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Meta cafeteria workers | ULP in Chelan | Trump targets judges

Friday, April 10, 2026

 

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Wired — How Meta Cafeteria Workers Took on ICE—and Won — In the case of Mbengue’s workplace, he and his more than 200 dining hall colleagues in Bellevue and nearby Redmond are employed by catering company Lavish Roots. Last year, over 60 percent of them asked Lavish and Meta to respect workers’ rights to form a union with Unite Here Local 8. Over 5,000 peers nationwide at Microsoft, Google, and different Meta offices employed by other catering companies have already unionized. But Lavish has allegedly campaigned against the workers through meetings, flyers, texts, and emails, according to Unite Here organizing director Sarah Jacobson. Union supporters have been disciplined, surveilled, and subjected to new rules making workplace communications more difficult, she alleges…The veteran Amazon engineer says he and fellow desk workers at the company have a history of supporting warehouse and delivery workers. The collaboration with food workers is new. But he felt having their backs was important should he and fellow engineers need their support on future campaigns, like about environmental or AI issues. “Solidarity means showing up in the ways they ask for,” the Amazon employee says.

 

LOCAL

► From the Wenatchee World — RiverCom adds AI for non-emergency calls; dispatchers’ union files complaint — In a statement Thursday, the union said that the local became aware last year of “unilateral changes to mandatory subjects of bargaining by RiverCom” and wanted to bargain the issue. They say that RiverCom said no, arguing that these changes aren’t mandatory, but “permissive,” meaning it’s up to the employer — RiverCom — to choose to enter into negotiations. “As we are confident that adding an AI ‘call assist’ is a mandatory subject of bargaining, we have filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against RiverCom, and await a hearing date with the Public Employment Relations Commission,” the statement reads.

► From KUOW — Forest Service axes research stations as severe fire season threatens Pacific Northwest — The U.S. Forest Service is shutting down research stations around the country, including centers in Portland, Seattle, and Wenatchee, Washington. Though much of the stations’ research is long-term, some fire experts say the cuts could hamper firefighting efforts as soon as this summer…“That particular team within the Seattle lab works on smoke prediction, and so they will be fully occupied this summer,” Prichard said. Federal agencies expect severe fire conditions to arrive in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon as early as June due to a meager snowpack melting off and letting soils and vegetation dry out early. Conditions are expected to worsen in July.

► From KUOW — Masked ICE agents arrest man with no deportation order in Seattle immigration court — Masked ICE agents briefly returned to the immigration courthouse in Seattle Tuesday and arrested a man who did not have a standing deportation order…[Attorney] Malone said the man does not have a criminal record, and he has not been charged with a crime in federal court. He is currently detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. This is the only known instance of ICE making an arrest at the Seattle immigration court since early last summer when ICE agents made a series of similar arrests in Seattle and other immigration courts around the country. A lawsuit is now challenging that practice.

► From KOMO — Seattle battery maker fined after workers faced lead levels 4x the limit , state says — Seattle battery manufacturer has been fined nearly $225,000 after state regulators said it knowingly exposed workers to dangerous levels of lead and failed to correct safety violations. The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) cited Dyno Battery, Inc., which produces batteries for trains, boats, forklifts, and golf carts, following a follow-up inspection of hazards first identified last July. Inspectors found the company had not addressed more than a dozen violations despite repeated reminders and deadline extensions.

► From the Willamette Week — As It Shutters, Beleaguered Shelter Operator Says All 175 Staff Will Lose Their Jobs — The news of the layoffs is “not terribly surprising,” Misha Litvak, a program manager and union president, tells WW. Still, he adds, the timing is rough. With government funding cuts, it’s become more difficult to get a job in homeless services, he says. There were once a good deal of well-paid union jobs in that realm, he said. “Now that bottom has kind of fallen out.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Bloomberg — Starbucks Union Complaint Signals Rough Start to Latest Round of Talks — Starbucks Corp.’s union filed a US labor board complaint accusing the company of negotiating in bad faith, signaling a rocky start to the two sides’ first negotiating sessions in a year. In a Wednesday filing with the National Labor Relations Board, the Workers United union alleged that the coffee chain this week backtracked on seven items it had previously agreed to, adding the company made “punitive” proposals that the union clearly couldn’t accept. In the complaint viewed by Bloomberg, Workers United, which represents around 600 of the chain’s roughly 10,000 company-run US stores, accused Starbucks of acting “with the intent of preventing any agreement from being reached.”

