Child care costs | Carbon market | Detentions challenged

Thursday, March 5, 2026

LOCAL

► From the Stranger — Why Workers at One of Seattle’s Hottest Restaurants Went on Strike — Employees were refusing to come to work because they hadn’t been paid. [Owner] Long put up, and then deleted, an Instagram post admitting he owed money to staff and vendors. “I have no idea what I’m doing and cannot seem to figure what’s up and what’s down,” he wrote. Days later, in a series of Instagram posts, general manager Moni Mitchell announced that the staff had resigned and accused Long of “documented financial mismanagement.”…When some employees tried to sign up for unemployment, they discovered that they couldn’t, because their hours had not been properly reported to the state. (Long says this resulted from a “lapse in taking care of my tasks accordingly.”) In the midst of all of that, most of the staff went on “strike,” as they put it, demanding Long fix their paperwork so they could collect unemployment and pay employees what they were owed, including the two former cooks at Oliver’s Twist.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Half of Fort Vancouver High’s teachers walk out over safety concerns prompted by social media posts — About half of Fort Vancouver High’s teachers walked out of school Wednesday morning because of safety concerns raised by social media posts. An Instagram page with the handle @fortvancouverteacher shows altered photos of Fort teachers inserted into videos, some with political or sexual references…Vancouver Education Association Executive Director Graham Picklesimer said the district notified the union that educators walked out at Fort. He said the union did not call for nor authorize the action, but its “sympathies are with the educators and community at Fort Vancouver High School as they advocate for the learning conditions their students deserve.”

► From My Northwest — O’Reilly Auto Parts ordered to pay $5.6M over discrimination against pregnant employees in WA — The women who faced discrimination and retaliation related to their pregnancies were employed at O’Reilly Auto Parts’ Puyallup distribution center. According to a lawsuit filed by then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson back in August 2023, the company violated state law by “systematically failing or refusing to provide pregnant and postpartum workers with reasonable workplace accommodations.”…The alleged behavior included barring pregnant employees from sitting or resting, not limiting how much they lift, making them handle hazardous materials, not allowing flexibility for restroom breaks, and failing to allow pregnant employees to pump breastmilk for their newborn babies after returning to work postpartum.

► From NW Public Broadcasting — Moscow high schoolers protest ICE — Mckayla Gentry, 16, told the crowd she used to support ICE but no longer does. “(My support) was out of a place of ignorance and not having the education to know what was really going on,” Gentry said. “Not being educated is not an excuse anymore. It’s not okay to see these things happening on the news and just pass it off and pretend like it’s not happening.” The 64 students, counted by NWPB, account for about 8% of the school’s roughly 800-person student population. Robert Bailey, a teacher at Moscow High School, said he was aware that other students wanted to protest but didn’t want an unexcused absence.

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — Why Does Child Care Seem Less Affordable Than Ever? — Though costs vary depending on where you live, families earning the median income in every U.S. state spend far more than the 7 percent of household income that the Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. You can see cost estimates for your state below..Yet the median wage for child care workers is $13 an hour. As states and cities have raised the minimum wage, child care providers said they increasingly compete for workers with fast food jobs paying as much as $20 an hour. Hiring has also become harder as increased immigration enforcement has reduced the number of foreign-born child care workers.

► From the New York Times — Fred VanVleet Was a Critic of the NBA Players’ Union. Now He’s Leading It. — The union has tried to communicate better with its members, engage with younger players who had felt disconnected from decision making and urged all of its members to think about their power as a collective brand, which can lead to new kinds of investment and marketing opportunities…The union is looking into ways to protect players against some of the problems that sports gambling have caused. Mr. Kelly said that if the union couldn’t find productive solutions — he mentioned eliminating certain kinds of prop bets, which are wagers on specific, individual outcomes — it planned to fight to roll back the presence of sports betting in the N.B.A. sphere.

► From the Guardian — $700 Erewhon hauls, 21-hour shifts: celebrity assistants go public with their grueling, fabulous work — Hiegel is among the most prominent figures in an emerging class of service workers – including private chefs, assistants and stylists, most of them women – who are monetizing the backstage maintenance of celebrity by documenting their work across TikTok and Instagram. They have influencerized tasks once defined by discretion: mixing a “six-step drink regimen” for the “funniest movie star in Hollywood”; pocketing a $1,000 tip from rapper Big Boogie; eating Popeyes with Ray J; and even degreasing Meghan Trainor’s camera lens. Other parts of the job remain invisible by necessity, as in the case of Hiegel’s mystery employer – although ultimately, all of the conjecture only helps her engagement. The trend reflects a broader shift in celebrity culture itself; fame is no longer assumed to be self-evident, but is increasingly understood as constructed and forcefully sustained.

