Podcasts about seiu local

In this episode, Fran Spielman interviews Stacy Davis Gates, President of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), discussing the recently approved teachers' contract. The civil war between the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU has fractured Mayor Brandon Johnson's progressive union coalition continues—so much so that it endangers Johnson's political future. It centers around CTU President Stacy Davis Gates failed attempt to have the CTU take over classroom assistant jobs held by SEIU Local 73.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

0:00 - Trump and Walz respond to Signal controversy: no need to apologize…won’t be using (much) going forward 13:19 - Hegseth on Goldberg: nobody was texting war plans 32:41 - White liberals and black people were asked if they think voter ID is racist. Result 52:00 - Jasmine Crockett calls Governor Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels” 01:10:47 - Pritzker at Human Rights Campaign dinner: we need to be streetfighters 01:45:47 - Internet laughs at ‘cringe’ music video that celebrates Musk and his ‘master plan to save our lives’ 01:50:10 - Andrew McCarthy is a Former Chief Asst. U.S. Attorney & Contributing Editor at National Review and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. He joined Dan and Amy to weigh in on the fight between the Trump administration and the courts. 02:10:37 - Ramona T Bonilla-Anaiel is Chief Union Steward Chicago Public Schools, Bargaining Team member, and three-term elected Executive Board Member of SEIU Local 73. Also the elected Republican Committeewoman for the 31st Ward Belmont Cragin in Chicago, IL. She joined Dan and Amy to talk about being targeted for social media comments.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A rally on Tuesday was held in support of 12 janitors who are going to their jobs at Alderney Gate on March 1st. This happened after the HRM council selected a new, non-union contractor, Imperial Cleaners. Service Employees International Union Local 2 that represents 20,000 workers around Canada were calling on HRM mayor, council and CAO to require Imperial to hire these janitors. Tina Oh, an organizer and coordinator with the union, spoke with our colleague Meig Campbell. A statement from the city to CBC says: On Feb. 28, 2025, the Halifax Regional Municipality received notice that a judicial review has been filed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2 on the matter of janitorial services for Alderney Gate. As this matter is now before the courts, no additional information or comment is available at this time.

Dr. Jayne Morgan, Vice President of Medical Affairs at Hello Heart, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss cardiovascular health, digital health solutions and the importance of preventive care for union members.  Dian Palmer, President of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the challenges facing public-sector workers, the role of unions in advocating for their members and the impact of recent political actions on workers' rights.

Dian Palmer, President of the Service Employees International Union Local 73, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss how her union member husband helped guide her to a career with SEIU. Palmer also talked about the contract issues with the city of Chicago and the difficult negotiations workers at the University of Illinois went through to earn their new contract. Eric Brandon, Strategic Account Executive Labor and Trust for Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss his union upbringing and how it helped guide him to the Labor and Trust division of Anthem. He also discussed how Anthem can help Taft Hartley Funds save union members money in healthcare costs.

Biden bombs, Trump pounces in first debate of 2024 | Supreme Court rejects Missouri lawsuit alleging feds bullied social media platforms | The unemployment rate in Kansas has been under 3% for 30 months | Sean Diller mourns the senseless loss of another progressive Colorado Democrat, as incumbent State Representative Elisabeth Epps was defeated in a primary this week | IL Gov JB Pritzker announces new Department of Early ChildhoodFrom Eugene Daniels at Politoco: Dems freak out over Biden's debate performancehttps://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/27/biden-debate-opening-concerns-00165595One prominent operative texted, “Time for an open convention.”President Joe Biden stands on stage during a commercial break in a presidential debate at CNN Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. | Francis Chung/POLITICOBy EUGENE DANIELS06/27/2024 10:15 PM EDTUpdated: 06/27/2024 10:27 PM EDTPresident Joe Biden opened the debate with a raspy voice and disjointed, rambling answers, reigniting Democratic concerns about his age and ability to take on former President Donald Trump.Many of the president's answers were hard to follow. At one point, seemingly losing his train of thought, Biden said “we finally beat Medicare,” misspeaking about his own policy on earned benefits.In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over “What did he just say? This is crazy.”Another veteran Democratic operative texted, “Biden seems to have needed a few minutes to warm up. I wonder if the lack of an audience was the right decision. And poor guy needs a tea. Maybe a whiskey.”An attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire said, “Biden is toast — calling it now.”Biden's rambling answers provided Trump multiple opportunities to jump in with retorts. At one point, after an answer ostensibly on immigration, Trump said, “I don't know what he said at the end there. I don't think he knows what he said.”The president's performance was widely panned online and will likely reinforce the impression that he's lost a step. The 81-year-old president's age has long been a liability, with poll after poll showing even many Democrats concerned about his age.Biden aides and allies had hoped the on-stage split screen between the two men would help to focus voters' attention on the race. But during the debate, many Democrats have begun to doubt that strategy would actually work out in Biden's favor.A person familiar with Biden's health claimed that his performance is due to a cold. But the president's team hadn't mentioned that to reporters until Biden began to answer questions in the debate.One prominent operative texted, “Time for an open convention.”Better call the waaaambulance! Supreme Court rejects Missouri AG's petition trying to connect the government, to social media, to his own challenges and inadequacies.https://missouriindependent.com/2024/06/26/scotus-rejects-suit-alleging-federal-government-bullied-social-media-into-censoring-content/SCOTUS rejects Missouri lawsuit alleging feds bullied social media into censoring contentThe lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who were either banned or throttled by social media companiesBY: JASON HANCOCK - JUNE 26, 2024 9:15 AMThe U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected arguments by Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online.In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court held that neither the states nor seven individuals who were co-plaintiffs in the case were able to demonstrate any harm or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.Therefore, they do not have legal standing to bring a case against the federal government.Plaintiffs failed to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion, Barrett wrote, rather than their own judgment and policies. In fact, she wrote, social media platforms “began to suppress the plaintiffs' COVID–19 content before the defendants' challenged communications started.”Plaintiffs cannot “manufacture standing,” Barrett wrote, “merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.”The ruling overturns a lower court decision that concluded officials under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove deceptive or inaccurate content out of fears it would fuel vaccine hesitancy or upend elections.Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey called the federal government's actions “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation's history.”But those arguments were greeted with skepticism by the court in March, with justices from across the ideological spectrum punching holes in the lawsuit and raising concerns about the consequences for public safety and national security.In an emailed statement, Bailey made no mention of the court's decision to dismiss the case, instead declaring that his office will continue to pursue evidence of social media censorship by the federal government.“Missouri is not done,” Bailey said. “We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden's vast censorship enterprise once and for all.”The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who either were banned from a platform or whose posts were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and X, then known as Twitter.Among the co-plaintiffs is Jim Hoft, founder of the St. Louis-based right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft has built a career on promulgating false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama's birth certificate.His company recently filed for bankruptcy as it faces defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado filed by people who say they faced threats after being vilified by Gateway Pundit in false stories.Hoft claims claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story at the urging of the federal government. But Barrett wrote that Twitter acted according to its own rules against posting or sharing “privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.”There is no evidence, Barrett wrote, that Twitter adopted its policy in response to pressure from the federal government.3. Kansas unemployment has been under 3% for almost 3 years runninghttps://kansasreflector.com/briefs/kansas-unemployment-rate-climbs-for-second-consecutive-month-to-2-9-in-may/Kansas unemployment rate 2.9%BY: TIM CARPENTER - JUNE 24, 2024 3:30 PMTOPEKA — The unemployment rate in Kansas was 2.9% in May, for an unprecedented 30 consecutive months with unemployment under 3%. The state's unemployment rate has remained under 3% since October 2021, after reaching double-digits in the twilight of Trump's presidency in 2020.In the past 12 months, Kansas' total nonfarm employment climbed by 24,000 jobs. The Department of Labor says that was due to a surge of 18,700 private sector positions and the addition of 5,300 government jobs.The average nominal hourly earnings in Kansas for private sector workers has increased 3.4% over the past 12 months to $30.09.4.  Go along to get along type wins Colorado blue seat primaryhttps://coloradonewsline.com/2024/06/25/camacho-leads-epps-in-closely-watched-colorado-statehouse-race/Camacho beats Epps in closely watched Colorado statehouse raceBY: SARA WILSON - JUNE 25, 2024 10:07 PM   Challenger Sean Camacho defeated Rep. Elisabeth Epps in the Democratic primary for state House District 6, according to early results from the Colorado secretary of state.Camacho was ahead with 63% of the vote, according to the results as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and Associated Press-subscribed outlets reported that the AP called the race for Camacho.Camacho was the establishment-backed candidate. Epps was the more progressive, yet controversial, first-term lawmaker. The race was seen as a bellwether among many state Capitol observers.Epps, who heads the Colorado Freedom Fund, won her first term in office in 2022 after another tough primary challenge from Katie March. During her two years in office, she championed progressive legislation including a ban on most semi-automatic firearms and a bill to allow overdose authorization centers. She also publicly criticized House leadership over their handling of floor speech and open meetings practices. She was reprimanded by House leadership after she joined pro-Palestinian protestors in the chamber gallery during a special session last fall.Epps was backed by labor and grassroots groups including the AFL-CIO and SEIU Local 105.Camacho had endorsements from the Democratic establishment of Colorado, including Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Senate President Steve Fenberg.Camacho vastly outraised and outspent Epps, according to campaign finance records. He also benefited from outside spending. Various committees spent over $120,000 for communications opposing Epps and over $250,000 supporting him. That included a series of negative mailers targeting Epps.5. IL Gov JB Pritzker signs bill creating new Depaartment of Early Childhoodhttps://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/pritzker-signs-bill-creating-new-department-of-early-childhoodPritzker signs bill creating new Department of Early ChildhoodGov. JB Pritzker holds up Senate Bill 1 after signing it into law, flanked by Reps. Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, and Will Davis, D-Homewood (left) and lead Senate sponsor Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood (right). Pritzker said the agency is expected to be up and running in 2026. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)Tuesday, June 25, 2024New agency to bring multiple programs under one roofBy PETER HANCOCKCapitol News Illinoisphancock@capitolnewsillinois.comSPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Tuesday creating a new cabinet-level state agency dedicated to early childhood education and development.The new Department of Early Childhood, which will become operational in July 2026, will take over programs currently housed across three state agencies, including funding for preschool programs, child care centers and the licensing of day care centers.Speaking at a bill signing ceremony at a preschool in Chicago, Pritzker said the streamlined agency  should make it easier for new parents to access critical services for their children.“It's hard enough juggling all the responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of parents,” he said. “And on top of that, they shouldn't have to navigate a complex bureaucracy to get the care that they and their children deserve.”  A chalkboard welcome sign for Gov. JB Pritzker inside Eyes On The Future Child Development Center in Chicago's far north side neighborhood of Rogers Park. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 1 there, which will create the framework for a new state agency geared towards early childhood development. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)  Pritzker first unveiled his plan for a consolidated agency last fall, just as lawmakers were beginning their annual fall veto session, when he issued an executive order establishing an Office of Early Childhood within the governor's office. Read more: Pritzker proposes creation of new standalone early childhood agencyThat order directed the Department of Human Services, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Illinois State Board of Education to begin working on a transition plan to move the administration of their early childhood programs into a new agency.The formal bid to establish the new agency was part of Pritzker's budget proposal to the General Assembly in February, along with a second year of increased funding for those programs under Pritzker's Smart Start initiative.Under the plan, the new agency will take over the Early Childhood Block Grant program from the State Board of Education, which funds the Preschool for All and Prevention Initiative programs; the Child Care Assistance Program, Home Visiting programs, and Early Intervention Services currently housed in the Department of Human Services; and licensing of day care facilities, which is currently managed by the Department of Children and Family Services.The legislation authorizing the new agency, Senate Bill 1, passed unanimously in the Senate in April, and last month passed with bipartisan support in the House, 93-18.“The foundation of a child's success and well-being is built starting the moment they are born,” Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “As a state, it is our duty to provide the necessary support and resources to build such stability. The creation of this unique agency will break ground on our transition to a whole, trauma-informed approach to meeting children's diverse needs.”  Gov. JB Pritzker poses for photos with early childhood advocates following a signing event for Senate Bill 1, which creates the Department of Early Childhood. Pritzker said the agency will immediately “make life simpler, better, and fairer for tens of thousands of Illinois families.” (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)Much of the debate over the bill in the legislature focused on the cost of launching a new state agency. Lawmakers appropriated $14 million in the upcoming fiscal year for initial startup costs, which include such things as hiring executive staff and opening new office space.But administration officials were reluctant to provide estimates of how much the new agency would cost annually once it's fully operational, and whether those administrative costs would outweigh what the state is spending currently.Responding to questions from reporters Tuesday, Pritzker again declined to offer specific cost estimates but suggested consolidating the programs into a single agency could result in efficiencies and cost savings. But he did chide “people who want to complain” about how new state agencies will “cost...taxpayers.”  “I really don't think it will,” Pritzker said. “I think there's real efficiency and taking programs that are desperately located in different departments and bringing them all together.”Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association. @TheHeartlandPOD on Twitter and ThreadsCo-HostsAdam Sommer @Adam_Sommer85 (Twitter) @adam_sommer85 (Threads)Rachel Parker @msraitchetp (Threads) Sean Diller (no social)The Heartland Collective - Sign Up Today!JOIN PATREON FOR MORE - AND JOIN OUR SOCIAL NETWORK!“Change The Conversation”Outro Song: “The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium http://www.americanaquarium.com/

