Today's AFL-CIO press clips
POLITICS
Trump cannot end union bargaining for federal workers, judge rules
Reuters
By Daniel Wiessner and Nate Raymond
June 25, 2025
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Republican President Donald Trump's administration from eliminating union bargaining for hundreds of thousands of federal workers at 21 agencies. U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco agreed with the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions that Trump's March 27 executive order exempting many federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions was likely illegal.
Federal judge halts Trump’s order to end collective bargaining rights for many federal workers
CNN
By Tami Luhby and Devan Cole
June 24, 2025
A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to terminate the collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees. Judge James Donato of the US District Court in San Francisco granted the preliminary injunction requested by a coalition of unions whose members would be stripped of their collective bargaining rights under Trump’s executive order. However, Donato’s decision clashes with a May ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which lifted a different judge’s block on Trump’s order pertaining to another union’s members.
Trump’s OSHA Nominee Has a History With Heat and UPS Drivers
The New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchi
June 25, 2025
Rebecca Reindel, director of occupational safety at the AFL-CIO, which represents 15 million workers across a range of industries, said the lack of heat regulations in most states left workers vulnerable and made federal standards critical. “Letting employers address heat however they want, with no rules whatsoever, is what we have now in most places,” she said.
Trump pressures Congress on his 'big beautiful bill' as debate clouds path forward
Reuters
By David Morgan
June 24, 2025
President Donald Trump on Tuesday stepped up pressure on Republicans in the U.S. Senate to advance his sweeping tax-cut and spending bill this week, as party hardliners and moderates squabbled over proposed spending cuts. Republican leaders are pushing to get the One Big Beautiful Bill Act -- which would add trillions to the nation's $36.2 trillion in debt -- through Congress and to Trump's desk before the July 4 Independence Day holiday.
A Running List of Policies Rejected From the Republican Megabill
The New York Times
By Alicia Parlapiano
June 24, 2025
The bill carrying much of President Trump’s domestic agenda is facing examination by the Senate parliamentarian, a nonpartisan official who enforces the chamber’s complex rules — and who can effectively strip out parts of the bill that don’t comply. Republicans will be able to push the tax and entitlement package through with a simple Senate majority, avoiding a Democratic filibuster, as long as it complies with the “Byrd Rule,” which has governed the budget reconciliation process they are using since the 1980s.
House Conservatives Warn They Can’t Back Senate Bill to Enact Trump’s Agenda
The New York Times
By Catie Edmondson
June 24, 2025
President Trump on Tuesday urged congressional Republicans not to leave Washington at the end of the week for a scheduled recess until they pass a sprawling bill to enact his domestic agenda, ratcheting up pressure on hard-liners in the House to swallow their objections and adopt the legislation the Senate is crafting. Congressional Republicans are racing to meet a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to pass the measure, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts, create new tax breaks and slash some programs, including Medicaid and nutrition assistance, to help offset the cost. The Senate is toiling to complete its own version of the legislation the House passed last month.
How proposed cuts to Medicaid could affect rural hospitals(Video)
PBS
By Geoff Bennett, Doug Adams and Kyle Midura
June 24, 2025
Rural hospitals across the country, many already struggling to stay afloat, could face devastating consequences if proposed Medicaid cuts in the domestic spending bill become law. To help understand what’s at stake, Geoff Bennett spoke with Tim Wolters, the director of reimbursement for the Citizens Memorial Hospital system in southwestern Missouri.
White House sends Dr. Oz to calm Senate nerves
Politico
By Adam Cancryn
June 24, 2025
The Senate Republican megabill is ailing. The White House thinks it has a doctor for that. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon best known for dispensing medical advice on television and now a top Trump health official, has emerged as the administration’s go-to salesman for the sweeping Medicaid overhaul at the center of the GOP’s legislative ambitions.
Senate referee appears open to revised GOP proposal to cut federal food assistance spending
The Hill
By Alexander Bolton and Aris Folley
June 24, 2025
A spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee said Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough appears open to a revised Republican proposal to shift some costs for food assistance to states after rejecting the initial draft of it over the weekend. The Senate Republican plan would require states for the first time to pay a sizeable share of food benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) unless they reduce the error rate for delivering benefits to below 6 percent.