► From Durham Rising:

 

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POLITICS & POLICY

► From KUOW — In Seattle, 9th Circuit judges consider Trump policy of mandatory immigrant detentions — The class-action lawsuit led by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Rodriguez Vazquez v. Bostock et al., is one of a number of challenges to the detention policy making their way through federal courts across the country. Plaintiffs say the Trump administration’s reading of the law means more people are being detained during their removal proceedings, despite having U.S. citizen family members and other community ties, and no criminal record.

► From the Washington State Standard — WA takes another step to link its carbon market with California and Quebec — Both supporters and critics of Washington’s cap-and-trade program say combining markets would benefit the state.  “From historic flooding and drought to extreme heat and devastating wildfires, climate change is impacting communities across our state and threatening our natural resources,” said Washington Department of Ecology Director Casey Sixkiller. “Together, we are demonstrating that states and provinces can meet this moment.”  If the markets were synchronized, all three jurisdictions would have joint auctions. A business in Washington could buy carbon allowances in Quebec, and vice versa.

► From WFSE:

 

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Editor’s note: send an email to urge lawmakers to say no to higher ed closures and cuts.

► From Notus — NIH Says It Will No Longer Recognize the Research Fellows’ Union — An email sent Monday to leadership of the NIH Fellows United-UAW union from the NIH Office of Human Resources asserted that NIH fellows, whose work is generally funded through term-limited grants, “are not ‘employees’” and are not “employed in an agency.”…NIH leadership’s move represents a new tactic for the Trump administration in its quest to eliminate federal-employee organizations, including those under the Department of Health and Human Services.

► From the New York Times — ‘No Tax on Overtime’ Rule Isn’t What Some Workers Were Expecting — Despite Mr. Trump’s “no tax” branding, overtime pay is still subject to taxes, including payroll taxes and, potentially, state taxes. Some people who work overtime won’t be able to claim the tax break at all. Only Americans who, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act, must be paid time and a half for working more than 40 hours in a week can claim it. And even then, only a portion of the overtime pay — the additional “half” in time and a half — is exempt from the federal income tax.

► From Common Dreams — Jayapal Demands Kristi Noem ‘Be Fired, Resign, or Be Impeached’—and DHS ‘Dismantled –Jayapal then revealed that four other citizens, “who were not even included” in Noem’s letter, were in the hearing room. She read the story of Patricia O’Keefe, who she said “was monitoring ICE agents when they deployed pepper spray into her car vent without provocation.” “They smashed her car windows, pulled her and her friend out, arrested them for ‘obstruction,’ and detained them,” Jayapal explained. “Patricia saw an entire area dedicated to detaining US citizens.” “An ICE agent also said, ‘You guys have to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead,’ referring to Renee Good,” who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January.

► From America’s Workforce Podcast — LISTEN: San Diego Building Trades: PLAs, Jobs and Women in Construction — Kim, a former teacher and nonprofit researcher who became the council’s first political director, said organized labor remains the most consistent institution fighting poverty by structurally empowering workers. She detailed how the council helped elect a pro-union city council, took a ballot measure to voters and won 58 percent support to overturn San Diego’s PLA ban. That victory led to a citywide PLA covering the city’s capital improvements program, creating a more reliable pipeline of union work and expanding the ability to recruit apprentices. Kim also assessed progress on women in construction, crediting cultural change, apprenticeship-readiness programs, mentorship and childcare support as key tools for recruiting and retaining women in the trades.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Korea Times — Samsung faces growing risks as labor unions move toward strike — The unions said Thursday they will hold a vote from March 9 to 18. If union members approve, the unions plan to stage a joint protest at the company’s Pyeongtaek plant in Gyeonggi Province on April 23 and launch a general strike from May 21 to June 7. “The three unions combined have about 90,000 members, meaning at least 45,000 votes in favor are needed,” said Choi Seung-ho, chairman of SELU and head of the joint negotiation committee, during a livestream Thursday…If union members vote for a general strike, Samsung Electronics could face its first strike in nearly 20 months. The first strike in Samsung Electronics’ history started in July 2024 and lasted for approximately one month.

► From the AP — Miners digging for world tech material are dying in Congo. Here’s why  — A landslide that collapsed several tunnels at a major coltan mine in eastern Congo is reported to have left at least 200 people dead in the rebel-controlled site. Rebels and government spokespeople traded accusations of responsibility and disputed the death toll, however analysts say that the collapses are the deadliest in years…Details about the collapse are sparse due to the mine’s remoteness and the pressure on the miners from rebels and mine owners to stay quiet afterward.

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