BOEING JET WORKERS STRIKE 

In the St. Louis area, 3,200 Boeing fighter jet workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), are out on strike after voting down a union contract that would have included a 20% raise over 4 years.

Last fall, Boeing ended a 53-day strike in Washington State by offering workers a 38% wage increase over a 5-year period, but St . Louis area union members said they want to hold out for more.

“IAM District 837 members build the aircraft and defense systems that keep our country safe,” said IAM Midwest Territory General Vice President Sam Cicinelli. “They deserve nothing less than a contract that keeps their families secure and recognizes their unmatched expertise.”

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MEDICAL RESIDENTS NOW A NEW FRONT IN UNION ORGANIZING

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Resident physicians at LA General in Los Angeles, California, rally outside the hospital on April 3, 2025, for a fair contract. DEANDRE JACKSON

Resident physicians are doctors who have graduated from medical school and are now on hospital staffs. They are akin to apprentices before becoming fully licensed. In many hospitals and emergency rooms they are the ones who deal with patients on a daily basis.

They work very long hours under often stressful conditions. Their pay is low, considering their training and the importance of their work. That is why they have become a new front in labor organizing.

Across the country in the last few years medical residents have been unionizing and striking by the thousands. They comprise some of the largest new units to unionize in the United States. Some 40,000 of them are now members of Committee of Interns and Residents, a part of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“Medical residents are monumental to the care that patients receive,” declared Dr. Armin Tadayyon, a resident physician at the University of Buffalo’s affiliated hospitals who helped lead a strike last year of residents affiliated with another organization, the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, that resulted in their first contract. In an interview with Truthout, an online publication, Dr Tadayyon explained, “Our labor holds the hospital afloat. Most of the direct patient contact is with residents. If residents don’t show up to work, the hospitals are in crisis mode.”

Another resident interviewed, Dr. Mahina Iyengar of the Los Angeles General Medical Center, elaborated:

“In many hospitals you visit, the residents will be the people taking care of you. They’re the backbone of whatever hospital they’re working at.

“We pretty much do everything, depending on the specialty. We’re usually in the hospital before 6:00 am. We do multiple rounds a day with patients. We order medications, call families for information, consent patients for surgeries, perform surgery under supervision, talk to nurses, explain treatment plans, and much more. Almost all this day-to-day work is done by interns, residents, and fellows.

“ Resident physicians have been overworked and underpaid for decades,” said Dr. Iyergar, “as we’ve seen the consolidation and corporatization of health care. We’ve been taught over generations to just push through and ignore our working conditions.”

What prompted the change in residents’ attitude was the Covid pandemic where they were working 14 and 16-hour days and 80-hour weeks. Their collective realization of their exploitation by hospitals who were completely dependent on their labor led to their desire to organize.

 Unionization has helped residents advocate for better patient care and get funds for equipment and supplies that patients need. Patients are ill-served by attending physicians who are exhausted after putting in 16-hour shifts.

Now hospitals find that a new generation of residents are union-minded and wish to be part of the labor movement.

Labor Start, 7/21

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GARBAGE WORKERS STRIKE SPREADS TO ATLANTA & SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 

On July 9, Payday Report described a strike of garbage workers employed by the private contractor, Republic Services,that had spread to Illinois, Georgia, Washington State, and Massachusetts. 

Now, the strike has spread to Atlanta as well as to Southern California in Orange County and the suburbs of San Diego.

“Republic abuses and underpays workers across the country,” Sean M. O’Brien, Teamsters president, said in a statement Wednesday. “We will flood the streets and shut down garbage collection in state after state. Workers are uniting nationwide, and we will get the wages and benefits we’ve earned, come hell or high water.”

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UNIONS FEAR DEMISE OF NIOSH

 Multiple labor unions and states are challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

NIOSH is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that funds and develops research to support workplace safety regulations, including studies aimed to reduce cancer risk in firefighters and treat respiratory diseases in miners. NIOSH also evaluates the safety of worksite protective gear and investigates workplace disease outbreaks and health hazards.

