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.
WE’RE HIRING: LAST CALL FOR APPLICANTS
The Oregon AFL-CIO is hiring a Communications Specialist as well as an Organizing and Research Specialist! The final day for applications is tomorrow, January 17. Learn more at www.oraflcio.org/jobs.
⚕️PROVIDENCE STRIKE
5,000 Providence workers including nurses, physicians, physician associates, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, clinical staff, and other healthcare professionals are currently holding the largest healthcare strike in Oregon history. We must continue to stand in solidarity with striking Providence workers and continue to put pressure on management until every striking worker wins the contract they - and their patients - deserve. Here’s how you can take action right now:
Join a Picket Line
Picket lines are running from 7:00am through 5:00pm daily until a fair contract is reached in Providence locations in Hood River, Medford, Milwaukie, Newberg, Portland, Seaside and Oregon City.
Please visit the Oregon AFL-CIO Strike Map for specific location information and please be sure to sign up for your picket line shift by clicking here.
Donate to the Strike Fund
The duration of this historic strike is indefinite, meaning Providence workers will continue to strike until they win a fair contract. Donating to the strike fund enables workers to focus on bargaining and picketing efforts. Click here to donate today.
Sign & Share the Petition
If you’re unable to walk a picket line or make a donation today, public support can help leverage the bosses at Providence to return to the bargaining table with a sensible offer.
Please click here to sign the petition and once you’re done, please share it on your social media pages.
📖 MUST READ
Jan. 14, 2025 | Labor Notes
Declaring that understaffing had them “running on empty,” 5,000 nurses, doctors, midwives, and nurse practitioners walked off the job January 10 in an open-ended strike at Providence Health and Services, the dominant hospital chain in the Pacific Northwest. The strikers work at eight hospitals plus women’s health clinics across Oregon. They’re demanding proper staffing, affordable health insurance, and competitive pay that can attract and retain seasoned workers.
January 11, 2025 | The News Line
The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced on Thursday that they are reuniting to launch ‘a new, long-term effort to make it easier for workers to win a voice on our jobs with their unions’. Two million SEIU service and care workers will join the nearly 13 million-member AFL-CIO, and together, these powerful organisations will push back on union-busting and win for working-class families. The unions formally announced the affiliation at a roundtable discussion with workers who are fighting to win their unions on Thursday in advance of the AFL-CIO’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference, which started yesterday.
January 2, 2025 | Northwest Labor Press
Oregon’s largest union officially re-affiliated with the Oregon AFL-CIO on Dec. 18, sealing a major expansion for the statewide labor federation. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503 President Johnny Earl and Executive Director Melissa Unger will represent Local 503 on the Oregon AFL-CIO executive board, bringing the board up to 34 members.
🏥 HISTORIC PROVIDENCE STRIKE
Jan. 14, 2025 | Axios
On the fifth day of the largest health care strike in Oregon history, Providence indicated it is ready to resume negotiation talks with the some 5,000 striking nurses and doctors across its eight hospitals. Why it matters: Bargaining between the parties had previously been stalled for months, as unionized hospital workers hope to secure new labor contracts that address compensation, benefits and understaffing concerns. Yes, but: This does not mean the strike is over.
January 11, 2025 | KGW
As the first-ever strike of both nurses and doctors continues at Providence Hospitals, hospital officials began discussing resuming federal mediation while union representatives held a rally at the Oregon Convention Center. Nearly 5,000 nurses, doctors and midwives went on strike Friday for what they say are fair contracts, safe staffing and better patient care.
January 11, 2025 | KGW
Providence announced they are making plans to schedule negotiations for other bargaining units in the days to come and are ready to discuss with federal mediators the process for resuming negotiations with Providence Medford and Newberg as soon as Saturday. This comes on the second day of the largest health care worker strike in state history.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
January 23, 2025 | Oregon Business
A new study shows Oregon saw higher than average union growth in recent years, a trend pushed by strong participation in education, behavioral health and social services. The productivity platform Plus Docs tracked Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2013 to 2023. Overall, union membership grew in number though it remained flat relative to total population growth.