Biden bombs, Trump pounces in first debate of 2024 | Supreme Court rejects Missouri lawsuit alleging feds bullied social media platforms | The unemployment rate in Kansas has been under 3% for 30 months | Sean Diller mourns the senseless loss of another progressive Colorado Democrat, as incumbent State Representative Elisabeth Epps was defeated in a primary this week | IL Gov JB Pritzker announces new Department of Early ChildhoodFrom Eugene Daniels at Politoco: Dems freak out over Biden's debate performancehttps://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/27/biden-debate-opening-concerns-00165595One prominent operative texted, “Time for an open convention.”President Joe Biden stands on stage during a commercial break in a presidential debate at CNN Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. | Francis Chung/POLITICOBy EUGENE DANIELS06/27/2024 10:15 PM EDTUpdated: 06/27/2024 10:27 PM EDTPresident Joe Biden opened the debate with a raspy voice and disjointed, rambling answers, reigniting Democratic concerns about his age and ability to take on former President Donald Trump.Many of the president's answers were hard to follow. At one point, seemingly losing his train of thought, Biden said “we finally beat Medicare,” misspeaking about his own policy on earned benefits.In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over “What did he just say? This is crazy.”Another veteran Democratic operative texted, “Biden seems to have needed a few minutes to warm up. I wonder if the lack of an audience was the right decision. And poor guy needs a tea. Maybe a whiskey.”An attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire said, “Biden is toast — calling it now.”Biden's rambling answers provided Trump multiple opportunities to jump in with retorts. At one point, after an answer ostensibly on immigration, Trump said, “I don't know what he said at the end there. I don't think he knows what he said.”The president's performance was widely panned online and will likely reinforce the impression that he's lost a step. The 81-year-old president's age has long been a liability, with poll after poll showing even many Democrats concerned about his age.Biden aides and allies had hoped the on-stage split screen between the two men would help to focus voters' attention on the race. But during the debate, many Democrats have begun to doubt that strategy would actually work out in Biden's favor.A person familiar with Biden's health claimed that his performance is due to a cold. But the president's team hadn't mentioned that to reporters until Biden began to answer questions in the debate.One prominent operative texted, “Time for an open convention.”Better call the waaaambulance! Supreme Court rejects Missouri AG's petition trying to connect the government, to social media, to his own challenges and inadequacies.https://missouriindependent.com/2024/06/26/scotus-rejects-suit-alleging-federal-government-bullied-social-media-into-censoring-content/SCOTUS rejects Missouri lawsuit alleging feds bullied social media into censoring contentThe lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who were either banned or throttled by social media companiesBY: JASON HANCOCK - JUNE 26, 2024 9:15 AMThe U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected arguments by Missouri and Louisiana that the federal government violated the First Amendment in its efforts to combat false, misleading and dangerous information online.In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court held that neither the states nor seven individuals who were co-plaintiffs in the case were able to demonstrate any harm or substantial risk that they will suffer an injury in the future.Therefore, they do not have legal standing to bring a case against the federal government.Plaintiffs failed to prove that social media platforms acted due to government coercion, Barrett wrote, rather than their own judgment and policies. In fact, she wrote, social media platforms “began to suppress the plaintiffs' COVID–19 content before the defendants' challenged communications started.”Plaintiffs cannot “manufacture standing,” Barrett wrote, “merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is not certainly impending.”The ruling overturns a lower court decision that concluded officials under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove deceptive or inaccurate content out of fears it would fuel vaccine hesitancy or upend elections.Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey called the federal government's actions “the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation's history.”But those arguments were greeted with skepticism by the court in March, with justices from across the ideological spectrum punching holes in the lawsuit and raising concerns about the consequences for public safety and national security.In an emailed statement, Bailey made no mention of the court's decision to dismiss the case, instead declaring that his office will continue to pursue evidence of social media censorship by the federal government.“Missouri is not done,” Bailey said. “We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden's vast censorship enterprise once and for all.”The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana, along with seven people who either were banned from a platform or whose posts were not prominently featured on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and X, then known as Twitter.Among the co-plaintiffs is Jim Hoft, founder of the St. Louis-based right-wing conspiracy website Gateway Pundit. Hoft has built a career on promulgating false conspiracies on a wide range of topics, from the 2018 Parkland school shooting to former President Barack Obama's birth certificate.His company recently filed for bankruptcy as it faces defamation lawsuits in Missouri and Colorado filed by people who say they faced threats after being vilified by Gateway Pundit in false stories.Hoft claims claims that Twitter, in December 2020, censored content about the Hunter Biden laptop story at the urging of the federal government. But Barrett wrote that Twitter acted according to its own rules against posting or sharing “privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.”There is no evidence, Barrett wrote, that Twitter adopted its policy in response to pressure from the federal government.3. Kansas unemployment has been under 3% for almost 3 years runninghttps://kansasreflector.com/briefs/kansas-unemployment-rate-climbs-for-second-consecutive-month-to-2-9-in-may/Kansas unemployment rate 2.9%BY: TIM CARPENTER - JUNE 24, 2024 3:30 PMTOPEKA — The unemployment rate in Kansas was 2.9% in May, for an unprecedented 30 consecutive months with unemployment under 3%. The state's unemployment rate has remained under 3% since October 2021, after reaching double-digits in the twilight of Trump's presidency in 2020.In the past 12 months, Kansas' total nonfarm employment climbed by 24,000 jobs. The Department of Labor says that was due to a surge of 18,700 private sector positions and the addition of 5,300 government jobs.The average nominal hourly earnings in Kansas for private sector workers has increased 3.4% over the past 12 months to $30.09.4.  Go along to get along type wins Colorado blue seat primaryhttps://coloradonewsline.com/2024/06/25/camacho-leads-epps-in-closely-watched-colorado-statehouse-race/Camacho beats Epps in closely watched Colorado statehouse raceBY: SARA WILSON - JUNE 25, 2024 10:07 PM   Challenger Sean Camacho defeated Rep. Elisabeth Epps in the Democratic primary for state House District 6, according to early results from the Colorado secretary of state.Camacho was ahead with 63% of the vote, according to the results as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and Associated Press-subscribed outlets reported that the AP called the race for Camacho.Camacho was the establishment-backed candidate. Epps was the more progressive, yet controversial, first-term lawmaker. The race was seen as a bellwether among many state Capitol observers.Epps, who heads the Colorado Freedom Fund, won her first term in office in 2022 after another tough primary challenge from Katie March. During her two years in office, she championed progressive legislation including a ban on most semi-automatic firearms and a bill to allow overdose authorization centers. She also publicly criticized House leadership over their handling of floor speech and open meetings practices. She was reprimanded by House leadership after she joined pro-Palestinian protestors in the chamber gallery during a special session last fall.Epps was backed by labor and grassroots groups including the AFL-CIO and SEIU Local 105.Camacho had endorsements from the Democratic establishment of Colorado, including Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Senate President Steve Fenberg.Camacho vastly outraised and outspent Epps, according to campaign finance records. He also benefited from outside spending. Various committees spent over $120,000 for communications opposing Epps and over $250,000 supporting him. That included a series of negative mailers targeting Epps.5. IL Gov JB Pritzker signs bill creating new Depaartment of Early Childhoodhttps://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/pritzker-signs-bill-creating-new-department-of-early-childhoodPritzker signs bill creating new Department of Early ChildhoodGov. JB Pritzker holds up Senate Bill 1 after signing it into law, flanked by Reps. Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, and Will Davis, D-Homewood (left) and lead Senate sponsor Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood (right). Pritzker said the agency is expected to be up and running in 2026. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)Tuesday, June 25, 2024New agency to bring multiple programs under one roofBy PETER HANCOCKCapitol News Illinoisphancock@capitolnewsillinois.comSPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Tuesday creating a new cabinet-level state agency dedicated to early childhood education and development.The new Department of Early Childhood, which will become operational in July 2026, will take over programs currently housed across three state agencies, including funding for preschool programs, child care centers and the licensing of day care centers.Speaking at a bill signing ceremony at a preschool in Chicago, Pritzker said the streamlined agency  should make it easier for new parents to access critical services for their children.“It's hard enough juggling all the responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of parents,” he said. “And on top of that, they shouldn't have to navigate a complex bureaucracy to get the care that they and their children deserve.”  A chalkboard welcome sign for Gov. JB Pritzker inside Eyes On The Future Child Development Center in Chicago's far north side neighborhood of Rogers Park. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 1 there, which will create the framework for a new state agency geared towards early childhood development. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)  Pritzker first unveiled his plan for a consolidated agency last fall, just as lawmakers were beginning their annual fall veto session, when he issued an executive order establishing an Office of Early Childhood within the governor's office. Read more: Pritzker proposes creation of new standalone early childhood agencyThat order directed the Department of Human Services, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Illinois State Board of Education to begin working on a transition plan to move the administration of their early childhood programs into a new agency.The formal bid to establish the new agency was part of Pritzker's budget proposal to the General Assembly in February, along with a second year of increased funding for those programs under Pritzker's Smart Start initiative.Under the plan, the new agency will take over the Early Childhood Block Grant program from the State Board of Education, which funds the Preschool for All and Prevention Initiative programs; the Child Care Assistance Program, Home Visiting programs, and Early Intervention Services currently housed in the Department of Human Services; and licensing of day care facilities, which is currently managed by the Department of Children and Family Services.The legislation authorizing the new agency, Senate Bill 1, passed unanimously in the Senate in April, and last month passed with bipartisan support in the House, 93-18.“The foundation of a child's success and well-being is built starting the moment they are born,” Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “As a state, it is our duty to provide the necessary support and resources to build such stability. The creation of this unique agency will break ground on our transition to a whole, trauma-informed approach to meeting children's diverse needs.”  Gov. JB Pritzker poses for photos with early childhood advocates following a signing event for Senate Bill 1, which creates the Department of Early Childhood. Pritzker said the agency will immediately “make life simpler, better, and fairer for tens of thousands of Illinois families.” (Capitol News Illinois photo by Dilpreet Raju)Much of the debate over the bill in the legislature focused on the cost of launching a new state agency. Lawmakers appropriated $14 million in the upcoming fiscal year for initial startup costs, which include such things as hiring executive staff and opening new office space.But administration officials were reluctant to provide estimates of how much the new agency would cost annually once it's fully operational, and whether those administrative costs would outweigh what the state is spending currently.Responding to questions from reporters Tuesday, Pritzker again declined to offer specific cost estimates but suggested consolidating the programs into a single agency could result in efficiencies and cost savings. But he did chide “people who want to complain” about how new state agencies will “cost...taxpayers.”  “I really don't think it will,” Pritzker said. “I think there's real efficiency and taking programs that are desperately located in different departments and bringing them all together.”Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association. @TheHeartlandPOD on Twitter and ThreadsCo-HostsAdam Sommer @Adam_Sommer85 (Twitter) @adam_sommer85 (Threads)Rachel Parker @msraitchetp (Threads) Sean Diller (no social)The Heartland Collective - Sign Up Today!JOIN PATREON FOR MORE - AND JOIN OUR SOCIAL NETWORK!“Change The Conversation”Outro Song: “The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium http://www.americanaquarium.com/

Mullissa Willette, President of the Service Employees International Union Local 521, and Josh Sturm, Chief Revenue Officer at Color Health, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the reasons union members are receiving cancer diagnoses at a higher rate than average, and how Color Health is helping union members receive quality care. Lawrence Abbott, a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 70, delegate to the Alameda Labor Council and Labor Caucus Co-Chair for Move to Amend, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss that group's effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to remove money and lobbying from politics and pave a way to improve labor laws.

Not every job will have us excited to get up in the morning. Sometimes, we have to take positions to pay the bills. But if you see an opening that excites you, Find Your Dream Job guest Arturo Rodriguez Flores says you should go all in on the opportunity. Arturo suggests using that excitement to fuel your cover letter writing and to research the company for the interview process. Excitement over a position will lead you to know where the company is, where they're going, and how you can help them get there, says Arturo.  About Our Guest: Arturo Rodriguez (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arturo-rodriguez-flores-992281203/) Flores is a recruitment strategist at SEIU Local 503. (https://seiu503.org/) It's one of the largest labor unions in the state of Oregon.  Resources in This Episode: Want to know more about Arturo and his work with SEIU Local 503? Connect with him on LinkedIn.  From our Sponsor: Find Your Dream Job is brought to you by TopResume.(http://macslist.org/topresume) Top Resume has helped more than 400,000 professionals land more interviews and get hired faster. Get a free review of your resume today from one of Top Resume's expert writers. (http://macslist.org/topresume)

This Day in Legal History: UK's House of Lords Becomes Elected BodyOn March 7, 2007, a pivotal moment in British legal and political history unfolded as the House of Commons, Britain's lower house of Parliament, voted in favor of transforming the House of Lords into an elected body. This significant decision marked the beginning of the end for the centuries-old tradition of appointments based on noble birth, a system that had shaped the composition of the United Kingdom's upper chamber of Parliament. For hundreds of years, the House of Lords had been composed largely of hereditary peers, bishops, and appointed life peers, a reflection of a hierarchical society rooted in aristocracy and privilege.The vote by the House of Commons was not just a legislative act; it was a profound statement about the evolution of democratic principles and the push for greater accountability and representation in the UK's legislative process. The move towards an elected House of Lords aimed to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Parliament by ensuring that members of the upper house were chosen by the public or their representatives, rather than by accident of birth or political appointment.This historic vote was the culmination of years of debate and reform efforts aimed at modernizing the United Kingdom's parliamentary system. Previous attempts to reform the House of Lords, including the significant House of Lords Act of 1999, which removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House, laid the groundwork for this dramatic shift. The 2007 vote was a clear indication of the changing attitudes towards governance and representation, emphasizing the importance of aligning the UK's legislative bodies with contemporary democratic standards.The decision to make the House of Lords an elected body faced both applause and criticism. Proponents argued that it would lead to a more democratic and transparent legislative process, while detractors raised concerns about the potential implications for the balance of power and the traditional roles of the Houses of Parliament. Regardless of the varied opinions, the vote on March 7, 2007, remains a landmark in the journey towards reforming one of the oldest parliamentary institutions in the world, reflecting the ongoing evolution of democracy and governance in the United Kingdom.The Dartmouth College men's basketball team's decision to unionize, with a 13-2 vote in favor of being represented by the Service Employees International Union on March 5, could potentially initiate a wave of unionization across Ivy League schools. This move comes after a protracted legal battle culminating in a National Labor Relations Board official's February 5 decision, recognizing the athletes as employees under the National Labor Relations Act, despite Dartmouth College's ongoing appeal. This decision represents a significant challenge to the NCAA, which has been entrenched in legal disputes regarding athletes' labor and employment rights. Dartmouth's case, while seemingly atypical due to the school's lower-profile athletic program and lack of scholarships or deals for name, image, and likeness (NIL) for its players, reflects a broader discontent with current NCAA policies. Economic and legal experts suggest that the lack of NIL deals makes unionization more appealing for athletes at Ivy League schools, where players often balance academics, sports, and part-time jobs without athletic scholarships.The resurgence of union activity at Dartmouth, highlighted by undergraduate dining hall workers' successful organization with SEIU Local 560, demonstrates a wider trend of labor organizing in higher education. The legal struggle for the Dartmouth basketball team is far from over, indicating that future unionization efforts at other institutions may encounter similar challenges. Dartmouth College's steadfast position that its athletes are not employees, juxtaposed with the NLRB's contrasting view, underscores the ongoing debate over the classification and compensation of college athletes. This case, and the broader movement it may inspire, challenges longstanding norms regarding athlete compensation and labor rights in college sports, signaling a potentially transformative period in the relationship between student-athletes and collegiate athletic programs.Dartmouth Players' Vote Poised to Spark Ivy League Union WaveCigna Group has entered into agreements with Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S to enhance coverage for obesity medications, specifically aiming to mitigate the financial burden on employer-sponsored health plans for drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. These deals, orchestrated through Cigna's Express Scripts pharmacy benefits manager, introduce a novel financial guarantee, capping annual spending increases for these medications at 15%. This initiative is designed to broaden access to these in-demand treatments by offering companies a safeguard against the soaring costs associated with GLP-1 treatments. Adam Kautzner, president of Cigna's Express Scripts, highlighted the unprecedented demand for weight-loss medications and the financial strain they impose on employers, with some witnessing annual spending surges of 40% to 50%.Express Scripts, serving 120 million individuals under various health plans, is now offering EncircleRx, a program that besides the drug coverage, includes patient support aimed at fostering lifestyle changes essential for the drugs' effectiveness. This program represents a strategic response to the challenges of covering high-cost obesity treatments, providing a structured framework for managing these expenses. Despite the reluctance of Lilly and Novo to discuss the specifics of their agreements with Cigna, these partnerships signal a significant shift towards addressing the affordability and accessibility of obesity treatments. The deals reflect a broader industry challenge in balancing drug costs with patient access, amidst calls from insurers for drug manufacturers to lower prices. Cigna's move to revise its long-term earnings growth forecast upwards underscores the financial implications and potential benefits of these strategic agreements in managing the costs of high-demand medications.Cigna Strikes Deals With Lilly, Novo for More Obesity CoverageThe Republican-led House Oversight Committee has formally requested Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, to testify in an open hearing on March 20 as part of their ongoing impeachment investigation into the president. This inquiry has scrutinized Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China during the time his father was vice president from 2009 to 2017, although no evidence implicating Joe Biden in any wrongdoing has been found. Alongside Hunter Biden, the committee also extended invitations to three of his former business associates to appear for testimony. Despite previous indications from Hunter Biden that he would only testify publicly, he participated in a closed-door deposition with the committee last month after facing potential contempt charges. During this contentious deposition, Hunter Biden emphasized that his father had no involvement in or benefit from his business activities. Hunter Biden's legal team has acknowledged receipt of the committee's latest request and plans to respond in writing.US House Republicans ask Hunter Biden to testify in open March 20 hearing | ReutersFTX and BlockFi, both of which declared bankruptcy in 2022, have reached a settlement agreement where FTX will pay BlockFi up to $874 million. This settlement follows lawsuits between the two companies over financial dealings and loans made to each other before their respective financial collapses. A significant part of the settlement, $250 million, is to be prioritized for BlockFi, with the balance contingent on FTX's ability to repay its own customers and creditors. The relationship between the two firms became complicated after a market crash in 2022 exposed FTX's misuse of customer funds, leading to BlockFi turning to FTX for rescue financing. Furthermore, FTX has committed to an additional payment of $185.3 million to BlockFi to cover funds held in FTX trading accounts at the time of the collapse. Despite the agreement, full repayment to FTX customers remains uncertain, and BlockFi has indicated that it is unlikely to fully repay its interest-bearing account holders, projecting that they might only recover between 39.4% and 100% of their account values. The deal also includes BlockFi's decision to withdraw its lawsuit concerning 56 million Robinhood shares previously pledged as collateral, which were seized by the U.S. Department of Justice following FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest and subsequent conviction for embezzling $8 billion from FTX customers.FTX reaches settlement with BlockFi, may pay up to $874 million | Reuters Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Reese, Kmac, Pam and Alex discuss Wake Forest's disappointing loss last night and Dartmouth's decision to unionize. The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 70-69 last night. What's wrong with Wake Forest? Will Wake Forest get in the tournament? The Dartmouth men's basketball team voted 13-2 to join SEIU Local 560, making it the first unionized college sports team in the country. Why did they do this? What does this mean?

