Today's AFL-CIO press clips
POLITICS
White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working.
The Washington Post
By William Wan and Hannah Natanson
May 20, 2025
When Trump took office in January, 2.4 million people worked for the federal government, making it America’s largest employer. In four months, Trump and a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk have hacked off chunks of government in the name of efficiency, with tactics rarely seen in public or private industry. The cuts so far represent roughly 6 percent of the federal workforce, but they have effectively wiped out entire departments and agencies, such as AmeriCorps and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was slashed 85 percent; the Education Department was cut in half.
Divided House GOP tries to push Trump’s tax bill over the finish line
The Washington Post
By Jacob Bogage and Marianna Sotomayor
May 21, 2025
House Republicans on Wednesday are set to try to push President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration package across the finish line, hoping to conquer internal divisions and tee up a vote that would send Trump’s sprawling agenda to the Senate. The House Rules Committee worked through the night on the legislation, trying to push the bill past a procedural test that would allow for a final vote. Lawmakers were still debating its provisions early Wednesday morning after a committee session that began at 1 a.m.
Trump on Capitol Hill implores divided Republicans to unify behind his big tax cuts bill
AP News
By Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, Leah Askarinam and Joey Cappelletti
May 20, 2025
President Donald Trump implored House Republicans at the Capitol to drop their fights over his big tax cuts bill and get it done, using encouraging words but also the hardened language of politics over the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing before planned votes this week. During the more than hour-long session Tuesday, Trump warned Republicans not to touch Medicaid with cuts, and he told New York lawmakers to end their fight for a bigger local tax deduction reversing his own campaign promise. The president, heading into the meeting, called himself a “cheerleader” for the Republican Party and praised Speaker Mike Johnson. But he also criticized at least one of the GOP holdouts as a “grandstander” and warned that anyone who doesn’t support the bill would be a “fool.”
Trump pressures House GOP to fall in line on budget bill amid key hurdles
CBS News
By Caitlin Yilek, Kaia Hubbard and Ellis Kim
May 20, 2025
President Trump met Tuesday with House Republicans as leaders try to push a massive budget package containing the president's legislative priorities over its last hurdle before it can get to the floor. The president is pressuring on members to fall in line as the party's dueling factions have threatened to upend the plan as they set down apparent red lines that don't align with the demands made from other members. Upon arriving on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump suggested that any Republican who doesn't back the bill would be "knocked out so fast," citing a handful of "grandstanders." And he urged that Republicans are a "very unified party," adding that lawmakers must get his "one big, beautiful bill" done.
UMWA, Labor Leaders To Protest Trump Health Cuts In D.C.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
By Curtis Tate
May 20, 2025
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts and members of the American Federation of Government Employees will demonstrate outside U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters over recent staffing reductions at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington on Thursday.
'We rely on NIOSH': Safety experts decry Trump administration cutting off mining research
Charleston Gazette-Mail
By Mike Tony
May 20, 2025
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. scarcely allowed that it hasn’t been business as usual at the federal agency charged with researching safety and disease trends among West Virginia miners and other industries across the nation. “The program will continue to function with continuity,” Kennedy tersely told Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., of the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, the black lung screening
and miner medical review unit which he had previously eectively eliminated, at a House of Representatives subcommittee meeting Wednesday.
These Are the Lawsuits Against Trump's Executive Orders
U.S. News & World Report
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
May 20, 2025
Executive Order: Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the “Schedule F” classification for certain federal employees. Experts say the move would make it easier for him to fire many career federal employees possibly for political reasons as it reclassifies their employment status to one that is less-protected. Challenge: Labor unions and other groups representing federal employees argue that Trump’s executive order violates the Administrative Procedures Act and the Fifth Amendment.
IMMIGRATION
Judges call out ‘deafening silence’ in Trump’s bid to avoid facilitating return of migrant
MSNBC
By Jordan Rubin
May 20, 2025
Is yet another wrongful deportation case on its way to the Supreme Court? It could be, after a divided appellate panel on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to lift an order to “facilitate” a man’s return from El Salvador. This isn’t the still-unresolved case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia but yet another case where a judge has ordered the government to rectify a wrongful removal. Monday’s ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came in the case of a Venezuelan national identified by the pseudonym “Cristian” in court papers.
LABOR AND ECONOMY
Americans favor labor unions over big business now more than ever
Medium
By Aaron Sojourner and Adam Reich
May 20, 2025
For decades, Americans were evenly divided in their relative support of labor unions and big business, but that’s no longer the case. Now, Americans are more likely to side with labor than at any time in the past 60 years. For people whose instincts about economic and political conflicts between unions and big business were honed more than a decade ago, it’s time to update your understanding.
