‘Illegal Mass Firings’ | Detention deaths | Fain on union power

Friday, September 26, 2025

STRIKES

► From MJ Biz Journal — Ongoing cannabis worker strikes in two states are longest in industry history — Separate, ongoing strikes at cannabis businesses in two states are now the longest work stoppages in the history of the country’s $32 billion legal marijuana industry. The two strikes are at: Exclusive Brands in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a vertically integrated operator active only in that state that began Aug. 28. Profitable marijuana multistate operator Green Thumb Industries’ (GTI) RISE location in York, Pennsylvania, that started Sept. 1. A small band of Exclusive Brands workers called a strike in part because management refuses to recognize a union election, while the unionized RISE workers voted to strike after more than a year of contract negotiations.

► From Breaking Defense — Amid strike, Boeing taking rare step of hiring permanent replacements for union workers — With no date set for Boeing and IAM to come back to the negotiating table, Boeing is interviewing prospective candidates [scabs] to start taking what were once union jobs, said Dan Gillian, Boeing’s vice president of Air Dominance and senior executive at the St. Louis site…Just an hour after the interview, the union held a press conference to discuss the ongoing strike. Informed of Gillian’s comments, Jody Bennett, IAM’s lead negotiator, didn’t mince words. “Why don’t you ask Dan if they’ve ever presented a deal to a union that they didn’t say was a very good deal? Obviously, anything the company slides across, they’re going to say it’s a very good deal,” he said. “Our membership doesn’t think it’s a very good deal. Matter of fact, they rejected it. … So please feel free to ask him if he’s ever given a final offer in which he said, ‘Hey, you ought to turn this down because it’s not worth a shit.’”

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Starbucks closes 2 Seattle stores amid restructuring, layoffs — Starbucks is closing its Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill and Reserve store in Sodo, the company confirmed Thursday…Since 2021, 650 Starbucks stores, including the roastery, and around 12,000 baristas have unionized. “As we currently understand it, union stores are over-represented in this announcement,” union spokesperson Shwetha Ganesh said. Workers United will send a formal request for information to Starbucks about the planned closures and expects to bargain for every impacted union store, in order to transfer displaced employees to their preferred locations, according to the statement.

► From KREM — Starbucks store closings: Here’s the list, so far, of locations shutting down nationwide –Starbucks has not yet publicly shared a store closing list. The company said the Starbucks app will be updated by Sunday with up-to-date hours of operation, including closures. Workers at Starbucks locations around the country have begun sharing online that they have been told their stores were closing. Using that list as a starting point, we were able to cross-check listings on the Starbucks online store locators.

Editor’s note: using the SBWU map to verify, 3 of the 5 Washington locations on this closure list (two in Seattle, one in Vancouver) are union stores. 

► From the union-busting Columbian — Has ICE renewed Tacoma detention center contract? It won’t say — Immigration advocates and legal experts have heavily criticized the lack of transparency over the expected renewal of the contract between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, which owns and manages the 1,575-bed, jail-like facility. Neither GEO Group nor ICE officials have released information about a new contract for running the detention center. The current contract, inked in 2015 as a one-year contract with an option to renew each year for nine years, is set to expire Sept. 27. The contract awarded GEO Group a minimum of $700 million over 10 years.

NATIONAL

► From the American Prospect — Workers Demand Justice for Immigrants as More Die in ICE Custody — The coalition includes hundreds of members of 1199 SEIU, AFGE Local 3911, Communications Workers of America, Laborers’ Local 1010, and UAW Region 9A. Protesters will encircle the building to demand “an immediate end to ICE’s violent and unlawful actions in New York,” according to a media advisory. The action comes days after immigration officials told federal lawmakers that more detainees have died in their care, including two on Tuesday. The total number of dead is now at least 16, according to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), though the number ICE lists on its congressionally required body count website is 13. Last year, 11 people died in ICE detention.

► From the Guardian — LISTEN: ‘Like Amazon Prime but with human beings’: inside Trump’s deportation machine — The centre’s role was revealed by a Guardian investigation of leaked data, detailing tens of thousands of flights transporting immigrants across the US, carried out for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice). Laughland and the immigration reporter Maanvi Singh talk about what the investigation tells us about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies – and concerns about the denial of due process and the ‘disappearance’ of people from lawyers and their families. Is the chaos and the cruelty by accident, asks Helen Pidd, or is it by design?

► From KTLA — Unionized Disneyland workers say $233M settlement validates years of organizing — Disneyland cast members in a local labor union are reacting after a judge approved a $233 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit that alleged cast members didn’t benefit from an Anaheim minimum wage law…“I love what I do, turning kids into princesses and knights, but I have to be able to afford to live while doing it,” said Michi Cordell, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 and a Disneyland employee for 17 years. “This settlement will be a major help to my family thanks to the union and the Anaheim voters who supported Measure L. We stood up for what we deserved, from passing Measure L to reaching this agreement, and won.”