To succeed, any social movement needs people power. And, as the great Ella Baker preached, that takes a lot of slow, respectful work to forge relationships — what she called “spadework.” Base-building is the first of the “seven strategies to change the world” that we elaborate on in our book Practical Radicals. And base-building is so important that all of the other six strategies depend on it. So we've decided to devote two episodes to the topic: one on unions and one on community organizing.  Today's episode focuses on base-building in the labor movement, especially the thrilling upsurge in Minnesota, where workers next week (March 2-9, 2024) are preparing to launch a massive, unprecedented general strike. Our guest is Greg Nammacher, president of SEIU Local 26, which represents janitorial, security, airport, and retail workers, and is a key player in this upcoming week of action. When he came to the local sixteen years ago, it was led by Javier Morillo, who wanted to usher in a new era of union democracy and militancy. And it worked! Local 26's membership has doubled, and by embracing base-building and a “bargaining for the common good” framework, and not being afraid to strike, they've won astonishing victories that point the way for union success around the country. Nammacher's interview is full of gems organizers need to hear: how to foster unity when members speak many languages; how to build “alignments,” not just coalitions or alliances; how to make organizing fun; and how to use social media smartly to build worker networks.  Greg says American labor is in “an incredible moment, and we won't get a lot of these. And so how do we make the most of it so that our members can have better lives and we can have a long-term voice of power in this country?” Minnesota Week of Action Fund: https://workingpartnerships.betterworld.org/campaigns/weekofactionfund Schedule of Events for Week of Action in Minnesota (March 2-9) Episode 3 transcript Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker

From the massive data breaches affecting millions globally, including the largest-ever breach for French citizens, to Nvidia's strategic leap over Amazon in market value, we cover the digital landscape's pressing issues and innovations. Plus, we break down Microsoft's February 2024 Patch Tuesday, addressing critical zero-days and enhancing digital safety. Join us as we explore the implications of these developments for the future of technology and cybersecurity. Original URLs for Each Article: Aircraft Leasing Company Cyberattack: Dark Reading Article Integris Health Data Breach: BleepingComputer Article Bank of America Customer Data Leak: Dark Reading Article Islamic Nonprofit Infiltration: Dark Reading Article French Citizens Data Breach: France TV Info Article Black Basta and Hyundai Motor Europe: Dark Reading Article on Black Basta LockBit and SEIU Local 1000: Dark Reading Article on Subway LockBit Investigation Nvidia's Sovereign AI: Nvidia Blog, Ars Technica Article Microsoft February 2024 Patch Tuesday: Trend Micro Research on CVE-2024-21412, BleepingComputer Article on Microsoft's Patch Thanks to Jered Jones for providing the music for this episode. Find him on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/37xLl4KR8hJ5jBuS8zYjQN?si=W75mgw68SsmCb7Zfu5ESeg Transcript: [00:00:00] Good morning listeners. And thanks for tuning in on Valentine's day. Sadly, I do not have anything Valentines related, uh, watch out for romance scams. As always. But we do have two very thrilling stories and a new segment. I'm calling. They got popped. We're going to be talking about. Nvidia and their leap towards sovereign AI and market dominance. And we're also going to be bringing [00:01:00] you the updates from yesterdays patch Tuesday. All right. So first up in an effort to avoid overly discussing data breaches, I'm going to compact them all for you and give them to you. At once. And to help me do this, to help me react to the severity of these breaches, I've brought in my brand new AI girlfriend. Uh, let's name her Tina. Let's kick it off. They got popped. Yes, Tina. Yes, they did. Okay. So first up we have airplanes. Yes, Tina. Yes. Planes, a commercial engine aircraft leasing. Named Willis. Lease finance Corp. Said it suffered a cybersecurity incident on January 31st and [00:02:00] it got its systems knocked offline. Uh, next we have the healthcare sector. Yes, believe it or not. The healthcare sector was just popped Integris health. Last November disclosed personal information, belonging to almost 2.4 million people was exposed. You heard about it yesterday? But bank of America got popped. Yeah, they seem so serious and significant, but yeah, they got popped. The details are in yesterday's episode, but it affected around 57,000 customers. We're going international with an Islamic nonprofit from Saudi Arabia. That's not fair. Saudi Arabia, nonprofit was infiltrated for over three years. By a silent back door. We've got two French companies. No, the baguettes are not even safe. VM muddy and Al Murray. They're both managed third party payments for health insurance [00:03:00] companies. And this combined exposure is the largest ever data breach for French citizens. Staying in Europe. We're talking about Hondai motor Europe. Hyundai. Yes. Uh, but I do love them. Black Basta has. Claim to have stolen three terabytes of data from the Hyundai motor group Europe. And if we talk about text data, that is a lot. And finally back state side. We've got California. A little outdated with the Arnold reference, but lock bit has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on service employees, international union local, 1000 in California. According to that ransomware gang, it's still 308 gigabytes of data from the union, including employee information, such as social security, numbers, salary information, and financial documents. So as always sign up for crediting credit monitoring. Change your passwords and keep an eye on those bank statements.[00:04:00] All right. So moving into our first real news article story of the day, it's coming to us from ARS Technica, and it is discussing. NVIDIA's CEO Jensen, Hong. Is championing the concept of sovereign AI amid the company, significant leap over Amazon in market value. So that's pretty amazing because Amazon's pretty important. Basically the NVIDIA's CEO is proposing a future where each country controls its own AI destiny. This vision termed sovereign AI suggests a world where nations harness artificial intelligence to preserve their cultural heritage and societal norms. Hong announced this while speaking at the world government summit in Dubai and emphasize the importance of countries owning the production of their own intelligence. So this idea, isn't just about data sovereignty. It's about embedding a nation's language, culture, and collective wisdom into the digital realm. The rise of Nvidia and the global [00:05:00] market. Now neck and neck with Amazon for market value is not just a financial milestone. It's a Testament to the growing importance of AI technology. NVIDIA's GPU's or graphical processing units are critical for AI development and have become indispensable in data centers around the world. Data centers that are used by Amazon. Microsoft Google and more notably open AI. This development underscores how essential AI and invidious technology have become to our digital infrastructure. Highlighting the company's influence in shaping the future of global technology and AI applications. So, this is pretty crazy. I knew Nvidia was doing great due to Bitcoin mining and AI, but I didn't know they were up there on the scale with Amazon. That's pretty cool. In 2019, I built my first computer. And I bought an Nvidia graphics processor, 2070, something like that for, I don't know, four or 500 bucks. Which has felt like a lot at the time.[00:06:00] And that is now over four years ago and that exact graphics processor is worth double it's worth 800 bucks brand new. In tech terms. Tech years are kind of like dog years. Like we progress so much faster in tech. So I, you know, expected that. Graphics processor to decline in value very rapidly. That's not to say that graphics processing hasn't improved much because. Yeah, it's almost even unusable. It's a great graphics processor, but not $800 worth. Good for you, Nvidia. And good for you. Whoever has bought stock in Nvidia, prior to Bitcoin mining and AI and all this stuff, because it's doing pretty well. Yesterday was Microsoft's monthly patch Tuesday. Valentine's day edition to zero days and a total of 73 security flaws. So just to [00:07:00] recap, a zero day is a vulnerability that was built into the initial software to the initial product. That. The company did not know existed. So the two, zero days that were patched were. To CVS. One was a windows SmartScreen security feature bypass, and the other was an internet shortcut files, security feature bypass. So the first one allowed attackers to bypass smart screens security checks by tricking users into opening malicious files. This vulnerability involved attackers exploiting the windows smart screen filter, which is a tool designed to screen out unrecognized apps. And files from the internet to protect users from malicious software by crafting a malicious file in a certain way. Attackers could deceive the smart screen filter into not recognizing the file as a threat. Which often involves manipulating metadata or the files digital signature to either appear benign or to mask its true nature. Once the user is convinced to open the file, believing it to be safe. The attacker could execute malicious [00:08:00] code on the victim system. So this is so huge when. We discussed this when talking about labeling AI content as well, but once the user gets confident, In a security measure, such as this label that identifies malicious files. When they see it, they're going to trust that it's there, and then when it's not there, they're going to trust that it was checked. So just like in the AI content, if people are used to seeing labels. I guess let's use. Corporate email as an example, we've all probably seen these banners on corporate emails that say. This email originated outside of the company, right? When we see that banner, we know to look at it. With a critical eye. But when we don't see that banner, something in our brain says it's safe because we know that that check exists. And when it's not there, it must be safe. Our guard is down when we don't see that banner. That's the same thing about this sort of check. And consumer confidence in [00:09:00] these checks. We trust that they're happening. And so attackers have found a way to exploit that trust. The other. Zero day vulnerability. That was patched yesterday. Is in a similar vein. This vulnerability specifically targets the way windows, processes, internet shortcut files. With respect to mark of the web or M O T w. So MTW is a security feature that assigns a quote zone. To files downloaded from the internet. So similarly, It starts tagging them. As less trusted. Than files originating from the local machine. When a file is tagged windows and various applications apply stricter security measures such as prompting users with warnings. Before execution, same thing. When we're used to seeing that warning and it doesn't come up, we assume it's safe. This basically just allows. Attackers to convince users to download malicious files. And also convinced them that those files are safe. 'cause that warning [00:10:00] didn't pop up. So we're glad Microsoft has patch these. It's just the lesson. Don't. Always trust. Security warnings and security features take your safety into your own hands when you can. Try to stick to downloading files from reputable sources. And if you're feeling advanced, you can go in. To Google and look up, check, sum and file integrity. Checking. Basically the file that is downloaded. From a reputable source. He has a certain signature. And once you get it onto your computer, you can check to see if that signature is still intact. But overall, make sure your systems are regularly patched with security updates, because that's the only way this update's going to get to your computer is by downloading the security updates. So. Make sure to patch. All right. That is it. I hope you guys have great plans for your Valentine's day today. And. We really appreciate you listening. We will talk to you more [00:11:00] tomorrow.

Sonoma County's airport, jail, and social services office, among other county services, are suffering from severe understaffing. According to a six-month investigative report by Sonoma's Press-Democrat, vacancy rates for key county positions range from 25% to 41%. Burnout, turnover and early retirements are contributing to the crisis. Meanwhile, frustrated county residents seeking assistance face long lines, interminable hold times, and busy phone signals. We'll talk about how Sonoma is trying to address these problems, which are common to many Bay Area counties. Guests: Emma Murphy, Sonoma County government and politics reporter, Santa Rosa Press-Democrat - Murphy co-authored the newspaper's investigative series on understaffing across Sonoma County departments Martin Espinoza, senior reporter of investigations team, Press Democrat - Espinoza co-authored the paper's investigation of understaffing across Sonoma County departments Janell Crane, director of human resources, Sonoma County Travis Balzarini, president, SEIU Local 1021 Sonoma County Chapter

Uber and Lyft drivers spoke in front of Minneapolis City Hall before a committee hearing about driver pay rates on Tuesday. Earlier this month, rideshare drivers held a one-day strike at the Minneapolis Saint Paul airport. This month another group of workers linked to the airport are organizing for higher wages and benefits. SEIU Local 26 represents the airport staff who provide services like cleaning cabins and pushing wheelchairs. Their contract is set to expire on Thursday. Sahan Journal reporter Alfonzo Galvan is following this story and he joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about it.

From October 4-6 of this year, the US experienced the largest healthcare worker strike in our history, when over 75,000 workers with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions went on a three-day strike against the healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. Then, on October 13, after warning that more strikes could be coming if a deal wasn't reached at the bargaining table, healthcare workers scored a major victory and reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser, which the union membership, accounting for over 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers across the country, voted to ratify in early November. As the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions stated in a press release upon the contract ratification, “In a historic victory for frontline healthcare workers, more than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers have overwhelmingly voted to ratify a new contract that will bolster patient safety, make critical investments in the healthcare workforce, and set a higher standard for the healthcare industry nationwide. Approved by a margin of 98.5%, the four-year contract is in effect from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2027, at hundreds of Kaiser facilities across California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.” In this mini-cast, we speak with Meg Niemi, President of SEIU Local 49, and Audrey Cardenas, a benefits support specialist at a Kaiser dental office in Oregon, about how Kaiser healthcare workers took on the bosses and won this new contract, and what that is going to mean for workers and patients alike moving forward. Additional links/info below… SEIU Local 49 website, Facebook page, and Twitter/X page SEIU United Healthcare Workers West website, Facebook page, and Twitter/X page Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions website and Twitter/X page Meg's Twitter/X page SEIU-UHW Press Release: "More than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers Ratify Landmark New Contract" Michael Sainato, The Guardian, "Kaiser Permanente and Unions Reach Deal after Healthcare Workers' Strike" Reuters, "Kaiser Healthcare Workers Ratify New Contract" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "35,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers Are Set to Strike, and the Future of US Healthcare Is at Stake (from 2021)" Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

From October 4-6 of this year, the US experienced the largest healthcare worker strike in our history, when over 75,000 workers with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions went on a three-day strike against the healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente. Then, on October 13, after warning that more strikes could be coming if a deal wasn't reached at the bargaining table, healthcare workers scored a major victory and reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser, which the union membership, accounting for over 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers across the country, voted to ratify in early November. As the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions stated in a press release upon the contract ratification, “In a historic victory for frontline healthcare workers, more than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers have overwhelmingly voted to ratify a new contract that will bolster patient safety, make critical investments in the healthcare workforce, and set a higher standard for the healthcare industry nationwide. Approved by a margin of 98.5%, the four-year contract is in effect from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2027, at hundreds of Kaiser facilities across California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.” In this mini-cast, we speak with Meg Niemi, President of SEIU Local 49, and Audrey Cardenas, a benefits support specialist at a Kaiser dental office in Oregon, about how Kaiser healthcare workers took on the bosses and won this new contract, and what that is going to mean for workers and patients alike moving forward.Additional links/info below…SEIU Local 49 website, Facebook page, and Twitter/X pageSEIU United Healthcare Workers West website, Facebook page, and Twitter/XpageCoalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions website and Twitter/X pageMeg's Twitter/X pageSEIU-UHW Press Release: "More than 85,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers Ratify Landmark New Contract"Michael Sainato, The Guardian, "Kaiser Permanente and Unions Reach Deal after Healthcare Workers' Strike"Reuters, "Kaiser Healthcare Workers Ratify New Contract"Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "35,000 Kaiser Permanente Workers Are Set to Strike, and the Future of US Healthcare Is at Stake (from 2021)"Permanent links below...Working People Patreon pageLeave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageIn These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageThe Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter pageFeatured Music...Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme SongPost-Production: Jules TaylorHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer:Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-podSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/newsletter-podLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews

On this topical show re-air, Crystal welcomes back Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union to walk through the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila Initiative, which was approved with over 82% of the vote in the November 2022 general election, and increased Tukwila's minimum wage to $18.99/hour for large businesses starting in July 2023. Katie details the broad, community-based coalition that was built and the thoughtful legwork and preparation that set the initiative up for success at the ballot box - from community surveys to signature gathering to Get Out The Vote, the campaign provides a template for how to build power through civic engagement. Crystal and Katie then talk about lessons learned, key takeaways, and what's next on the horizon for the Transit Riders Union. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB and the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.   Katie Wilson Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for Raise the Wage Tukwila.   Resources Minimum Wage and Fair Access to Additional Hours of Work | City of Tukwila   What's on the ballot: City of Tukwila Initiative Measure No. 1 | King County Elections   “Tukwila voters approve minimum wage hike” by Melissa Santos from Axios   “Tukwila minimum wage hike passing by huge margin” by Seattle Times staff from The Seattle Times   “The minimum wage movement is more mainstream than ever” by Guy Oron from Real Change News    “Transit Rider's Union Leads Coalition Seeking to Raise Tukwila's Minimum Wage” by Andrew Engelson from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. So today, I'm very excited to be welcoming back to the program, Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union. Welcome. [00:00:46] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal. [00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: I am very excited to talk about the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative, which was wildly successful and you played a really big role in. So I think just to start off - just recapping what the initiative was aiming to do. [00:01:07] Katie Wilson: Sure. So Raise the Wage Tukwila basically set out to, as the name suggests, raise the minimum wage in the City of Tukwila. And toward the beginning of this year, we did a lot of outreach to workers, to local businesses, to residents, to community organizations to put together our measure. And we decided to basically try to bring Tukwila's minimum wage up to more or less match the minimum wages in the neighboring cities of SeaTac and Seattle. [00:01:40] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. And so when you were going about - I guess - the planning for this, the idea for this, how did this begin? [00:01:49] Katie Wilson: So the Transit Riders Union, which is the organization that I work with and for - we started thinking about something like this campaign in the middle of last year. And at that point, we were doing a lot of work on renter protections with another coalition called Stay Housed, Stay Healthy. And as part of that work, we were trying to get cities all around the county to do more to protect renters, both with emergency protections and permanent protections. And that really got us thinking about what it would look like to do some deeper organizing in South King County. And so we began talking to lots of ally organizations and doing some outreach - and eventually settled on this idea of doing an initiative in the City of Tukwila. And the City of Tukwila is a really interesting place. It's a small city - it only has about maybe 20, a little over 20,000 residents. But it's a really big job center - so you have the Southcenter Mall down there and all of the retail jobs around there - so a lot of low wage workers are basically commuting from all over South King County and beyond to work at jobs in Tukwila. And so - we also thought that because Tukwila is nestled in between SeaTac and Seattle, it made a lot of sense to propose raising the minimum wage up to parity with those neighboring cities. [00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Now who is the coalition that you began this with? [00:03:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it's a really broad coalition. So there are a lot of community organizations that do work in Tukwila, especially with the many immigrant communities in Tukwila. So for example, there's the Congolese Integration Network, which was very involved, and African Community Housing and Development. And the Washington Community Action Network and Working Washington both really stepped up on helping us with some of the signature gathering and Get Out The Vote. And a number of labor unions who have members in Tukwila and South King County also really stepped up and helped out - including UFCW, including SEIU Local 6, Teamsters 117. So it was really a kind of a broad community and labor coalition that came together. [00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: Really strong coalition. How did you, or how did the coalition, go about writing the initiative and determining exactly what was right for Tukwila? [00:04:28] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so that process really began more than a year ago. And we basically talked to - on the one hand - policy experts, people who worked on minimum wage and other labor standards campaigns in Seattle and other places, even around the country. And we did a lot of talking to workers at Southcenter Mall. We did a couple of surveys where we had about 100 workers responding to survey questions about the issues that they face at work. And then of course just talking with all the organizations that were starting to come together in this coalition. We also did some door knocking just to Tukwila residents to take people's temperature on how they felt about something like this. And so through all that - and then I guess outreach to local businesses was an important part of that too - so we talked to, we would just walk into pretty much any local Tukwila business that we could find and try to talk to the owner about what they thought about this. And so through all that, we came up with our policy, which is pretty simple. It's basically raising the minimum wage to match SeaTac. There's some small differences in how we do the inflation adjustment, so it's going to go up year after year based on cost of living. And it's going to be a little bit on its kind of own trajectory, but very similar to SeaTac. And we have a graduated structure so that the new wage, which will be $18.99 next year, will go into effect on July 1st of 2023 for large businesses - ones with over 500 employees worldwide. And then we have a three-year phase-in for smaller businesses so that they'll be going up and basically match the large employer rate in 2025. And then there's an exemption for the very smallest businesses, with up to 15 employees and up to $2 million in annual revenue. So that really came out of those conversations. And then the other piece of the policy - which is important - is access-to-hours policies. So that basically means that employers have to offer available hours of work to existing part-time employees before they hire new employees or subcontractors. [00:06:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is actually a really big issue - there and across the board - and was really happy to see that addressed in the initiative. So going out - so now you've written the initiative - qualifying to get on the ballot involves getting a certain number of signatures from residents in the city. How did you go about that process? [00:07:20] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we began signature gathering around the end of March of this year. So our team - Transit Riders Union - we had two full-time people that we brought on to be organizers for this campaign. And we planned basically a campaign launch event around the end of March - brought together people from our coalition, Transit Riders Union members, volunteers - and so that was the kickoff of our signature gathering effort. And then after that, every Saturday we would have a big volunteer day where people would gather in the morning and we would send people out knocking on doors, gathering signatures. And then we also did more signature gathering during the week. So it was a pretty big effort. And in Tukwila, signature gathering basically means door knocking. So if you're doing an initiative in Seattle, there's a lot of big public events and public spaces, like outside the light rail station, where you can stand there outside and just talk to person after person as they walk by and ask them to sign your petition. The thing about Tukwila is that there's not really many public spaces where you're going to find Tukwila residents. So you could go to Southcenter Mall, but the vast majority of people that you talk to don't actually live in Tukwila. They're there for shopping or they're there for work, and they live somewhere else. So if you want to efficiently gather the signatures of Tukwila residents, you really have to find people at home. And so it was almost all door knocking. [00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: Which was really exciting to see, to watch from afar. And is, as you said, different than we've seen in a number of big cities and frankly, from a number of campaigns that have been really well-funded - is focusing a lot on tabling and transit stations, and going to those large events. So as you were planning the door knocking associated with this, were you taking advantage of that time to also educate the renters and homeowners on what this was, what it meant? What was that process like? [00:09:43] Katie Wilson: Yeah. I think part of the great thing about doing an initiative is that when you're out gathering signatures, you're also talking to the same people whose votes you're going to need in the fall. And so we were definitely - yeah, obviously talking to people about why this was important and also asking them questions like - do you work in Tukwila? Do you know anyone who will benefit from a minimum wage increase? And so building those relationships with Tukwila residents and voters right off the bat, I think, really helped us when it came to the fall because a lot of people remembered having signed the petition in the spring, so they were already aware that this was happening and we got to come back to them and say - hey, remember that thing that you signed? We got enough signatures, so it's going to be on the ballot for you to vote on, right? So there was an opportunity to talk to the same people multiple times during the campaign. And we also did some registration of new voters too. So we were able to knock on doors and talk to people who maybe had just moved from another city and needed to update their registration to be able to vote in Tukwila, or someone who was an immigrant who is just newly eligible for voting. So we were able to do some of that as well. [00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So was this a largely volunteer signature gathering effort? I think you said that there were paid canvassers involved. Were there other financial supports involved? How did this look financially and volunteer-wise? [00:11:18] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it was really a mixture. So we had a lot of volunteer signature gathering - again, like TRU members and volunteers who had just gotten involved in the campaign. Also, a lot of other organizations would bring out volunteers - the Seattle DSA - mostly during the Get Out The Vote portion of it, but definitely came out canvassing with us a number of times. And then we also had, on TRU's side, two staff organizers who were doing a lot of signature gathering as well. And then Washington Community Action Network has a canvassing team and they put in some time as well. So it was really a combination, I would say, probably roughly about half and half signatures gathered by volunteers versus signatures gathered by staff. [00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense - and then other people are looking at this, other organizations who may be considering initiatives to help improve things in their own communities. What are the biggest lessons that you learned about the signature gathering - going through this process - and what advice would you provide? [00:12:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think one thing is just that it is a lot of work. So yeah, don't underestimate how much work it is to go and gather what sounds like not a lot of signatures, right? We gathered over 3,000 signatures, but you have to expect that your validity rate is going to be very low, especially in a city like Tukwila, right - where you have a lot of - big proportion of renters, so people tend to move a little bit more often. Lots of non-citizens, so people might not realize that they're not able to sign it. And so we gathered over 3,000 signatures and we had plenty to qualify, but I think we had a little over 1,700 valid out of that. And door knocking is really intensive work, so you could spend basically all day knocking on doors gathering signatures and maybe you get 15-20 signatures at the end of that - just in terms of signatures per hour, signatures per day - it's a much slower process than it is, for example, in Seattle when you're just outside the Capitol Hill light rail station talking to 30 people an hour, right? And so that's one thing - is just don't underestimate the amount of work it is. But also, I think that - obviously our results in Tukwila were very, very good and there are, I think, a lot of reasons for that. But I do think that running an initiative is an opportunity to really just do some deep talking to voters and setting yourself up really well for people to come out and vote and know what they're voting on in the election itself. [00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: So thinking - you get to the point where you do get enough signatures, you do qualify - I guess one other question, just with the validation - because with these signature gathering processes, valid signatures have to come from registered voters, so you have to meet all the qualifications and be registered. How did you go about the validation process for making sure that out of the signatures that you collected, you determine which ones were actually valid? [00:14:40] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so it's ultimately - it's King County Elections that does the official validation. So you turn your signatures into the City Clerk and the City Clerk transmits them to King County Elections. And then King County Elections basically checks each signature, each entry against their voter file and the signature that they have on file for each voter. And what we were doing - before we turned in our signatures - we did our own rough verification process where basically we would - and we had an excellent volunteer data entry team from among TRU's membership who were doing this process, where basically they would - we would scan the petition sheets after we collected them. And then for each entry, we would check them against the Washington State voter file, which is a public document that you can download for purposes like this, and try to find that person to at least verify that they actually are a registered voter in Tukwila. Now, of course, we don't know what their signature looks like, right? So we can't actually match the signature that we got against the official signature, but we can at least try to find that name and that address and say - okay, yes, this is the person who is a registered voter at this address. And so that gave us a pretty good idea of how many valid signatures we had. And it also - what it allowed us to do - is then we had a list of hundreds of entries where we didn't find that person in the voter file. And so we were able to do some follow up with those people to, for example, try to help them get registered to vote if they were eligible, but not registered - or if they needed to update their voter registration information. [00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Okay, so you qualified. Now it's time to - knowing that you're going to be on the ballot - to make sure that voters know that this is going to be on the ballot and why they should vote for it. How did you go about putting together how to communicate this to the residents of Tukwila? [00:16:58] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think we did all the things that campaigns do. And so we prepared over the summer. And then after Labor Day, we kicked off our Get Out The Vote campaign. And we - the centerpiece of it, of course, was just more door knocking, right? And we had pledge-to-vote postcards that we were inviting people to sign - that we would then mail back to them when ballots dropped. So they would get an extra reminder from themselves to look for their ballot. And we also made refrigerator magnets that are - they look like a campaign button, except it's a magnet on the back instead of a pin. And so we would give people reminder-to-vote refrigerator magnets. And we also did door hangers, which we would leave at the door if no one answered. We did some mailers - we didn't do mailers to everyone because it's pretty expensive, but we carved out a subset of voters to do mailers for. We did a bunch of texting people. So yeah, really just all of the above - everything that you do to get the word out. We did a few yard signs. And really, I think we were expecting, when we went into this campaign, that we were going to have really strong, well-funded opposition from some of the business associations. And so we planned accordingly and did all the things that we would need to do in order to effectively fight a No campaign. We also got lots of media coverage, right? So we'd be in touch with all the TV news and the reporters trying to get news coverage of the campaign. So we did all those things. Of course, in the end, we actually had no opposition, which was kind of amazing, but we still did all the things. And I think that's part of the reason why we had 82% vote in favor of the measure. [00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: Right - and I just want to pause for a moment and just talk about 82% - which is just an eye-popping number for a minimum wage initiative. We haven't really seen a result like this before. And as I look at it, it has a lot to do with how you went about the strategy and putting together this initiative from the very beginning. The strength of the coalition that you put together - it was broad, it was inclusive, it wasn't necessarily - hey, we're coming from the outside to tell you what we think would be best, or we already know exactly what we're going to do and we're just transplanting it to the city. You really did involve people who were there and looked at what would make the big differences for them locally - incorporated that into the legislation, talked to business owners there in the city. And it seems like that doing the legwork upfront and really understanding who your stakeholders were, understanding how this impacted people, and including the people who would be impacted made a big difference. What do you see as the reason why you were able to get such a huge amount of people in support? [00:20:32] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, thank you. I would love to believe that it's - we just ran such a great campaign, that's why we won by so much. But I do think that there were some other elements of it that were important, which were less due to what we did. One thing that we did do that I think was a good strategic decision that made a big difference was - in designing the measure - having it really explicitly say we are raising Tukwila's minimum wage to match next door in SeaTac, as opposed to just choosing a number, right? If we had said $19/hour, right - now it amounts to the same thing, it's going to be $19/hour. But I think that it just sounds so ridiculously reasonable that Tukwila should have the same standard as the city next door - that I think just that framing and having that be the way the legislation was written, rather than putting a number on it - I think was probably really helpful. It's just really hard to argue that - no, Tukwila should not have the same minimum wage as SeaTac - when you have people doing the same jobs right across the street from each other in the two different cities, who are getting paid different amounts, right? So I think that was good. But I do think a couple of other things. I think that kind of the moment that we're in, right? We're in this moment where there's high inflation and just the cost of living - from food to gas to rent - are going up so rapidly. I think that ended up helping us. And I kind of thought that maybe it would hurt us because people would look at cost increases and say - well, if you raise the minimum wage, prices are going to go up even more. And we heard that fear a little bit, but I think mostly what the inflation and the high cost of living did was it just made it really undeniable that people who were making the statewide minimum wage or just a little bit more are not able to afford to live here anymore, right? And so I think that really on balance helped us. And I think also the fact that we've experienced this really tight labor market this year has meant that a lot of large employers have actually needed to raise their wages for the time being just to get workers in the door and to keep them there. So you've seen in the news - a lot of major corporations have just announced - okay, our starting wage right now is going to be $17 because otherwise we can't hire people. And so I do think there was an element of some corporations that might normally be inclined to fight something like this were already having to pay significantly more than the statewide minimum wage. And so it just wasn't worthwhile to them to fight it. And so I think that really helped. And that moment is not necessarily going to last, right? There's almost certainly going to be a recession next year. Probably we're going to enter a period where some people are being laid off and employers don't really need to pay more than the minimum wage to get people in the door. And so in that sense, I think we lucked into a window of opportunity where there just wasn't a lot of fight back. [00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly windows of opportunity are real and even if you have a great initiative with a great team - timing and just those larger conditions make a difference. But I do want to go back and talk a little bit more about your strategy for canvassing and even having those conversations throughout the signature gathering process - going back and revisiting people afterwards. Were you planning to visit most voters who you identified as likely to support the initiative? [00:24:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, our fall door knocking strategy - I think we ended up pretty much just knocking every - knocking all registered voters' doors in the fall and only taking out doors where, during the signature gathering, someone had refused to talk to us or didn't want to be bothered. So we - yeah, which was a very small minority of people. We really just ended up knocking everyone. Tukwila is a small enough city and we had enough people power in the fall, especially with many of our coalition allies stepping up and helping out, that we were able to knock, I think, everyone's door at least a few times. So we weren't terribly selective. I think after ballots dropped, we became maybe a little bit more selective in trying to knock the doors of like likely voters who hadn't voted yet. And even low-propensity voters - people who maybe voted once in the last four years or something. So we got a little more selective, but it ended up being the most efficient thing just to knock everyone. [00:25:47] Crystal Fincher: So basically if you were a resident in Tukwila, you got a knock from the campaign at least once and most people got it multiple times. Even if it did - slightly - it was for good reason and a very beneficial result. I do think that door knocking is an area of a number of campaigns, especially initiatives sometimes, where a lot of campaigns overlook it. And they think - okay, we just need to make sure we have an adequate communications budget to be up with commercials and in people's mailboxes and online where people are at. But really focusing on having those conversations with voters and utilizing the opportunity to get a signature as not just a signature gathering opportunity, but one - to have a conversation to build understanding and support, and to really inform how you move forward - was a really smart and effective one that I would love to see more campaigns really being intentional about investing a lot more in. I guess looking at overall lessons that you came out of this with - what are the biggest lessons you learned, or biggest takeaways from this campaign for you? [00:27:12] Katie Wilson: I think to say something a little more on the negative side - and where I think we and other people who are thinking about doing campaigns like this should think about how to do better - one of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I was doing some door knocking really close to Election Day, like the last couple of days. I talked to people at several doors where they had signed our petition, they were super supportive, but they had probably never voted before and they just didn't make the connection between - Oh, this is - there's an election, this is on the ballot, and you're going to get this thing in the mail which is your ballot, and you actually need to do something with that. And there's a deadline. And so I went to one household where there was a bunch of people living there in an apartment, and they had signed the petition, and they were excited about it. And they're searching for their ballots and finding their primary ballots, but not the - and I'm just like, Oh god, okay, it's just too late - the one person's ballot who we actually found wasn't there and wasn't going to be home. And so I think that Tukwila, year after year, has just rock bottom voter turnout compared to other cities in King County. And we still need to do an analysis to see to what extent our efforts moved voter turnout. And I think they probably did a little bit, but not hugely. So Tukwila - still this year - voter turnout compared to other cities in King County was very, very low. And so that - that I think is disappointing and just speaks to the structural factors which make that the case - we didn't shift those in a huge way. And so I think that's something to kind of think about for future campaigns is - okay, what is it going to take for these people who are registered to vote and a 100% there on the issue, but just are not practiced at this kind of civic engagement and no one is really helping them with that in a really deep way. So what is that going to take? So that's one thing. And I guess just in terms of more positive overall lessons - obviously, raising the minimum wage is really popular, so we should do it more. There's a lot of other cities in King County that could do this. And so that is one thing that we're thinking about as we look at next year and beyond - is what are the opportunities to get this done in more cities around the county? Because I would imagine that it is very popular everywhere. [00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really popular. And just on the point you made - I think, especially for people who are inclined to listen to this show on the radio, via podcast are more passionate about voting and civic engagement than the average person. But really important to understand that the average person is not necessarily excited at all, and probably doesn't know what there is to be excited about or mad about or ambivalent about - that it's just not on the radar for a lot of people. And even though it seems like it's consuming our lives or the news or anything like that, it's just not reality on the ground for a lot of people. And I think one of the things is - I look at my work - it's really the prolonged and repeated engagement that moves the needle there. And a silver lining on the cloud is it actually - a couple of percentage points really does change an election. Boosting turnout by 5% is a humongous amount in the quantities that we measure, and that completely changes the complexion of campaigns. So even the work you did - and again, we're still going through results and precinct-level results and figuring that all out, but clearly made a difference. And I hope there is continued engagement on the ground - in Tukwila specifically - and in areas where we do activate, whether it's through a candidate campaign or through an initiative, to keep that going because it really is the repeated engagement and people being able to see that something from the formation and policy prospect that - hey, they did get excited about, and then it did happen, and then they're receiving a benefit. And - oh, I see that what I sign and actions that I took resulted in something that actually benefits me, or people that I know, or family that I have, or whatever the case is makes a big difference. I guess as you're - you said you're considering looking at what's on the menu moving forward - what is next and what are you considering? [00:32:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I think that's exactly right - it's what you said - just that a one-off campaign is not enough to move that needle. And people need to have the experience of - oh yes, wow, I voted and something happened and it's actually something that makes a difference in my life. And so as we're looking at what to do next - as I mentioned, I think there's a lot of potential for other cities to do minimum wage raises, so we're looking at that. But we had our Transit Riders Union membership meeting in November and had a discussion about this, and I think heard really strongly from our members that we need to keep organizing in Tukwila specifically. And so we are kind of in the process now of figuring out what that could look like. And so we're having - actually tonight, we're having a meeting with some Tukwila renters to talk about what it might look like to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila, right? Because while we were door knocking, we talked to many, many people who were getting large rent increases, and this was part of the sad thing too - is you'd talk to someone in the spring and they'd sign the petition. And then go back in the fall and they'd moved out because - they no longer live there - because they got a $300/month rent increase, right? And so I think one possibility is to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila next year - basically working with a lot of the people that we met during this campaign this year. And then I think we're also looking at how to keep organizing with workers in Tukwila, and specifically at and around Southcenter Mall. And the new law is going to go into effect next July. And so I think one project is making sure that everyone who works in Tukwila knows about that - knows the law, knows their rights - both on the minimum wage side of things, but also the access-to-hours policy. And the City is going to have to do some rulemaking to decide how to actually put those policies into practice, what to require of employers in terms of reporting and informing their employees. And so there's the details that have to be figured out. So we're going to be involved in that process and we're going to try to get Tukwila workers involved in that process. And yeah, I think also just continuing to talk to workers at the mall about what other issues they're facing - maybe there are other labor standards issues that workers in Tukwila want to do something about. So we're figuring that out now. We're in the space where there are so many possible things that we could do next year that sound worthwhile. And so we're going to have to figure out where there's the most interest and energy to move forward. [00:35:30] Crystal Fincher: I just can't tell you how excited I am to see what you're doing next. I just have so much admiration for how you went about this. You nailed the strategy and the execution of this. And it really is a model for other coalitions to follow - that can really be community-based, community-led and bringing about the kind of change that people need in their own communities. So thank you so much for joining us today. [00:36:02] Katie Wilson: Oh, my pleasure - it's great to be here. [00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: All right - thanks so much. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Having survived multiple recall attempts in his first term, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón officially launched his reelection in October at the SEIU Local 2015 office in front of a room full of supporters – many of them health care workers. The DA noted his mother, an immigrant from Cuba often had to toil, working for below minimum wages. That has translated into a commitment to fight for working people. “We don't talk about one of the biggest crimes in our history,” he explained. “It's a theft of wages. A theft of labor. Billions of dollars each and every year – which impacts all of us by the way, because when you steal from workers, you're stealing from the tax base of our community. You're stealing from families. You are taking food away from babies. You are often precluding people from having a roof over their heads.” Gascón also noted that despite the decline in crime, he is being attacked for being soft on crime. He said, “I find it interesting when Republicans like Ron Desante and fellow presidential run also out on TV and says, while he's in la, he talks about how crime is out proportion here and how burglars are now being prosecuted and organized retail theft because of George Gascón.” He said one of his staffer Googled organized retail theft in Florida. “The first thing that pops up is videos of people storming stores in Miami and other parts of Florida. And then we went to Houston and we looked at some other southern cities. And guess what? It's a national problem,” he said. He noted that they aren't pointing this out because it doesn't fit their narrative. He said, “We need to make sure that we do not embrace the narrative that the Republicans have been using for the last 40 years. You can go back to Nixon when we were talking about the war on drugs and the war on crime. And it's the same thing. And it cycles over and over and over again. Even though today as a nation, we have historically some of the lowest numbers of crime that we've ever had.” He added, “Now we're seeing crime going down at a very rapid rate and hopefully soon approaching pre pandemic times. And some people say, well, we don't believe those numbers.” Gascón pushed back noting that those are the numbers from LAPD and the Sheriff's Department. “You believe those numbers two years ago. Why don't you believe it today? We don't make the numbers,” he continued. He added, “But you know what it really tells us is that we can have reform and safety.”

