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.
ACTION ALERT: CONTACT OREGON LAWMAKERSTO EXTEND UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE TO STRIKING WORKERS
The Oregon Legislature is currently considering a vitally important bill and one of Oregon Labor’s top legislative priorities this year: SB 916 / HB 3434 which will remove an exemption to Oregon’s Unemployment Insurance system and give striking workers the opportunity to receive UI benefits.
This policy will help Oregon workers be able to buy food, pay rent, and pay for healthcare during a strike. It levels the playing field, since employers continue to earn a paycheck while workers are striking. And because of its economic support for workers, it will help ensure that management isn’t making proposals that they know won’t be accepted by workers as a bargaining tactic.
⚕️SUPPORT THE PROVIDENCE STRIKE
5,000 Providence workers including nurses, physicians, physician associates, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, clinical staff, and other healthcare professionals are continuing to hold the largest healthcare strike in Oregon history. 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
January 29, 2025 | Oregon AFL-CIO
“Oregon unions continue to grow despite opposition from employers and their hired union busters along with broken labor laws that don’t reflect the needs of a modern workforce,” said Graham Trainor, Oregon AFL-CIO President. “At the heart of any increase in membership are workers and the absolute courage and tenacity it takes to stand together and call for change on the job. For some, it’s the need for safer working conditions. For others, it’s about being compensated fairly. And for all, it’s about ensuring the dignity and respect at work that we all deserve regardless of who we are or where we work. From healthcare to behavioral health to retail to manufacturing, the Oregon Labor Movement is growing and each new member adds a new voice and new strength to our efforts to build a truly fair and just economy for all.”
January 29, 2025 | Common Dreams
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler warned in a statement Tuesday that Trump's firing of Wilcox—who, under federal law, cannot be fired on political grounds—"is illegal and will have immediate consequences for working people." "By leaving only two board members in their posts, the president has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board's operations, leaving the workers it defends on their own in the face of union-busting and retaliation," said Shuler. "Alongside the firing of NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, these moves will make it easier for bosses to violate the law and trample on workers' legal rights on the job and fundamental freedom to organize."
January 26, 2025 | Willamette Week
Graham Trainor, the Oregon AFL-CIO President says the bill would make labor negotiations more balanced. “Striking workers and their families should not be pushed into poverty for exercising their legally protected right to strike,” Trainor said. “This policy would help level the playing field for workers, put money back into the local economy by giving workers the ability to continue to feed their families during a strike, and will expedite negotiations with employers. When you ask workers why they go out on strike, they will tell you their hands are forced: workers strike because they have to—for economic, safety and community reasons—not because they want to.”
January 28, 2025 | Economic Policy Institute
Interest in union organizing is surging in the United States. Since 2021, petitions for union elections at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have more than doubled. And public support for unions is near 60-year highs—at 70%. This growing momentum around union organizing—aided by the Biden administration’s support for worker organizing and appointment of strong worker advocates in critical agencies like NLRB—signals a powerful push by workers to improve wages, working conditions, and workplace rights. But despite this groundswell of support, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal a puzzling trend: Unionization rates continue to decline.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
January 30, 2025 | FOX 12
More than 1,000 city workers have reached a tentative agreement with the City of Portland, avoiding a strike that was approved earlier this week. Oregon AFSCME Local 189 says the tentative agreement was reached after almost 18 hours at the bargaining table. On Wednesday, 87% of AFSCME Local 189 members voted in favor of a strike during negotiations with the city.
January 29, 2025 | KOIN
With the Oregon Nurses Association strike entering its 20th day, the nurses union and Providence have reentered mediation at the request of Gov. Tina Kotek. Previous negotiations between the hospital and the nurses union were unfruitful. On Jan. 29, the Oregon Nurses Association and Providence issued a joint statement saying they’ve returned to the table.
January 29, 2025 | The Oregonian
The contract will provide a 5% cost of living salary increase to teachers for the current school year and similar adjustments in the next two years, according to a press release from the Beaverton School District, which employs more than 2,600 teachers across 56 schools. The contract still must be ratified by the Beaverton Education Association and approved by the school board.
January 27, 2025 | KDRV
Today, striking nurses at Providence Medford Medical Center held a union solidarity rally. The rally included labor leaders across the state including the Oregon chapter of the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Rogue Climate Management, Jobs With Justice, Rogue Action Center and others. "We act for a voice of all workers,” AFL-CIO President Graham Trainor told NewsWatch 12. “Any union, any worker that's in a fight, we're there with them."
🏛️POLITICS
January 30, 2025 | The Oregonian
In the weeks before President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a small group of lawyers in Oregon worked swiftly to try to protect as many people as possible from the threat of deportation before policy changes took effect under the new administration.
January 29, 2025 | People’s World
The AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler issued the following statement: “The Trump administration’s move to freeze federal funding is unprecedented and illegal and will immediately harm working families across this country. The Office of Management and Budget’s memo indicates that essential programs will stop operating as soon as 5 p.m. Tuesday, including food assistance for people living in poverty; shelter for homeless veterans; health care for babies and nursing homes for seniors with Medicaid; Head Start preschool programs for children; rent assistance and support for low-income families to heat their homes; fire response and disaster relief for people who have lost everything; and state workplace safety programs for workers on the job.
January 29, 2025 | CBS News
"Purging the federal government of dedicated career civil servants will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government," said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. "This offer should not be viewed as voluntary. Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration's goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to."