In March 2025, HHS announced a “dramatic restructuring” of the NIOSH workforce, and over the course of the next few months, laid off approximately 90% of its workforce. Absent the support of NIOSH research and expertise, worker advocates fear that OSHA’s workplace safety enforcement will deteriorate. Already, the loss of NIOSH research leaves OSHA’s proposed heat stress regulations vulnerable to attack.

On Labor, 7/13

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WRITERS GUILD EAST BLASTS PARAMOUNT SURRENDER OVER CBS 60 MINUTES BROADCAST

The settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against CBS has been sharply criticized by the Writers Guild of America East “as a capitulation to Trump threats to “journalists’ ability to do their job reporting on powerful public figures.”

They have branded the settlement a brazenly “transparent  attempt to curry favors with an administration in the hopes it will allow the Paramount (CBS’ parent company) and Skydance Media merger to be cleared for approval.” The settlement calls for Paramount to pay $16 million for Trump’s legal fees and a donation to his future presidential library. The media company also agreed that future 60 Minutes broadcasts with presidential candidates will release transcripts of the interviews “subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”

Trump sued the network, claiming the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential campaign had been edited to make her look good, causing him “mental anguish.”

“The Writers Guild of America East stands behind the exemplary work of our members at 60 Minutes and CBS News,” said the Guild statement. “We wish their bosses at Paramount Global had the courage to do the same.”

The Wrap, 7/2

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LABOR PLAYS IMPORTANT ROLE IN “NO KINGS” PROTESTS

A protester dressed as a founding father hold a flag that reads “No Kings In America” at a “No Kings” protest outside the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on June 14.
(PHOTO BY JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

For days, the news has been filled with accounts of the massive “No Kings” demonstrations around the country on Oct. 14. The turnout in some 2,000 cities and small towns all across America involving an estimated five million people, the largest in memory, was a thunderous  protest against the policies of President Donald Trump.

They represented Americans of many political views but all united in opposition to Trump’s agenda of huge tax breaks for billionaires while taking crippling cuts to basic services for poor and middle class families, his attacks on the U.S. Constitution, and his attempts to set himself up as some kind of American king.

“No Kings” protest along Fifth Avenue in New York City on June 14

Although most unions didn’t officially mobilize members to protest as organized groups, union members were an important part of the demonstrations.  The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was prominent in Philadelphia and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in California and the South. In New York City, the most organized groupings were the college teachers union PSC-CUNY, the Communication Workers of America and federal workers, who have been at the center of Trump’s efforts to destroy the labor movement.

Among the tens of thousands who turned out in Philadelphia were members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.  ​“We know that when organized labor is defeated, it usually means open season for everybody else,”  said one high school teacher and PFT member. “They’re not done attacking organized labor and trying to dismantle what remains of working class organizations.”

 Jen Gaboury, first vice president of PSC-CUNY, branded Trump’s authoritarian overreach as “really financial abuse of workers, New Yorkers, of people who need the social safety net.”

Carl Rosen, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, says a new formation called Labor for Democracy brought together 15 national unions and hundreds of locals and regions to back the No Kings Day protests, recognizing ​“that the labor movement has a special role to play in defending democracy in our country.”

Labor for Democracy is planning to launch a political education program for rank-and-file union members. Unions are a major force as part of an effort to defeat Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” whose provisions like eligibility changes to Medicaid would cut healthcare coverage to nearly 11 million people and have a  devastating impact on millions of working people if the bill passes.

Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union also spoke about a plan to  develop a joint strategy alongside national education unions, federal unions, logistics workers and the AFL-CIO. Potter says the game plan is to mobilize workers to “defend our communities against the billionaire agenda hellbent on cutting healthcare, food for hungry children and school funding.”

