Boeing shake-up | Patty delivers | Women labor leaders celebrated

Monday, March 25, 2024

AEROSPACE

► From Reuters — Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to step down in management shakeup amid safety crisis — Boeing Co. CEO Dave Calhoun will step down by year-end, in a broad management shakeup brought on by the planemaker’s sprawling safety crisis stemming from a January mid-air panel blowout on a 737 MAX plane. The planemaker also said that Stan Deal, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO, would retire, and Stephanie Pope would lead that business. Steve Mollenkopf has been appointed the new chair of the board.

From Reuters (Feb. 22, 2023) — Boeing offers CEO Calhoun $5.3 million incentive to stay through recovery — Boeing’s board of directors awarded Chief Executive Dave Calhoun an incentive worth approximately $5.29 million to induce him to stay throughout the company’s recovery from the twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and two deadly 737 MAX crashes that led to the fleet’s grounding.

► From Reuters — Boeing’s largest union seeks seat on planemaker’s board, FT reports — Boeing’s largest labor union is seeking a board seat at the planemaker, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The International Association of Machinists District 751, which represents 32,000 workers at factories in Washington state, began contract negotiations with Boeing this month and one of its aims is to have a greater voice at the company.

Fr0m The STAND (March 11) — ‘Washington’s union movement has IAM 751 members’ backs’ — As Machinists at Boeing begin contract talks, labor solidarity is evident.

LOCAL

Farm workers gather in Sunnyside, WA for a Cesar Chavez Day event and farm worker union rights rally.

Los campesinos se reúnen en Sunnyside, WA para un evento del Día de César Chávez y una manifestación por los derechos sindicales de los campesinos.#WeFeedYou #CesarChavez pic.twitter.com/D2Gbcb1lSS

— United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) March 25, 2024

Today from The STAND — WSLC Immigration Summit: United, ‘we always win’

► From the union-busting Columbian — Evergreen Public Schools final plan for cuts includes 22 elementary teacher librarians — The school district is still proposing to cut 22 elementary teacher librarians, despite vocal support for the positions in recent weeks at board meetings and on social media. The superintendent will take a salary cut and a total of 124 positions and $18.7 million are slated to be cut.

► From the Olympian — Faculty, students speak out after 14 Saint Martin’s professors get ‘terminal appointment letters’ — Fourteen faculty at Saint Martin’s University, all of whom are believed to teach in the humanities, have received letters saying that the university does not guarantee them a teaching position after the 2024-2025 school year. David Price, who has taught at the Lacey college for 30 years, said:

“I can’t speak for everyone, but it feels like a huge betrayal of trust. To have done this without telling us is horrible and disgraceful.”

► From Post Alley — 35 Washington state news publications sold to a mysterious new owner — A British Columbia court last week approved the sale of the Canadian company that owns the Everett Herald and 34 other local news outlets in Washington. What happens next is unclear.

THIS WASHINGTON

► From the News Tribune — Inslee signs Strippers’ Bill of Rights today. When booze will hit WA clubs is uncertain (by Matt Driscoll) — L&I will draft rules and guidelines for making the changes to workplace safety standards included in the legislation. The Legislature gave the agency a deadline of early 2025. Once those rules are established, the Liquor Control Board will work with L&I to issue liquor licenses while ensuring that applicant clubs are meeting the new standards.

► From the Seattle Times — Legislature passes bills that may help King County’s budget crisis — Democratic legislators shot down the county’s preferred budget fix, which would have raised the cap on how much property taxes can rise each year. Still, legislators passed two obscure bills, largely along party lines, that could help King County — and only King County — raise taxes to fill its budget gap.

From The STAND (March 22) — Save Public Health in Seattle, King County

► From the WA State Standard — ‘Really troubling:’ Survey finds poor outcomes for students with disabilities after high school — Students with autism or intellectual disabilities in particular are much more likely to not have a job or further education lined up after high school.

THAT WASHINGTON

► From the AP — Supreme Court again confronts abortion, this time over access to widely used medication — The Supreme Court will again wade into the fractious issue of abortion this week when it hears arguments over a medication used in the most common way to end a pregnancy, a case with profound implications for millions of women no matter where they live in America and, perhaps, for the race for the White House. Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for bans or severe restrictions on abortion in many Republican-led states, abortion opponents on Tuesday will ask the high court to ratify a ruling from a conservative federal appeals court that would limit access to the medication mifepristone, which was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year.