From Starbucks Workers United:

 

NATIONAL

► From CBS News — 2 missing workers presumed dead after parking garage collapse in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood — The two construction workers who went missing after a parking garage in Grays Ferry partially collapsed are presumed dead, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said Thursday night. Parker said all three workers who died were members of Ironworkers Union Local 401…Multiple agencies, including the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Philadelphia Fire Department, Philadelphia Police Department and L&I, will be on the scene of the collapse until the investigation is completed.

► From NABTU:

► From the AP — USPS is set to suspend pension contributions, seeks 4-cent stamp price hike  — Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the temporary suspension of annuity payments is “not ideal” but it doesn’t immediately impact his members, who he said understand the Postal Service’s financial challenges. “Given a menu of options, none of which are overall positive, they would certainly prefer the Postal Service making a move like this as opposed to something that immediately impacts them or immediately impacts in a negative way the service that we provide to the American people,” Renfroe said. Ninety-nine percent of career USPS employees are covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System.

► From the AP — US economy grew a sluggish 0.5% in fourth quarter, government says, downgrading previous estimate — The American economy, slowed by last fall’s 43-day government shutdown, grew at a sluggish 0.5% annual pace from October through December, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in downgrade of its previous estimate…For all of 2025, the economy grew 2.1% last year, slower than 2.8% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2023. Business investment, excluding housing, increased at a 2.4% pace, likely reflecting money being poured into artificial intelligence, but the increase was down from 3.2% in the third quarter.

► From the AP — Immigration board denies Mahmoud Khalil’s appeal, bringing activist one step closer to deportation — The Board of Immigration Appeals issued the final order of removal on Thursday, according to Khalil’s lawyers. The board’s rulings are not public, and an inquiry to the U.S. Department of Justice was not immediately returned. Khalil said he was not surprised by the ruling, which he called “biased and politically motivated.” His attorneys said he cannot be lawfully detained or deported as he pursues a separate case in the federal court system…Khalil, a 31-year-old legal permanent resident, was the first person whose arrest became publicly known during the federal crackdown on noncitizens who publicly criticized Israel and its actions in Gaza.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New York Times — How Trump Purged Immigration Judges to Speed Up Deportations — In interviews, more than two dozen immigration judges who have served under the second Trump administration described feeling a consistent sense of pressure to deport immigrants or risk losing their jobs. “All of us are looking over our shoulders,” said Holly D’Andrea, an immigration judge in Texas who was appointed during the first Trump administration. She spoke with The Times in her capacity as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, a labor union…Other officials are said to have instructed judges to grant asylum only in the most extraordinary circumstances. In a previously unreported whistle-blower letter to Congress, one fired judge quoted an official remarking on the standard for asylum: “Maybe if you were Jewish and escaping Nazi Germany in 1943, you should get it.” The whistle-blower is a military lawyer who was detailed to serve as a temporary immigration judge and subsequently dismissed.

► From Your Alaska Link — Flight attendants plan Anchorage rally over proposed SAVE Act — The rally is being organized by members of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, who say the legislation would create additional barriers to voter registration and absentee voting. Organizers argue that flight attendants, due to frequent travel schedules, often rely on mail-in and absentee voting and could be disproportionately affected by the proposed requirements.

► From the Seattle Times — Opponents sue to block WA’s new ‘millionaires tax’  — Invest in Washington Now, a labor-backed coalition supporting the high-earners income tax, slammed the lawsuit as an attempt to kill tax reform that will benefit many working-class families. “The truth is the Millionaires Tax is very popular with Washingtonians, but these extremist groups are doing everything they can to shield billionaires and mega-millionaires from paying what they owe our communities,” said the emailed statement from the group’s spokesperson, Lexi Koren.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Trades Union Congress:

 

JOLT OF JOY

ahem 🗣️ FOR THE UNION MAKES US STROOOOOOOOOONGGGG!

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