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
Oregon Labor Legislative Conference & Lobby Day
February 25, 2025 in Salem
RSVP Required: Please email communications@oraflcio.org to request the registration link
Join union members from across Oregon to meet with legislators, advocate for working people, and make our voices heard in Salem. This event is free of charge and is only open to union members, union leaders, and staff of unions.
✊🏿Black History Month Events
Thank you to the Oregon Coalition of Black Trade Unionists for organizing an incredible series of events for Black History Month!
“The Revolution Continues:” A Reproductive Health Care Discussion
February 6, 2025 from 7:00pm - 8:30pm on Zoom
Join us for a sneak peek of upcoming legislation addressing the onslaught of attacks on women's health care and scaling back medical safe havens created for transgender and queer health care rights.
Special Black History Month Viewing: “Outgrow the System”
February 13, 2025 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Oregon Labor Center, 3645 SE 32nd Ave, Portland, OR 97223
Join us for a special Black History Month screening of Outgrow the System, a documentary about transitioning to a sustainable economic system. A discussion and Q&A will follow.
“The Revolution Continues:” The Need for a Revolution
February 20, 2025 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Oregon Labor Center, 3645 SE 32nd Ave, Portland, OR 97223
Join us for a special Black History Month panel, The Need for a Revolution, followed by a Q&A session.
📣 TAKE ACTION
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
📖 MUST READ
February 5, 2025 | OPB
The Oregon Nurses Association announced late Tuesday evening it had reached a tentative deal with Providence to end one of the largest health care strikes in state history. The deal came after 26 days on picket lines at various Providence facilities stretching from Medford to Portland, and Seaside to Hood River.
February 5, 2025 | AFL-CIO
Today, the AFL-CIO has launched the Department of People Who Work for a Living (DPWL), a new campaign to hold Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, accountable and make sure the federal government is responsive to working people and not just to the whims of an unelected CEO like Musk.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
February 2, 2025 | The Register-Guard
Nearly a year after bargaining began, the United Academics University of Oregon faculty union has entered mediation with the university, but there is still much ground to cover.UAUO began bargaining with UO in February 2024. Since then, there has been minimal movement, resulting in a need for mediation following the last unsuccessful bargaining session on Dec. 5.
February 1, 2025 | KGW
The picketing started Friday after the labor union's treasurer was allegedly "discriminatorily fired" by New Seasons.
January 30, 2025 | The Register-Guard In a meeting on Sunday, Dan Garrison, the state legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Union, or SMART Union, said Union Pacific is attempting to lease its Eugene Yard to Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad, a subsidiary of Genesse & Wyoming. This means Union Pacific, a Class I railroad with the highest caliber of industry revenue, would lease the Eugene Yard to CORP, a Class III railroad that generates lower revenue.
January 30, 2025 | KOIN
New Seasons Labor Union leaders said the Arbor Lodge store strike was launched on Tuesday in response to the dismissal of their treasurer — who worked for the grocery chain for 19 years. The labor organization claimed the company accused him of wrongfully working on his break, as he assisted a visually-impaired colleague.
January 29, 2025 | The Daily Emerald
An hour into their meeting on Jan. 27, members of the University of Oregon Student Worker Union voted to proceed with a strike authorization vote if mediation with UO administration’s bargaining team remains unresolved.
🏛️POLITICS
February 4, 2025 | KATU
Lawmakers will convene for a work session Tuesday afternoon to discuss House Continuing Resolution 2, which seeks to address the presence of cancer-causing chemicals known as PFAS in firefighting gear.
February 3, 2025 | The Oregonian
Oregon lawmakers filed a bounty of bills — more than 2,200 — before the first day of the 2025 legislative session. That’s at least a 25-year record and is stirring worries that the avalanche will clog the system and limit the attention given to worthwhile proposals.
January 30, 2025 | The Lund Report
Supporters say opaque health care billing practices can destroy lives when mixed with credit bureaus, the ‘gatekeeper’ of our economy
January 29, 2025 | FOX 12
Friends, family, legislators, and members of the public gathered in Oregon’s Senate chamber Wednesday for Peter Courtney’s celebration of life. Courtney was Oregon’s longest-serving lawmaker. “We are gathered here to celebrate, honor, and remember one of Oregon’s greatest leaders,” said Lori Broker, the secretary of the Senate.
⚠️FEDERAL ATTACKS
February 4, 2025 | People’s World
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler chimed in on the unions’ side. She called it “union-busting the federal workforce.” “Rejecting federal workers’ collective bargaining agreements is union busting, plain and simple.
