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
Save Our Services, Let Us Work Mass Call
March 13 at 5pm
You’ll hear from workers from the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), AFGE, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other unions and advocacy groups pushing to protect our public services.
Hands Off Medicaid Rallies
March 15 - April 16
Congress is proposing drastic cuts to Medicaid – thus far more than $880 billion – to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the very rich. Rallies are being held statewide through April – register today for a rally near you.
NALC National Day of Action Rallies
March 23
On Sunday, March 23, NALC branches are hosting local rallies to say "Hell no!" to dismantling the Postal Service. With branches holding events nationwide on the same day, we are sending a clear, unified message: Hands off USPS!
Pacific Northwest Labor History Association Labor History Conference
April 25 & 26
“Labor in a Hostile Political Environment: What Can Labor History Teach Us?”
NECA/IBEW Electrical Training Center, 16021 NE Airport Way, Portland
📣 TAKE ACTION
Striking workers and their families should not be pushed into poverty for exercising their legally protected right to strike. Take action today and send a letter to Oregon Senators asking for them to Vote Yes on SB 916 and by doing so, protect working people who are using their legal right to strike.
Prefer to send an email? Write your senator today, urging them to Vote Yes on SB 916.
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.
The AFL-CIO is collecting stories from workers and working families who are affected by the Trump administration’s new policies.
🛠️ RESOURCES
The Oregon AFL-CIO’s compendium of resources to address federal threats against workers from immigration to LGBTQIA+ rights.
📖 MUST READ
March 5, 2025 | Beaverton Valley Times
Beaverton School District Board Member Tammy Carpenter lays out her argument in favor of SB 916.
March 10, 2025 | Spectrum News
The first Black woman to chair the National Labor Relations Board returned to the agency Monday with a hero’s welcome after a judge ruled last week she was illegally fired. Dozens of staff members cheered, clapped and waved signs that said “Welcome back Gwynne” as Wilcox returned to the independent federal agency charged with protecting employee rights.
February 19, 2025 | The Northwest Labor Press
In 2025, the Oregon legislature has a timely opportunity to modestly help level this imbalanced playing field by passing SB 916 — ending the current exclusion of unemployment insurance benefits for working Oregonians when they are on strike.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
March 12, 2025 | Willamette Week
SB 426 aims to hold both property owners and general construction contractors jointly and severally liable for unpaid wages. The bill would allow workers who have been stiffed—or the Oregon Department of Justice on their behalf—to sue the general contractor or the owner of a project, rather than just a subcontractor who might have hired them.
March 8, 2025 | KATU
Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have joined forces with Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other congressional and labor leaders to reintroduce the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act).
March 10, 2025 | Portland Mercury
A number of medical institutions, including Seattle Children’s Hospital, have halted or postponed gender-affirming procedures. So far, that has not happened in the Portland area.
🏛️POLITICS
March 11, 2025 | People’s World
Taking the fight against the Trump regime’s war on workers beyond Congress and the courts to the streets, the AFL-CIO’s new Department of People Who Work For A Living—a title satirizing Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”—plans a week of actions nationwide from March 17-23.
March 11, 2025 | Bloomberg Law
Acting Office of Personnel Management Director Charles Ezell won’t testify at a March 13 hearing in a lawsuit by government employee unions challenging the Trump Administration’s mass layoffs of federal workers, after a federal court ordered him to appear.
⚠️FEDERAL ATTACKS
March 8, 2025 | Common Dreams
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement: "TSA officers are the front-line defense at America's airports for the millions of families who travel by air each year. Canceling the collective bargaining agreement between TSA and its security officer workforce is dangerous union-busting ripped from the pages of Project 2025 that leaves the 47,000 officers who protect us without a voice."
March 11, 2025 | The New York Times
The Education Department announced on Tuesday that it was firing more than 1,300 workers, effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.
March 11, 2025 | AP
A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training, finding that cuts are already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun sided with the eight states that had requested a temporary restraining order.
March 10, 2025 | Politico
“The president claims to be committed to ‘free speech,’ but we’ve quickly discovered that pledge doesn’t apply to higher education and now, PSLF,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country. “He wants to impose an ideological litmus test antithetical to American values and contrary to the statute at hand.”
March 10, 2025 | Bloomberg Law
The United Mine Workers of America say the office closures could impact worker safety. “It is still not clear to us if all of these offices will actually close, or if the workers there are simply being shifted to other locations,” said Cecil E. Roberts, president of UMWA.
🚨ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS
March 7, 2025 | Axios
About 85 immigration court professionals are resigning or retiring, the International Federation of Professional Engineers (IFPTE), the union representing the country's roughly 700 immigration judges, says. This follows the firing of 29 judges and senior staff by the Trump administration. The union said no cause was given for the firing of judges. The past week, one additional probationary immigration judge has been fired, the union said.
March 9, 2025 | The New York Times
President Trump has broadcast plans for a “mass deportation,” and the opening weeks of his second term have brought immigration enforcement operations in cities across the United States, providing a daily drumbeat of arrests that, while so far relatively limited, are quickly noted in group chats among migrants.
🫱🏼🫲🏽 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
March 8, 2025 | The Detroit News
UAW President Shawn Fain, right, introduces U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, after speaking before him as part of Sanders' national "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour on Saturday, March 8, 2025 at Lincoln High School in Warren.
📣 STRIKES & COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
March 10, 2025 | Ganjapreneur
Workers at West Bountiful, Utah-based WholesomeCo last week ratified their union contract with United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 99, becoming the first cannabis industry workers in Utah to do so. Workers had voted to unionize in November 2023 by a 21-1 vote. In a statement, UFCW Local 99 President Jim McLaughlin called the contract “an important milestone not just for WholesomeCo employees, but for all Utah cannabis workers.”
March 11, 2025 | Eater Las Vegas
In late February, the Culinary and Bartenders Unions reached a monumental agreement with the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. The year-long effort secured a new contract for 3,300 Fontainebleau employees, including guest room attendants, bartenders, food servers, porters, cocktail servers, bellmen, cooks, and kitchen workers. The agreement is a milestone for casino workers, marking the first time in Las Vegas’s 90-year history that every major resort on the Strip is unionized.
March 10, 2025 | San Jose Inside
As many as 100,000 commuters, students and shoppers are scrambling today to find alternatives to the sidelining of buses and light rail trains by a strike by 1,500 Valley Transportation Authority workers. The strike began after midnight today, with no end in sight. VTA provides primary transportation services for thousands of employers across Santa Clara County. The transit system’s contract with the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 ended at 12:01am March 10.
📊 THE ECONOMY
March 7, 2025 | Reuters
U.S. job growth picked up in February, but cracks are emerging in the once-resilient labor market amid a chaotic trade policy and deep federal government spending cuts that threaten to disrupt economic growth this year. The Labor Department's closely watched employment report on Friday, the first under President Donald Trump's watch, showed a broader measure of unemployment surging to near a 3-1/2-year high last month as the ranks of part-time workers swelled.
👥 ORGANIZING
March 7, 2025 | The American Prospect
Federal call center workers continue their fight after the Biden administration dialed back support for it.
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