The megabill’s math isn’t adding up for Senate Republicans
Politico
By Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill and Benjamin Guggenheim
June 24, 2025
Republicans are running into a major issue as they try to finalize their sweeping domestic-policy bill: arithmetic. With just days until Senate GOP leaders want to start voting, they have been hit with a mathematical double-whammy: Tax writers are proposing a package that’s hundreds of billions of dollars more costly than what House Republicans have proposed, while senators struggle to finalize a larger package of spending cuts to offset it.
Trump administration scrambles to rehire key federal workers after DOGE firings
CNN
By Eric Bradner,
June 24, 2025
Federal agencies are rehiring and ordering back from leave some of the employees who were laid off in the weeks after President Donald Trump took office as they scramble to fill critical gaps in services left by the Department of Government Efficiency-led effort to shrink the federal workforce. The Trump administration’s quiet backtracking from the firings and voluntary retirements — which are also paired with new hires to fill vacancies those departures created — come as federal agencies are still implementing their “reduction-in-force” plans as part of a push for spending cuts.
‘Big Balls’ No Longer Works for the US Government
Wired
By Jake Lahut, Makena Kelly, Vittoria Elliott and Zoë Schiffer
June 24, 2025
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the first technologists hired as part of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is no longer working for the federal government, according to multiple sources. “Edward Coristine resigned yesterday,” a White House official tells WIRED. Coristine received full-time employment status at the GSA late last month, as reported by WIRED. As of Tuesday afternoon, his Google Workspace account with the General Services Administration (GSA) was no longer active, according to a source with direct knowledge. His name also no longer appears on a White House contact list of current DOGE employees on the federal payroll maintained by a senior administration official, the official says.
IMMIGRATION
Judge’s Ruling Casts Doubt on Trump Administration’s Claims Against Migrant
The New York Times
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer
June 24, 2025
In early June, Attorney General Pam Bondi unveiled the indictment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador, with a pronouncement: “This is what American justice looks like.” She predicted he would be easily convicted. On Sunday night, 16 days later, a federal magistrate judge gave a far different assessment of the evidence presented so far: The department’s case had serious problems, relied heavily on deals with multiple informants, included dubious claims about his actions that bordered on “physical impossibility” and was rife with hearsay testimony.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from jail only to be taken into immigration custody
AP
By Travis Loller
June 25, 2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is expected to be released from jail in Tennessee on Wednesday, only to be taken into immigration custody. The Salvadoran national whose mistaken deportation became a flashpoint in the fight over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies has been in jail since he was returned to the U.S. on June 7, facing two counts of human smuggling.
TRANSPORTATION
Rail unions warn DOT rollbacks could jeopardize train safety
Freight Waves
By John Gallagher
June 24, 2025
Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, whose member unions include the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, warned that the proposed policy would have a “chilling effect” that could result in federal employees being punished for trying to uphold safety regulations. “This not only undermines the credibility and effectiveness of the enforcement process but also risks creating an environment where personnel fear professional repercussions for doing their jobs,” Regan told DOT.
ORGANIZING
This is how over 40% of NYC bookstores became unionized.
Literary Hub
By James Folta
June 24, 2025
The books world is has been full of labor action in the last few years, most recently with Quirk Books voting to form a union with the NewsGuild and Abrams Books winning their vote to form a union with the UAW. Bookstores have especially been at the forefront of this push to organize. On May Day I went to an event at Verso’s offices featuring unionized booksellers talking about their work and their organizing. One fact jumped out at me: over 40% of all bookstores in New York City are unionized, which is four times the nation average. That 40% is likely about to be even higher with the news that The Center for Fiction just won voluntary union recognition.
Nurses at Pittsburgh’s largest employer run up against labor board stalled by Trump
Pennsylvania Capital-Star
By Kalena Thomhave
June 24, 2025
Hundreds of nurses employed by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center — the city’s largest employer — say they are having to fight just to schedule a union election. Meanwhile, their employer is justifying delays by citing the Trump administration’s changes to the National Labor Relations Board. On June 13, a throng of scrub-clad nurses and supporters gathered in the damp shadow of Pittsburgh’s iconic U.S. Steel Tower — which now bears the UPMC logo across its roofline. Joined there by a range of elected officials, including city councilmembers, U.S. Reps. Summer Lee and Chris Deluzio, and Pittsburgh’s mayor, Ed Gainey, they demanded a date for their union election.
