GOP shutdown | Illegal firings lawsuit | Bus drivers

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

STRIKES

► From the St. Louis Business Journal — Union sends ‘modified’ contract offer to Boeing St. Louis in latest bid to end strike — The modified offer was submitted as IAM will hold a rally Wednesday featuring AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and others. The event will be held at noon at the District 837 Union Hall, 212 Utz Lane, in Hazelwood. Also, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, is expected to release a letter soon to Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg. On Sept. 20, Sanders wrote on X: “If Boeing could afford to give their last two outgoing CEOs $100 million+ in golden parachutes, it can afford to pay workers fairly.”

LOCAL

► From the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild:

Today in effects bargaining, Cascade PBS refused to move at all on their severance package they are offering the soon to be laid off newsroom staff. We are continue to be disappointed in how management is treating it’s hardworking staff while making hundreds of thousands of…

— Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild (@PacNWGuild) October 1, 2025

► From the Seattle Times — As ICE fears loom, a Tacoma community of migrants strives for normalcy — With stories of detention and deportation constantly in the news, it’s easy to forget that thousands of recent migrants are spread throughout Washington — in Thrive’s complex, hotel rooms rented by other organizations, low-income housing buildings and elsewhere — and continuing to jump-start American lives as best they can…At Thrive’s complex, residents stay anywhere from several months to more than a year. ICE has not shown up there so far, and would not be let in without a court warrant, said Bondarenko, the facility’s director. No one can open the surrounding gate nor either of the two buildings without a code. To further deter ICE’s presence, the facility does not let residents stay if they have been ordered removed.

► From the Washington State Standard — ICE Is Transferring People in Its Custody Away From Family, Lawyers — Luis Peralta, who was transferred from Miami to Tacoma, told Capital & Main that officers did not allow him to bring his personal documents with him when they moved him. That meant that he didn’t have access to any phone numbers for family members — his mother’s had been written on a piece of paper in his belongings at the Miami facility. That also meant he hadn’t been able to reach the attorney that his family found for him, he said…“Hopefully we don’t get transferred again,” Peralta said. “Being transferred is like the worst experience that anybody could go through.”…Their wrists, ankles and waists were shackled together, he said. “If something malfunctions in the air, there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “It’s very, very, very scary.”

► From NWPB — Unpacked: Hanford site prepares to process radioactive waste — Vitrification means to bind up in glass. Basically, this plant is a big factory and it’s meant to bind up radioactive waste into more stable glass logs so that the waste can escape and move around in the environment. The plant will work roughly like this — it’s going to pump the low level waste from underground tanks in piping under the ground, to the waste treatment plant…By Oct. 15, we should see some deadline announcement by the Department of Energy saying we have vitrified waste and there’s probably going to be a press rollout, but nothing’s for sure yet.

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Boeing’s new plane has been ‘a long time coming,’ analysts say — The next narrowbody plane is at least 10 years away from launching, aerospace analysts said Tuesday, but it’s not a surprise the discussion is starting…Historically, it has taken Boeing about five years from the launch of a new aircraft program to entry into service, Kahyaoglu wrote, though that timeline has been stretched for its recent programs, including the 777X and two new MAX variants.

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From My Northwest — Everett School District faces bus driver strike — Workers are demanding their employer, Durham School Services, offer them a new collective bargaining agreement, according to a news release from the union. Drivers want compensation and benefits comparable to other school districts. “A strike is imminent,” President of Teamsters Local 38 Pete Lamb told KIRO 7. “We’re going to do everything in our power to prevent that.” Teamsters Local 38 said the company walked away from the bargaining table last week, refusing to negotiate in good faith. Therefore, union members filed unfair labor practices against their employer.

► From KING 5 — Nurses rally at Seattle Children’s as contract talks drag on — The informational picket, organized by the Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA), drew more than a thousand participants to the sidewalks around the hospital’s main campus. Nurses held signs, chanted, and waved at passing traffic — making clear that a strike remains a possibility if talks fail…“Most of our nurses have been here for less than 10 years, and those people are still paying the brunt of not having enough wage increases to be able to keep up with the cost of living in Seattle,” Hoogestraat said. “People are hungry. This is the most fired up I’ve seen our bargaining unit in the entire 20 years that I’ve been here.”

