‘Like a hostage’ | EPA cancels contracts | Vaccine misinformation

Monday, August 11, 2025

STRIKES

► From KSDK — WATCH: Boeing strike enters 2nd week with hundreds of union machinists swarming St. Louis County facility — Union members will flood the gates at Boeing on Monday. They want to show management they’re serious about getting a fair contract.

► From the St. Louis Business Journal — Boeing says no negotiations scheduled, $5K bonus no longer available — Despite the ongoing labor dispute, Boeing maintains its contract offer remains on the table, with one notable exception that could influence negotiations moving forward…Some District 837 members have said the $5,000 bonus offered by Boeing St. Louis was paltry. When a seven-week strike against the Boeing commercial airplanes division ended last year, unions members in Washington state, Oregon and California received a $12,000 ratification bonus.

► From the Pittsburgh Union Progress — ‘Remarkable and unprecedented’: Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh thanks NYT tech workers for ‘substantial’ donation — At the 2025 NewsGuild Sector Conference at the Wyndham Grand in Downtown, Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Zack Tanner awarded the New York Times Tech Guild with a plaque for its $114,000 donation in December to workers striking against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The donation was the remainder of what the Times tech workers raised for their own strike in November and came at a time when the Pittsburgh strikers were in need of financial support for their strike, which was then and remains the longest ongoing work stoppage in the country.

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — ‘Like I’m a hostage’ — ICE detention haunts Kirkland theater manager — Fernando Rocha has been out of ICE’s detention center in Tacoma for almost as long as he was in, but he still doesn’t feel free. A black monitor is strapped to his left ankle, he can’t travel outside of Washington state, and he has to check in with Department of Homeland Security authorities virtually each week and in person every two months until his asylum hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. In his car, he wonders if he’ll get pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement again. At home, if they will come to his door. “My life is now a nightmare,” said Rocha. “I feel like I’m a hostage.”

► From the Seattle Times — WA state employee stopped at Canada border, held by ICE in Texas, union says –Shaw works for the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families and is a member of Local 341. She works at Echo Glen Children’s Center, a medium/maximum security juvenile rehabilitation facility in Snoqualmie. Department spokesperson Nancy Gutierrez said Shaw’s employment eligibility was verified when she was hired. The union is calling for the immediate release of Shaw and her son, the news release said.

Editor’s note: you can donate to the GoFundMe for Sarah Shaw and her son Isaac. 

► From KREM — Providence shutters clinics in Spokane and Stevens counties, lays off 50+ employees — Providence Inland Northwest announced clinic and program closures across Spokane and Stevens counties Thursday, citing “multiple pressures,” including state and federal Medicare and Medicaid cuts and higher costs due to inflation and tariffs. “These headwinds will only intensify when the cuts to vital safety-net programs that were included in the recently passed HR1, also known as the One Beautiful Bill Act, go into effect,” Providence said in a Thursday statement.

► From the Seattle Times — Why Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ likely to raise WA energy costs — Here in Washington state, energy experts and policy wonks are coming to understand that it’s going to mean higher electrical bills. Precisely when your bills will rise and by how much remain somewhat unclear. But the tax plan will eliminate single-family tax credits, hand out billions to fossil fuel companies and hamstring the very wind, solar and battery projects Washington state is scrambling to build. The money lost will soar into the billions, according to some estimates.

AEROSPACE

► From the Everett Herald — When Boeing expects to start production of 737 MAX 10 plane in Everett — Boeing will start producing its 737 Max 10 jetliner at its Everett plant after expected certification of the plane from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2026, its top executive said. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s comments at a July 29 company earnings call offered a potential new timeline for when the largest variant of its 737 family of jets could start production in Everett.

ORGANIZING

► From the Cannabis Business Times — Workers at Cannabis Software Firm Dutchie File for Landmark Union Election — Product support agents and analysts from cannabis software company Dutchie filed to form a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1445. Dutchie, a cannabis software tech company founded in 2017, provides business software to more than 6,500 dispensaries across the country and is responsible for 1 million transactions daily.

NATIONAL

► From the Guardian — CDC union says vaccine misinformation put staff at risk after Atlanta shooting — The CDC workers’ union said the deadly violence on Friday was not random and “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured”. It said vaccine misinformation had put scientists at risk…Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, has said Kennedy Jr is directly responsible for the villainization of the CDC’s workforce through “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust”.

► From the New York Times — F.A.A. Plans to Hire 8,900 Air Traffic Controllers but Still Expects Shortages –In a work force plan for air traffic controllers between now and the end of fiscal year 2028, which runs through September, the F.A.A. detailed the ways in which it intends to “supercharge” hiring and training to address a shortfall of nearly 3,000 controllers. But the report also revealed that because of projected losses from its current pool of controllers and washouts among its recruits, the F.A.A. expects to have only about 1,000 additional certified controllers by the end of fiscal year 2028.