January 10, 2025 | OPB
Portland’s new city council entered office amid tense, drawn-out labor negotiations between several different public labor unions and the city. Now, after a week on the job, some elected officials are trying to turn down the heat as 1,200 city employees consider striking next month. “It’s time we signal that this new city council is a labor council,” said Councilor Mitch Green, who represents Portland’s west side and some southeast neighborhoods in District 4.
January 2, 2025 | Northwest Labor Press
Two chapters of the Oregon AFL-CIO have merged to form the Cascades to Coast Central Labor Chapter. The new chapter combines the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter with its neighbor directly south, the Linn-Benton-Lincoln Central Labor Chapter. The merger was finalized Dec. 18 when the Oregon AFL-CIO board approved the new chapter’s bylaws.
🚒 L.A. Fires
January 16, 2025 | California Federation of Labor Unions
Find links to resources, relief funds, and more ways to assist working people in California impacted by the fires.
January 10, 2025 | Variety
IATSE is offering assistance to its members displaced due to the wildfires. In a release, IATSE, the union that represents the workers behind-the-scenes said, “If you or a fellow member has been displaced due to the wildfires, please contact the Local office as soon as possible to let us know your/their current circumstances, as well as provide any temporary address and contact information you may have, so that we may mobilize resources appropriately.”
📣 STRIKES & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
January 15, 2025 | Trains
Members of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers’ Mechanical and Engineering Department (SMART-MD) have voted to ratify a new contract agreement, the National Carriers Conference Committee announced yesterday. SMART-MD is the fifth national agreement ratified, following agreements reached by the National Conference of Firemen and Oilers, Transportation Communications International Union, Brotherhood Railway Carmen, and the American Train Dispatchers Association.
January 12, 2025 | The New York Times
The labor union representing stagehands went on strike Sunday against Atlantic Theater Company in Manhattan, prompting the prestigious nonprofit to postpone two productions that had already begun performances and to warn that union demands could force the closing of the Atlantic and other Off Broadway nonprofits.
🔍 LABOR HISTORY
January 14, 2025 | WPR
In 1976, members of the union SEIU Local 150 went on strike at St. Luke’s Hospital in Racine, demanding higher wages and better staffing for support services. Images from a local newspaper showed Black and brown women at the picket line with white United Auto Workers members lined up behind them. That’s according to Rutgers University Assistant Professor Naomi R. Williams. “Those images were so different than the stories that we typically hear about labor in the 1970s,” Williams explained.
January 2, 2025 | Northwest Labor Press
“He was a genuinely good man whose post-presidency focus on humanitarian work and championing human rights around the world was deeply inspiring.” So said the AFL-CIO on news Dec. 29 of the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter at the age of 100. It was about all the labor federation could say and not commit sins against historical memory.
🏛️POLITICS
January 16, 2024 | AFL-CIO
It’s essential that the Democratic Party prioritizes the needs and aspirations of working people. Over the past several months, the labor movement engaged directly with those who seek to lead the party going forward to ensure that workers’ issues are at the forefront of the debate about the direction of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). At the recent DNC Labor Council forum, working people asked pointed questions of the candidates for DNC chair about how they plan to re-establish the party’s focus on working-class issues and values to expand its reach to all workers.
January 15, 2025 | Bloomberg through Yahoo! News
President–elect Donald Trump’s plans to shrink the federal workforce would have disparate impacts on Black employment, while potentially eroding a key conduit to economic mobility that many Black families have relied on for generations. Some researchers say a substantial cutback could push the Black unemployment rate higher, particularly in areas like Washington, DC, where Black joblessness is among the highest in the country. Such an outcome would stand at odds with Trump’s campaign promises to protect Black workers’ jobs and provide them with more employment opportunities.
January 14, 2025 | Truthout
Organized labor is currently preparing to fight back. Just a week into 2025 the SEIU announced that it was rejoining the AFL-CIO to help fight Trump’s anti-worker agenda. The two unions have been unaligned for almost 20 years. In remarks made at a roundtable discussion shortly after the decision, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler stressed the need for solidarity among workers. “We just finished an election cycle where one party spent the entire time telling working class people across this country, ‘Look how different you are from each other,’” said Shuler. “‘He’s an immigrant. She’s transgender or they worship differently than you do’ and it worked to some degree, right? We watched it. The scariest thing in the world to the CEOs, to the billionaires in this country and the folks like Donald Trump who do their bidding, is the idea that we might one day see through that. That there is a barista and an airport services worker and a fast food worker and a home care worker and a teacher and a warehouse worker and a cook and an electrical worker, all of them together saying, ‘Your fight is my fight.’ It terrifies them.”