► From the Athletic — Napheesa Collier calls out WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert: ‘Worst leadership in the world — Less than 48 hours after Minnesota’s season-ending Game 4 semifinals loss to the Phoenix Mercury, Collier read a two-page prepared statement at a news conference in Minneapolis that criticized the league’s officiating, Engelbert and the WNBA’s approach to the ongoing Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations…Collier said she asked Engelbert why high-profile players such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers were such significant revenue drivers, but were paid so little by comparison. (Clark’s WNBA salary this season was $78,066.) Collier said that Engelbert responded: “Caitlin should be grateful she makes $16 million off the court because without the platform that the WNBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything.”

► From Reuters — Broadway actors prepare to strike, union says — “Asking our employers to care for our bodies, and to pay their fair share toward our health insurance is not only reasonable and necessary, it’s an investment they should want to make toward the long-term success of their businesses,” Actors’ Equity President Brooke Shields said in a statement to Reuters, adding that she tore her meniscus on a Broadway show and continued dancing on it, “painfully,” for three months.

ORGANIZING

► From LAist — What’s at stake as USC and LMU push back against untenured faculty unions? — Experts say the universities’ anti-union tactics aren’t wholly original. But, taken together, the pushback marks an era of more aggressive opposition to labor organizing at campuses in Southern California — one that could have implications for higher ed institutions nationwide…Herbert, of Hunter College, said LMU is not the first university to invoke a religious exemption. A 1979 Supreme Court decision has been the basis for litigation by religiously affiliated institutions seeking to thwart faculty unions…Still, Herbert underscored, “the fact that [a university] may or may not be subject to the National Labor Relations Act does not preclude [it] from agreeing to continue to negotiate” with a union. LMU’s peer Catholic Jesuit institutions, including Georgetown University and Fordham University, have active collective bargaining units.

► From Starbucks Workers United:

BREAKING: Workers at the Starbucks store that was the center of the “Charlie Kirk cup controversy” were thrown under the bus after Starbucks lied about their cup-writing policies to the press.

Now, they’re organizing a union to protect each other and demand better! pic.twitter.com/X5TPPYDMFD

— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) September 30, 2025

NATIONAL

► From Bloomberg — AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring — The power needs of the massive complexes are rapidly driving up electricity bills — piling onto the rising prices for food, housing and other essentials already straining consumers. That’s starting to have economic and political reverberations across the country as utilities and local officials wrestle over how to divvy up the costs. Yet those same facilities are a linchpin of US leadership in the global AI race.

► From the New York Times — Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech — The remarkable ruling was a hard-fought win for a coalition of academic and civil rights organizations that had sued to block future deportations of foreign students, arguing that the government had used the threat of “ideological deportation” to punish people for criticizing Israel’s government and its war in Gaza. Describing the question before him as “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court,” Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, released a scathing rebuke of President Trump, whose administration he said had worked outside the law to curtail First Amendment protections for noncitizens.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the AP — Vote to end government shutdown fails in Senate as Democrats hold firm on health care demands — A vote to end the government shutdown hours after it began failed Wednesday, as Democrats in the Senate held firm to the party’s demands to fund health care subsidies that President Donald Trump and Republicans refuse to provide…This is the third time Trump has presided over a federal funding lapse and the first since his return to the White House this year. His record underscores the polarizing divide over budget priorities in a political climate that rewards hard-line positions rather than more traditional compromises.

► From the New York Times — Tracking How the Shutdown Is Affecting Federal Services and Workers — The government shutdown that began Wednesday morning suspended the work of hundreds of thousands of employees, disrupting a wide range of federal programs. Many more employees are required to report to work without pay until funding is restored. The impacts vary from department to department. Some services and programs will continue mostly uninterrupted if they are self-funded or considered “mandatory”, such as the Postal Service and Social Security benefits. Departments also designated some employees, such as federal law enforcement officers, active-duty troops and air traffic controllers, as “essential.”

► From KUOW — Government shutdown could delay key economic reports at an especially sensitive time — A key report on the job market will not be published on Friday, as scheduled, as a result of the government shutdown. That means businesses and policymakers will be left guessing about the strength of the labor market at a time when the U.S. economy appears to be slowing. If the shutdown drags on for more than a few days, a report on inflation scheduled for mid-October could also be delayed. That report is part of the formula used to calculate the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that Social Security recipients receive next year.