► From the Washington Post — Nearly 2 million Americans on unemployment, highest since pandemic era — Workers who have received benefits through a “continued claim” for unemployment insurance jumped to 1.97 million in late July, up from 1.85 million in early January, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. New filings for unemployment claims remain low, rising by just 7,000 last week. The figures reinforce the increasingly weaker labor market landscape. Even without a large pickup in layoffs, many Americans cannot find new work and are facing longer bouts of unemployment. A separate jobs report released last week showed that employers are hiring at close to the slowest pace in more than a decade, excluding the pandemic.

► From the AP — Ford to invest nearly $2 billion in Kentucky assembly plant to produce electric vehicles — Ford Motor Co. will invest nearly $2 billion retooling a Kentucky factory to produce electric vehicles that it says will be more affordable, more profitable to build, and will outcompete rival models. The automaker’s top executive unveiled the new EV strategy at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant which, after producing gas-powered vehicles for 70 years, will be converted to manufacture electric vehicles.

► From the Washington Post — Mothers are leaving the workforce, erasing pandemic gains — The share of working mothers age 25 to 44 with young children has fallen nearly every month this year, dropping by nearly 3 percentage points between January and June, to the lowest level in more than three years, according to an analysis of federal data by Misty Heggeness, a professor at the University of Kansas and former principal economist at the Census Bureau. The drop has been enough to wipe out many of the gains made by working mothers after the pandemic, when remote work arrangements and flexible schedules lured many back to the labor force. But the reversal of many of those policies — with major corporations and government agencies now requiring employees to be back in the office five days a week — has had the opposite effect, Heggeness said. Sweeping federal layoffs have also been a setback for women and other caregivers, who have long relied on the government for stable and flexible employment.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — Union Leaders Get Tough With Democrats as Members Drift Toward Trump — “Every time we talk politics, the first thing that comes up is, ‘The Democrats let us down,’” said Jimmy Williams, the president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. His 140,000 members, he said, had split nearly evenly between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump. Mr. Williams said that he had been asking Democratic officials how they planned to win back his members but that he hadn’t “heard a coherent message that is enough for me to feel confident that the Democratic Party truly understands the pain that working people are feeling.”

► From the New York Times — E.P.A. Cancels Federal Union Contracts in Push to End Collective Bargaining –In an agencywide email reviewed by The New York Times, E.P.A. officials said contracts with the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union for federal employees, and four other unions were “hereby terminated.” The terminations at the E.P.A., which started the year with over 16,000 employees but planned to reduce its staff to close to 12,000, follow an announcement earlier this week that the Department of Veterans Affairs would strip labor protections for more than 400,000 of its workers.

► From KUOW — Trump’s tariff revenue has skyrocketed. But how big is it, really? — Last month, the Department of the Treasury brought in more than $29 billion in “customs and excise taxes” — a category that is overwhelmingly tariff revenue. This pace means that in just a few months, the government will be able to rake in what it received in all of last year. In 2024, customs and excise revenue totaled $98 billion. Importantly, that tariff money is coming from Americans. Businesses in America are directly paying the tariffs to the government. When they raise prices, it comes indirectly out of consumers’ pockets.

► From the AP — Trump’s executive order gives political appointees control over all federal grants — The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.” It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.

► From the New York Times — Senate Heads for a ‘Nuclear’ Showdown on Trump Nominees — Senate Republicans are actively exploring unilateral changes in Senate rules to speed confirmation of Trump administration nominees in the fall after they failed to break stiff Democratic resistance to executive branch picks before leaving on their August recess. Senior Republicans say that talks are ongoing and that changes in confirmation procedure are likely in order to overcome Democratic insistence on holding formal roll call votes on every executive branch nominee. That requirement has slowed approval of President Trump’s picks for scores of top executive branch jobs.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Immigrants urge Washington to address detentions, housing for asylum seekers — More than a dozen immigrants and advocates met with Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson’s policy advisers last week in Olympia. They are asking the state government to address immigrant detentions and housing issues affecting asylum seekers in the region. The group is asking for a state of emergency to be declared, to protect migrants from evictions and rent hikes. “If we do not resolve the immediate issue of the housing crisis that migrants are facing, then we are setting them up to have to be houseless again and really making them more vulnerable to the federal government’s attacks against migrants with increased ICE raids,” said Kassandra Seda, who is part of International Migrants Alliance (IMA).

► From the Tacoma News Tribune — Tacoma council sends workers bill of rights to ballot. But did it miss deadline? — Colton Rose, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367, told The News Tribune that the union hopes it can still work with local officials to find a way to get it on the ballot this fall but said he was confident it will win whenever it does appear before the voters. “There is sort of a thought that – did they delay the certification? Because we got the signatures in right on schedule,” UFCW 367 president Michael Hines told The News Tribune.

INTERNATIONAL

► From Jacobin — Everyone Hates Airlines, Especially the Workers Set to Strike — In one of the strongest strike mandate votes in recent Canadian history, 99.7 percent of members in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) airline division opted to authorize a strike, with a turnout of 94.6 percent. With this overwhelming strike authorization in hand, the union is now headed back to the bargaining table to make one last push for a deal before picket lines go up…Workers have already waited an extraordinary length of time for change. Their most recent contract, which expired last year, had been in place for a full ten years — including during the pandemic, when the airline received huge government subsidies while flight attendants faced a range of hardships.

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