Today's AFL-CIO press clips
POLITICS
Administrative judges' lawsuit says DOGE inquiry threatens their safety
Reuters
By Karen Sloan
Feb. 12, 2025
Administrative law judges claim that the potential disclosure of their personal information sought by the Department of Government Efficiency threatens their safety, in a lawsuit that joins a wave of actions seeking to disrupt the Trump administration's efforts to pare back the federal workforce. The Association of Administrative Law Judges — a union that represents 910 administrative law judges who adjudicate cases at the Social Security Administration — filed suit on Tuesday alongside several other unions that represent government workers. The case is American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. U.S Office of Personnel Management, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:25-cv-01237.
'We need those services': Education leader reacts to Trump's plan to end the Department of Education (Video)
CNN
Feb. 13, 2025
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, discusses the Trump administration's plan to abolish the Department of Education.
Teachers’ Union Sues Over Sensitive Data Accessed by Elon Musk’s DOGE
Education Week
By Lauraine Langreo
Feb. 12, 2025
The complaint accuses the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Treasury Department of violating federal privacy laws by granting Musk’s employees access to the agencies’ data systems, which includes the Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and the dates and places of birth of millions of Americans. The lawsuit is asking the court to block DOGE’s access to these data systems. The lawsuit was filed on Monday in federal court by the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, the National Federation of Federal Employees, as well as six people who the lawsuit says have been “directly harmed” by what Musk’s employees are doing.
Unions sue to keep Musk's "unqualified flunkies" out of Americans' personal data
Salon
By Russell Payne
Feb. 12, 2025
Federal employee unions have sued the United States Office of Personal Management, its acting director, Charles Ezell, and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency over alleged illegally accessing the personal information of tens of millions of Americans. In a suit filed Feb. 11, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Association of Administrative Law Judges and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers accuse the OPM of recklessly enabling and DOGE operatives' access to the personal records of “tens of millions of American public servants, job applicants, their family members, and other third parties.”
Federal Workers’ Unions Are Waging the Fight of Their Lives
The New Republic
By Grace Segers
Feb. 13, 2025
This activity is reflected on a national level as well: The American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, the largest federal employee union, has seen a surge in new members in recent weeks. AFGE is also leading several of the lawsuits pushing back on efforts to slash the federal workforce.
Judge Extends Halt on Trump Plan to Dismantle U.S.A.I.D.
The New York Times
By Karoun Demirjian and Eileen Sullivan
Feb. 13, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday moved to extend by one week a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from carrying out plans that would all but dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Trump administration directs agency heads to fire most probationary staff
The Washington Post
By Hannah Natanson and Emily Davies
Feb. 13, 2025
The Trump administration on Thursday moved swiftly to fire thousands of workers and directed agency heads to terminate most trial and probationary staff — a move that could affect as many as 200,000 employees, according to four people familiar with internal conversations who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
Senate Confirms Kennedy, a Prominent Vaccine Skeptic, as Health Secretary
The New York Times
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Feb. 13, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic and former presidential candidate who fled his family’s party and threw his “medical freedom” movement behind President Trump, won Senate confirmation as the nation’s health secretary on Thursday and was sworn in hours later during an Oval Office ceremony. The ceremony, conducted by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch as Mr. Trump looked on, capped a remarkable rise for Mr. Kennedy and a curious twist in American politics. He was confirmed by a Republican Senate, without a single Democratic vote, in a chamber where his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncles, John F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, all held office as Democrats.
Education Dept. will shield federal student aid data from Musk's DOGE – for now
USA Today
By Zachary Schermele
Feb. 11, 2025
The U.S. Department of Education agreed on Tuesday to prevent Elon Musk's government efficiency team from accessing millions of students' personal and financial data for at least a week. In a new federal court filing, the agency said it would not allow any members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to see or use information from federal student aid databases until next Monday. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss signed off on the agreement, which also temporarily bars any employee detailed to the agency after Jan. 19 from the same systems as part of a lawsuit filed late last week.
Trump Administration Fires Dozens at Federal Personnel Office
The New York Times
By Chris CameronNicholas NehamasMattathias Schwartz and Madeleine Ngo
Feb. 13, 2025
The Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal civilian work force and is coordinating an effort by the Trump administration to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force, laid off dozens of employees on Thursday, according to people familiar with the move. The exact number of workers who were fired is unclear, but three people at the agency familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that those affected included probationary employees who had worked there for less than two years, members of the agency’s communications office and Schedule A workers — individuals, including veterans, with severe physical, psychiatric, or intellectual disabilities.
