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NEWS ROUNDUP

PeaceHealth contract | Inside ICE Air | Rent-fixing

Friday, April 4, 2025

 

LOCAL

► From the NW Labor Press — Exec getting raises? We get one too! — That ruling is finally resulting in back pay checks for members of the four unions — Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 11, Laborers Local 335, AFSCME Local 307, and PROTEC17. On March 18, Clark County councilors approved $4 million in payments to 875 workers for raises they would have gotten in 2023 and 2024.

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington AG takes software company to court over rental price-fixing allegations — The lawsuit alleges RealPage and nine landlords violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act by stifling competition. “It’s price fixing, it’s illegal and it hurts Washingtonians,” Brown said. Chris Vialpando, a renter in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, said his landlord raised his rent over 50% in 2022 based on RealPage’s algorithm. He said he is one of many “falling victim to the collusion, thereby perpetuating this already complex, systemic housing crisis.”…About a third of Washington residents are renters, according to the lawsuit.

► From KUOW — Victim of alleged transgender hate crime ‘distraught’ at news of second attack — The victim of the first attack was Lexi Young, a transgender woman who has worked for the past year as a fare ambassador for Sound Transit. Charging documents allege that while Young was working on Sept. 14, 2024, the accused man, Andre Karlow, mocked her, calling her a slur for LGBTQ people when she approached him to seek proof of payment in the Chinatown-International District light rail station. Karlow then boarded the train as Young tried to photograph him. Charging documents say Karlow “then stepped back off the train and punched Young in the face unprovoked.”

► From MLK Labor:

► From Cascadia Daily News — Know your rights: What to know as immigration actions pick up — When immigration agents pull a person over, questions should relate to why they had suspicion to conduct a traffic stop. The driver or passenger can ask about probable cause for the stop and the agent should state why. The driver and passenger have the right to remain silent. It is also within people’s rights to film and photograph federal immigration enforcement action, while making sure to get names and badge information. The information can then be used in immigration court…If agents want to enter a house, or “dwelling,” they cannot do so without a warrant. People can also request to review a signed warrant by a judge.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Cascadia Daily News — PeaceHealth union members start vote to authorize strike — More than 900 PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center employees started voting on Thursday, April 3, on whether or not to authorize a strike. The vote will be counted Tuesday, April 8. Reaching this point “shows just how deeply PeaceHealth has failed its frontline staff and Whatcom County,” union president Jane Hopkins said in a prepared statement. “No one takes this decision lightly, and our goal is not to strike, but to reach an agreement,” she added.

► From the NW Labor Press — Student workers ready to strike at University of Oregon — UOSW declared an impasse and submitted its final offer March 19, days after a 94.5% vote to authorize a strike. The unit of about 4,000 undergraduate student workers voted to unionize in October 2023 and has spent 10 months negotiating a first contract.

 

NATIONAL

► From 19th News — Five years after the height of COVID, nurses are still fighting for their rights — “I was impacted by seeing all these people lose their lives,” Crittenden said. “I was also feeling frustrated and quite mad. We just needed more help on the floor. We were the ones in the rooms having these conversations with patients. We were their emotional support and their physical support. And managers and supervisors and directors were nowhere in sight.” Two years later, Crittenden was among the hundreds of nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin who voted to unionize. It was a snapshot of the worker power brewing within the health care industry — led in part by nurses, a workforce dominated by women.

► From ProPublica — Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time” — The reality is that 85% of the administration’s “removal” flights — 254 flights as of March 21, according to the advocacy group Witness at the Border — have been on charter planes. Military flights have now all but ceased. While there are ICE officers and hired security guards on the charters, the crew members on board are civilians, ordinary people swept up in something most didn’t knowingly sign up for…the flight attendants were most concerned about their inability to treat their passengers humanely — and to keep them safe. They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time? “They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” one said. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

► From CNN — DOGE drove layoff announcements to their third-highest-ever level in March — The federal government announced plans to axe 216,215 jobs, accounting for nearly 80% of the 275,240 layoffs announcements made by US employers in March, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas’ latest report. It’s the third-highest monthly total behind April 2020 (671,129) and May 2020 (397,016). The March announcements mark a stark 60% jump from February, which saw a spike of its own, and they’re up 205% from the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024.

► From the AP — Sell-off worsens worldwide and Dow drops 1,300 after China retaliates against Trump tariffs — China’s response to U.S. tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China by imposing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From the Washington State Standard — OPINION: Long-term care workers need lawmakers in Olympia to step up support — As an SEIU 775 represented certified nursing assistant and a chief executive officer working in Washington nursing homes, we are deeply concerned about the sustainability of this essential model of long-term care in our state. Families and communities across Washington simply cannot afford to do more with less after years of crisis and inadequate state investments.

► From the AP — Unemployment benefits for striking workers being considered in Oregon, Washington — Bryan Corliss, spokesperson for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace union, told The Associated Press that the big winners would be low-wage workers. “If low-wage workers had the financial stability to actually go on strike for more than a day or two without risking eviction, we believe that would incentivize companies to actually come to the table and make a deal,” he said.

► From the Spokesman Review — Cantwell and top Senate Republican introduce bill to give Congress control over tariffs — Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced legislation with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that would require the president to notify Congress before enacting tariffs, which would expire within 60 days without congressional approval. The Trade Review Act also would let lawmakers end tariffs at any time and require an administration to provide both a rationale for imposing new taxes on imports and an analysis of their impact on American businesses and consumers.

► From Inside Higher Ed — Researchers, Higher Ed Union Fight NIH Grant Terminations — Individual university researchers, a public health advocacy organization and a union [UAW] representing more than 120,000 higher education workers are suing the National Institutes of Health after the agency terminated more than $2.4 billion in grants it claims support “non-scientific” projects that “no longer” effectuate agency priorities…“This isn’t just a fight for my professional survival but a stand against the erosion of scientific freedom,” Charlton said. “[The grant cancellations set] a worrying precedent where scientific inquiry becomes vulnerable to political rhetoric. The concern here is not merely academic; it affects the very foundation of public health policy and the health of vulnerable communities.”

► From Reuters — US Health Dept may ask fired staff to keep working, reinstate others — “There were some programs that were cut that are being reinstated,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told ABC News, referring in particular to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program that monitors lead levels in children’s blood. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut — we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan.”

► From the Washington Post — Md. judge expands order barring Trump admin from firing federal workers — In a preliminary injunction order filed late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar also barred the administration from conducting future layoffs of probationary workers at the affected agencies — unless those layoffs comply with the laws regulating such an action. Bredar’s ruling, which gives the Trump administration until April 8 to comply, mirrors a temporary restraining order against 18 federal agencies that he granted last month, though it adds the Defense Department and the Office of Personnel Management to the list.

► From the NW Labor Press — Labor secretary slashes solidarity grants — On March 21, she released a video touting some of the savings. “Last week, the department terminated several foreign aid grants, saving over $38 million,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I bet you didn’t even know that your hard-earned tax dollars were being spent on things like enhancing transparency and accountability in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, promoting policies related to so-called climate change programs in Brazil and Colombia, supporting collective bargaining in Indonesia and Guatemala, and overseeing progress on labor standards in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Editor’s note: looking like there’s quite the asterisk next to the “pro-labor” descriptor granted to the Secretary.

 

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