The Oregon Labor Dispatch is a weekly email and blog series designed to keep Oregon’s workers informed of the latest news about unions, worker power, and much more. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of news stories, graphics, and information about upcoming events and actions. When Oregon’s Labor Movement is connected, updated and informed we are able to be stronger advocates for all working Oregonians.
If you have a news story, event or action you’d like to see featured in the Oregon Labor Dispatch please email us at communications@oraflcio.org.
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
“La Cocina de las Patronas”
March 5, 2025 from 5:30pm-7:30pm
North Portland Library, 512 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217
To celebrate Women’s History Month, attend a free film screening of La Cocina de las Patronas, followed by a facilitated discussion. This documentary centers on a group of women in Mexico who have provided meals to Central American migrants for over 20 years, resisting a system that criminalizes the migrants.
📣 TAKE ACTION
Elon Musk and his unaccountable DOGE are threatening vital programs across the government, politicizing the federal workforce that keeps our country running, and violating Americans’ rights by seizing our private data.
On Jan. 27, President Trump fired National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board. This move is illegal and will have immediate consequences for working people. Click to call your Senator and Representatives in Congress today to demand Wilcox be reinstated.
The AFL-CIO is collecting stories from workers and working families who are affected by the Trump administration’s new policies.
Striking workers and their families should not be pushed into poverty for exercising their legally protected right to strike. This policy helps level the playing field, helps put money back into the local economy during a labor dispute, and helps ensure negotiations happen sooner rather than later.Take action today and send a letter to Oregon lawmakers asking for them to support SB 916 / HB 3434 and by doing so, protect working people who are using their legal right to strike.
🛠️ RESOURCES
The Oregon AFL-CIO’s compendium of resources to address federal threats against workers from immigration to LGBTQIA+ rights.
📖 MUST READ
February 26, 2025 | Oregon AFL-CIO
On Tuesday, February 25 nearly 200 union members from every sector of our economy and from throughout Oregon gathered in Salem for the 2025 Oregon Labor Legislative Conference and Lobby Day. It was an inspiring, uplifting, and action-packed day of legislative advocacy on behalf of working Oregonians!
February 24, 2025 | OPB
After 46 days on strike, nurses at Providence hospitals across Oregon have approved a deal that will see them return to work. The nurses, who are represented by the Oregon Nurses Association, began their indefinite strike in early January. The strike, which is one of the largest health care worker labor actions in state history, included thousands of nurses at all eight Providence hospitals in the state.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
February 26, 2025 | Willamette Week
A copy of the one-page document, obtained by WW, shows that the unions are asking the city to not trim employees during a budget cycle in which the city is staring down a $100 million budget deficit.
February 24, 2025 | KBOO Labor Radio
Thomas Topi, an activist in the Federal Unionists Network, describes the brutal assault on federal jobs and services by Elon Musk, and his buddy Donald Trump. Topi speculates about Trump's next steps and how unions and the working class can fight back.
February 21, 2025 | OPB
After eight months of bargaining with Portland State University’s administration, the faculty union believes the two sides are no longer making significant progress on a new labor contract. This week, PSU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors filed a declaration of impasse with the Oregon Employment Relations Board. The union represents close to 1,200 faculty and academic professionals at Portland State.
February 19, 2025 | NW Labor Press
Nurses at three Legacy Health hospitals voted by overwhelming margins to unionize with the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) in ballots counted Feb. 6 and 7. The new bargaining units at Randall Children’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, and Emanuel Medical Center represent a combined total of nearly 2,300 nurses.
🏛️POLITICS
February 20, 2025 | OPB
Oregon is facing potential funding cuts amid the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically downsize federal spending. More than 31% of the state’s budget comes from the federal government.
February 25, 2025 | The Oregonian
The Estacada City Council voted Monday to dissolve its diversity, equity and inclusion committee that was created to improve the city’s outreach to underrepresented groups and advise the city council.
February 20, 2025 | NPR
Sen. Mitch McConnell announced today that he would not seek reelection when his term is over in 2026, ending his 40-year career in Congress.
⚠️FEDERAL ATTACKS
February, 20, 2025 | HR Dive
The National Labor Relations Board on Feb. 14 rescinded several enforcement guidance documents issued during the Biden administration in a bid to shift the agency’s policy stance. The affected documents addressed a swath of areas within NLRB’s purview. One of them, a 2022 memo by former General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, said employers’ workplace surveillance programs, artificial intelligence tools and similar technologies may interfere with workers’ ability to exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
February 25, 2025 | AFL-CIO
All across the country working people are holding grassroots events with the Department of People Who Work for a Living against unelected billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who are attacking essential workers and government programs that Americans rely on.
February 20, 2025 | Axios
The Trump administration's mass federal employee layoffs can continue after a judge on Thursday declined that he had jurisdiction to pause the actions.