In These Times, 6/16

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LABOR LEADERS CONDEMN ARREST OF UNION HEAD IN L.A. ICE RAIDS

Labor unions around the US rallied together June 8 to demand the release of a labor leader arrested and injured during Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles.

David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California and SEIU United Service Workers West, was serving as a community observer during an ICE raid in Los Angeles on Friday when federal agents arrested him over allegations of interfering.

He was initially hospitalized and released later on Friday for injuries sustained during the arrest. Videos circulating online show officers shoving Huerta to the ground during the arrest before handcuffing him.

“What happened to me is not about me; this is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening,” Huerta said in a statement after his release from the hospital. “Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

“As the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has unnecessarily targeted our hard-working immigrant brothers and sisters, David was exercising his constitutional rights and conducting legal observation of ICE activity in his community,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said in a statement. “The labor movement stands with David and we will continue to demand justice for our union brother until he is released.”

Leaders of major unions convened hundreds of protesters outside justice department headquarters in Washington DC.

“David was the first one to say this isn’t just about him,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country. “We know what this administration is doing, so we are saying to Donald Trump and all of his allies: we will not, we will not, scapegoat immigrants.”

Jaime Contreras, an executive vice-president at the SEIU 32BJ, representing workers across the north-eastern United States, said Huerta’s case would serve as a rallying cry for his members and supporters, because “there’s a lot more people that agree with us than agree with them”.

“David for us is … he’s a labor leader, he’s a brother, he’s a union member, he’s a respected leader in California, and we’re here to let him know that he’s not alone,” Contreras said..

“We’re not gonna stand by that,” Contreras declared. “There’s always a next election, so we’re gonna make everybody pay at the voting booth when it comes to election time.”

In New York City, SEIU 32BJ’s president, Manny Pastreich, told union members and protesters: “Everything we hold dear is under attack. Unions, workers, freedom, immigrant communities, healthcare, the constitution, our union brothers and sisters.

“We must fight back. We reject these attacks on our communities and demand the immediate release of our union brother David Huerta,” he said.

Huerta, well-known among Democrats in California given his long record as a union leader in the state, received support from governor, Gavin Newsom and other Democratic officials across the US, including the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries.

“SEIU refuses to be silent in the face of these horrific attacks on working communities. Standing in solidarity as a movement of working people is not new to us,” said April Verrett, international president of SEIU.

“SEIU protects the rights and dignity of hard-working people, and the safety of workers in the workplace. Imagine what it feels like for thousands of workers around the country to be attacked by masked men with weapons, or to bear witness to their co-workers getting dragged away, knowing their kids may not see them again. We demand David Huerta’s immediate release and an end to these abusive workplace raids.”

In addition to New York and Washington DC, SEIU led or participated in rallies in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Oregon, Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and St Paul, Minnesota, to call for Huerta’s release, for the California national guard to stand down and for an end to the ICE raids..

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the largest public employee union in the US, also called for Huerta’s release.

“Americans have a constitutional right to free speech. That right was violated when ICE agents violently arrested and injured Huerta as he peacefully observed immigration enforcement activity in his community,” Saunders said. “Huerta was exercising his legal right to speak out and bear witness.”\

Labor Start, 6/10, The Guardian, 6/9, Also see websites and news releases of AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, and several others.

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AFTER TRUMP TAKEOVER, KENNEDY CENTER WORKERS VOTE TO UNIONIZE

Sally Field in scene from pro-labor movie Norma Rae

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has long been Washington, D.C.’s premiere stage for the arts and culture — originating with a 1958 act of Congress to advance artistic excellence as a symbol of U.S. cultural soft power. But under the second Donald Trump administration, the center has become the backdrop for much harder political conflict, as well as a roiling labor struggle in the nation’s capital. Since the White House seized control of the center in February, staff members who work on its cultural and educational programming have become increasingly angered and alarmed by mounting signs of managerial chaos, layoffs and political meddling in the historically bipartisan cultural organization.

