecting trash pickup, pools and 911 calls — District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees announced the strike on its Facebook page early Tuesday, saying “HOLD THE LINES.”…“Like any workers in this country, I think that they have a right to expect a livable wage, and it’s really nice to see our country’s ability to still have strikes and still have public dissent,” said Nick Shuhan, a 34-year-old editor and property manager who lives in Center City. “So I stand with them.”

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — Fire officials, mayor reflect on ‘dedicated’ Idaho firefighters who will ‘shine brightly in our memory’ — Gabe Eckert, president of the labor union Coeur d’Alene Firefighters International Association of Fire Fighters Local 710, told reporters Morrison and Tysdal were hard workers who loved their families. He said his last interaction with Morrison was two weeks ago when the two had a lull at the fire station. So, they smoked cigars and chatted on the back patio. “We talked about being better fathers, we talked about being better leaders, we talked about being better firefighters,” Eckert said. “I just want to say I am so incredibly grateful that that gets to be my last memory with him.” Justin Zabel, president of IAFF Local 2856 in Kootenai County, said the “tragedy does not define our community.” “The men and women of Local 710 and Local 2856 will continue to answer that call because it’s who we are and it’s how we honor the memory of our brothers who gave their lives doing the job they loved in service to others,” Zabel said.

► From Cascade PBS — WA contractor’s safety record under fire after multiple injuries — Work on the project resumed on June 13, after the Port’s commissioners reviewed Rotschy’s health and safety plan and decided to hire a third party to monitor the project. Local labor unions have protested the Port’s decision to hire Rotschy due to its safety history, which spans 25 serious violations and $264,000 in fines over the past five years…In a 2-1 vote, commissioners approved awarding the [rail expansion] project to Rotschy. [Commissioner Evan] Jones was the only commissioner to support rebidding the project…“To a certain extent we are kinda stuck with them. If I can’t get rid of the bastards, I want to make sure they are doing the right thing,” Jones said. “I’m not thrilled about it, it’s not how I like taxpayer money being spent.”

► From KUOW — Supporters of Pierce County man deported to Africa by Trump administration call on Ferguson for pardon — After serving 25 years in a Washington state prison, Tuan Phan’s family says he expected to be deported to Vietnam. Instead, he was ordered to be deported to South Sudan, as part of the Trump administration’s policy to deport immigrants to “third countries” — places other than the immigrants’ country of origin…Now, the clock is ticking for Ferguson to issue a pardon and get Phan home before he’s moved to South Sudan, his attorney says.

ORGANIZING

► From the Olympian — Workers at a third Thurston County Starbucks location have voted to unionize –Pepper Sparkman, a barista at the newly unionized Starbucks, said unionization can help protect workers from discipline, improve staffing levels and amplify workers’ demands for policy changes on the corporate level. She said under-staffing was the primary issue that pushed workers to unionize. “The biggest issue and the one on everyone’s minds is staffing. A lot of us see that our current staffing model is unsustainable, and it’s going to lead to burnout. It already has,” she told The Olympian.

NATIONAL

► From NEWS4 San Antonio — Union Rallies in San Antonio After Family Detained by ICE with concerns for child’s health — Nicolle Forero and her family were detained in Washington, but they were brought to a detention center outside of San Antonio. Her union, representing her and her coworkers, the Service Employees International Union, traveled from Los Angeles to call for her release. “They are asylum seekers from Columbia who went to court for an immigration check-in and were ripped away from their home and sent halfway across the country to Texas,” said Shermaine Fontenette, an SEIU union member. They are asking for Nicolle and her 6-year-old son, Juan Forero, to be released. The union says Juan is not getting adequate medical care for his life-threatening illness. They say detention is preventing Juan from being able to regularly see pediatricians and took him away from his care team in Seattle.

► From On the Line:

@SEIU925 member, Nicolle Forero, and her family were detained by ICE in Seattle, then sent to a family detention center in San Antonio, Texas. @SEIU members on the Justice Journey held a speakout in San Antonio to demand the release of our union sister and her family! pic.twitter.com/L7vcOQDSLH

— On the Line (@laborontheline) June 30, 2025

► From the Acadiana Advocate — Hundreds protest Louisiana ICE facilities as a union targets ‘detention alley’ — The protest, organized by the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, took aim at President Donald Trump’s continued efforts to detain and deport those in the country illegally and without proper documentation. The union is calling for the immediate release of immigrant workers who it claims are unjustly detained in the remote Louisiana complexes in Basile and Jena, both of which have landed the state in the center of the national immigration debate. Jena has been at the forefront of that discourse since it was the facility where Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was held for more than three months before his June 20 release.

► From the Guardian — Severe weather hits the US hard as key forecast offices reel from Trump cuts — As of 30 June, there have already been more than 1,200 tornadoes nationwide. More than 60 people have died due to this year’s tornadoes, most of which have centered on the Mississippi River valley – about 500 miles east of the traditional heart of “tornado alley” of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. That unusual eastward shift may also be making tornado outbreaks more dangerous, bringing them in closer proximity to more people than the relatively sparsely populated plains states. In addition to the tornadoes, it’s also been a burdensome year for flash flooding. On 14 June, more than three inches of rain fell in just half an hour in West Virginia, washing away a young boy and prompting frantic emergency rescues across two counties in the northern part of the state. According to National Weather Service statistics, rainfall that intense could only be expected to happen about once every thousand years in a stable climate. As the weather has worsened, there have been fewer federal scientists to alert the public of it.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the AP — Live updates: Senate passes Trump tax bill as Vance breaks 50-50 tie — Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session. Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top. The three Republicans opposing the bill were Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

► From the AP — Senate strikes AI provision from GOP bill after uproar from the states — Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on Monday night to introduce an amendment to strike the entire proposal…[Sen. Ted Cruz] withdrew the compromise amendment and blamed a number of people and entities he said “hated the moratorium,” including China, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a teachers union leader and “transgender groups and radical left-wing groups who want to use blue state regulations to mandate woke AI.” He didn’t mention the broad group of Republican state legislators, attorneys general and governors who also opposed it.

Editor’s note: note to self, be sure to check under the bed and in the closet for ~woke AI~ before going to sleep.

► From the New York Times — Fact-Checking Trump and Republicans on Proposed Tax Cuts in Policy Bill — The Senate narrowly passed its version on Tuesday, with Vice President JD Vance casting a tiebreaking vote. Now, both chambers of Congress will reconcile differences between their versions. Still, some of their most repeated talking points — a warning about vast tax increases if the bill did not pass, a purported elimination of taxes on Social Security and boasts about a record tax cut for average Americans — are not accurate. Here’s a fact-check.

► From the New York Times — EPA Workers Warn Trump Is Politicizing Their Work — The letter to President Trump’s E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin, was a remarkable rebuke of the agency’s political leadership. It followed a similar missive sent this month by more than 60 employees of the National Institutes of Health, who criticized orders they saw as illegal and unethical. “E.P.A. employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies, including those that undermine the E.P.A. mission of protecting human health and the environment,” the E.P.A. workers wrote.

► From the Washington State Standard — These Washington laws take effect July 1 — A new law going into effect Tuesday aims to protect workers from coercion by their employer based on immigration status. Workplace coercion could be used to violate wage or agricultural labor laws. For example, if an employee’s boss mentions someone’s immigration status before asking them to work unpaid overtime. Workers can now file complaints about such threats to the state Department of Labor and Industries, under Senate Bill 5104. Maximum civil penalties range from $1,000 for the first violation to $10,000 for a third.

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