DOGE software approval alarms Labor Department employees
NBC News
By David Ingram
Feb. 13, 2025
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has received approval from the Labor Department to use software that could allow it to transfer vast amounts of data out of Labor’s systems, according to records seen by NBC News and interviews with two employees. The approval for Musk’s team to use the file-transfer and remote access software, known as PuTTY, has alarmed some of the Labor Department’s career employees. Musk, the head of DOGE, has dispatched subordinates throughout the government to radically overhaul or dismantle federal agencies with the backing of President Donald Trump.
DOGE rips through Education Department, cutting contracts, staff and grants
The Washington Post
By Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson
Feb. 13, 2025
The notices popped into email boxes all over the country Monday afternoon, notifying researchers who collect, analyze and study data on the American education system that their contracts were terminated, effective immediately. No reason was given. The nixed contracts support the Institute for Education Sciences at the Education Department, known as IES, and inside the agency, staff questioned whether the cuts were legal, much less justified.
Musk Staff Propose Bigger Role for A.I. in Education Department
The New York Times
By Dana Goldstein and Zach Montague
Feb. 13, 2025
Allies of Elon Musk stationed within the Education Department are considering replacing some contract workers who interact with millions of students and parents annually with an artificial intelligence chat bot, according to internal department documents and communications. The proposal is part of President Trump’s broader effort to shrink the federal work force, and would mark a major change in how the agency interacts with the public. The Education Department’s biggest job is managing billions of dollars in student aid, and it routinely fields complex questions from borrowers.
Federal employee layoffs begin at Education Department as DOGE tries to shrink government
CBS News
By Aaron Navarro and Kathryn Watson
Feb. 13, 2025
The Education Department made department-wide cuts on Wednesday, including in its civil rights office, according to multiple sources familiar with the move, a day after President Trump said he'd like to see the department eliminated. The terminations were primarily sent to newer probationary employees hired within the last year, sources said. Layoff letters were emailed to employees Tuesday. The letters informed employees that they could appeal their firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board if they felt they had been terminated "for partisan political reasons or because of your marital status."
Trump administration seeks more power to fire independent regulators
The Washington Post
By Ann E. Marimow and Lauren Kaori Gurley
Feb. 13, 2025
The Trump administration has told Congress it is prepared to disavow a long-standing Supreme Court ruling that has preserved the independence of certain government agencies and protected commissioners from being fired without good reason. The notice to lawmakers this week is another signal that the new president intends to make it easier to purge federal government workers and exert maximum control over the bureaucracy. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has fired government agency watchdogs and officials who protect whistleblowers, in addition to members of the boards of three independent federal agencies that oversee swaths of U.S. workers, employers and labor unions.
How Trump’s Directives Echo Project 2025
The New York Times
By Elena Shao, Karen Yourish and June Kim
Feb. 13, 2025
A slew of actions taken by President Trump during his first month in office bear the fingerprints of Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government. During his campaign, Mr. Trump distanced himself from the plan, saying it was largely unfamiliar to him. But The New York Times found more than 60 major moves that Mr. Trump and his administration have made in his first 23 days, including executive orders and agency memos, that align with proposals in the blueprint.
NLRB
Wells Fargo faces labor board complaint over union vote
Banking Dive
By Rajashree Chakravarty
Feb. 13, 2025
The National Labor Relations Board has accused Wells Fargo of illegally threatening and retaliating against employees and coercing workers to prevent fair unionization votes at a California branch. Most employees of an Atwater, California, branch who signed cards supporting unionization in December 2023 voted against unionization the following month, a regional director of the NLRB alleged, in a complaint filed Tuesday and seen by Bloomberg, The NLRB claims Wells Fargo coerced workers to vote against unionization. Wells Fargo has denied that allegation.
Postdoc union organizers brace for ‘aggressive’ Trump administration policies
The Daily Princetonian
By Sena Chang, Meghana Veldhuis, and Nikki Han
Feb. 12, 2025
The NLRB is “the body that guarantees our legal rights to organize as a union,” explained Judy Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the University Center for Human Values and member of the bargaining committee for Princeton University Postdocs and Scholars-United Auto Workers (PUPS-UAW). Kim described how the Trump administration’s actions have prompted PUPS-UAW to consider more demands, including a proposal strengthening the rights of international postdoctoral researchers in response to Trump’s crackdowns on immigration. According to Kim, PUPS-UAW has also been considering demanding a “transitional emergency fund” that would cover a postdoc’s salary if it is frozen due to executive orders that have slashed funding for the NIH and targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related projects.