Listen to Everyday Injustices exclusive interview with Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón after he announced his reelection in front of an audience of workers at SEIU Local 2015. Gascón noted that crime was going down despite the news coverage that would lead the public to the contrary conclusion. “I would say one of the biggest challenges that we have is how can we get factual information in a way that people understand it, in a way that people see it,” he explained. He added, “There's so much misinformation concerning crime, and as you indicated, we're actually, crime nationally, but certainly LA County per capita is coming down faster than many other jurisdictions that continue to adhere to the old way of doing business.” Listen as Gascón talks about criminal justice reform, policing, and much more.

Nneka Eke, PhD, a graduate of Syracuse's Political Science department and a current Research Associate at SEIU Local 721, joins us to discuss her career exploration journey. From a graduate to doing great work outside of academic, Nneka's experience is instructive for us all.

Are you happy with the mishandling of funds from the public education system here in California? If your answer is NO, then this episode is a must to listen toad share. The Children's Educational Opportunity act just makes sense. Join Casey as he has a discussion about the CEOact with guest Dr. Kevin McNamee current Mayor of Thousand Oaks and Benny Bernal former V.P. of SEIU Local 99. Follow Casey Diaz: caseydiaz.net IG: real_casey_diaz_ To Donate to TSCP: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theshotcaller EducationOpportunity.org --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theshotcaller/support

Roberto Rodriguez is an instructor in the Green Janitor education program at SEIU Local 1 and talks about environmentally friendly cleaning.

https://youtu.be/sEV69nKaUnQ MoniQue London's presence changes atmosphere wherever she goes shifting lives with a mission and passion as an Author, Motivational Speaker, and Certified Business/Career Coach. Without limitations her realizations of conversations embraces the hearts who search for hope. Ms. London holds a Bachelor of Science in Business, and a master's in Business Entertainment with the emphases on communication. Ms. London graces the minds of her audience speaking about how she overcame “Domestic Violence, how to have better control of your life, setting proper boundaries and loving yourself better. MoniQue also serves over 30,000 employees in the education industry as an executive officer as Treasurer at SEIU Local 99 being the second largest labor union in the United States. As an entrepreneur, MoniQue's focus is to travel the world as a best-selling author, motivational speaker, inspirational keynote speaker, business/career life coach embracing her purpose to help change lives for the better. She is fierce, ready to shape you, mold you and unfold you in becoming intentional using her teaching strategies on how to shift your mindset to overcome your adversities, and living your best life.

Ralph welcomes the CEO of the National Cooperative Bank, Casey Fannon to discuss his bank's work serving cooperatives and other member-owned organizations. The NCB helps finance affordable housing, healthy food, renewable energy, small businesses, community-driven health care, and non-profit organizations and generally advises cooperatives around the country on how to build and grow. Plus, Ralph talks a little more about the Trump indictments and responds to some of your feedback.Casey Fannon is President and CEO of National Cooperative Bank, a leading financial services company dedicated to providing banking products to cooperatives and socially responsible organizations nationwide.Access to capital is one of the major stumbling blocks for any small business, but particularly small cooperative and new, young cooperatives.Casey FannonThere's a small tent view of cooperatives and a large tent view of cooperatives. And I think that by focusing on the big tent…allows for a better NCB. I think NCB is better, and I think our consumer cooperatives are better off that we are tied into the cooperative ecosystem in a more fulsome way.Casey FannonIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantis1. The progressive, Wisconsin-based legal group Law Forward has filed a brief with the Wisconsin Supreme Court alleging that the state's legislative maps violate the state constitution due to rampant partisan gerrymandering. Not only are the petitioners demanding new legislative maps, they are also calling on the court to cut all existing senate terms short. In practice, this would mean the entire legislature would be up for election in 2024. This could mean a political sea-change in the Badger State.2. The LA Times reports that AOC, along with ten other progressive members of Congress, are planning to visit Latin American nations led by Leftist governments, in order to “learn from our counterparts in these countries, including how to confront disinformation and violent threats to our democracies.” She went on to add “It's long past time for a realignment of the United States' relationship to Latin America…The U.S. needs to publicly acknowledge the harms we've committed through interventionist and extractive policies, and chart a new course based on trust and mutual respect.”3. In a win for workers, the Department of Labor has issued a rule on the Davis-Beacon Act, which “sets a wage floor for construction workers on public-works projects,” per the American Prospect. This law is also known as the “prevailing wage,” law as it sets benchmarks for wages in a given area. This rule could have major positive ramifications for workers as President Biden's infrastructure package and the CHIPS Act are put into action. This New Deal era labor rule was significantly weakened under the Carter and Reagan administrations, and labor groups have been pushing for its restoration ever since. The article notes however that “the rule…is expected to be immediately challenged,” with the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group poised to file a lawsuit as early as next week.4. In more labor news, the Washington Post reports that 11,000 Los Angeles city employees joined the writers, actors, and hotel employees in a one day strike to “shut down the city of Los Angeles,” according to David Green, executive director and president of SEIU Local 721. Green added “The message we're sending is that our workers are just fed up. They've reached a breaking point. And we need these folks in the city to come back to the table for the good of the city.”5. VICE reports that a group of 32 economists have sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency in support of rent control. This is the latest tactic in a campaign led by People's Action. The article notes that “Economists have historically been the strongest critics of rent control,” but, like on the issue of minimum wage “some economists believe the orthodoxy on the topic has been contradicted by research and real-world examples.”6. The climate focused news site Heatmap reports that the Department of Energy is launching a new procurement program focused on technology to “remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.” Notably, while agencies have “previously granted money to carbon-removal companies, funded R&D, or subsidized their activities, it has never pledged to buy their services directly.” Utilizing the government's purchasing power to effect changes in society more broadly has been done before, perhaps most famously with automobile airbags, following the advocacy of Ralph Nader.     7. A new report on 90 year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein in the New York Times covers the legal battle between her daughter and her step-daughters over her late husband's estate. Buried in this report is a startling fact – Senator Feinstein's daughter holds power of attorney over her mother's legal affairs. It is disturbing to think that a person incapable of managing their own legal affairs is one of only two Senators representing 40 million people in the upper house of Congress.8. DCist reports that the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party is suing to prevent ranked choice voting and open primaries from appearing as ballot measures in next year's elections. D.C. Democratic Party officials have claimed these reforms would disenfranchise voters, with one opponent even calling ranked choice voting “electoral gentrification.” Implicit in these criticisms is the fact that the overwhelming power of D.C.'s Democratic Party may be challenged somewhat by these reforms, opening electoral space for independents or other parties.9. The tech website Stackdiary reports that the ubiquitous teleconferencing app Zoom has quietly added sinister new sections to their terms of service. Put simply, sections 10.2 and 10.4 explicitly allow for the company to collect user data and “use this data for machine learning and artificial intelligence, including training and tuning of algorithms and models…effectively allow[ing] Zoom to train its AI on customer content without providing an opt-out option.”10. The American Prospect reports that a bipartisan group of Senators, led by Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Roger Marshall of Kansas, are championing the Credit Card Competition Act, which aims to crack down on credit card swipe fees by “forc[ing] card issuers…[like] (Visa and Mastercard) to enable competitor networks to manage the processing and routing—the service for which swipe fees are levied.” Panicked by these developments, “shadowy right-wing groups have been issuing mailers and other advertisements claiming the [the bill] is a liberal handout for “woke” big-box retailers like Target. One set of mailers was bankrolled by the Conservative Accountability Foundation, a newly formed organization based in Sen. Marshall's home state of Kansas but without a listed address or phone number.” In other words, corporations and their political front groups are pushing the culture war button to avoid consumer protection regulation. What else is new. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

ICYMI: Later, with Mo'Kelly Presents – Thoughts on the impact of SEIU Local 721's one-day strike, vandals and thieves attacking food delivery robots AND the new ‘Dial a Pilot' service designed to help you get over your fear of flying - on KFI AM 640 – Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app

Conrado Guerrero, President of the Service Employees International Union Local 99 joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the Local's fight to get a new contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Guerrero also talked about his journey to lead Local 99. Executive Director of LaborLab, Bob Funk, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast and talked about LaborLab's midyear report that exposed companies who engage in anti-union persuasion. Funk also discussed the regulations on hiring persuaders or those who engage in anti-union tactics.

Jason speaks with Seneca Scott (@SenecaSpeaks21 ) about his life and work leading up to and including the founding of Neighbors Together Oakland, which focuses on community safety, localized agricultural systems, thriving local businesses, and accessible housing. They also discuss building ‘parallel systems that will remain resilient as our current one's collapse', and how this relates to local political engagement About Seneca Scott: Seneca moved to Oakland in 2012 to work as the East Bay Director for SEIU Local 1021, representing and negotiating improvements to wages and working conditions for thousands of workers in East Bay cities, most notably Oakland. It didn't take long for Seneca to fall in love with the town for its independent spirit and love of nature. Moving to the Lower Bottoms, he immediately went to work in the community, co-founding Bottoms Up Community Gardens and Oakhella. Seneca likes to say that all of his endeavors serve the same purpose, helping to bring Oakland Neighbors closer together. In 2020, Seneca ran for City Council to bring a voice to his neighbors that he felt was being ignored. His Neighbors Together movement has since exploded across the city, demanding accountability from its Mayor and City Council. Seneca has worked as a Labor leader and community organizer for over 20 years. He earned his B.S. from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He has served as a Director for various unions, as well as a consultant, negotiating contracts for Bay Area public sector employees. In addition to organizing, Seneca is a cook, farmer and chess enthusiast. Seneca ran for Mayor in 2022, attracting widespread national media attention for the campaign's independently minded, pragmatic approach to Oakland's daunting and intersecting crises of homelessness, drug tourism, poverty, theft and violent crime. On the heels of the campaign, NTO is currently working to expand our urban farming efforts. We hope to engender holistic spaces that nurture the minds and bodies of Oakland Neighbors, building safe resilient communities organized around the issues that matter most.

It's time for the thrilling conclusion to Cherry Creek Week! All week long, we've been talking about one of Denver's most divisive neighborhoods: Cherry Creek. How will the community deal with the vexing problems brought by an imminent wave of development? Can it find a solution to the ongoing fight — and current impasse — over transportation infrastructure? As the historians taught us, change is inevitable. So how can we make the most of all this interest in Cherry Creek? At the annual Transportation Solutions conference Wednesday morning, host Bree Davies talked through some real solutions with a panel of experts, including SEIU Local 105 political director True Apodaca, the City of Denver's city-wide manager for transit-oriented development Chris Nevitt, and the man Westword dubbed “the good developer” David Zucker of Zocalo Community Development.  We'll be back with our usual Friday news round-up next week! For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver by texting “Denver” to 66866. Follow our weather guy for all your weekend weather needs: Rain or Shine, it's Andy Stein! Follow us on Twitter: @citycastdenver Or instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Got thoughts or feelings about Cherry Creek Week? Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: (720) 500-5418‬ Learn more about the sponsor of this episode: Transportation Solutions Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Care workers play a vital role in our communities.  They feed, bathe, and otherwise care for those who cannot take care of themselves. In doing so, care workers make it possible for others to go to work and live their lives. Unfortunately, care workers get paid low wages and few benefits, all while performing physically and emotionally demanding work.In this episode, we speak with Melissa Unger, Executive Director of SEIU Local 503, about the challenges facing care workers – specifically, those who perform long-term care work. We discuss what Oregon lawmakers should do to ensure that care workers can take care of themselves and their families.  One of the policies that could go a long way in improving working conditions for long-term care workers is what's known as a “wage board.”  We end the show with a conversation with Janet Bauer, Director of Policy Research at the Oregon Center for Public Policy, about the benefits of wage boards.

#82: Last week, more than 60,000 workers and teachers in the nation's second largest school district went on strike. It was led by SEIU Local 99 — members of the Service Employees International Union, representing about 30,000 essential workers in Los Angeles Unified. These are LAUSD's bus drivers, teachers' aides, custodians food service workers and other school workers – and they're among the lowest paid workers in the district. The teacher's union joined in solidarity.  On Friday, after three days of striking, LAUSD reached a tentative labor deal with the district effectively meeting the workers' demands for a 30% increase in salary and healthcare benefits for part-time employees. SEIU 99 union members will be able to vote on the agreement in-person and online throughout next week. The voting results will be announced on Saturday, April 8.  But it got us thinking, how effective are strikes anyway? What other tools do unions have to get their demands met? And how are they even organized?   Guests: Joshua Grunland, choir and music production teacher at Manuel Arts High School; Jonathan Harris, associate professor at Loyola Law School; Diana Reddy, doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.Shout out to LAist newsroom for assist with voice from the picket line!

This update notes the second day of SEIU Local 99’s work stoppage and strike, as well as the recent L.A. County Motion to rename Grand Park to Gloria Molina Grand Park in honor of the former L.A. City Council and L.A. County Supervisor’s legacy for local government and Latina women in Los Angeles. Our updateContinue reading L.A. VS BARCELONA THIS SPRING →

This update notes the second day of SEIU Local 99’s work stoppage and strike, as well as the recent L.A. County Motion to rename Grand Park to Gloria Molina Grand Park in honor of the former L.A. City Council and L.A. County Supervisor’s legacy for local government and Latina women in Los Angeles. Our updateContinue reading WHAT DO L.A. AND BARCELONA HAVE IN COMMON? THE OLYMPIC GAMES, J.T., AND MORE →

In this episode we go to Los Angeles, where school staff are striking and schools are shut down. The Service Employees International Union, Local 99, which represents about 30,000 teachers' aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, special education assistants and other support staff, walked out amid stalled contract talks on Tuesday, March 21st, for a 3-day strike. SEIU Local 99 members voted overwhelmingly (96% in favor) to authorize a strike last month. During the strike vote and contract bargaining process, the district subjected workers to surveillance, intimidation, and harassment. LA's teachers' union has joined the labor action, refusing to cross their colleagues' picket line, essentially leaving the second-largest school district in the US closed for business until the strike is over. We're joined by Bryant Odega, a substitute teacher at the HArts academy, housed in Narbonne High School – a school in the LA Unified School District. Bryant is a member of the LA teachers' union (United Teachers of LA or UTLA). He joins us from the picket line outside his workplace. Staying on theme, we move back to Oakland, where contract negotiations between the teachers union and the district went from a double-digit raise down to a 3.5% raise, and even that low number's funding would come from cuts to other staff, like SEIU and AFSCME classified staff who do things like special ed support, and food prep. On Friday, March 24th, school workers and teachers are planning a walkout as a wildcat strike action. We're joined by one of the teachers impacted – Marika Iyer is an English and Ethnic Studies Teacher at Oakland High School. —- Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post LA School Staff on Strike while Oakland Teachers Plan a Wildcat Strike Action appeared first on KPFA.

SEIU Local 99 — the union representing LAUSD staff like bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria workers, and teacher aides — could be on the verge of a three-day strike. Sunday is the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Along with the government con to sell it to the public, the war launched a still-current age of grift. Critics review the latest film releases: “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “Inside,” “La Civil,” and “Wildflower. Wouldn't it be lovely to cultivate a pot or two of easy-to-grow plants just for the visual pleasure of their flowers, then snip a few to enhance a familiar dish at the table?

Workers at nonprofits like the Felton Institute are on the front lines of our region's biggest problems, like poverty, homelessness, and addiction. Employees say the work is meaningful yet grueling, with low pay and high turnover. For nearly 3 years now, a group of workers at Felton, one of the Bay's oldest social service agencies, have been campaigning to unionize the organization's nearly 500 employees. But the campaign is currently in limbo, as organizers encounter difficulties reaching their co-workers across 7 counties. The union, SEIU Local 21, has also accused managers at Felton of retaliating against workers trying to unionize, filing 10 unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Guest: Holly J. McDede, KQED producer/reporter  Links: Read: Inside the Long, Uphill Battle to Unionize Workers at One Large Bay Area Nonprofit The Bay Listener Survey! This episode was produced by Alan Montecillo and Maria Esquinca, and hosted by Ericka Cruz Guevarra.