► From the Spokesman-Review — How Patty Murray helped craft a compromise to fund the government despite chaos in Congress: ‘Nobody thought we could get this done’

► From the Seattle Times — Channeling old political spirits, Sen. Murray rains money on WA (by Danny Westneat) — These are the first spending plans passed with Murray at the helm of the uber-powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s the first time in more than four decades that a Washington state politician has apportioned the federal river of money, since the late Sen. Warren Magnuson last chaired the same committee… The news here is that our senior senator continues to be underestimated. I’m reminded of the 1990s saying “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” These are the rules of politics; she didn’t create them. Is she changing them? No. But right now, there’s no one who’s playing the game as it is better than Murray.

► From Vox — The House GOP just gave Biden’s campaign a huge gift — Roughly 80 percent of House Republicans just lined up behind a plan to cut Social Security and ban all abortions.

► From NPR — Trump faces a crucial day in his hush-money trial, and a deadline to post bond — Former President Donald Trump faces a pivotal day in New York on Monday: A criminal court judge will hold a hearing and could set a trial date in the hush-money case. Separately, the New York attorney general could move to seize one or more of his properties to satisfy a judgment in a civil fraud case.

► From Mirage News — White House hosts Women’s History Month labor roundtable — Last week’s event, held in partnership with the AFL-CIO and moderated by White House Senior Labor Advisor Erika Dinkel-Smith, was a celebration of women in labor in honor of Women’s History Month and highlighted how the Biden-Harris Administration is putting women and girls at the heart of the Administration’s economic agenda, and promoting and defending women workers’ rights both domestically and abroad. Participants included AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO State Federation and Central Labor Council leaders (including the WSLC’s April Sims and Cherika Carter), as well as young women organizers on the front lines of organizing new workplaces and expanding the benefits of unionization to women in their states.

NATIONAL

► From the USA Today — Pharmacy unionizing efforts build momentum as a CVS Omnicare in Las Vegas seeks to join — A national effort to unionize pharmacists against worsening conditions inside chains like CVS and Walgreens has hit a milestone as workers at the first of what organizers say will be dozens of pharmacies files a federal petition seeking the right to join The Pharmacy Guild (part of IAM Healthcare). The petition, expected to become public today, puts CVS on notice that workers in its Omnicare pharmacy in Las Vegas intend to hold an election to determine whether the newly formed guild should represent them in labor negotiations with the Fortune 500 company.

READY FOR A VOICE AT WORK? Get more information about how you can join together with co-workers and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!

► From the Pittsburgh Union Progress — National labor leader pushes apprenticeship programs, unionism in Pittsburgh visit — Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, joined a group of elected officials and labor leaders who spoke at a program after the tour to encourage more workers to apply for apprenticeships in the building trades.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Do you want to “earn while you learn” a family-wage career in the trades? Check out the Construct a Career website from the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council about how to get started in a union apprenticeship program today! Also, check out the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries Become an Apprentice webpage listing multiple resources for those interested in learning more.

► From CNBC — SpaceX hit with new NLRB complaint over severance agreements, dispute resolution rules –The National Labor Relations Board accused SpaceX in a new complaint of entering into unlawful severance agreements with terminated employees nationwide. The unfair labor practices complaint comes two months after SpaceX filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of the NLRB’s oversight authority, and after the federal agency in a separate complaint accused the company of illegally firing eight workers who had criticized its CEO Elon Musk in an open letter. The new NLRB complaint claims that SpaceX included unlawful confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements and that it unlawfully limited the terminated workers’ ability to participate in other claims against the company.

► From the Hollywood Reporter — SAG-AFTRA performers ratify TV animation contracts — The new deal includes several gains secured in the union’s 2023 TV/theatrical contracts following its 118-day strike, such as guardrails on AI and wage increases.

► From Jacobin — Worker-to-worker unionism: A model for labor to scale up (by Eric Blanc) — At the heart of the current uptick in union organizing at companies like Starbucks has been “worker-to-worker unionism.” That model could be key to scaling up organizing and revitalizing the labor movement.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.