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Trump v. DOE | Medicaid | United Videogame Workers

Thursday, March 20, 2025

 

STRIKES

► From UNITE HERE Local 40:

LOCAL

► From the Yakima Herald-Republic — About 200 Yakima residents rally against potential cuts to Medicaid — Yessica Cabrera, a local childcare provider, said some of her clients rely on Medicaid. Her family own family struggled with supporting a family member until he could get on Medicaid, she said. “Without it, what will we do?” she said.

► From the Lynnwood Times — Cantwell meets with local healthcare providers to discuss the impacts of Medicaid cuts — Also speaking at Tuesday’s event, Whitney Stohr, advocate and mother of a son who was born with spina bifida, shared that without Medicaid there would be no way her family could afford the care her son, Malachi, needed during his early days at the hospital. “We couldn’t pay for it then, we couldn’t pay for it now – at least not without Medicaid,” said Stohr. “For families like mine, for kids like Malachi, Medicaid is the lifeline.”

► From Cascade PBS — WA keeps details of severe workplace injuries, deaths from public — Joe Kendo, chief of staff of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said a worker’s union – which does have access under law — uses those L&I investigative records to check on safety practices and concerns at those workplaces. “The union would want to see the investigation, and peek into to see where the breakdown occurred that led to a death — was the company not following safety laws, or where the safety laws are too permissible,” Kendo said in an interview with Cascade PBS.

► From the Olympian — Intercity Transit buses are getting driver protective barriers. Here’s how they will work — The barrier is something drivers had pushed for, including at a recent meeting of the authority when bus operator Stacy Catarina raised concerns about the threat of being attacked or verbally abused. “Intercity Transit’s decision to move forward with this protective device came from a 2023 survey of operators showing two-thirds supported the installation of barriers to create a safer environment while providing transit services,” the information reads.

► From KUOW — Nearly 3 million immigrants got amnesty under Reagan. Some of them still work on Washington’s farms — Brad Carpenter said it made a big difference for his business that in the 1980s the U.S. government offered undocumented immigrants a path to legal status: It helped him retain his workers. He said about 50 people — at the time, the majority of the Carpenter Ranches’ employees — got amnesty. “It proved to be very valuable to have those particular employees to have status,” Carpenter said…That help “wasn’t politically driven,” Brad Carpenter said. “It was driven based on the value of our company and the betterment of our employees.”

 

AEROSPACE

► From Yahoo Finance — Boeing Sees Cash Flow Improve as Jet Factories Stabilize — The cash burn in the first three months “could be in the hundreds of millions” of dollars better than expected as working capital comes down, Chief Financial Officer Brian West said at a Bank of America conference on Wednesday. Production of the cash-cow 737, which has been capped by federal regulators, is “going pretty well,” he said, adding that “the factory looks fantastic.”

► From My Northwest — Boeing faces lawsuit in whistleblower’s death — The wrongful death lawsuit was filed by Barnett’s estate representatives, including family members. It accuses the company of driving Barnett to his death by suicide after suffering repeated retaliation, a hostile work environment, and bullying. The documents filed today allege that Barnett’s senior manager once told him, “I’m going to push you until you break.”

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From Forbes — United Airlines Flight Attendants Edge Closer To A Deal — Contract talks between United Airlines and its flight attendant union appear to be nearing an end after four years. “We are just starting to see United get serious at the table,” Ken Diaz, president of the United chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants, said Wednesday. “We’re over 20% less in pay than American is right now,” Diaz said. “Right now United is second in profits, but fifth in how they pay flight attendants.”

 

ORGANIZING

► From On Labor — A Pathway Toward Union Density in the Cannabis Industry — While cannabis is still unlawful under federal law, state-level legalization has made cannabis less of a black market, as run-of-the-mill health codes, employment laws, and other regulations now apply to cannabis businesses. So does the National Labor Relations Act. While some cannabis workers (i.e. those who grow and harvest the plant) are agricultural employees outside the NLRA’s purview, many others who work in dispensaries and processing facilities are subject to federal labor law, as Michelle outlined here. In recent years, unions including the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Teamsters have organized cannabis workers, now representing tens of thousands of them.

► From Variety — Video Game Workers Union Launches in Partnership With CWA — A direct-join union, United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433 was announced during the 2025 Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. UVW-CWA will include video game workers across the United States and Canada, as well as video game contractors, freelancers, indie developers, workers who are currently unemployed, and workers who are already organizing their workplaces, according to the new union.