January 29, 2025 | Politico
President Donald Trump says he’s never read Project 2025. But his advisers sure have. Monday’s memo from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordering a sweeping freeze of federal financial assistance is the boldest, and clearest example of the administration not only leaning on the people who wrote Project 2025 but employing its strategies. It’s not the only example of how Project 2025 promises are coming to fruition. The president has moved to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs, re-up his previous “Schedule F” initiative that allows him to more easily fire career employees and reinstate service members who had been dismissed for failing to receive the Covid-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic.
January 29, 2025 | Bloomberg Law
President Donald Trump’s executive order that threatens the job security of federal workers drew a pair of lawsuits from labor unions and a labor rights group representing thousands of federal civil servants. The order creates a new class of federal workers, Schedule F employees, that can be fired for their political affiliation, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
January 28, 2025 | Forbes
Late Monday night on January 27, President Donald Trump neutralized the National Labor Relations Board, which is an independent federal agency designed to function without direct political interference. The law explicitly states the president of the United States cannot fire a sitting board member without cause, due process, and a hearing. She did not get a hearing. But the salient impact is that without Member Gwynne Wilcox, the board won’t have a quorum and can’t issue decisions to settle disputes of unfair labor practices and other actions that promote the collective bargaining process and labor rights and union functioning.
January 27, 2025 | The Guardian
Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has been accused by a leading labor union of an “absolutely illegal” breach of federal regulations after posting a vague request for job applications. The Trump administration’s much-vaunted but ill-defined program to reshape the federal government announced it was recruiting “full-time, salaried positions” for software engineers, information security engineers and “other technology professionals” on its official website.
🏫 EDUCATION
January 29, 2025 | NBC News
Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, said at the group’s annual convention last year that research shows vouchers “negatively affect achievement.” “Today, vouchers subsidize wealthy families who already send their kids to private and religious schools,” she said. “Privatizers fund those giveaways by defunding and destabilizing public schools.”
January 27, 2025 | WBUR
Leaders of the Boston Teachers Union and the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts in a statement Friday condemned Trump’s agenda and pledge to carry out mass deportations. “These threats take an emotional, psychological, and physical toll on our children and their families,” the statement said. "If continued, they will have a chilling effect on our schools and communities.”
January 27, 2025 | Mass Live
More than 100 full-time educators at Tufts University in Medford will go on strike Monday after almost a year of unsuccessful contract negotiations. The university and its lecturers are at odds over fair wages, a cost-of-living adjustment and sustainable workloads, according to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509 union representing the educators.
📣 STRIKES & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
January 29, 2025 | Business Report
Tensions between transit union members and the Capital Area Transit System over stalled contract negotiations came to a boil Tuesday. Members of Amalgamated Transit Union 1546, wearing bandages on their faces to convey injury by CATS, were emphatic in expressing their frustration with the agency at the CATS Board of Commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday evening.
January 28, 2025 | The Hollywood Reporter
At the start of what is likely to be a busy news year amid Trump’s return to the Oval Office, ABC News‘ unionized writers have secured new protections governing the use of generative AI in their workplace. Staffers who belong to the Writers Guild of America East have voted to ratify a contract that offers some employment safeguards if the newsroom adopts the technology, the union announced on Tuesday. That includes an agreement that the company will not lay off current staff employees due to the use of generative AI and will give three weeks’ notice to full-time temporary employees if any shifts are curtailed as a result of the technology.
January 20, 2025 | Nonprofit Quarterly
Since March 2022, over 600 workers have voted to unionize at 11 REI stores. The campaign is growing, with workers in Greensboro, NC, voting to become the eleventh union store just last week. Workers at these stores are affiliated with either the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
🦺 WORKPLACE SAFETY
January 29, 2025 | Fire & Safety Journal Americas
The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) has introduced its second course on workplace violence prevention. The new training, Practical Strategies for Safety, builds on the IAFF’s initial workplace violence prevention course launched in 2021. The latest module provides prevention strategies, real-world examples, and safety resources for members. The course is free to all IAFF members and includes demonstrations filmed at the EMS training facility of Washington, DC Local 36 and DC Fire and EMS.
January 29, 2025 | The Columbus Dispatch
Nurses at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center are accusing the health system of failing to protect its staff against workplace violence, according to a complaint filed Tuesday. Represented by the Ohio Nurses' Association (ONA), the Ohio State University Nurses Organization (OSUNO) alleges that OSU has not heeded pleas to improve security measures for workers, such as enforcing effective safety protocols or increasing security personnel. Workplace violence has persisted as a result, they allege.
📊 THE ECONOMY
January 29, 2025 | Reuters
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday and gave little insight into when further reductions in borrowing costs may take place in an economy where inflation remains above target, growth continues, and the unemployment rate is low. After several months in which inflation data have largely moved sideways, the U.S. central bank dropped from its latest policy statement language saying that inflation "has made progress" towards the Fed's 2% inflation goal, noting only that the pace of price increases "remains elevated."
🫱🏼🫲🏽ORGANIZING
January 28, 2025 | HuffPost
Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia formed the chain’s first union on Monday, setting the stage for a larger organizing fight at the Amazon-owned grocer. Employees at the company’s Center City location voted 130 to 100 in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, according to a spokesperson at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency overseeing the election.
January 28, 2025 | AFL-CIO
It’s plain as day that more working people want a union now than at any point in our lifetimes. Across our economy and in every part of the country, workers are standing together to demand fair treatment, better wages, and dignity and respect on the job. Our organizing has resulted in remarkable victories in traditional and emerging sectors like manufacturing, health care, clean energy, infrastructure, retail and restaurants, hospitality, and on college campuses, in technology, in public service and much more.
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