February 4, 2025 | The Guardian
US government workers are describing an atmosphere of “fear” and “madness” as they grapple with a barrage of executive orders issued by Donald Trump and threats to their jobs from the office of personnel management, the agency tasked with managing the federal civil service, which has been taken over by the billionaire Elon Musk
February 4, 2025 | The Hill
The largest federal government employee union is suing the Trump administration to block its buyouts for workers, calling the offer “an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.”
February 3, 2025 | Labor Tribune
“President Trump’s attack on federal workers began on his first day in office,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in response to the order. “Schedule F is a bureaucratic name for a simple idea Trump created during his first term and laid out as a priority in Project 2025: He is setting the table to clear out the hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans who make our government actually work and replace them with political loyalists who will do his bidding.
February 3, 2025 | Michigan Advance
President Donald Trump ousted National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox on Monday in an unprecedented move that paralyzes the board while teeing up a constitutional challenge that could further weaken it. With Wilcox gone, the five-seat board now has just two members and lacks the necessary quorum to hear cases on alleged unfair labor practices in the private sector (although functions lower down in the agency may continue).
February 3, 2025 | CNN
Elon Musk said President Donald Trump agreed the US Agency for International Development needs to be “shut down,” following days of speculation over the future of the agency after its funding was frozen and dozens of its employees were put on leave.
February 3, 2025 | The Washington Post
President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order aimed at eventually closing the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantling it from within, according to three people briefed on its contents.
January 31, 2025 | The Labor Tribune
It is disheartening to see that the Trump Administration has begun its effort to end DEI programs in federal agencies. Building diversity strengthens our institutions and we have made progress over the last several decades in advancing toward fairness and justice. Sadly, the attacks on diversity we are witnessing stand to not only halt that progress, but take us backward to a time when discrimination prevented so many of us from accessing opportunities afforded to others.
🫱🏼🫲🏽 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
February 3, 2025 | ESPN
The National Hockey League Players’ Association and Professional Hockey Players’ Association are affiliating with the AFL-CIO and joining the labor organization’s sports council, they announced Monday.
📣 STRIKES & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
February 3, 2025 | USA Today
NALC President Brian L. Renfroe said in a statement that the union plans to reopen negotiations within five days. “In a democratic vote, the will of NALC’s membership has been made clear,” Renfroe said. “The tentative agreement that represented the best offer the Postal Service put on the table is not good enough for America’s city letter carriers. We have earned more and we deserve more.”
February 3, 2025 | CBS News
The United Auto Workers members at Detroit Axle have ratified a contract with Daimler Truck of North America, the union reported. The vote took place Saturday, with 84% in favor of the new collective bargaining agreement.
February 2, 2025 | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard graduate student union organizers presented articles for the union’s third contract in a general membership meeting on Thursday, the first major step toward bargaining with the University later this semester.
February 1, 2025 | Central Oregon Daily News
Costco and the Teamsters union have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, avoiding a strike, the union said Saturday. Teamsters spokesman Matthew McQuaid confirmed the agreement, which will have to be approved by members. Details of the agreement weren't immediately available. The Associated Press left a message seeking comment with Costco.
📊 THE ECONOMY
February 4, 2025 | Slate
On Friday, at 8:29 a.m., markets across the world will slow what they’re doing to wait for data—specifically, the monthly jobs report, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases at 8:30 a.m. It’s not an exaggeration to say that trillions of dollars (U.S. equity markets alone are worth $62 trillion) turn on what the BLS says.
February 4, 2025 | Reuters
U.S. job openings fell by the most in 14 months in December, but steady hiring and low layoffs suggested the labor market was not abruptly slowing down and that the Federal Reserve probably can hold off on cutting interest rates until at least June.
👥ORGANIZING
February 4, 2025 | Forbes
On January 28th, 130 Philadelphia Whole Foods employees at the grocer’s Center City location voted to approve the company’s first trade union in nearly 20 years.
February 4, 2025 | Tallahassee Democrat
Florida A&M University’s staff is launching a new labor union on campus – the FAMU Chapter of United Campus Workers – to address the need for higher wages, adequate staffing and workplace safety after the employees have not had an active union since the end of 2023.
February 3, 2025 | Washingtonian
Workers across five upscale DC restaurants—Le Diplomate, Pastis, and St. Anselm from restaurateur Stephen Starr and Rasika and Modena from Knightbridge Restaurant Group—announced plans to unionize last month. A labor organizing drive of this size is unprecedented in the local restaurant industry, and the unions could collectively represent 500 front- and back-of-house workers if they’re successful.
February 3, 2025 | Chicago Tribune
But now, the administration of President Donald Trump could threaten some of the progress graduate student unions have made not only at UChicago, but at private universities across the country. In his first term, Trump’s administration sought to restrict graduate students’ abilities to be recognized as employees.
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