UNION NEGOTIATIONS
AI Is Disrupting Commercial Shoots, But Actors May Get New Guardrails
The Hollywood Reporter
By Katie Kilkenny
May 20, 2025
A year and a half later, the performers’ union is starting to refine its approach to the technology, as a new tentative agreement covering commercials work demonstrates. The Commercials Contracts, whose in-depth details were released on May 8, represent the first time in a major deal that SAG-AFTRA has restricted access to its members’ performances to train generative AI systems. The union also contends that the contracts are poised to disincentivize producers from using AI-generated performers over human performers specifically as a cost-saving mechanism.
These New Orleans nurses are striking for a union contract—and Trump is making things worse
Fast Company
By Capital and Main
May 20, 2025
With Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” as a soundtrack, nurses at New Orleans’s University Medical Center walked off the job for the third time, picketing along the city’s Canal Street thoroughfare earlier this month. “We will picket, shout, bargain, petition, and strike again, and again, and again until the nurses win the first contract!” Terry Mogilles, an orthopedic trauma clinic nurse, told a rapt crowd on May 1. The crowd comprised about 100 nurses and their supporters, with many of the nurses wearing scrubs or red shirts with white lettering reading “We Will Strike for Our Patients!”
Workers at 5 Metro Detroit nursing homes hold 1-day strike
The Detroit News
By Charles E. Ramirez
May 20, 2025
More than 300 workers went on strike Tuesday for one day in protest of a labor dispute with the owner of five Metro Detroit nursing homes. Officials with SEIU Health Care Michigan said the union called for the work stoppage because the company, Ciena Healthcare, continues to bargain in bad faith and doesn't respect its frontline caregivers.
Over 300 nursing home staff members on strike against Ciena Healthcare
WENY News
By Paula Wethington and Jordan Burrows
May 20, 2025
Workers at five Ciena Healthcare nursing home facilities in Metro Detroit are taking part in a one-day strike Tuesday. The union representing the workers is SEIU Health Care Michigan (SEIU HCMI). The strike is meant to draw attention to the fact that Ciena Healthcare, which is the largest nursing home operator in Michigan, and the union, which is the largest healthcare union in the state have failed to reach a bargaining agreement. The union said many of the employees have been working without a contract for months, some as far back as January 2024.
Nurses plan 5-day strike at Meriter hospital in Madison as contract talks stall
Wisconsin Examiner
By Erik Gunn
May 20, 2025
Nurses at Madison’s Meriter hospital plan to walk off the job for five days starting Tuesday, May 27, after negotiations on a new union contract ended Monday night without an agreement. The hospital management and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin, which represents about 950 nurses at the hospital, are divided over pay, security provisions and whether the hospital should commit to specific ratios of how many patients are under a nurse’s care.
IN THE STATES
NC nurse advocates for veterans healthcare as Trump’s VA cuts loom
The Herald-Sun
By Danielle Battaglia
May 20, 2025
Manning-Joy isn’t just a patient at the Durham VA. She’s a nurse of 25 years, who works at the facility and is a member of National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country. On Tuesday, she joined a group of NNU members and Rep. Mark Takano, a Democrat from California, for a briefing held over Zoom, to discuss the impact of the Trump administration on VA healthcare.
LABOR AND ENTERTAINMENT
‘We’ve taken the industry for granted’: Mayor Bass pledges to make it easier to film in L.A.
Los Angeles Times
By Julia Wick
May 20, 2025
Standing in Hollywood actors guild SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles headquarters alongside a cavalcade of film industry players, Mayor Karen Bass pledged Tuesday to make it easier for productions to shoot in Los Angeles. The mayor signed an executive directive to support local film and TV jobs — an action that she said will lower costs and streamline city processes for on-location filming, as well as increase access to legendary L.A. locations including Griffith Observatory, Central Library and the Port of Los Angeles. The move was cheered by representatives from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and other union leaders.
L.A. Mayor Vows to Cut Red Tape and Make It Easier to Shoot Movies and Shows In the City
The Hollywood Reporter
By Katie Kilkenny
May 20, 2025
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is advancing efforts to streamline film and television production in Los Angeles amid cries for further policymaker intervention on the issue of runaway production. Bass calls for a reduction of city staffers on shoots and improved access for crews to iconic Los Angeles locations like the Griffith Observatory, the Central Public Library and the Port of Los Angeles in an executive order that was signed Tuesday at the L.A. headquarters of performers’ union SAG-AFTRA. The directive further enlists city departments to cut red tape and help ease basic production headaches in a bid to improve the city’s friendliness to filmmakers.