On May 15, Kennedy Center staff announced their intention to form a union with the United Auto Workers, representing more than 172 staff members, in order ​“to ensure the Kennedy Center remains a beacon for bold, uncompromising art and education.”

In early February, Trump orchestrated a purge of Democrats from the center’s 36-member Board of Trustees, which had previously been split evenly between Democratic and Republican appointees, and replaced them with loyalists. In short order, the new board ousted longtime chair David Rubenstein, installed Trump in his place, and replaced the center’s president Deborah Rutter — who had served in the role for more than a decade — with interim president Richard Grenell, a Trump confidante and diplomat known for serving as a kind of ​“shadow Secretary of State,” pushing the ​“America First” foreign-policy agenda while Trump was out of office. The other new board members include a number of MAGA operatives and acolytes, most with little relationship to the performing arts: Second Lady Usha Vance; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Trump’s deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino; head of the White House personnel office and former MAGA super PAC leader Sergio Gor; Allison Lutnick, wife of billionaire Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick; Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo; and country music star Lee Greenwood, creator of the MAGA anthem ​“God Bless the USA.”

Since then, Kennedy Center staff have spent the past few months in an uneasy limbo, watching coworkers be arbitrarily fired and programs slashed, and fearful that their organization’s founding principles are being compromised by Trump-appointed ​“industry outsiders.” According to the union, 37 employees have been terminated since February, ​“including veteran administrators in the departments of public relations, marketing, development, government relations, education, and artistic programming.” The remaining staff say the center’s decision-making processes have become deeply opaque under the leadership of Trump appointees ​“with no formal job descriptions or professional background in the arts” and who communicate little with the career staffers.

While some programming planned prior to the takeover is proceeding, workers say the center is run under a new, unilateral management culture, prompting concerns that, even if they manage to keep their jobs, the staff who had previously planned and coordinated programs and shows with artists across a broad spectrum of genres and fields will lose their creative autonomy as Trump’s political cronies take over programming. Trump has dismissed the center’s past work as overly ​“woke,” claimed that it wasted money on ​“rampant political propaganda, DEI, and inappropriate shows” and vowed to revamp its operations. And Grenell announced earlier this month that the center is breaking with past practice to host non-union productions.

Ticket sales have reportedly tumbled by 50% this quarter, though it is difficult to assess the impact because, the union says, data on ticket sales is no longer reported regularly. The current leadership appears to be abandoning the center’s public-facing mission by undermining arts and education programming, for example, by cutting an initiative aimed at recruiting international artists and shutting down the Social Impact division, which supported programs and outreach for underserved communities, including collaborations with activist groups representing LGBTQ communities and communities of color, an artist residency focused on maternal health and ​“dance sanctuaries” with West African and Hawaiian dance companies.

In addition, the union accuses the new management of ​“mislead[ing] the public” about the organization’s finances, which had a $6 million surplus in 2023, to justify its funding cuts. This week, Grenell announced that he would initiate a federal investigation into alleged fraud and financial mismanagement at the Center.

Following their successful vote to form a union, center workers are now demanding ​“transparent and consistent terms for hiring and firing,” or ​“just cause” protections that would ensure no one is fired for arbitrary or retaliatory reasons, as well as the reinstatement of ​“ethical norms” to guide the center, including ​“freedom from partisan interference in programming, free speech protections, and the right to negotiate the terms of our employment.”

“The arts, and the performing arts in particular, is a very complex business,” one union member who works in the center’s programming department explains. ​“We have deep understanding and knowledge of the center itself and of the art forms, in ways that the folks that have been appointed into positions since February 12th are unlikely to have… We deeply believe that we are the ones most qualified to do this work and want to remain a part of the Kennedy Center for the safety and dignity of the artists and for audiences.”

The administrative and programming staff who comprise the new union include a number of workers who have worked alongside other unions for years, including UNITE HERE and Actors’ Equity Association. But it also includes staffers who never previously considered joining an organized labor movement — until Trump allies took over their workplace.