 

NATIONAL

► From NBC Washington — Air traffic control centers struggle with understaffing amidst DOGE layoffs — According to data from the FAA’s 2024 Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, there are not enough certified professional controllers and those in training to meet Crisis Response Working Group’s standards in the majority of U.S. terminals, which include TRACONs, or terminal radar approach control facilities, and towers.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From CBS — Trump to sign order today to begin dismantling Education Department — President Trump on Thursday will sign an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education, according to the White House. But completely eliminating the department would require congressional approval, which isn’t certain.

► From Bloomberg — US Labor Board Drops Case Over Prison Company’s Treatment of Detained Immigrants — The US labor board has abandoned its case accusing GEO Group Inc. of retaliating against detained immigrants, signaling a different enforcement approach under President Donald Trump. Abruzzo said Wednesday she was “very disappointed” to see the complaint withdrawn. “Exploitation of all employees, particularly vulnerable workers, should never be tolerated, never mind condoned, by the US government,” the former general counsel said in a text message.

► From the Washington Post — Federal workers think Trump won’t improve their agencies. Even his voters. — As President Donald Trump accelerates his push to slash the civilian workforce, less than half of the federal workers who voted for him think he will improve the ability of their agency to fulfill its mission, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. “To be so sh–ty to the people who are supposed to be implementing your agenda, and to treat us the way we’ve been treated, it’s just ridiculous,” said an Air Force veteran and longtime Defense Department employee who voted for Trump three times.

► From Food Dive — Trump admin looks to allow meat processers to permanently run faster line speeds — Labor and food safety groups have fiercely pushed back against higher rates, arguing that faster processing speeds pose risks to worker health and make it harder to spot potential contamination. “Increased line speeds will hurt workers – it’s not a maybe, it’s a definite – and increased production speeds will jeopardize the health and safety of every American that eats chicken,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

► From Wired — ‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE — The two auditors told WIRED that going through the technological and financial minutiae of even just a single project or part of an agency can take anywhere from six to 18 months. “You can’t coherently audit something like the whole Social Security system in a week or two,” says the second auditor. It’s exactly this rush to crack systems open without full understanding, the auditors say, that has led to Elon Musk’s false claims that 150-year-olds were receiving Social Security benefits…“In no uncertain terms is this an audit,” claims the second auditor. “It’s a heist, stealing a vast amount of government data.”

► From Newsweek — OPINION: As a Poor-Performing Probationary Employee, Elon Musk Must Go — Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been on the job for less than two months, but the early results are nothing short of disastrous. These include a series of airplane safety incidents, cancelled appointments at the VA, long lines outside national parks, and abandoned medical research. Through it all, there is an overriding sense that the world’s richest man is using his power over President Donald Trump to steal from the public coffers and enrich himself.

► From the Washington State Standard — Housing bills to watch as the Washington legislative session enters its final weeks — This time around, the hot topic in Olympia has been rent stabilization — Democrats’ idea to cap rent increases at 7% per year, with some exceptions. To curry votes from moderate Democrats in the Senate, the legislation may need softening around the edges. But more than halfway through this 105-day session, lawmakers are also eyeing a slew of other policy changes in hopes of spurring more housing…Senate Bill 5184 would prohibit jurisdictions from mandating more than one parking space per two residential units or more than one spot per 1,000 square feet of commercial space. Developers could still choose to build additional parking, but it could not be required.

► From the Washington State Standard — WA’s latest budget outlook shows another $845M dent in revenue — The latest forecast shows that money flowing into the state’s operating budget during that time is expected to be nearly $900 million lower than projections released in November. Revenues for the remainder of this budget cycle show a modest, $54.4 million increase from the November figures. When taking this into account, revenue is down $845 million through 2029.

 

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From In These Times — OPINION: The Labor Movement Should Stand Up for Mahmoud Khalil — As General President of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, I lead 140,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, and I have a duty to represent them to the best of my ability — which means fighting for their interests in any way that I can. If engaging in speech that the administration disagrees with allows our government to do this to someone with a legal right to live and work here, it is not out of the realm of possibility to imagine further encroachments on U.S. citizens’ right to protest…Even when positions are divisive, they should never be used as a weapon to roll back our basic rights.

 

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