UNION NEGOTIATIONS
Writers Guild East Members Ratify First Union Contract at Story Syndicate
The Hollywood Reporter
By Katie Kilkenny
June 24, 2025
Nonfiction entertainment workers who are members of the Writers Guild of America East have ratified a first union agreement with prestige documentary company Story Syndicate. Story Syndicate employees who belong to the WGA East, roughly 30 in total, many of them producers, unanimously voted to greenlight the deal after it was reached June 6.
Deadline
By Katie Campione
June 24, 2025
The Writers Guild of America East has finally sealed its first deal with management at the nonfiction production company Story Syndicate. The union announced Tuesday that the 30-member bargaining unit unanimously ratified the contract after nearly two years of talks. The MPEG and the Writers Guild of America East won their joint effort to unionize producers and editorial employees at Story Syndicate in 2023 and have been negotiating since. “We’re thrilled to celebrate securing our first collective bargaining agreement! We hope our contract will help set precedents throughout the nonfiction TV/film industry, and we stand in solidarity with our colleagues at Motion Picture Editors Guild IATSE Local 700 (MPEG)’s ongoing contract negotiations with Story Syndicate,” the bargaining committee said in a statement.
Minnesota Nurses Association vote to authorize unfair labor practices strike
CBS News
By Aki Nace, Adam Duxter and Marielle Mohs
June 24, 2025
A Minnesota nurses union voted Monday to authorize an unfair labor practice strike, as thousands of employees work without a contract and others face a contract expiration at the end of the month. The Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents 15,000 nurses across 13 hospitals in the Twin Cities and Duluth area, says the vote gives negotiators the ability to call for a strike at any time, after providing a 10-day notice.
‘Unfair labor practice’ strike continues outside of Colorado Springs Safeway
KKTV
By Rebecca Gvozden
June 24, 2025
On Monday, employees of a Colorado Springs Safeway store joined in on the statewide strike against the grocery chain. Union members were seen outside the Safeway on Galley and Circle, holding signs and chanting. On Tuesday, the strike continues. Last week, UFCW Local 7 held a vote to authorize a strike for more stores. Colorado Springs meat and retail workers voted 99% in favor of the strike. Our 11 News team spoke to a union member on Monday, who said workers’ reasons for striking range from health care plan concerns to staffing shortages. “Currently, the workers are out on strike on an unfair labor practice strike,” explained Dominic Rossi with UFCW Local 7. “The company has engaged in unfair labor practices during our contract negotiations.
Nurses union votes on strike authorization
WDIO
By WDIO
June 24, 2025
Nurses union votes on strike authorization
Amidst on-going contract negotiations, the Minnesota Nurses Association has asked it’s members for the authorization to call a unfair labor practices (ULP) strike. The vote, taken on June 23, would not prompt an immediate work stoppage, but rather give union leaders the option to declare a strike after giving employers a 10-day notice. MNA says staffing levels are also a concern as they continue their contract talks. “Safe Staffing” is a part of the union’s contract platform, and representatives told WDIO in an interview that they consider this to be a patient issue. “If you have a nurse who has too many patients to take care of, they’re not able to give the best care that they need to.” said Stacee Rosier, a RN who works with Essentia and is part of MNA’s bargaining team.
MNA says union members voted overwhelmingly to authorize strike over Unfair Labor Practices (Video)
KARE 11
By Kare11.com
June 24, 2025
Thousands of union nurses across the Twin Cities and Duluth have voted to authorize a strike, accusing management of unfair labor practices.
Springfield Symphony Players Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement
The Violin Channel
By The Violin Channel
June 24, 2025
The musicians of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (SSO), in Massachusetts, have reached a new two-year collective bargaining agreement with Local 171 of the American Federation of Musicians. The orchestra will maintain its current average of 64 contracted musicians, but will afford wage increases for all players. In addition, player representation on the SSO's board of directors will be increased from one player to two.
IN THE STATES
Good WI union jobs are at risk if energy credits are stripped from budget bill (Opinion)
Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
By Kent Miller
June 24, 2025
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson recently called the massive reconciliation bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives 'immoral.’ He was outdone in his criticism days later by Elon Musk, who called the legislation currently pending before the U.S. Senate a 'disgusting abomination.’