January 12, 2025 | Chicago Tribune
Following lawsuits filed by U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel earlier this week, the United Steelworkers president released a statement Friday, doubling down on the union’s reasoning for its opposition of the Japanese company’s potential purchase. “In a ridiculous final attempt to get the government, the general public and the union to support this shortsighted and dangerous merger, U.S. Steel and Nippon have filed baseless lawsuits,” USW President David McCall said in a video statement.
💻 LABOR & TECHNOLOGY
January 14, 2025 | Becker’s Hospital Review
On Jan. 16, thousands of registered nurses will hold marches, protests and rallies to demand the hospital industry ensure safe staffing levels and artificial intelligence safeguards, a Jan. 14 National Nurses United news release said. "Patient advocacy is at the core of what we do as nurses," Nancy Hagans, RN, president of NNU, said in the release. "That’s why we’re demanding safe staffing and protections against untested technologies such as AI. We see the harm that these cost-cutting schemes cause our patients on a daily basis."
January 10, 2025 | Forbes
The increasing capabilities of generative AI systems were all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, but for all the enthusiasm from the tech world, there is still plenty of concern about the impact these tools will have on the workforce, from industrial and service work to creative industries, including entertainment, film and TV. So while the crowds were jamming the aisles of the Las Vegas Convention Center, representatives of America’s biggest unions were meeting down the street at the AFL-CIO’s Labor Innovation and Technology Summit to coordinate strategy around AI and try to ensure that workers have a seat at the table when it comes to setting policy around AI.
📊 THE ECONOMY
January 10, 2025 | NBC News
President Joe Biden will end his term with a relatively healthy labor market as the United States added a surprising 256,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. Both figures, reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compare favorably to historical averages and beat Wall Street forecasts.
🫱🏼🫲🏽ORGANIZING
January 16, 2025 | The Oregonian
Dr. Shirley Fox, an obstetric hospitalist with nearly 30 years at Oregon’s largest Providence hospital, never imagined herself on a picket line. After all, vanishingly few physicians have historically joined unions, much less strike.
January 14, 2025 | CBS News
Workers at a bustling Philadelphia grocery store gathered to publicly demand a raise as they await a union election. Some employees of the Whole Foods Market at 22nd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue picketed outside the store on Monday, along with members and officials from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776. People in the crowd held signs that read "Make Amazon pay Whole Foods workers." Amazon has owned the Whole Foods brand since a merger in 2017.
January 14, 2025 | KQED
Workers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are launching a campaign to unionize, they announced Tuesday. The union, Monterey Bay Aquarium Workers United (MBAWU), would cover more than 300 aquarium workers from all sectors, ranging from guest services to marketing and education. In a public letter, MBAWU leadership cited workers’ desire for fair pay, comprehensive benefits and career transparency. They noted that they continue to stand behind the nonprofit aquarium’s mission of ocean conservation and that they hope a union will allow them to foster a healthy environment for workers.
January 13, 2025 | Becker’s Hospital Review
Resident physicians and fellows at Einstein Health Network, part of Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, voted 356-35 to join the Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, the union said in a Jan. 8 Facebook post. In a statement shared with Becker's after the vote, Jefferson said it "respect[s] the decision of our residents and fellows to vote in favor of unionization. We remain committed to maintaining an environment of exceptional medical training, open communication, and collaboration to ensure the success and well-being of our residents as we deliver outstanding patient care."
January 10, 2025 | Jacobin
This summer, World of Warcraft and Bethesda Game Studios workers joined the growing number of video game developers organizing with Communications Workers of America. We spoke with some of the workers and organizers who have been unionizing the industry. Last month, 461 video game workers with Microsoft’s ZeniMax Online Studios announced they were unionizing with the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees–Communications Workers of America (CODE-CWA).
Comments