Federal Workers Union Sues Trump Over Attack on Collective Bargaining by Jessica Corbett
March 31, 2025
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) A union that represents employees across 37 federal agencies and offices on Monday sued U.S. President Donald Trump and various leaders in his administration over an executive order that aims to strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government workers under the guise of protecting national security.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) filed the federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., arguing that the order issued by Trump last week is not only illegal but also motivated by "a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions," many of which have vocally resisted Trump's legally dubious attacks on agencies and key programs.
"The law plainly gives federal employees the right to bargain collectively and the shocking executive order abolishing that right for most of them, under the guise of national security, is an attempt to silence the voices of our nation's public servants," said NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald in a statement.
"It is also a continuation of the administration's efforts to deny the American people the vital services that these talented civil servants provide by making it easier to fire them without any pushback from their union advocates," she declared.
Greenwald vowed that "NTEU intends to protect the ability of frontline federal employees to stand together to improve the conditions under which they serve the American people. Federal workers around the country, through their unions, advocate for the tools and resources they need to do their jobs and help their agencies accomplish important public service missions, and we will not allow the administration to distort the truth."
Postal Workers Throng to 500 Rallies to Save the Postal Service by Alexandra Bradbury
March 28, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) From big cities to small towns, postal workers organized hundreds of rallies across the country in the past week to defend a beloved public service—and the nation’s largest union employer—against privatization and DOGE attack.
“Whose Postal Service?” workers chanted in New York: “The people’s Postal Service.”
“U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale” was the rallying cry March 20 at 250 rallies organized by the Postal Workers (APWU). “Fight Like Hell” was the theme March 23 for another 210 rallies led by the Letter Carriers (NALC).
Additional extract:
Days later the Washington Post broke the news that Trump was on the verge of signing an executive order to bring the currently independent USPS under the Commerce Department, an illegal move that would presumably curtail union rights. Unlike other federal workers, postal workers since their 1970 strike have enjoyed full collective bargaining rights and the protections of the National Labor Relations Act.
How Can Unions Fight Back Against Anti-Worker Trump? Organize! by Dentin Cohen
April 10, 2025
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Don’t let U.S. President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien fool you. The new administration is a bunch of scabs—union busters of the highest order, cut from the same cloth as the radically anti-worker Reagans and Thatchers of the world.
In his frenetic and destructive first few months back in office, Donald Trump has pursued a sweeping set of anti-worker and anti-union executive actions that have our country’s oligarchs salivating. Here is a small and disturbing sampling of Trump administration actions. He:
• Fired hundreds of thousands of unionized federal workers across dozens of federal departments and agencies, many of them illegally;
• Illegally nullified the Transportation Security Administration’s union contract and ended collective bargaining for thousands of federal workers, ominous first steps in the right-wing plot to destroy public sector unions entirely;
• Started an unlawful campaign to stack the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor zealots;
• Elevated Elon Musk—an openly corrupt oligarch and notorious union-buster currently suing to rule the NLRB unconstitutional— to the very highest level of decision-making authority in his administration;
• Began an illegal and authoritarian crackdown on the right to free speech and free assembly—indispensably important union rights protected by the Constitution; and
• Opened up a new privatization front targeting Social Security, the U.S. Postal Service, and other federal agencies and programs that employ thousands of union workers and serve millions of working families.
Kentucky Unions Stand Up to Halt Deportation of Two Hundred Workers by Luis Feliz Leon
April 10, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations.
The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.
They’re in the U.S. on “humanitarian parole,” a program that the government until now has used to provide visas to people fleeing war or political instability in certain countries.
“I worked with a lot of those people—they’re some of the nicest people I've ever dealt with,” said Halee Hadfield, who worked at the plant until last year and is now part of the United Auto Workers organizing drive at the nearby electric vehicle battery park BlueOval.
“They come from extreme poverty and neglect, the likes of which most Americans, myself included, couldn’t even fathom. These people deserve better.
Chicago Teachers Approve Contract with Remarkable Gains by Jackson Potter
April 21, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) This month, 85 percent of the Chicago Teachers Union’s 27,000 active members voted on a tentative agreement covering 500 public schools across the city. A record 97 percent voted yes.
The contract will run from 2024 to 2028, expiring at the same time as the UAW’s contracts with the Big Three. The negotiation drew the greatest level of member participation and support in the CTU’s history and was achieved without a strike or a strike vote.
The new contract addresses both bread and butter concerns and common-good demands. Said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates, a member of the union’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators: “It was the whole buffet.”
NEW CONDITIONS
There have been three Chicago Public School strikes since the slate supported by the reform caucus CORE, with Karen Lewis as president, came to power in 2010. This contract is more comprehensive, and includes the biggest raises and step increases, since the advent of collective bargaining for Chicago teachers in 1967. It also lowers class sizes at every grade level.
New political and bargaining conditions contributed to the strong contract and overwhelming ratification vote. After the Illinois legislature restored teachers’ full bargaining rights in 2021, this year the CTU was able to bargain on issues other than wages and benefits for the first time in three decades. The city’s current mayor, Brandon Johnson, a former CTU member and middle school teacher, supported teachers’ contract goals.
Unions Cheer After Judge Halts Trump Order on Federal Workers' Collective Bargaining Rights by Jessica Corbett
April 25, 2025
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Labor unions representing federal workers celebrated on Friday after a U.S. district judge blocked President Donald Trump's March executive order intended to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government employees.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) swiftly took action over what union national president Doreen Greenwald called "an attempt to silence the voices of our nation's public servants," filing a lawsuit in in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
Judge Paul Friedman, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, granted a preliminary injunction on Friday, blocking implementation of the executive order (EO), which aimed to restrict workers' rights under the guise of protecting national security.
CNN reported that during a Wednesday hearing, Friedman questioned "Trump's motive in issuing the order" and "the administration's contention that certain agencies have national security as their primary function, citing the National Institutes of Health, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Agriculture."
US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings
Source: Reuters
May 3, 2025 2:01 AM EDT Updated 8 hours ago
WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump's Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters. Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency's employees said.
At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination. U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH's functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Unmoved by Tariff Threats, Mexican GM Workers Win a Double-Digit Wage Hike by Natascha Elena Uhlmann
April 17, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Mexican General Motors workers in the Silao, Guanajuato, factory complex clinched record raises after staring down company scaremongering about tariff threats.
“They said, well, we’re offering 6 percent,” said Norma Leticia Cabrera Vasquez about management’s offer at bargaining.
“We knew they were going to show up with that, but we said, ‘We still have weeks to negotiate, so we won’t let that intimidate us,’” said Cabrera Vasquez, who worked at the plant for 15 years, and now serves as a leader of the union’s Women’s Department.
In spite of the company's efforts to stoke uncertainty, auto workers stood their ground, garnering wage increases of 10 percent on average.
Workers in tiers making up 60 percent of the workforce will receive a raise of 10.25 percent; the other 40 percent will see a 9.25 percent increase.
They also eliminated the lowest tier in the workforce—as such, the plant’s starting wage jumped up by 33.95 percent, to about $3 per hour. This is the second time the union has won double-digit increases, bringing GM Silao workers to the top edge of Mexico’s auto industry, with the plant’s highest-paid earners bringing in about $7 per hour.
Decades After Nike Promised Sweatshop Reforms, Workers in This Factory Were Still Fainting by Rob Davis
May 1, 2025
Introduction:
(ProPublica) In Phnom Penh’s hot season, when the Cambodian capital’s sweltering, subtropical air routinely soars to 100 degrees, more workers than usual visited the infirmaries inside a factory that made baby clothes for Nike, the world’s largest athletic apparel brand.
As many as 15 people a month typically became too weak to work in May and June, according to a medical worker employed by the factory. Even at other times of year, she said, eight to 10 workers wound up in the clinic monthly because they felt weak, including one or two a month who fell unconscious and needed to go to the hospital.
Other former employees told ProPublica they sometimes saw two or three people a day taken to an on-site clinic. One described how he carried workers too weak to walk. Another said she saw thin workers being taken to the clinic, their faces pale and eyes closed.
Y&W Garment’s employees — at one time numbering around 4,500 — operated sewing machines and packaged clothing in cavernous buildings with fans but no air conditioning. The fans sometimes broke and weren’t fixed, one worker said. Another said the inside of the factory could get hotter than it was outdoors. “It’s so hot,” said Phan Oem, 53, who started working there shortly after the factory opened in 2012. “I’m sweaty. It’s too hot.”
Workers have fainted for years inside Cambodia’s garment factories, where more than 57,000 people now produce Nike goods. People at Nike’s suppliers fainted en masse in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to news reports at the time, part of a string of events in which thousands of Cambodians got sick, vomited or collapsed on the job. (The term “fainting” in Cambodia is used for conditions that range from losing consciousness to becoming too dizzy or weak to work.)
Warehouse Workers Power New York City’s Fashion Industry. Now, They’re Unionizing by Natascha Elena Uhlmann
May 6, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Minutes from the high-end boutiques of SoHo in Manhattan sits Bergen Logistics’ fulfillment facility in North Bergen, New Jersey, where workers sort, package, and ship hundreds of packages a day for luxury fashion brands including Acne Studios, Kenzo, and Phillip Lim.
The workers themselves can’t realistically afford the ornate gowns and crisp suits they ship to online shoppers. Some work two jobs just to stay afloat, and rush to keep up with unit-per-hour expectations.
Now they’re fighting for union recognition and the reinstatement of a colleague the union alleges was fired for her organizing. The workers point to the gap between word and action for high-profile brands that publicly claim to care about working conditions.
HEAT AND SPEED-UP
Safety is a key concern, especially when heat waves hit. “Especially last year, the hot season was really intense,” said Yeurimar Acosta, who works in the stock department. “On the fourth floor, with the amount of plastic there is—because the garments are wrapped in it—generates more heat. Last year, some of my co-workers nearly fainted,” she said. The company has added fans, she said, “but it’s not enough for how big the space is.”
Insufficient staffing leads to accidents. Acosta was injured when a box slipped and landed on her hand. “I was so frustrated,” she said, “because I think I’d asked for support like three times, because of the heavy workload.”
Kaiser and Mental Health Care Workers Reach Tentative Agreement by Mark Kreidler
May 5, 2025
Introduction:
(Capital & Main) The announced end of a nearly 200-day strike by Kaiser Permanente mental health care workers in Southern California will surely come as a relief to many of those employees. Some 2,400 of them — therapists, psychologists, social workers and others — walked off their jobs last October.
What the strike’s conclusion won’t do, for Kaiser patients, is radically change a mental health care system that is so dysfunctional, it’s been the subject of multiple fines and citations by the state — yet shows almost no sign of improving.
To that end, a California State Assembly bill is advancing to reimburse desperate Kaiser patients who have had to obtain their mental health care outside the health giant’s system. The Assembly’s Committee on Health, meanwhile, scheduled a Tuesday hearing to examine Kaiser’s continued failure to provide adequate behavioral health services.
And the state’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC), which regulates Kaiser and other health providers in California, recently reported that among the 20 deficiencies it identified in Kaiser’s mental health services in 2022, all but one remain uncorrected.
It’s part of a larger trend, going back more than a decade, in which Kaiser has been dinged repeatedly by state regulators for running a system that doesn’t come close to providing the mental health care that many of its 9.4 million California members want and need.
On the Frontlines: Hospitalists in Bellingham, Washington Strike for Patients, Not Pay by Yoav Litvin
May 13, 2025
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) At two hospitals tucked in the quiet corners of Bellingham, Washington, an unfolding labor struggle cuts to the heart of the crisis in American healthcare. At PeaceHealth St. Joseph and PeaceHealth United General, hospitalists, including physicians and advanced practice providers, have walked off the job. However, this isn't a fight over salaries. It is a strike for the soul of their profession.
As members of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), these clinicians are demanding the right to advocate for their patients without fear of retaliation. They're calling out a system in which metrics and margins take precedence over urgent care and human dignity, discharges are prioritized over medical necessity and unsafe staffing has become the norm.
Despite a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board affirming their union, PeaceHealth, a large nonprofit hospital system, refuses to negotiate. The hospitalists are caught between two employers: Sound Physicians, which hires and pays them, and PeaceHealth, which controls their working conditions. Both point fingers, while the providers bear the burden.
United Steelworkers Lead Mobilization Drive as American Unions Face Growing Vulnerability by John P. Ruehl
May 9, 2025
Introduction:
(The Left Chapter) In March 2025, hundreds of workers at the JSW Steel facility in Ohio became the latest to unionize under the United Steelworkers Union (USW). Though not the country’s largest union, its full name—the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied and Industrial and Service Workers International Union—reflects its expansive reach across multiple industries.
Recent organizing campaigns show the union’s growing reach across key sectors. In 2022, 700 manufacturing workers at a Bobcat plant in North Dakota voted to join the USW, while around 12,000 academic employees at the University of Pittsburgh have joined the USW as of 2024. In 2023, 1,500 school bus builders at Blue Bird Corporation in Georgia and 600 miners in Minnesota’s Iron Range also unionized, joining the 1.2 million active and retired USW members, alongside the union’s international allies.
In the last few years, the USW and other unions have grown more active through grassroots mobilization, with education and retail emerging as major sectors witnessing unionization. British Columbia Starbucks workers joined the USW in March 2025, Philadelphia Whole Foods workers aligned with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union in January, and the first Chipotle store, located in Michigan, unionized with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2022, indicating a major change for previously resistant workplaces.
According to a 2025 Economic Policy Institute article, public support for unions is at 70 percent, a 60-year high, and millions of Americans want to join one. Yet membership remains historically low, with just six percent of private sector workers unionized. The USW’s scale and international reach position it to lead a unionization comeback, but coordinated resistance from companies and the government continues to pose serious obstacles.
New Jersey Transit engineers strike, impacting 350,000 passengers
Source: USA Today
May 16, 2025, 3:19 a.m. ET
WOODLAND PARK, NJ — New Jersey Transit engineers have walked off the job, halting the agency's train service throughout the Garden State at 12:01 a.m. on May 16 after agency officials left contract talks, only the second engineers' strike in the agency's 42-year railroad history.
New Jersey Transit bus service will remain in operation throughout the state, and the agency has plans to enhance bus capacity during the strike. Mark Wallace, the national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, confirmed the decision to strike. He said New Jersey Transit officials walked out of negotiations at 10 p.m. on May 15. "This rests at the feet of NJ Transit," said General Chairman Tom Haas, who represents the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
The New Jersey Transit website noted early on May 16 that "due to a strike by locomotive engineers represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), all NJ Transit rail service is currently suspended." The outcome follows a more than five-year standoff between New Jersey Transit and the locomotive engineers over renewing a contract that expired on Dec. 31, 2019.
The two sides have been at odds over wages, with the engineers saying they should make a salary similar to what engineers make at Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road, and Metro-North. They have said New Jersey Transit could otherwise risk engineers going to other railroads, which has already happened this year.
Donald Trump Scores Major Legal Win on Blocked Order by James Bickerton
May 17, 2025
Introduction:
(Newsweek via MSN) President Donald Trump's administration secured a legal win on Friday when a federal appeals court lifted a lower court injunction that had blocked the president's plan to end unionizing rights for hundreds of thousands of federal workers in a case brought by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).
Why It Matters
With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress the courts have emerged as arguably the most significant impediment to Trump administration policy.
Since Donald Trump's second inauguration in January courts have blocked a number of his policies including a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, the freezing of billions in foreign aid and on Friday the Supreme Court ruled against deporting Venezuelan nationals using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
What To Know
Friday saw a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit panel put on hold an injunction issued by a lower court blocking the implementation of an executive order issued by Trump in March on union rights in federal government.
Trump's executive order removed more than a dozen federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Justice, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, from union bargaining obligations regarding their employees.
A Sneaky Policy Buried in the GOP Tax Bill Could Blow Up the Civil Service by Dave Jamieson
May 22, 2025
Introduction:
(Huffington Post) President Donald Trump’s long-running dream to protect loyalists in the federal bureaucracy and fire any perceived enemy got even closer to reality Thursday, when House Republicans passed a massive tax and spending bill.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed 215-214, cuts $1 trillion in federal health and food programs while adding nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts steered primarily to the wealthy. But it also includes a little-noticed provision that would force new federal employees to either give up traditional job protections or take a significant cut to their compensation.
If the measure survives in whatever package the GOP-controlled Senate passes, unions warn it could turn the federal workforce into an old-school spoils system.
“It’s a huge policy change masquerading as a small budget provision,” said Daniel Horowitz, legislative director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 800,000 workers.
Will Mexican GM Workers Get a Fair Union Election? by Natascha Elena Uhlmann
May 22, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Workers at a second General Motors assembly plant in Mexico are campaigning to join SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union), the independent union that won a landmark election to represent workers at another Mexican GM plant in 2022. The 6,500 workers at the San Luis Potosí plant produce the GMC Terrain and the Chevrolet Trax and Equinox SUVs.
Days after SINTTIA filed to represent workers on April 21, a second union, Carlos Leone, began collecting signatures, in what appears to be an effort to ward off a legitimate union at the facility. SINTTIA supporters allege the rival union is being assisted by GM management.
Workers at the plant have been without a union since they voted out their previous union, a Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) affiliate, in 2023. Workers across Mexico had the chance to vote to keep or oust their existing unions as part of Mexico’s 2019 labor law reform, which aimed to allow workers to replace the pro-boss “protection unions” like the CTM that dominate the country’s labor scene and have long thwarted genuine union representation. The CTM is notorious for imposing pro-employer contracts that lock in abysmal pay and working conditions.
Immediately after workers voted out the CTM, GM created a “labor council” at the facility, largely made up of CTM loyalists, to address labor relations at the plant. “It was a way for General Motors to say, ‘We take the workers into account,’” said SINTTIA advisor Willebaldo Gómez Zuppa.
The day that SINTTIA’s effort to represent workers at the San Luis Potosí plant went public, the majority of representatives on the labor council resigned and began collecting signatures for the Carlos Leone union.