ORGANIZING
Off Broadway, Labor Tension Heats Up
The New York Times
By James Barron
Feb. 13, 2025
For more than a month, striking stage crews have idled the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company, where the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “Kimberly Akimbo” ran before they moved to Broadway and won Tony Awards. The strike is part of a unionization push that could change the economics of Off Broadway, which was hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and has yet to recover. I asked Michael Paulson, The New York Times’s theater reporter, to explain where things stand.
Chicago History Museum workers want to join an arts industry unionization wave
WBEZ Chicago
By Courtney Kueppers
Feb. 12, 2025
About two dozen workers at the Chicago History Museum have signed a letter saying they plan to unionize. In the letter, issued Wednesday morning, the employees said they are seeking clear communication from management and competitive wages. The move is one in a wave of similar organizing efforts at other Chicago cultural institutions. The workers are organizing with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME Council 31. Workers from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum and Newberry Library, among others, have joined that same union in recent years.
Ceremony employees seek unionization over wages, benefits, working conditions
The Brown Daily Herald
By Maya Kelly and Ethan Schenker
Feb. 12, 2025
Employees at Ceremony’s two locations are seeking unionization. 16 baristas, prep cooks and tea and coffee specialists at the local cafe enterprise are seeking higher base wages, paid sick leave and improved working conditions, employees and organizers told The Herald. The teahouse’s employees petitioned on Monday for an election to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, according to public filings. The employees delivered a formal notice to Ceremony leadership that same day, asking for union recognition.
Bettendorf Starbucks could be 3rd in Iowa to unionize
Iowa Starting Line
By Amie Rivers
Feb. 12, 2025
As Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) members representing more than 500 Starbucks stores nationwide prepare for mediation with their company—a huge step in their quest to begin bargaining a first contract—I spoke with workers at a Starbucks in Bettendorf who are getting ready for an election to possibly become the third unionized Starbucks in Iowa. Michael Marquez, a shift supervisor with Starbucks for 13 years, contacted SBWU in October after saying he “noticed a distinct shift in the company straying away from the coffee house culture … and more toward this fast-food coffee factory that started being concerned with profits over people.”
Young workers in Santa Cruz County may be poised to lead a ‘union boom’
UC Santa Cruz
By Allison Arteaga Soergel
Feb. 13, 2025
A new study from UC Santa Cruz and UCLA found high rates of interest in unionization among young workers in Santa Cruz County, demonstrating the potential for increased worker organizing in the region. As part of the project, in spring 2024, students from UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College surveyed 1,947 Santa Cruz County workers, students, and residents between the ages of 18 and 34 who were not currently part of a union. The survey asked participants about their potential interest in joining a union. After adjusting the sample to be reflective of the county’s demographics, the results showed that 44% of respondents said they would join a union, while only 19% percent were opposed to joining one.
Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus”
Jacobin
By Nelson Lichtenstein
Feb. 13, 2025
Today some of the most fertile grounds for union organizing are among the workers in the “cultural apparatus,” a phrase first coined by C. Wright Mills encompassing workers in the worlds of publishing, education, entertainment, and research. We rightly pay a lot of attention to efforts to organize Amazon, Starbucks, and the foreign-owned auto plants in the American South. But graduate students at the Ivies and the big public universities; postdoctoral researchers at Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai, and the National Institutes of Health; and the editors and game developers at HarperCollins and Activision Blizzard have also won National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election victories that have led to union recognition and first contract signings.
JOINING TOGETHER
‘Stand With Grocery Workers Who Are Overworked, Understaffed and Underpaid’
OB Rag
By Todd Walters
Feb. 13, 2025
For too long, the hardworking union grocery workers of Southern California have been overworked, understaffed, and underpaid. These essential workers, who showed up day in and day out during the pandemic to keep our communities fed, now find themselves struggling to make ends meet. With inflation driving up the cost of living at an alarming rate, it’s time for major grocery corporations—Kroger/Ralphs, Albertsons/Vons, Stater Bros., and Gelson’s—to step up and provide the fair wages and benefits that these workers have earned. Southern California UFCW Locals are gearing up for what will likely be the toughest round of negotiations in decades. Bargaining with Kroger/Ralphs and Albertsons/Vons kicks off on February 13, with Stater Bros. negotiations beginning on March 6. Dates with Gelson’s have yet to be scheduled, but our message to all these companies is the same: Grocery workers are rising for our futures, our families, and our communities.
Some California state workers could receive an extra 1% raise this year, if the budget allows
The Sacramento Bee
By William Melhado
Feb. 13, 2025
Ahead of Valentines Day, a group of state employees asked California leaders to show public servants some extra love. Roughly 100 union members marched from SEIU Local 1000’s office on R Street to the nearby California Department of Human Resources’ building on Wednesday to deliver over 13,000 petitions, demanding the state grant a conditional 4% raise, instead of the normal 3% salary increase.