“I truly had never thought about myself as a potential member of the labor union movement before. But with this turn of events, the Kennedy Center, which has been a nonpartisan institution since its founding, has become extremely political,” one staffer who works in the center’s education department told In These Times. ​“So I do think it’s important to come together, to bargain for different working conditions that pertain to things like the ability to make creative decisions, the ability to have a seat at the table when programming decisions are made, so that we can protect the needs of the artists, the students and the audiences that we serve.”

Other unions have sprung up in the arts and entertainment industries in recent months, signaling an increasing recognition of the precarity and vulnerability that is endemic to many jobs in creative fields, from low wages to sexual harassment to unstable gig work. In recent months, workers at several private art museums have unionized in order to both improve their working conditions and to combat discrimination and hierarchy in institutions that claim to follow a public-service mission. While the union drive at the Kennedy Center has arisen in the face of Trump’s direct political targeting, it’s also part of a chorus of voices in the arts demanding just labor conditions as a pillar of free expression.

“The Kennedy Center is not just a building; it’s a group of people, and art in a lot of ways is labor,” says the programming department staffer. ​“I think that the dignity of our ordinary coworkers who create extraordinary and amazing moments every single day, over 2,000 times a year at the Kennedy Center, is something that is worth standing up for and protecting through a labor union.”

In These Times, 5/23

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FLIGHT ATTENDANT UNION REACHES TENTATIVE AGREEMENT WITH UNITED AIRLINES

After five years without a pay raise, United Airlines Flight Attendants, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), and United Airlines reached an historic tentative agreement for 28,000 Flight Attendants.

The agreement includes:

  • Industry-leading compensation
  • Hotel, scheduling, reserve and other improvements
  • In the first year alone, Flight Attendants will gain 40% of total economic improvements
  • Plus, industry-leading retro pay.

The locally elected leaders of the 28,000 Flight Attendants will meet May 29th and 30th to review the full details before voting to send the agreement to the members for ratification. No further details of the tentative agreement will be released until the leadership concludes their review.

AFA-CWA Website, 5/23

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JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP EFFORT TO END COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS FOR PUBLIC WORKERS

FLASH!

At least half a dozen USAID employees who spoke to reporters after they thought they had been fired by the Trump administration have now received notices from the foreign aid agency’s internal human resources office that they are facing investigation for participating in interviews.

The workers, received an email in recent days carrying the subject line, “Administrative inquiry.” The email accused them of having “engaged with the press/media without authorization” and threatened “disciplinary action” including “removal from the U.S. Agency for International Development.” The action of USAID came after a federal judge blocked Trump’s order withdrawing union rights from federal workers (see item below).

Randy Chester, the vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, which is the union that represents USAID employees, blasted the move as “total intimidation.” And Abbe Lowell, a veteran Washington, D.C., attorney defending rights of federal workers, declared , “Federal employees do not surrender their constitutional rights when they take public service jobs.” 

CBS  News, 5/9

In April, President Trump issued an executive order rescinding the longstanding rights of  public employees in nearly a dozen government agencies and departments to join unions that represent them in collective bargaining. He also moved to end those unions’ existing contracts with the government.

Shortly afterward, a federal judge temporarily ·blocked the order, which relied on an obscure wartime provision in the federal labor laws that authorizes the president to exempt agencies engaged in national security work, though most of the employees affected had nothing to do with national security.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman was acting on a lawsuit filed  the National Treasury Employees Union, arguing that Trump exceeded his powers under the collective bargaining laws. At the court hearing, Judge Friedman, suggested that the order, affecting employees at the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Treasury and Energy, the Office of Personnel Management, and other major agencies, appear targeted toward unions that have opposed his agenda, rather than national security concerns.

The judge ordered that  federal agencies resume engaging with their employees’ unions and to resume collecting dues payments, among other normal employee relations business.

Politico, 4/25

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