► From the NW Labor Press — Nurses call out Providence Portland for short-staffing — Botterill works in the emergency room at Providence, which is often well staffed. When it isn’t adequately staffed, the results aren’t good for patients no matter how the staff decide to manage the shortage. Sometimes staff close down entire assignments of the ER, which curtails the number of available beds and lengthens the time patients spend in the waiting room before they can be seen and treated.  “The worst wait I’ve seen is eight hours, but it’s not unusual for wait times to be in the four-hour range,” Botterill says. “Patients will leave, either home or to another hospital, or by the time they do get back to a room they’re very grumpy. When we get really busy and have a full waiting room we’ll go to ‘ambulance divert,’ notifying the ambulance company that right now we’re not taking ambulances and they have to go find another hospital to take their patients. All this translates into poorer care.”

► From Variety — Disney Shareholders Demand Documents Related to Jimmy Kimmel Suspension About Whether Company Committed ‘Wrongdoing’ by ‘Capitulating’ to Trump Administration — The letter on behalf of the Disney shareholders — the American Federation of Teachers, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and Reporters Without Borders — requested the production of internal Disney documents and communications related to the decision to take Kimmel off the air for a week. The groups invoked shareholder rights under Delaware law to obtain information from corporations; such requests are granted only in cases of a breach of fiduciary duty and not for routine management decisions.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — White House Threat of Federal Layoffs Only Deepens Shutdown Impasse — Democrats on Thursday condemned the threat by Mr. Trump and his top aides to fire droves of federal employees during a federal closure, and said they would not be cowed into dropping their demands for health care spending concessions because of it. “We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader. Hours later, Mr. Trump, who has declined to negotiate with Democrats he has accused of being not “realistic” in their demands, said a lapse in funding would be their fault.

► From Common Dreams — Federal Workers Union Denounces Trump’s Threat of ‘Illegal Mass Firings’ Amid Shutdown Fight — “While politicians are playing games, real Americans’ jobs, paychecks, and access to vital services are being threatened by a looming government shutdown. Now, White House OMB Director Russell Vought has announced his intention to pursue another DOGE-like round of illegal mass firings in the event of a shutdown, adding to the chaos,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees…Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that the memo displayed “Russ Vought’s trademark chaos.” “Instead of coming to the table to negotiate lowering costs and addressing the healthcare crisis Republicans created, the White House is staging harmful charades like this that will impact all Americans,” DeLauro said.

► From the New York Times — Federal Bureau of Prisons Ends Union Protections for Workers — The Federal Bureau of Prisons said on Thursday that it was canceling a collective bargaining agreement with the union representing more than 30,000 prison workers, making it the latest group to be targeted by the Trump administration’s effort to assert more control over the government work force. William K. Marshall III, the bureau’s director, told employees that he was terminating the contact with the union, the Council of Prison Locals, saying that it had become an obstacle to making changes intended to improve safety and morale.

► From the New Republic — Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts to Social Security Are Even Worse Than We Knew — Months after Elon Musk departed his position at the Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is suffering extensive damage from the fledgling office’s onslaught of cuts. Earlier this year, DOGE slashed the Social Security Administration’s workforce by 12 percent, leaving an already understaffed agency in a state of upheaval. The cuts have hit local field offices the hardest, reported The New York Times Wednesday.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Canada Post union launches strike as government moves to end most door-to-door mail — The Canadian Union of Postal Workers went on strike Thursday after the government announced door-to-door mail delivery would end for nearly all households within the next decade…The union said it was caught off-guard by the changes and argued Canada Post and the government are creating the conditions that drive down demand for its letter and parcel services. CUPW said all of its 55,000 Canada Post members were on strike immediately, adding the corporation has so far not engaged in “real bargaining.”

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Jacobin — The UAW’s Shawn Fain on Union Growth and Union Power — The working class didn’t see rising productivity get rewarded with more money in our pockets. Instead, the profits went to the top. To the billionaire class. To the people who never step foot on a factory floor but think they own everything we build…That’s why the battles we’ve waged over the last two years matter so much. And that’s why May Day 2028 will be the defining moment of our generation. This week marks two years since the stand-up strike began. That strike changed everything.

JOLT OF JOY

Today’s jolt of joy is a blast from the past: Abbey Road was released 56 years ago today. So here’s John Lennon performing ‘Come Together,’ a song that gives The Band a run for their money vis-à-vis lyrical indecipherability. But it is ostensibly about unity, a concept many of us long for these days. (At least I think it is. Maybe? I dunno, someone figure out how to ask John Lennon.)

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