STATE LEGISLATION
'Right-to-work' states lack the freedom, success of NH(Opinion)
New Hampshire Union Leader
By Glenn Brackett
Feb. 13, 2025
IN THE coming days, we will see the New Hampshire Legislature vote on House Bill 238, this year’s iteration of the misleadingly titled “right-to-work” bill. Many of the voices advocating for this bill, which was drafted by out-of-state corporate special interest groups, are, in fact, employees of these out-of-state interests. I think it’s important that New Hampshire taxpayers and voters understand what “right to work” really is and expose the truth about its “success” and “popularity.” Right-to-work legislation allows members of a bargained-for workforce to receive all of the benefits of union representation without having to pay a dime. Federal law requires that union organizations represent and defend these free riders up to, and including, going through our judicial system, at no cost to the employee refusing to pay their fair share.
Striking Oregon workers would get unemployment under proposed law
Statesman Journal
By Dianne Lugo
Feb. 13, 2025
Senate Bill 916, requested by the Oregon AFL-CIO labor union that has 300,000 members, would remove language that disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits while they strike. If passed and signed by the governor, the bill would immediately go into effect.
Labor leaders are exploring a referendum to repeal Legislature’s anti-union bill
Slay Lake Tribune
By Robert Gehrke
Feb. 12, 2025
As a bill banning Utah governments from bargaining with public employee unions sits on Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk awaiting his signature or veto, union leaders are exploring the possibility of a citizen referendum to repeal the measure — should Cox sign it.
New Hampshire House once again rejects right-to-work legislation
New Hampshire Bulletin
By William Skipworth
Feb. 13, 2025
The latest effort to bring right-to-work policies to New Hampshire has again failed. The state House of Representatives voted, 200-180, on Thursday to indefinitely postpone House Bill 238, which would have turned New Hampshire into a right-to-work state and prohibited collective bargaining agreements from requiring employees join or contribute to a union. By indefinitely postponing the bill, the House effectively killed it, prohibiting the chamber from taking up the issue again this legislative session. The vote saw several Republicans cross the aisle to block the legislation. One such Republican, Rep. Stephen Pearson, of Derry, pleaded with his party members before the vote not to alienate working people from their party, calling right-to-work “a pointless attack on American families” and a “failed concept of a bygone era.”
IN THE STATES
Union tells Supreme Court that UW Health can collectively bargain despite Act 10
Wisconsin Public Radio
By Rich Kremer
Feb. 12, 2025
A union representing nurses in Madison is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require UW Health to collectively bargain despite Act 10 stripping those rights from most public employees in 2011. The lawsuit before the court was filed by Service International Employees Union, or SEIU, and stems from a 2022 agreement with the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority, or UWHCA, to avoid a strike. The union was phased out in 2014 following the the passage of Act 10 under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, but UW Health nurses revived it in 2019 and demanded it be recognized by the UW authority. During oral arguments Wednesday, SEIU attorney Tamara Packard urged justices to conduct a strict reading of a decades-old state law called the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act when analyzing the case.
LABOR AND ENTERTAINMENT
Deadline
By Greg Evans
Feb. 13, 2025
The Kennedy Center, under Donald Trump’s newly announced leadership, has canceled its tour of Finn, an acclaimed Kennedy Center-produced children’s musical about a young shark who, in the words of the show’s creators, “wants to let out his inner fish.” The decision was announced – and decried – on the Instagram page of the show’s creators, Chris Nee, Michael Kooman, and Christopher Dimond. “We didn’t ask for this joy bomb of a show to be a part of the resistance,” they write, “but here we are.”
Kennedy Center staff describe climate of fear as events drop from calendar
The Washington Post
By Travis M. Andrews, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Michael Andor Brodeur
Feb. 13, 2025
In a statement, the union Actors’ Equity Association said it was “outraged” at the cancellation. “It is disturbing to see the new leadership of this institution move so swiftly to suppress viewpoints they do not agree with,” the union wrote, adding that it intends to enforce its contracts with the center.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
With Wildfires Contained, the Long Rebuild for Hollywood Workers Begins
The Wrap
By Jeremy Fuster
Feb. 13, 2025
On Jan. 16, it was all hands on deck at the IATSE Local 80 headquarters in Burbank, and not just within the entertainment crew workers’ union. Representatives from the Motion Picture & Television Fund and Entertainment Community Fund were on hand to accept applications for financial assistance. Grief counselors and insurance advisors were available for meetings on the second floor.