Travis Woodward, President of Civil Service Employees Association Service Employees International Union Local 2001, joined the AWF Union Podcast and discussed a childcare crisis in Connecticut caused by childcare providers earning poor wages and no benefits. He also talked about the privatization of the Connecticut Department of Transportation and legislation to fully integrate paraeducators into the educational system.   Laborers' International Union of North America Local 563 Director of Government Relations and New Business Development Pamela Trhlik appeared on the Ameria's Work Force Union Podcast and spoke about the need to fight back against the non-union mindset in North Dakota and the help from unions in Minnesota to organize and grow unions. She also discussed the push to gain marketshare in the alternative energy sector.

On this midweek show, Crystal welcomes back Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union to walk through the wildly successful Raise the Wage Tukwila Initiative, which was approved with over 82% of the vote in last month's general election, and will increase Tukwila's minimum wage to $18.99/hour for large businesses starting next July. Katie details the broad, community-based coalition that was built and the thoughtful legwork and preparation that set the initiative up for success at the ballot box - from community surveys to signature gathering to Get Out The Vote, the campaign provides a template for how to build power through civic engagement. Crystal and Katie then talk about lessons learned, key takeaways, and what's next on the horizon for the Transit Riders Union. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Katie Wilson at @WilsonKatieB and the Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU.   Katie Wilson Katie Wilson is the general secretary of the Transit Riders Union and was the campaign coordinator for Raise the Wage Tukwila.   Resources Raise the Wage Tukwila campaign website   What's on the ballot: City of Tukwila Initiative Measure No. 1 | King County Elections   “Tukwila voters approve minimum wage hike” by Melissa Santos from Axios   “Tukwila minimum wage hike passing by huge margin” by Seattle Times staff from The Seattle Times   “The minimum wage movement is more mainstream than ever” by Guy Oron from Real Change News   “Transit Rider's Union Leads Coalition Seeking to Raise Tukwila's Minimum Wage” by Andrew Engelson from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. So today, I'm very excited to be welcoming back to the program, Katie Wilson of the Transit Riders Union. Welcome. [00:00:46] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal. [00:00:47] Crystal Fincher: I am very excited to talk about the Raise the Wage Tukwila initiative, which was wildly successful and you played a really big role in. So I think just to start off - just recapping what the initiative was aiming to do. [00:01:07] Katie Wilson: Sure. So Raise the Wage Tukwila basically set out to, as the name suggests, raise the minimum wage in the City of Tukwila. And toward the beginning of this year, we did a lot of outreach to workers, to local businesses, to residents, to community organizations to put together our measure. And we decided to basically try to bring Tukwila's minimum wage up to more or less match the minimum wages in the neighboring cities of SeaTac and Seattle. [00:01:40] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense. And so when you were going about - I guess - the planning for this, the idea for this, how did this begin? [00:01:49] Katie Wilson: So the Transit Riders Union, which is the organization that I work with and for - we started thinking about something like this campaign in the middle of last year. And at that point, we were doing a lot of work on renter protections with another coalition called Stay Housed, Stay Healthy. And as part of that work, we were trying to get cities all around the county to do more to protect renters, both with emergency protections and permanent protections. And that really got us thinking about what it would look like to do some deeper organizing in South King County. And so we began talking to lots of ally organizations and doing some outreach - and eventually settled on this idea of doing an initiative in the City of Tukwila. And the City of Tukwila is a really interesting place. It's a small city - it only has about maybe 20, a little over 20,000 residents. But it's a really big job center - so you have the Southcenter Mall down there and all of the retail jobs around there - so a lot of low wage workers are basically commuting from all over South King County and beyond to work at jobs in Tukwila. And so - we also thought that because Tukwila is nestled in between SeaTac and Seattle, it made a lot of sense to propose raising the minimum wage up to parity with those neighboring cities. [00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Now who is the coalition that you began this with? [00:03:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it's a really broad coalition. So there are a lot of community organizations that do work in Tukwila, especially with the many immigrant communities in Tukwila. So for example, there's the Congolese Integration Network, which was very involved, and African Community Housing and Development. And the Washington Community Action Network and Working Washington both really stepped up on helping us with some of the signature gathering and Get Out The Vote. And a number of labor unions who have members in Tukwila and South King County also really stepped up and helped out - including UFCW, including SEIU Local 6, Teamsters 117. So it was really a kind of a broad community and labor coalition that came together. [00:04:18] Crystal Fincher: Really strong coalition. How did you, or how did the coalition, go about writing the initiative and determining exactly what was right for Tukwila? [00:04:28] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so that process really began more than a year ago. And we basically talked to - on the one hand - policy experts, people who worked on minimum wage and other labor standards campaigns in Seattle and other places, even around the country. And we did a lot of talking to workers at Southcenter Mall. We did a couple of surveys where we had about 100 workers responding to survey questions about the issues that they face at work. And then of course just talking with all the organizations that were starting to come together in this coalition. We also did some door knocking just to Tukwila residents to take people's temperature on how they felt about something like this. And so through all that - and then I guess outreach to local businesses was an important part of that too - so we talked to, we would just walk into pretty much any local Tukwila business that we could find and try to talk to the owner about what they thought about this. And so through all that, we came up with our policy, which is pretty simple. It's basically raising the minimum wage to match SeaTac. There's some small differences in how we do the inflation adjustment, so it's going to go up year after year based on cost of living. And it's going to be a little bit on its kind of own trajectory, but very similar to SeaTac. And we have a graduated structure so that the new wage, which will be $18.99 next year, will go into effect on July 1st of 2023 for large businesses - ones with over 500 employees worldwide. And then we have a three-year phase-in for smaller businesses so that they'll be going up and basically match the large employer rate in 2025. And then there's an exemption for the very smallest businesses, with up to 15 employees and up to $2 million in annual revenue. So that really came out of those conversations. And then the other piece of the policy - which is important - is access-to-hours policies. So that basically means that employers have to offer available hours of work to existing part-time employees before they hire new employees or subcontractors. [00:06:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is actually a really big issue - there and across the board - and was really happy to see that addressed in the initiative. So going out - so now you've written the initiative - qualifying to get on the ballot involves getting a certain number of signatures from residents in the city. How did you go about that process? [00:07:20] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so we began signature gathering around the end of March of this year. So our team - Transit Riders Union - we had two full-time people that we brought on to be organizers for this campaign. And we planned basically a campaign launch event around the end of March - brought together people from our coalition, Transit Riders Union members, volunteers - and so that was the kickoff of our signature gathering effort. And then after that, every Saturday we would have a big volunteer day where people would gather in the morning and we would send people out knocking on doors, gathering signatures. And then we also did more signature gathering during the week. So it was a pretty big effort. And in Tukwila, signature gathering basically means door knocking. So if you're doing an initiative in Seattle, there's a lot of big public events and public spaces, like outside the light rail station, where you can stand there outside and just talk to person after person as they walk by and ask them to sign your petition. The thing about Tukwila is that there's not really many public spaces where you're going to find Tukwila residents. So you could go to Southcenter Mall, but the vast majority of people that you talk to don't actually live in Tukwila. They're there for shopping or they're there for work, and they live somewhere else. So if you want to efficiently gather the signatures of Tukwila residents, you really have to find people at home. And so it was almost all door knocking. [00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: Which was really exciting to see, to watch from afar. And is, as you said, different than we've seen in a number of big cities and frankly, from a number of campaigns that have been really well-funded - is focusing a lot on tabling and transit stations, and going to those large events. So as you were planning the door knocking associated with this, were you taking advantage of that time to also educate the renters and homeowners on what this was, what it meant? What was that process like? [00:09:43] Katie Wilson: Yeah. I think part of the great thing about doing an initiative is that when you're out gathering signatures, you're also talking to the same people whose votes you're going to need in the fall. And so we were definitely - yeah, obviously talking to people about why this was important and also asking them questions like - do you work in Tukwila? Do you know anyone who will benefit from a minimum wage increase? And so building those relationships with Tukwila residents and voters right off the bat, I think, really helped us when it came to the fall because a lot of people remembered having signed the petition in the spring, so they were already aware that this was happening and we got to come back to them and say - hey, remember that thing that you signed? We got enough signatures, so it's going to be on the ballot for you to vote on, right? So there was an opportunity to talk to the same people multiple times during the campaign. And we also did some registration of new voters too. So we were able to knock on doors and talk to people who maybe had just moved from another city and needed to update their registration to be able to vote in Tukwila, or someone who was an immigrant who is just newly eligible for voting. So we were able to do some of that as well. [00:11:00] Crystal Fincher: So was this a largely volunteer signature gathering effort? I think you said that there were paid canvassers involved. Were there other financial supports involved? How did this look financially and volunteer-wise? [00:11:18] Katie Wilson: Yeah, it was really a mixture. So we had a lot of volunteer signature gathering - again, like TRU members and volunteers who had just gotten involved in the campaign. Also, a lot of other organizations would bring out volunteers - the Seattle DSA - mostly during the Get Out The Vote portion of it, but definitely came out canvassing with us a number of times. And then we also had, on TRU's side, two staff organizers who were doing a lot of signature gathering as well. And then Washington Community Action Network has a canvassing team and they put in some time as well. So it was really a combination, I would say, probably roughly about half and half signatures gathered by volunteers versus signatures gathered by staff. [00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense - and then other people are looking at this, other organizations who may be considering initiatives to help improve things in their own communities. What are the biggest lessons that you learned about the signature gathering - going through this process - and what advice would you provide? [00:12:25] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think one thing is just that it is a lot of work. So yeah, don't underestimate how much work it is to go and gather what sounds like not a lot of signatures, right? We gathered over 3,000 signatures, but you have to expect that your validity rate is going to be very low, especially in a city like Tukwila, right - where you have a lot of - big proportion of renters, so people tend to move a little bit more often. Lots of non-citizens, so people might not realize that they're not able to sign it. And so we gathered over 3,000 signatures and we had plenty to qualify, but I think we had a little over 1,700 valid out of that. And door knocking is really intensive work, so you could spend basically all day knocking on doors gathering signatures and maybe you get 15-20 signatures at the end of that - just in terms of signatures per hour, signatures per day - it's a much slower process than it is, for example, in Seattle when you're just outside the Capitol Hill light rail station talking to 30 people an hour, right? And so that's one thing - is just don't underestimate the amount of work it is. But also, I think that - obviously our results in Tukwila were very, very good and there are, I think, a lot of reasons for that. But I do think that running an initiative is an opportunity to really just do some deep talking to voters and setting yourself up really well for people to come out and vote and know what they're voting on in the election itself. [00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: So thinking - you get to the point where you do get enough signatures, you do qualify - I guess one other question, just with the validation - because with these signature gathering processes, valid signatures have to come from registered voters, so you have to meet all the qualifications and be registered. How did you go about the validation process for making sure that out of the signatures that you collected, you determine which ones were actually valid? [00:14:40] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so it's ultimately - it's King County Elections that does the official validation. So you turn your signatures into the City Clerk and the City Clerk transmits them to King County Elections. And then King County Elections basically checks each signature, each entry against their voter file and the signature that they have on file for each voter. And what we were doing - before we turned in our signatures - we did our own rough verification process where basically we would - and we had an excellent volunteer data entry team from among TRU's membership who were doing this process, where basically they would - we would scan the petition sheets after we collected them. And then for each entry, we would check them against the Washington State voter file, which is a public document that you can download for purposes like this, and try to find that person to at least verify that they actually are a registered voter in Tukwila. Now, of course, we don't know what their signature looks like, right? So we can't actually match the signature that we got against the official signature, but we can at least try to find that name and that address and say - okay, yes, this is the person who is a registered voter at this address. And so that gave us a pretty good idea of how many valid signatures we had. And it also - what it allowed us to do - is then we had a list of hundreds of entries where we didn't find that person in the voter file. And so we were able to do some follow up with those people to, for example, try to help them get registered to vote if they were eligible, but not registered - or if they needed to update their voter registration information. [00:16:35] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. Okay, so you qualified. Now it's time to - knowing that you're going to be on the ballot - to make sure that voters know that this is going to be on the ballot and why they should vote for it. How did you go about putting together how to communicate this to the residents of Tukwila? [00:16:58] Katie Wilson: Yeah, I think we did all the things that campaigns do. And so we prepared over the summer. And then after Labor Day, we kicked off our Get Out The Vote campaign. And we - the centerpiece of it, of course, was just more door knocking, right? And we had pledge-to-vote postcards that we were inviting people to sign - that we would then mail back to them when ballots dropped. So they would get an extra reminder from themselves to look for their ballot. And we also made refrigerator magnets that are - they look like a campaign button, except it's a magnet on the back instead of a pin. And so we would give people reminder-to-vote refrigerator magnets. And we also did door hangers, which we would leave at the door if no one answered. We did some mailers - we didn't do mailers to everyone because it's pretty expensive, but we carved out a subset of voters to do mailers for. We did a bunch of texting people. So yeah, really just all of the above - everything that you do to get the word out. We did a few yard signs. And really, I think we were expecting, when we went into this campaign, that we were going to have really strong, well-funded opposition from some of the business associations. And so we planned accordingly and did all the things that we would need to do in order to effectively fight a No campaign. We also got lots of media coverage, right? So we'd be in touch with all the TV news and the reporters trying to get news coverage of the campaign. So we did all those things. Of course, in the end, we actually had no opposition, which was kind of amazing, but we still did all the things. And I think that's part of the reason why we had 82% vote in favor of the measure. [00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: Right - and I just want to pause for a moment and just talk about 82% - which is just an eye-popping number for a minimum wage initiative. We haven't really seen a result like this before. And as I look at it, it has a lot to do with how you went about the strategy and putting together this initiative from the very beginning. The strength of the coalition that you put together - it was broad, it was inclusive, it wasn't necessarily - hey, we're coming from the outside to tell you what we think would be best, or we already know exactly what we're going to do and we're just transplanting it to the city. You really did involve people who were there and looked at what would make the big differences for them locally - incorporated that into the legislation, talked to business owners there in the city. And it seems like that doing the legwork upfront and really understanding who your stakeholders were, understanding how this impacted people, and including the people who would be impacted made a big difference. What do you see as the reason why you were able to get such a huge amount of people in support? [00:20:32] Katie Wilson: Yeah - well, thank you. I would love to believe that it's - we just ran such a great campaign, that's why we won by so much. But I do think that there were some other elements of it that were important, which were less due to what we did. One thing that we did do that I think was a good strategic decision that made a big difference was - in designing the measure - having it really explicitly say we are raising Tukwila's minimum wage to match next door in SeaTac, as opposed to just choosing a number, right? If we had said $19/hour, right - now it amounts to the same thing, it's going to be $19/hour. But I think that it just sounds so ridiculously reasonable that Tukwila should have the same standard as the city next door - that I think just that framing and having that be the way the legislation was written, rather than putting a number on it - I think was probably really helpful. It's just really hard to argue that - no, Tukwila should not have the same minimum wage as SeaTac - when you have people doing the same jobs right across the street from each other in the two different cities, who are getting paid different amounts, right? So I think that was good. But I do think a couple of other things. I think that kind of the moment that we're in, right? We're in this moment where there's high inflation and just the cost of living - from food to gas to rent - are going up so rapidly. I think that ended up helping us. And I kind of thought that maybe it would hurt us because people would look at cost increases and say - well, if you raise the minimum wage, prices are going to go up even more. And we heard that fear a little bit, but I think mostly what the inflation and the high cost of living did was it just made it really undeniable that people who were making the statewide minimum wage or just a little bit more are not able to afford to live here anymore, right? And so I think that really on balance helped us. And I think also the fact that we've experienced this really tight labor market this year has meant that a lot of large employers have actually needed to raise their wages for the time being just to get workers in the door and to keep them there. So you've seen in the news - a lot of major corporations have just announced - okay, our starting wage right now is going to be $17 because otherwise we can't hire people. And so I do think there was an element of some corporations that might normally be inclined to fight something like this were already having to pay significantly more than the statewide minimum wage. And so it just wasn't worthwhile to them to fight it. And so I think that really helped. And that moment is not necessarily going to last, right? There's almost certainly going to be a recession next year. Probably we're going to enter a period where some people are being laid off and employers don't really need to pay more than the minimum wage to get people in the door. And so in that sense, I think we lucked into a window of opportunity where there just wasn't a lot of fight back. [00:23:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and certainly windows of opportunity are real and even if you have a great initiative with a great team - timing and just those larger conditions make a difference. But I do want to go back and talk a little bit more about your strategy for canvassing and even having those conversations throughout the signature gathering process - going back and revisiting people afterwards. Were you planning to visit most voters who you identified as likely to support the initiative? [00:24:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, our fall door knocking strategy - I think we ended up pretty much just knocking every - knocking all registered voters' doors in the fall and only taking out doors where, during the signature gathering, someone had refused to talk to us or didn't want to be bothered. So we - yeah, which was a very small minority of people. We really just ended up knocking everyone. Tukwila is a small enough city and we had enough people power in the fall, especially with many of our coalition allies stepping up and helping out, that we were able to knock, I think, everyone's door at least a few times. So we weren't terribly selective. I think after ballots dropped, we became maybe a little bit more selective in trying to knock the doors of like likely voters who hadn't voted yet. And even low-propensity voters - people who maybe voted once in the last four years or something. So we got a little more selective, but it ended up being the most efficient thing just to knock everyone. [00:25:47] Crystal Fincher: So basically if you were a resident in Tukwila, you got a knock from the campaign at least once and most people got it multiple times. Even if it did - slightly - it was for good reason and a very beneficial result. I do think that door knocking is an area of a number of campaigns, especially initiatives sometimes, where a lot of campaigns overlook it. And they think - okay, we just need to make sure we have an adequate communications budget to be up with commercials and in people's mailboxes and online where people are at. But really focusing on having those conversations with voters and utilizing the opportunity to get a signature as not just a signature gathering opportunity, but one - to have a conversation to build understanding and support, and to really inform how you move forward - was a really smart and effective one that I would love to see more campaigns really being intentional about investing a lot more in. I guess looking at overall lessons that you came out of this with - what are the biggest lessons you learned, or biggest takeaways from this campaign for you? [00:27:12] Katie Wilson: I think to say something a little more on the negative side - and where I think we and other people who are thinking about doing campaigns like this should think about how to do better - one of the most heartbreaking things for me was when I was doing some door knocking really close to Election Day, like the last couple of days. I talked to people at several doors where they had signed our petition, they were super supportive, but they had probably never voted before and they just didn't make the connection between - Oh, this is - there's an election, this is on the ballot, and you're going to get this thing in the mail which is your ballot, and you actually need to do something with that. And there's a deadline. And so I went to one household where there was a bunch of people living there in an apartment, and they had signed the petition, and they were excited about it. And they're searching for their ballots and finding their primary ballots, but not the - and I'm just like, Oh god, okay, it's just too late - the one person's ballot who we actually found wasn't there and wasn't going to be home. And so I think that Tukwila, year after year, has just rock bottom voter turnout compared to other cities in King County. And we still need to do an analysis to see to what extent our efforts moved voter turnout. And I think they probably did a little bit, but not hugely. So Tukwila - still this year - voter turnout compared to other cities in King County was very, very low. And so that - that I think is disappointing and just speaks to the structural factors which make that the case - we didn't shift those in a huge way. And so I think that's something to kind of think about for future campaigns is - okay, what is it going to take for these people who are registered to vote and a 100% there on the issue, but just are not practiced at this kind of civic engagement and no one is really helping them with that in a really deep way. So what is that going to take? So that's one thing. And I guess just in terms of more positive overall lessons - obviously, raising the minimum wage is really popular, so we should do it more. There's a lot of other cities in King County that could do this. And so that is one thing that we're thinking about as we look at next year and beyond - is what are the opportunities to get this done in more cities around the county? Because I would imagine that it is very popular everywhere. [00:30:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, really popular. And just on the point you made - I think, especially for people who are inclined to listen to this show on the radio, via podcast are more passionate about voting and civic engagement than the average person. But really important to understand that the average person is not necessarily excited at all, and probably doesn't know what there is to be excited about or mad about or ambivalent about - that it's just not on the radar for a lot of people. And even though it seems like it's consuming our lives or the news or anything like that, it's just not reality on the ground for a lot of people. And I think one of the things is - I look at my work - it's really the prolonged and repeated engagement that moves the needle there. And a silver lining on the cloud is it actually - a couple of percentage points really does change an election. Boosting turnout by 5% is a humongous amount in the quantities that we measure, and that completely changes the complexion of campaigns. So even the work you did - and again, we're still going through results and precinct-level results and figuring that all out, but clearly made a difference. And I hope there is continued engagement on the ground - in Tukwila specifically - and in areas where we do activate, whether it's through a candidate campaign or through an initiative, to keep that going because it really is the repeated engagement and people being able to see that something from the formation and policy prospect that - hey, they did get excited about, and then it did happen, and then they're receiving a benefit. And - oh, I see that what I sign and actions that I took resulted in something that actually benefits me, or people that I know, or family that I have, or whatever the case is makes a big difference. I guess as you're - you said you're considering looking at what's on the menu moving forward - what is next and what are you considering? [00:32:31] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and I think that's exactly right - it's what you said - just that a one-off campaign is not enough to move that needle. And people need to have the experience of - oh yes, wow, I voted and something happened and it's actually something that makes a difference in my life. And so as we're looking at what to do next - as I mentioned, I think there's a lot of potential for other cities to do minimum wage raises, so we're looking at that. But we had our Transit Riders Union membership meeting in November and had a discussion about this, and I think heard really strongly from our members that we need to keep organizing in Tukwila specifically. And so we are kind of in the process now of figuring out what that could look like. And so we're having - actually tonight, we're having a meeting with some Tukwila renters to talk about what it might look like to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila, right? Because while we were door knocking, we talked to many, many people who were getting large rent increases, and this was part of the sad thing too - is you'd talk to someone in the spring and they'd sign the petition. And then go back in the fall and they'd moved out because - they no longer live there - because they got a $300/month rent increase, right? And so I think one possibility is to push for stronger renter protections in Tukwila next year - basically working with a lot of the people that we met during this campaign this year. And then I think we're also looking at how to keep organizing with workers in Tukwila, and specifically at and around Southcenter Mall. And the new law is going to go into effect next July. And so I think one project is making sure that everyone who works in Tukwila knows about that - knows the law, knows their rights - both on the minimum wage side of things, but also the access-to-hours policy. And the City is going to have to do some rulemaking to decide how to actually put those policies into practice, what to require of employers in terms of reporting and informing their employees. And so there's the details that have to be figured out. So we're going to be involved in that process and we're going to try to get Tukwila workers involved in that process. And yeah, I think also just continuing to talk to workers at the mall about what other issues they're facing - maybe there are other labor standards issues that workers in Tukwila want to do something about. So we're figuring that out now. We're in the space where there are so many possible things that we could do next year that sound worthwhile. And so we're going to have to figure out where there's the most interest and energy to move forward. [00:35:30] Crystal Fincher: I just can't tell you how excited I am to see what you're doing next. I just have so much admiration for how you went about this. You nailed the strategy and the execution of this. And it really is a model for other coalitions to follow - that can really be community-based, community-led and bringing about the kind of change that people need in their own communities. So thank you so much for joining us today. [00:36:02] Katie Wilson: Oh, my pleasure - it's great to be here. [00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: All right - thanks so much. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