► From Politico — Labor unions sue OMB, OPM for ‘unlawful’ threats of mass layoffs ahead of shutdown –The lawsuit argues the administration violated the Antideficiency Act — which prohibits the government from spending federal funds exceeding the amount available in an appropriation — in its instructions for employees to carry out the firings. That law also requires most federal employees to stop working during the appropriation lapse. “Nothing in the Antideficiency Act or any other statute authorizes RIFs of employees who work in agencies or programs with a lapse in funding,” the lawsuit states. “Instead, the Act expressly provides that all employees who are not paid during a shutdown — whether furloughed or excepted — must receive back pay for that time period once funding is reinstated.”

► From Bloomberg Law — Judge Shields Federal Union Rights as Agencies Cancel Pacts — Judge Paul Friedman of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said in a preliminary injunction ruling from the bench Tuesday that the administration can’t strip unionized employees of their federal labor rights and disregard CBAs for the duration of the AFL-CIO’s litigation against it. The judge’s reasoning, laid out after oral arguments, falls in line with his rulings in two other challenges to Trump’s March executive order which declared large swaths of the government exempt from labor protections. The injunction covers workers represented by the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists, and several other AFL-CIO member unions.

► From the AP — Civil rights agency drops a key tool used to investigate workplace discrimination — The memo, emailed to all area, local and district office directors of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Sept. 15, says that the agency will discharge by Tuesday any complaints based on “disparate impact liability,” a legal concept that argues that even if a policy looks fair on the surface, it can still be discriminatory if it creates unnecessary barriers that make it harder for certain groups of people to succeed.

► From the Seattle Times — Supreme Court lets Lisa Cook remain as a Federal Reserve governor for now — In a brief unsigned order, the high court said it would hear arguments in January over Republican President Donald Trump’s effort to force Cook off the Fed board. The court will consider whether to block a lower-court ruling in Cook’s favor while her challenge to her firing by Trump continues.

► From the Washington State Standard — OPINION: Why first responders want to see WA diversify its long-term care fund investments — Every day, firefighters and nurses in Washington state help aging people and people with disabilities suffering injuries and illnesses that could have been easily avoided. Many calls to 911, visits to the emergency room, and hospital admissions are related to preventable falls, missed medications, or common infections. That’s because too many folks can’t afford long-term care…This November, Washington voters will consider Senate Joint Resolution 8201 to protect and grow Washington’s public long-term care fund dedicated to women, aging adults, and people with disabilities by allowing its investment in a balanced portfolio. By growing the state fund by billions more each year, this ballot measure will help keep premiums low and may even expand our long-term care benefits without costing taxpayers a penny.

► From the Tri-City Herald — WA sues Trump admin after Homeland Security cuts funding ‘for political purposes’ — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from unlawfully reallocating federal homeland security funding away from states based on their compliance with the administration’s political agenda, a day after a coalition of states including Washington filed a lawsuit.

► From the LA Times — Newsom signs bill expanding California labor board oversight of employer disputes, union elections — The legislation, Assembly Bill 288, gives the state authority to step in and oversee union elections, charges of workplace retaliation and other disputes between private employers and workers in the event the National Labor Relations Board fails to respond…“This is the most significant labor law reform in nearly a century,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. “California workers will no longer be forced to rely on a failing federal agency when they join together to unionize.”

INTERNATIONAL

► From the AP — Thousands march in Athens against labor law changes, disrupt services nationwide — Unions representing civil servants and private sector workers called the strike to protest labor law changes that allow greater flexibility in labor conditions, including overtime that could stretch occasional shifts to 13 hours. Under the new regulations, working hours that include overtime would be capped at 48 hours per week, with a maximum of 150 overtime hours allowed per year. Unions argue the new rules leave workers vulnerable to labor abuses by employers. “We say no to the 13-hour (shift). Exhaustion is not development, human tolerance has limits,” the private sector umbrella union, the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, said in a statement. The union called for a 37½-hour working week and the return of collective bargaining agreements.

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