February 22, 2025 | The Washington Post
AFGE President Everett Kelley called the new order an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”
February 24, 2025 | Axios
The federal agency that sent out an email over the weekend asking workers what they accomplished last week can't fire those workers for not responding, claims an amended lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of federal employees. Why it matters: It's the latest potential legal stumbling block for DOGE and Elon Musk's slash-and-burn workforce strategy.
February 24, 2025 | AP
A judge agreed Monday to temporarily bar two federal agencies from disclosing records containing sensitive personal information to representatives of billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
🚨ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS
February 24, 2025 | USA Today
"Permitting law enforcement to conduct raids on school grounds or in hospitals and clinics, potentially forcibly removing people in front of children, will break trust between families, law enforcement and your administration, as children will be traumatized by the spectacle," Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers warned President Donald Trump.
February 24, 2025 | San Francisco Public Press
President Donald Trump’s promises to implement mass deportations and other potential changes to immigration policies could strain an already-understaffed health care workforce, making it harder for older adults and people with disabilities to receive care at home and in nursing facilities.
February 26, 2025 | AP
Immigration officials say anyone living in the U.S. illegally will soon have to register with the federal government, and those who don’t could face fines, imprisonment or both.
🫱🏼🫲🏽 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
February 25, 2025 | People’s World
The crowd, led by Letter Carriers President Brian Renfroe, were upset by reports that Musk and Trump—whom at least one speaker called “president” and “vice president” in that order—plan to dismember and privatize the USPS, which has been independent of presidential control since the great postal strike of 1970 forced wide-ranging reforms. The crowd’s repeated response to the dismemberment/privatization threat: “Hell no!”
February 25, 2025 | The Nation
“Gender-affirming care is life-saving care for any patient,” Nancy Hagans, a registered nurse, the president of the New York State Nurses Association, and one of the copresidents for NNU, told me over the phone. “Everyone deserves to be taken care of properly, the way they need. If you have a heart condition, you go to a cardiologist and take care of your heart. When someone decides to go to gender-affirming care, it’s not only helping them physically, it’s helping them mentally.”
📣 STRIKES & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
February 24, 2025 | Jalopnik
United Auto Workers at Rolls-Royce North America in Indianapolis, Indiana have voted to authorize a strike if their collective bargaining demands are not met by the new five-year contract deadline Wednesday night. Not the Rolls-Royce that makes extravagant cars, but the one that makes aircraft engines. The UAW says that workers were overwhelmingly supportive of a walk-out, with 99.5 percent of Local 933 workers voting in favor of the strike.
February 24, 2025 | The San Diego Union-Tribune
Thousands of UC San Diego workers in health care and beyond plan to strike for better wages and benefits Wednesday, participating in overlapping statewide pickets at University of California campuses statewide. It is just the outcome threatened by members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, whose members held a demonstration in August on the final day of their contract.
February 24, 2025 | Bloomberg Law
Unions led fewer strikes against US employers last year than in 2022 or 2023, according to Bloomberg Law labor data. But the 236 walkouts called in 2024 still represent the third-highest annual total in almost two decades, suggesting that the post-pandemic trend of labor unrest is still far from over. After unions initiated only 86 strikes in shutdown-driven 2020, strikes took place with increasing frequency in the ensuing three years—from 164 in 2021 to 317 in 2022 to 356 in 2023—as workers sought to assert more control over their job security and compensation. It took until 2024 for the tide of strikes to subside (to 236) rather than rise.
📊 THE ECONOMY
February 25, 2025 | Reuters
U.S. consumer confidence deteriorated at its sharpest pace in 3-1/2 years in February while 12-month inflation expectations surged, offering further signs that Americans were growing anxious about the potential negative economic impact of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration.
👥 ORGANIZING
February 21, 2025 | Eater DC
Some workers from Stephen Starr restaurants are calling out tactics they say Unite Here Local 25 has used to get them to sign union cards affirming a desire to unionize at D.C. restaurants, including French bistro Pastis, St. Anselm in Union Market district, and Le Diplomate on 14th Street, the longest-reigning Starr restaurant in the area.
February 24, 2025 | WUSA 9
Hundreds of employees at some of D.C.'s most lucrative restaurants are overjoyed following the news of their union vote. On Friday, St. Anselm employees voted 51-42 in favor of unionizing. In mid-January employees with five restaurants: Le Diplomate, Pastis, and St. Anselm, operated by STARR Restaurant Group; and Rasika and Modena, operated by Knightsbridge restaurant group, announced they were organizing a union with UNITE HERE Local 25. The unit covers the front and back of house and includes servers, bussers, dishwashers, cooks and bakers.
February 24, 2025 | Jacobin
For those elections tallied in January, twelve involved 250 or more workers, and ten were successful, involving the unionization of 5,628 workers. One was the much-discussed unionization of 297 Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia. The rest were all in health care, and a whopping six were run and won by Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR). In one month, CIR gained 3,862 new members.
February 24, 2025 | The Harvard Crimson
After more than a year of negotiations over their first contract, residents at Mass General Brigham sensed growing momentum for a strike in January. Such a decision, made by 2,700 doctors working at the state’s largest private employer, would have major ramifications for the healthcare industry.
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