California Academic Workers' Strike Fund: https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw We start this week's episode with a quick update on where things stand with CUPE in Ontario, as negotiations are once again moving slowly. This week workers won their election at a second Medieval Times castle, making their unit of the AGVA bicoastal. Unfortunately we've got another story of awful child labor, this time a company having kids as young as 13 cleaning slaughterhouses. Also this week, workers at an Amazon air hub in Kentucky launched their drive for a union and a living wage. Airline pilots for Delta and United have both taken steps recently towards a potential strike, but are held back by the Railway Labor Act just like the rail workers. In a frustrating story this week, staff workers at SEIU Local 2015 were forced to strike for nearly two weeks due to refusal to negotiate over wages and healthcare. 250 workers hit the picket lines at publisher HarperCollins in NYC this week, fighting to make publishing a career that can actually pay the bills and to open it up to a more diverse workforce. The biggest strike in the US since 2019 kicked off this week as 50,000 academic workers at the University of California system are fighting for raises, better benefits, and workplace protections. The strike wave in the UK has grown once again, as nearly half a million workers in nursing, academia, and public service all announced upcoming strikes. Finally, Starbucks workers hit 260 union stores this week as well as over 7000 workers at unionized locations. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

2100 Market Street in San Francisco under construction, 2018. | Image by Gregory Varnum is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 On today's show: 0:08 – We follow up on the Iran Mahsa Amini protests with Fatemeh Shams (@ShazzShams), assistant professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. 0:20 – Christian Benitez head custodian for the SFUSD and chief union steward with SEIU Local 1021 discusses continuing payroll troubles at the District. 0:33 – We host a debate on San Francisco propositions D and E with Sujata Srivastava, San Francisco Director for SPUR—a nonprofit public policy organization and John Avalos (@avalossf), executive director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a 21 member organization of community based affordable housing developers. The post Mahsa Amini protestors persist against paramilitary forces; Plus we host a debate on SF Prop D/E appeared first on KPFA.

Happy Monday From YOUR KC Morning Show!On the show today, Mike Meyers with Meyer Music and Band of Angels!LINKS: https://bandofangels.org/We wrap up the show in solidarity. Hartzell is joined by Alejo Gonzalez, with SEIU Local 105 in Denver, Colorado! Alejo was just featured in the season finale of the Invisibilia Podcast, produced by NPR. LINKS: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia "Bad bosses. Obnoxious coworkers. Unfair compensation. There are so many reasons people feel disempowered in the workplace. But how can our feelings about power enable or disrupt the larger dynamics we hate at work?"A Good Day To Be A Kansas Citian. Always.xoxo - @hartzell965, @holeyhearts, @kcmorningshow

August 18 — Union members packed into the Board of Supervisors chambers at last week's meeting, scoffing at claims of a financial crisis and calling for an increase in pay. “We've been hearing that the county can't afford a cost of living increase because there's a financial crisis,” said Patrick Hickey, the field representative for SEIU Local 1021, which represents most of the county's unionized workers. “But is there? In a word: no.” The county has asked for a year-long pause in negotiations over a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to assess the financial situation on the national as well as local levels. And the Board contemplated a program to exempt media from paying fees for public records act requests, even as a new system of including public comment on meeting agendas has drastically reduced the public discourse. Hickey argued that in the last five years, the county has overestimated expenses and underestimated revenues, sometimes by more than 100% for one source of tax funds. Union members clapped and cheered as he shared his data points with the Board. “The only potential funding shortfall is in cannabis taxes,” he declared; “which everyone who was paying attention knew was coming. But every other funding stream is increasing. How can the Board take action to support county employees? Number one: there are 264 funded, unfilled positions. Repurpose some of those funds. The county has argued that there is no money there because it gets used up by overtime and extra help. But you need to look at the actual data. If you review the past budgets, and the recently released annual comprehensive financial report, you will see that that is not true. There is an increase in overtime and extra help, but it doesn't come close to using up the savings when those positions are not filled. Number two: for this year's budget, the county has projected no increase in sales tax revenues. Let's take a look at how well the county has done in forecasting sales and use tax revenues.” In the last five years, he said, “actual revenues are regularly higher than projected, and expenses are regularly lower than projected. The budget is a fiction, designed to make the Board look prudent and effective. The Board needs to understand this, and make decisions accordingly.” Not all of the presentations were quite as data-driven. Jessica Christensen shared responses to county job postings on Facebook. “We are advertising that your check can be up to $1850 per paycheck,” she began. “Up to. And this is what the public had to say about that: ‘Mendocino County is a gorgeous place to live. But the job market couldn't suck harder if it attached a nozzle to it.'” She went on, including some frank language from users of the site, as union members laughed and held up their signs. Union President Julie Beardsley predicted what will happen if more workers become dissatisfied and leave the county. “Falling behind in employee compensation will result in a lack of services, phones not being answered, long wait times for permits, and it will put the most vulnerable in our county at risk,” she declared. The public is also no longer privy to correspondence with the Board of Supervisors on matters of public interest. Up until the beginning of June, comments addressed to the Board about items under discussion during the meetings would be attached to the pertinent agenda item. They were often plentiful, and they ranged from expert opinion to angry one-liners. But a new system, called Granicus, requires commenters to create a password-protected account, which has not caught on. I was first surprised on June 21, when it appeared that no one besides supervisors and county staff had anything to say about a controversial proposal for a sales tax. Since then, only county documents have appeared on the agendas. Since the new system was in place, I have obtained at least three important letters about topics that are clearly in the public interest — just not by way of the agenda. Chamise Cubbison, the elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller, wrote to the Board of Supervisors on August 2, characterizing assertions they had made about the county's budget as false. Earlier that day, the Board had agreed to ask the State Controller to help the county with its budget, due to an alleged financial crisis. Cubbison informed the Board that the meeting had been full of misinformation, and that she had not been given a chance to respond. That letter made its way into my hands informally. On July 29, Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal wrote to the Board of Supervisors about updates to the manual for the cannabis equity grant program. Mismanagement and delays in administering the direct grants to qualified applicants were the subject of a recent Grand Jury report, called “Building the Airplane While it's Flying.” I also obtained this piece of correspondence, from a public servant to elected representatives, informally. I happen to be on the mailing list for the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council, which wrote a letter to the Board dated August 10, urging it to adopt a standing committee to address cannabis issues. They wrote that, “As is obvious to everyone now, the roll out of the cannabis permit program has been fraught with hiccups and missteps sinc ethe inception.” At the meeting no August 16, the Board directed cannabis concerns to the General Government standing committee. The cannabis community has been requesting this for years, but the Board has held firm on its position that the entire Board should hear cannabis matters, and that an ad hoc committee should take up specific, narrowly defined problems. But the Board changed its position during a discussion about an item on a retroactive contract amendment that was pulled from the middle of the consent calendar. The public did not have a chance to see who, besides the MAC and the cannabis community, had weighed in on that decision by writing to the Board. The most recent agenda consisted of 66 items, and contained only one public comment, which was a memo from the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, an advocacy organization that has long been working with the Board and the public to establish and clarify its position. I shared my thoughts about this with the Board during public comment on Tuesday. I said that previously, I have been able to gauge the level of public interest in an item, including the thoughts of people who are not well-versed in advocacy; and that I find value and interest in what the public has to say. Williams responded that he agreed, but that the Clerk of the Board's office is down from five employees to about 1.5. The union members, who were in the room for public comment, booed and groaned. Williams said the clerk is charged with saving emails as pdf's, and manually uploading them as comments. “We simply didn't have staff time, based on the number of comments,” he said. “I'm not saying that we shouldn't have that simplified model that we had before, but it's a struggle, and it's not just in the clerk's office. It's across the board. Every problem that we look at, we say, we don't have enough personnel to carry it out. Yes, it's a problem…I don't know what that solution is today. It's not as easy as directing staff to put back in place what was in place previously. Because we simply don't have the staff time to carry it out.” The County recently used close to $370,000 in one-time American Rescue Plan Act funds to remodel the Board of Supervisors chambers, including new chairs, a new telecom system, and an automatic door system. Beardsley, the union president, summarized her position: “We have examined the budget, and the claims of no money just don't add up.”

Darryll Bell, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 31, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast and discussed the need to block a proposed Schedule F employment category that would strip federal employees of their civil service protections. He also spoke about staffing shortages in Veterans Administration facilities and the impact on veteran care.     Travis Woodward, President of the Connecticut State Employees Association (CSEA) affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2001, appeared on the AWF Union Podcast and talked about staffing shortages among state workers in Connecticut, which are estimated to cost taxpayers over $100 million per year. He also discussed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement for CSEA workers.

August 10, 2022 — The new fiscal year is off to a rocky start, with miscommunication about the health plan deficit, uncertainty about federal disaster reimbursements, and the county's main labor union filing a complaint with the state in the midst of contract negotiations. Last week, the Board of Supervisors agreed to ask the state controller for help with its books after Supervisor Ted Williams declared that the county was in a financial crisis. Chamise Cubbison, the newly elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller, wrote a letter to the board saying the discussion was full of misinformation, while retired Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire said the county is “absolutely not” in a financial crisis. CEO Darcie Antle said crisis is a strong word to describe the county's financial situation, but there are areas of concern, including close to $70 million in long term debt service and rising interest rates as the county contemplates refinancing bonds to fund the new jail. Eleven million dollars in disaster reimbursements from FEMA is still outstanding. And Antle described the confluence of events that led up to the sudden news about last year's $3.6 million shortfall in the county health plan. She recalled that just before COVID, and the high-dollar claims that followed, the county had a robust reserve in the health plan. “The prior Auditor-Controller came forward in 16/17 and stated that our reserve for the health plan, the fund balance, was too high,” she recalled; “and that the State Controller was concerned about that, and recommended that we spend down that amount of money. I think we spent down roughly $6 million through a health holiday. That occurred in 17/18 and 18/19. In the quarter of October through December of each respective year, employees and the county did not pay the premium for those months. So those were health holidays, which equated to about a $6 million spend-down. In December of 2019, who would imagine we would be going into COVID…claims increased, acuities increased, over the last three years.” In August of last year, Antle met with former Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer to discuss a $1.1 million deficit in the health plan. She stated that in 2021, “that information was reported to the Board, a couple of times…At that time, the team, the HR team, and the Executive Office, did ask for an increase in the health plan, and that increase went into effect January 1 of 2022 at a 12% increase,” which Antle says was well within the amount allowed by the county's contracts with its labor unions. There was a delay in reporting the additional $2.5 million deficit to the board, and Antle said her team did report the inaccurate number. She said the $1.1 million deficit was on a cash basis, “which can be seen by any department running a month to actual report. That is what was obtained by the Executive Office, the HR office, and what was clearly understood by our outside actuary. The $2.5 million, which is the number that was missing from the original $3.6 million, that was on an accrual basis on the balance sheet, and the balance sheet is balanced once per year by the outside auditors. The balance sheet for 2021, because of the delay in the outside audit, was not completed and submitted to the auditor (because they complete and submit to the auditor), until the end of June, early July, of 2022. So we can clearly see that from the financial statement now. But that wasn't what was reported. And again, the team reported twice, publicly, a $1.1 (million deficit). Nothing was brought forward to clarify those statements. So is this misdoing on anyone's part, or is this part of a transition? We had our Auditor-Controller retire. Our Treasurer-Tax Collector retired. We have a new person stepping into a dual role that had never been filled here before. I'm stepping into my new role as well. So I think everybody needs to continue to work together, and come together as a tem, and make sure that there is transparency and communication to the Board, and to the public.” The county is currently in negotiations with its labor unions, which also want more budget information. Last month, SEIU Local 1021 filed a complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) about lengthy delays in fulfilling requests for detailed information, which Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson said she's working to supply. The county has until August 18 to respond to PERB about the complaint, and is likely to face a number of deadlines to produce the rest of the information to the union negotiators. The union is asking for a 5% Cost Of Living Adjustment, or COLA, and Antle said she is asking for a one-year pause on that part of the negotiation. “We really want to assess the financial stability of the county at this time,” she said. “Coming out of COVID, not receiving all our reimbursement from FEMA, going into a possible economic downturn. We really just want to understand the fiscal position. We are just asking for a one-year pause on the COLA…over the last three years, all bargaining units have received a 3% COLA each year…in that three-year period, they were also receiving classification study surveys to bring most if not all positions into market. So there were additional increases during that time.” She hopes next year's budget process will involve more collaboration, and more regular reports. “I would like to see the Auditor-Controller's office, the Executive Office fiscal team, come together with the budget ad hoc on a regular basis,” she reflected. “Again, communication is both ways, so we need everybody to come to the table.”

August 3, 2022 — A Board of Supervisors discussion about cost overruns for the new jail construction project veered into a cry for help from the state, as county leadership admitted that it does not have a clear idea what its financial situation is. “I would like to ask my colleagues for support on direction to the CEO's office to reach out to the state controller's office to help us get our books in order,” Supervisor Ted Williams announced, about a half hour into the meeting. A few minutes after hearing that state review of construction documents is causing months-long delays and that cost estimates for the new jail are now $7-8 million over budget, Williams told his colleagues how frustrated he is by the lack of financial information, even after a budgeting process that started months ago. “I'm three and half years into a term,” he said. “I worry, I'm coming up on the point where I can no longer use the excuse, I'm new here. And yet in the three and a half years, I haven't been able to get a credible financial report. I understand we have three different sets of books. They all differ. Why?” CEO Darcie Antle corroborated the main point. “I would agree with you. I'm not quite sure,” she acknowledged. “I think a lot of the reason we have asked for a pause in the labor negotiations is that we don't know. We don't have a clear vision on what the books are, and where the finances are. And those discussions need to continue with the new auditor-controller.” It doesn't seem like anyone has a clear idea, and that's a problem for rank and file workers and the public as well as the leadership. SEIU Local 1021, the union that represents the bulk of the county's employees, filed a complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board last month, detailing the information they've requested as they negotiate their contract. The union wants a 5% Cost of Living Adjustment, which Field Representative Patrick Hickey estimates would cost the county $3.2 million. The county released some information to the public a few days after the union filed its complaint, but Hickey said that he, too, is frustrated by missing details. He's still looking for specific information about differential pay and temporary and part-time workers that will help the union understand the impact their proposals will have on the county's budget. “That's something we submitted all the way back in November,” he said last week. “So we've been trying to keep track as the county has parsed out little bits of information to us as the negotiations have progressed.” Though it seems no one has the information anyone wants about the budget, the county has had an unprecedented amount of money to work with in the past year and a half. Local agencies are still receiving their allotments from the county's $22 million settlement from PG&E. And the county was awarded almost $17 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. Maria Avalos of UVA, a Latino advocacy group, requested more details about how those funds will be spent, and how the decisions will be made. She noted that over $4 million of the ARPA funds has been allocated for core county services and infrastructure. “So I'm just wondering, where is the breakdown of where that money will go?” she asked during public comment. “Will it be able to be found by the public? And how is the local government making the decision to use the funds? And will there be public input?” Williams counts himself among those agitating for financial transparency. But he told his colleagues yesterday that he doesn't think anyone is able to provide detailed financial information about the county. “We do have an outside audit that happens,” he said. “When was the last time this board, you and I sitting on this board, voted to direct the auditor to incorporate the outside audit recommendations? I don't think I've done it yet. I don't know if past boards have done it. But it means we're paying for an outside audit, we're getting advice about changes we need to make to meet accounting principles. And then we're ignoring the advice. So how much accumulated error is there, and over how many years is it? Ten years, is it thirty years? Is that why we have different sets of books, with different numbers? Because we never incorporate the outside audit findings? I think we have a financial crisis here, and we just don't know how bad it is.” Supervisor John Haschak pointed to a recent shakeup in the county's main financial offices. But Williams thinks the problem goes back much further than the decision to consolidate the offices of auditor-controller and treasurer-tax collector. “It's just really ironic that this board voted to consolidate the two positions when those people in those positions said don't do it, and that consolidation would not help, and now we're in the position where we're asking the state to step in to help out this position that in part we created as a board,” Haschak said. “So I want to respond to that. A part of the reason that I supported the consolidation is that I couldn't get financials,” Williams replied. “And we had an auditor retire, and shortly after, I learned we have a $4.5 million hole in the health plan. Why didn't this board know that we had a $4.5 million hole? We would have planned accordingly. There's an institutional problem here that this county doesn't have a set of books that anybody believes. There's nobody in this county today you could ask, how much money do we have to our name, and get a straight answer. How can I do my job, voting on a budget, if I don't know how much money we have to spend?” Supervisor Glenn McGourty called for structural change. “You want to have people who really know finances, who are properly trained,” he said. “That's why I've supported a professional financial office, which is what most big organizations have, where you appoint people based on their skill set and a proven track record of handling money well. And if we look back through Mendocino County's history at the auditor-controller and tax collector-treasurer, we don't see that pattern. So I still think we're going to need long-term structural change in county government on this. This will not go away until we do.” The board voted unanimously to ask the state for more money for the new jail, and to ask the state controller for help with the county's fiscal issues.

July 28, 2022 — At a brief Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, the Board heard about Measure B, cannabis, covid, and labor. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren called in to warn about new variants. He is strongly recommending that people wear masks indoors and gather outdoors. Since May, the county has recorded eight deaths from covid, six of them in the greater Ukiah area. The descedents ranged in age from 67-91, and most had comorbidities. And negotiations between the county and the union representing most of its workers are not going amicably. SEIU Local 1021 filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state Public Employment Relations Board, claiming that the county has refused to give union negotiators all the information they need to participate in bargaining sessions. Union representative Patrick Hickey called into the Board meeting on Tuesday to say that he thinks the county does have the money to give members a cost of living allowance, or COLA. “We've been waiting since November for a variety of information requests,” he said. “And the county continues to drag its heels, has failed to present the information that we've needed to analyze the budget…we did finally get a dribble of information from the county last week in our negotiations. They provided a small portion of the information requested regarding the more than 402 unfilled vacant positions in the county…based on the limited amount of information provided, it's clear that there is certainly funding available to provide county employees with a reasonable COLA to address the current high level of inflation. Based on the current budget, a lot more attention is being paid to taking care of the buildings, rather than taking care of the employees. Some of those projects are not imminent or urgent, and certainly can be postponed and that money can be rededicated to COLAs…there's a sizable amount of money set aside to buy new vehicles. The County has a large number of vehicles that are not even used on a regular basis, that are just sitting in parking lots, getting old.” The union told the employee relations board that “the County should be ordered to provide complete and accurate responses to the Union's outstanding requests for information; ” and asked it to “order all other remedies it deems just and proper.” The union frequently contends that low pay leads to understaffing, a theme that emerged in many of the Grand Jury reports, which started to come out last week. Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, drew the board's attention to the Grand Jury report on the cannabis equity grant program, which is supposed to provide grants to people who have been harmed by the war on drugs. The report detailed communications failures, and noted that as of May, the county's Cannabis Department had ten vacant positions and only twelve employees. Katz said the report bolstered many points the board has heard before. “I'm not sure you had a chance to review it. It came in yesterday,” he began. “If you had, you might see that some of the findings and some of the recommendations align with what MCA and stakeholders from the community have been saying for quite some time. One of the first findings indicates that there was no process developed for the distribution of grant funds to individuals prior to applications being received. What that indicates is a project management issue, I believe, that speaks to the need for additional support of the cannabis department by the CEO's office to ensure that as projects are set up, they align with all of the requirements of the county infrastructure and that we are not waiting for the last minute to identify potential roadblocks in getting out these much-needed funds. That goes on, additionally, to finding #2, that the County did not ask county did not ask the State for requirements on record-keeping until May of 2022, and apparently only did so to establish the County's risk of having to repay funds if they were not spent for approved purposes.” The county received $2.2 million for the equity program, and close to $10.5 million for a local jurisdiction assistance grant program to help growers comply with environmental regulations and cover the cost of various fees. Supervisor John Haschak pulled an item from the Board's consent calendar approving a year-long agreement with a company called Planet Labs to provide satellite imaging services, starting July 27, for a little over $350,000. “This is the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant money,” he said; “and the concern expressed was that this only be used for helping out with getting people to their annual licenses, which is the intent of the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant.” The Mendocino Cannabis Alliance sent a memo to the Board, sounding the alarm over the satellites' potential use for enforcement purposes, which it contends are ineligible uses for the grant money. Katz called out what he sees as a double standard. “It's been made very clear that if funds are misused, we will not be able to retain them,” he warned. “And seeing County Counsel's focus on making sure that the misuse of funds policy was in place for applicants to the equity program, people who have already been harmed by the war on drugs, it seems obvious to us that there should be similar misuse of funds policies in place for the administration of these funds.” The Board passed the consent calendar and agreed to fine-tune the use of the funds later. In the Measure B update, Behavioral Health Director Dr. Jeanine Miller told the Board that a new crisis team of mental health specialists worked with law enforcement to answer about one call a day last year. Sheriff Matt Kendall claimed that law enforcement visits to hospital emergency rooms with people in mental health crises are down 60% since the team started working together. But the mental health training center in Redwood Valley is expensive, and so far not living up to expectations. Again, Haschak was dubious. “We're hearing that there's two trainings per month at this point,” he said. “So that's 24 per year, and if we're looking at the operational cost of $50,000 per year, plus it looks like $30,000 for the capital, so we're talking $80,000 a year just to keep it up and running. So I guess the question is, how do we get better usage of it.” Miller said she expects better marketing will get the training center rented out more often. While the Measure B committee has put aside a prudent reserve, there is no reserve for capital improvement projects or maintenance, though one of the stated purposes of the Measure was to “Provide for the necessary infrastructure to support and stabilize” people needing treatment for a variety of conditions. The Measure B committee has ordered a gun locker for the training center and is deciding where to put it.

July 20, 2022 — A recent announcement by Adventist Health about its negotiations with Anthem Blue Cross, the county's main insurance provider, has caused widespread panic. The contract between Anthem and Adventist, a faith-based nonprofit hospital system that manages all three of the county's hospitals, was originally due to expire on July 18, but has been extended to August first. Adventist posted FAQs on its website this week, directing patients to call the number on their insurance card for answers to most questions. But patients are advised that if they are in the hospital after midnight on August first, Anthem could choose to transfer them to another hospital. Some patients may be able to continue receiving care for some time as a “continuity of care service.” In a letter to patients last month, Adventist claimed that Anthem has enjoyed record profits for the past two years, but continues to pay Adventist “substantially less than other hospital systems. Anthem is one of our lowest-paying health plans, and we can't continue to provide quality care for patients at such significantly reduced rates.” Adventist offered to be interviewed on this subject, but we declined because President Judson Howe refuses to speak to us about the faith-based hospital's policies on abortion, which remains legal in the state of California. Recent studies show that much of the high cost of doing medicine in the state of California is due to a lack of competition, both in healthcare and insurance markets. According to a study by the California Healthcare Foundation, titled, “Markets or Monopolies,” “the preponderance of evidence suggests that hospital consolidation leads to higher prices… Furthermore, workers bear the burden of these increased premiums as employers depress wages to pay more for health insurance coverage.” The MediCare Payment Advisory Commission told Congress in 2018 that “hospitals with large market shares have the leverage to negotiate relatively high prices from commercial insurers.” This affects small local governments offering employer insurance, as well as private citizens who pay for their own coverage. The county's health plan is currently close to $5 million in the hole, with the county paying about 81% of the cost of skyrocketing claims, according to a presentation by Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson during last month's budget hearings. “So we would really need to change our whole plan,” she told the Board of Supervisors. “We need to be looking at the deductibles, the co-insurances…Fully insured is where we're looking at, so we know, with a fully insured plan, what your payments are every single month. Right now, we don't know. We project what we believe our monthlies will be, but it's unpredictable. We could get a $60,000 claim week, and then the next week, we could get $116,000.” Julie Beardsley, President of SEIU Local 1021, which represents most county workers, said it's time to cut loose. The union is in a battle with the county, which is offering a 0% cost of living allowance. “The county has been stalling about looking into new plans,” she said at a union rally during the budget hearings. “Obviously Adventist has kind of monopoly here in the county and they can charge whatever they want, but we need to look at other plans.” Adventist told its patients that in the last five years, it's given away more than $276 million in charity to those in need. We have not had the opportunity to review detailed financial information for Adventist Health. But according to a report by Stat, a healthcare-focused news website produced by Boston Globe Media, nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. received an estimated $25 billion in tax exemptions in 2015. Its authors, Ge Bai and David A. Hyman, write that “many nonprofit hospitals do not provide enough charity care to justify their exemptions…More than one-third of nonprofit hospitals (36%) provided less than $1 of charity care for every $100 in total expenses.” Nonprofit hospitals are exempt from federal, state, and local property taxes, and donations to them are tax-deductible. Ge and Hyman argue that, “If nonprofit hospitals are unwilling to provide sufficient charity care to justify the amount of their current tax exemption, there is no reason we should deprive local communities of the property tax revenues that allow them to fund local schools, parks, and other public services.” Assembly member JimWood's office responded to our inquiries with a statement reading in part that the Assembly member understands that, “In this case, Adventist is the one initiating the action to renegotiate, requesting higher reimbursements in a number of areas…On the other hand, Anthem is seeking an agreement that would not reflect significant cost increases to the employers, employees or others with Anthem coverage. It's important to note that the entities being affected, such as the school districts, city of Ukiah and (the) county, are self-insured and, as such, are tax-payer funded and can only absorb certain cost increases before they have to look for other ways to make it up, like cutting costs. This is not a situation that Asm. Wood wants to see happen and commends these self-insured entities for being responsible to the taxpayers and by pushing back against any attempt to raise the cost of coverage beyond what they can afford.” Some of the largest employers in the county, including the county government, the city of Ukiah, and the Ukiah Unified School District, rely on Anthem for their insurance. The county has 961 employees with 810 dependents, while the school district has about 750 employees with approximately 350 dependents. The city of Ukiah has 194 workers and 234 dependents, and is consulting with a regional insurance provider about its options. If the contract between the hospital system and the insurance provider is terminated, people with Anthem will have to pay out-of-network costs at Adventist facilities. After last month's healthcare presentation during budget hearings, Supervisor Ted Williams said the choices seem to be to continue to invest in an ever more expensive system, or look to the state and federal government for a whole new system. “We can ask staff to shop around, try to find a creative solution, (but) the bottom line is, without a single payer solution, or some national and state level solution, we're going to see continued increase in health costs. And the only answer is, we need to contribute more.”

We have an Ironreads for you this week, courtesy of the Times Union's Chris Churchill. Stop letting Andrew Cuomo live rent free in your head! The J6 hearings aren't convincing swing state republicans to switch teams, and are in fact further entrenching both sides. The Fed has decided that workers have had it too good for too long and need some disciplining. A bitcoin mine in the Finger Lakes has everybody pissed off–will Kathy care? Gilded Age is set to return to the Capital District, and David has some choice words for Julian Fellows and the inaccurate historical representation of streets in 1882. Finally, the workers at Capital Roots have requested recognition of their union with SEIU Local 200. Please email their CEO to express your support for the staff–link at the bottom!   https://www.timesunion.com/churchill/article/Churchill-Letting-go-of-Andrew-Cuomo-17249155.php?IPID=Times-Union-HP-column-list   https://www.levernews.com/the-fed-declares-war-on-workers/    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/impeachment-no-3-jan-6-panel-isnt-swaying-swing-state-republicans-rcna34037   https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/The-Gilded-Age-sets-up-for-second-season-of-17249675.php    https://www.fingerlakesdailynews.com/2022/06/15/1473612/    https://gothamist.com/news/bitcoin-mining-operation-finger-lakes-runs-against-new-yorks-climate-law    https://www.seiu200united.org/news/capital-roots-staff-request-voluntary-recognition-of-their-union-with-seiu-local-200united/    Email Amy Klein, CEO of Capital Roots: https://act.seiu.org/a/capital_roots  Support the show!

Here's your morning news: Hundreds of employees at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center  expected to walk off job today; Contract talks to resume today between LA County officials and leaders with SEIU Local 721; LAPD investigating deaths of three children in their home in West Hills; County officials say 365 firearms turned in at weekend gun buy-back event in Lynwood; Cedar Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park set to re-open today after  lightning fire forced its closure; Study finds that decades of wildfire suppression is fueling megafires and making them more dangerous; “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” has posted the biggest box office opening of the year. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.   Support the show: https://laist.com

Hundreds of non-tenure-track lecturers and adjunct faculty at Howard University, one of the most storied higher education institutions in the US, have been fighting for nearly four years to negotiate their first union contract with the university administration. On Wednesday, March 23, just hours before they were set to go on strike, the union bargaining team reached a tentative agreement with the administration, which members will be reviewing and voting on in the coming weeks. Reporting from Howard's campus in Washington DC, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Corey Lamont, a lecturer in Howard's English Department and member of the SEIU Local 500 bargaining unit, about the union's long fight to secure their first contract with the university and what having that contract will mean for faculty and the broader campus community.Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com/a-historic-victory-for-howard-universitys-non-tenure-track-facultyPre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Cameron GranadinoHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer: Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-podSign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/newsletter-podLike us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealnewsFollow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealnews