United Public Workers for Action

1 day ago

Lab workers key to California’s bird flu response are poised to strike
Chronic staff shortages have left the lab struggling to protect the state’s food chain from bird flu, the workers said.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/19/bird-flu-california-lab-strike/
February 19, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ESTToday at 12:00 p.m. EST

Alyssa Laxamana, left; Amy Fletcher, center; and Kayla Dollar are members of the union representing workers at the University of California at Davis laboratory that does testing for the bird flu virus. (Marissa Leshnov/For The Washington Post)

By Hannah Ziegler
Workers at the only lab in California with the authority to confirm high-risk bird flu cases will go on a brief strike next week, claiming that years of understaffing, poor training and burnout have left them struggling to protect the state’s food chain from the rampant virus.
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Amid a statewide outbreak that has killed 23 million birds and infected hundreds of cattle herds and dozens of humans, workers say the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System at the University of California at Davis is struggling. Limited career advancement and poor management prompted a staff exodus early last year, former lab workers said, and chronic staffing shortages have since increased errors and left remaining workers ill-equipped to handle virus testing.
“Management has made it clear that they prioritize getting results out fast because we have such a high sample load over ensuring that our results are accurate and pass our quality control program,” said Alyssa Laxamana, a biotech worker at the lab. “That has been really tough.”

The University Professional and Technical Employees-CWA Local 9119 union, which represents Laxamana and nearly 20,000 other laboratory and medical facility workers across the University of California system,voted last week to authorize a three-day strike beginning Feb. 26, citing chronic staff shortages as well as recruitment and retention issues.

Those problems have “real impacts not just on our workers, but for Californians,” Amy Fletcher, UC-Davis co-chair for the union, told The Washington Post. “We are all now aware of the impacts of avian influenza, and if we could listen to workers, it would be much easier to address these concerns.”
Shortly before the strike was announced, Bill Kisliuk, a spokesperson for UC-Davis, told The Post in a two-page email on behalf of the lab that it has met “unprecedented” demand for bird flu testing during the outbreak and “distributed the work broadly among qualified and certified team members.” The union has been negotiating a new contract with the University of California for several months, and at times, “the rhetoric can become heated,” he said.

The lab has brought in temporary workers from other universities, outsourced some testing and hired technicians after last year’s staff departures, Kisliuk said. It also formed a task force last year to ensure “meaningful consideration” of workers’ concerns, he added.
‘A sink-or-swim situation’

Dairy cows at the University of California at Davis, on Feb. 11. Exposure to the bird flu virus is not a death sentence for cows, but the virus can reduce milk output in herds. (Marissa Leshnov/For The Washington Post)
California’s farms are concentrated in a few key regions, such as the Central Valley, making those areas a hotbed for bird flu, said John Korslund, a former staff veterinary epidemiologist for the Agriculture Department. And thanks to a ballot measure passed in 2018 and gradually implemented over subsequent years, egg-laying hens can’t be confined to cages, giving them greater exposure to the wild birds that transmit the virus.
The virus’s severity has exploited cracks in the country’s agricultural and veterinary response systems, and bird flu cases have recently “exploded” in California, said Meghan Davis, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

“This is a system that’s dealing with a very complex issue which impacts not just dairy cows and not just poultry, but also humans and cats and other species,” Davis said. “Here, you’ve got a system that’s actually primed, and when you overwhelm that system, that gives you a sense of the scale or magnitude” of the outbreak.
Consumers have felt the outbreak’s impact through skyrocketing egg prices. The average price of a dozen large, Grade A eggs in U.S. cities was $4.95 in January, nearly double their price in January 2024, according to federal data. That spike is expected to continue this year.
Since the virus jumped to cattle last year, economists have watched California, which is the country’s 11th-largest egg producer but is by far its biggest milk producer. Bird flu exposure is not a death sentence for cows, unlike for chickens, but the virus has decimated milk output in some affected dairy herds.

So far, bird flu has had a limited impact on California’s dairy industry because most cows have fully recovered after exposure, said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural and resource economics professor at UC-Davis. Still, more than 75 percent of the 950 infected dairy herds in the United States are in California, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to declare a state of emergency in December to “streamline and expedite” its bird flu response.
The UC-Davis lab, which focuses on identifying new areas of infection, is critical to controlling the outbreak. A positive result can prompt farmers to kill thousands of birds, meaning a mistake can critically harm someone’s livelihood. Meanwhile, a false negative result risks exposing more animals and humans to the virus, and further affecting the state’s food chain.
When Laxamana, 25, first tested milk samples for bird flu last September, she had only watched the process twice. She recalled how she had to don scrubs, two sets of surgical gloves, a mask, medical goggles, a lab coat, a hairnet and two sets of medical booties to enter the area where suspect samples are stored. Workers must submit fingerprints and undergo a background check. Daily access also requires an iris scan, and workers must shower before they exit.

“I didn’t even get to practice,” Laxamana said of the complex work, which involves handling highly contagious material. “I didn’t even know if I was doing things correctly.”
The bird flu’s explosiveness has required workers at the UC-Davis lab to test up to 600 samples a day, spending four to six hours per shift sealed in protective gear. Normally, five members of the biotech team would split the work, often aided by a lab assistant and supervisor. But last summer, Laxamana and a colleague, Victoria Ontiveros, were the only people testing samples for avian influenza.

A California law forbids confining egg-laying hens to cages, which gives them greater exposure to the wild birds that transmit the virus. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
By then, the lab had lost decades of expertise, Ontiveros said, including a veteran supervisor who had worked there a dozen years. “We lost all of that institutional knowledge, so that role was put on me with only two years here,” she said. “It’s very much a sink-or-swim situation.”

Before that, workers had raised concerns about inadequate training and persistent burnout due to the bird flu outbreak, according to emails reviewed by The Post. In May 2023, biotech workers delivered a petition asking management to address retention, training and pay equity issues. Later that year, workers wrote in a follow-up letter that their workload had “measurably increased” since another California lab flooded in March 2023.
“We operate with the mindset that the next outbreak is right around the corner, and we need proper training opportunities and competitive salary to remain adequately staffed for that eventuality,” they wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post.
Kisliuk, the UC-Davis spokesperson, said the task force established last year is “actively pursuing initiatives” identified by staff members and is in “productive conversations” with those who have raised concerns. Workers in the biotech lab must have “exceptional qualifications” and undergo “extensive training,” Kisliuk wrote. The lab is “part of a national system designed to handle surges in testing demand” and has also adopted new sampling protocols to address the outbreak’s severity, he added.
‘This job was killing me’

The lab at UC-Davis is the only lab in California with the authority to confirm high-risk bird flu cases. (Marissa Leshnov/For The Washington Post)
The bird flu outbreak, which began in 2022, exacerbated tensions in the lab and triggered the staff exodus, current and former lab workers told The Post.

Kayla Dollar, 29, left in May 2024 after spending two years as a lab assistant for the biotech section. She worked closely with technicians like Laxamana and Ontiveros but needed a promotion and additional training to help with testing.
In January 2024, Dollar applied to a job with testing duties. Others in the lab, including her supervisor, encouraged her, and she volunteered to train outside of work hours to avoid disrupting the outbreak response. But senior management denied her the chance to compete for the job, saying she lacked experience and her colleagues didn’t have time to train her.
Dollar, who has a degree in lab sciences and two years of outbreak experience, now works in veterinary genetics at another UC-Davis lab, the same job she was previously deemed unqualified to work.
“I stepped up when they needed me,” Dollar said. “It didn’t matter.”

Samantha Hale, 28, joined the lab’s virology team in June 2023 but was eventually pulled into biotech support. She recalled how weekly lab meetings would devolve into arguments about understaffing and struggles to fix testing errors. Senior management discouraged technicians from working overtime, Hale said, but they found it impossible otherwise to keep up with the barrage of samples.
Management strictly monitored workers’ breaks, scheduled their lunches and moved their shifts, creating a “very tumultuous, emotionally fraught environment,” Hale said. She took medical leave last November, after the stress contributed to debilitating migraines. When her leave ended, she quit.
“I genuinely am worried about our lack of ability to do the testing properly and what that means for the public, both in terms of an increased potential for human-to-human transmission and how it affects food availability and pricing,” Hale said. But, “this job was killing me.”
Close calls on testing
Since last summer, senior managers have hired technicians, and scientists from the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University have completed rotations at the lab, Ontiveros said.
In addition, lower-priority testing — including for routine diseases, other foreign animal diseases and avian influenza in already-infected places — has been outsourced, allowing the biotech staff at UC-Davis to focus on “higher-priority H5N1 testing,” said Kisliuk, the UC-Davis spokesperson.
But concerns persist about training support and transparency, Ontiveros said. Senior technicians have faced extra pressure to manage new hires and catch mistakes, Laxamana added. She recalled several close calls when testing errors yielded incorrect results, requiring her or Ontiveros to intervene.
And so far, the workload changes haven’t curbed churn. The lab’s replacement supervisor, who arrived in the fall, quit in December, Ontiveros said.
“You can get bodies in there, but if you’re not training them properly, they’re not going to feel comfortable enough to work by themselves, and they’re going to feel defeated,” Ontiveros said.
Laxamana and Ontiveros have considered leaving as well. But they worry about the impact on California’s food chain if they abandon their bird flu battle stations.
“If we leave,” Laxamana said, “there’s really no one else who’s going to stay and do the job.” … See MoreSee Less

Lab workers key to California’s bird flu response are poised to strike

www.washingtonpost.com

Chronic staff shortages have left the California lab struggling to protect the state’s food chain from bird flu, the workers said.

United Public Workers for Action

2 days ago

SF Billionaire Mayor's Union Busting Pals
www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/lurie-donors/

Daniel Lurie’s wealth network: These are the people the S.F. mayor could tap to fund his work
Daniel Lurie address the crowd during his mayoral inauguration at the Civic Center in San Francisco..jpeg
Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle
By J.D. Morris and Nora Mishanec | Feb. 19, 2025 4:00 a.m.

Before he became San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie spent nearly two decades raising vast sums of money from wealthy people to fight poverty in the Bay Area. Now, he plans to tap into that experience to push his agenda at City Hall.

Lurie’s first political win as mayor was getting legislation passed that lets him seek funds from private donors to help pay for his plans to fight homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness. Lurie has offered few specifics about who might ask for contributions, but he’s projected confidence that he’ll find sufficient financial interest and has vowed to be transparent about the fundraising.

“There’s people that want to help this city in a variety of capacities,” Lurie said before signing the ordinance at City Hall on Feb. 12. “We need to stand up more mental health beds, more shelter beds, and I know there are people interested in that. … The public will know who we are talking to and who donates.”

It’s not clear how much money Lurie and his top aides want to raise or exactly who they’ll ask. But a look at the people who’ve contributed to Lurie’s nonprofit, Tipping Point Community, as well as his mayoral campaign and inauguration offers clues.

Here are 12 people who could potentially contribute, based on their histories with Lurie and his nonprofit. The Chronicle reached out to everyone on this list, many of whom couldn’t be reached for comment or didn’t respond.

The Dolby family
Dagmar Dolby and David Dolby are seated on a sofa as they answer questions during an interview..jpeg
Dagmar Dolby, left, and David Dolby are interviewed in San Francisco. Photo by Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle 2017
The family of the late Dolby Laboratories founder Ray Dolby has supported Tipping Point and Lurie’s political ambitions. Dagmar, Ray’s wife, gave to a political action committee that supported Lurie’s mayoral bid and his inauguration, as did her son David, the company’s current CEO, along with his wife, Natasha. David and Lurie were school classmates in San Francisco and at Duke University. In an interview, David Dolby said his family would “take each opportunity” to donate to Lurie’s mayoral initiatives on a “case-by-case” basis. “Our family cares deeply about San Francisco, and we believe by mobilizing resources across the city we are going to effect a positive change we want,” he said.

Paul Tudor Jones

Paul Tudor Jones. Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images 2021
Jones, the billionaire manager of a multinational investment firm whose website calls him “one of the pioneers of the modern-day hedge fund industry,” donated large sums both to Tipping Point and Lurie’s mayoral PAC. Described by the New York Times as “a Memphis native who cut his teeth trading cotton in New Orleans,” Jones is a founder of the Robin Hood Foundation, where Lurie worked in his 20s and later used as a model for Tipping Point. Forbes this year estimated his fortune at $8.1 billion. In an email, Jones did not address whether he would donate to the city if asked, but said Lurie takes “a heart-centered approach to how he treats people. Mix that with a business-centric approach to solving problems, and I will follow him anywhere.”

The Schwab family
Charles Schwab.jpeg

Charles Schwab started the nation’s largest publicly traded investment services firm in San Francisco. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs his net worth at more than $14 billion. He, his wife Helen, and his daughters Katie Schwab Paige and Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz have all given to Tipping Point, where Paige was a founding board member. The Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation has been one of Tipping Point’s top donors and provided tens of millions of dollars toward the nonprofit’s work on the construction of an affordable housing complex that Lurie often highlighted as a mayoral candidate. Schwab family members were also major donors to Lurie’s political rise and his inaugural committee.

Mimi Haas. Photo by Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle 2024
She is Lurie’s wealthy mother, and the widow of Peter Haas, the longtime CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. who was also a descendant of the company’s namesake founder. As of 2021, Forbes estimated her net worth at $1.4 billion. Haas is an advocate for early childhood education through her private family foundation, which has consistently been one of Tipping Point’s top donors. She gave $1 million to the PAC that supported her son’s successful mayoral campaign.

Katherine, the former president of First Republic Bank, is on the Tipping Point board of directors and on the finance committee of Lurie’s transition team. David, a residential real estate investor, founded a recruiting company that was sold to Monster.com. The couple have been generous donors to Tipping Point and also gave to a political action committee supporting Lurie’s mayoral bid. They gave $100,000 to his inauguration.

Chris James, a close friend of Lurie’s, was a founding board member of Tipping Point. A longtime tech investor, James told Institutional Investor in 2021 that the Bay Area’s tech boom was partly to blame for the region’s homelessness crisis, telling the website that tech companies “owned a large part of the responsibility for homelessness.” He started an environmentally minded hedge fund, Engine No. 1, that’s known for launching a successful 2021 campaign to replace some board members at ExxonMobil. James and his wife, Bradley, have given heavily to Tipping Point, and Bradley also donated six figures to the pro-Lurie PAC during the mayoral race.

John Fisher. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle 2022
Gap Inc. co-founders Donald and Doris Fisher were early supporters of Tipping Point. Their son John — the Athletics owner — has also supported the nonprofit. John and his brothers and their spouses gave a combined $300,000 to Lurie’s inauguration. Doris and the late Donald built a $9 billion fortune as of 2020, Forbes estimated. The pair were trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and amassed an art collection worth an estimated $1 billion.

Jed York. Photo by Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle 2024
The 49ers CEO sits on Tipping Point’s board and has given a lot of money to the nonprofit in tandem with his wife, Danielle. Lurie worked closely with York when he chaired the host committee that brought Super Bowl 50 to Levi’s Stadium in 2016. The 49ers gave $150,000 to Lurie’s inauguration, making the team the single largest contributor to the new mayor’s transition and swearing-in festivities. Lurie’s blind trust, which prevents him from controlling his assets while he’s mayor, is invested in 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the NFL team that owns a British soccer club, Leeds United.

Mason Morfit and Jordana Brewster at the Golden Globe Awards. Photo by Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images 2024
The CEO of investment company ValueAct Capital and Salesforce board member was another six-figure donor to Lurie’s PAC. Morfit grew up in Asia and is married to Jordana Brewster, a star of the “Fast and Furious” film franchise. Morfit, a friend of Lurie’s, and Brewster have donated to Tipping Point and gave $30,000 to Lurie’s inauguration.

Parker Harris gestures while seated at a table..jpeg
Parker Harris. Photo by Connor Radnovich/The Chronicle 2015
The Salesforce co-founder and chief technology officer of Slack gave $100,000 to the Lurie PAC and donated $20,000 to the inauguration along with his wife, Holly Johnson. They’ve given to Tipping Point in the past as well. CNBC described Harris as Marc Benioff’s “longtime sidekick” who has appeared in superhero costumes at company conferences and is “well known in the software industry but largely unfamiliar outside of it.” His holdings in the company were worth an estimated $600 million as of last year.

Michael Moritz

Michael Moritz. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle 2024
He is a venture capitalist and chairman of the San Francisco Standard news website. After beginning his career as a journalist, he was later hired on by Sequoia Capital, where he went on to have a flourishing career, investing in companies such as Google, Yahoo and PayPal. He and his wife, the sculptor and author Harriet Heyman, founded the Crankstart Foundation, which has given to Tipping Point. Moritz has been a highly active political donor in recent San Francisco elections — though his preferred mayoral candidate last year was Mark Farrell. Still, he’s an obvious potential candidate to give to Lurie’s efforts in office.

Like Moritz, the cryptocurrency mogul had another preferred mayoral candidate last year — he was a top benefactor of former Mayor London Breed’s. But Larsen has been a prominent civic booster of San Francisco: He invested in the “It All Starts Here” campaign to boost the city’s reputation, financed an expansion of privately run surveillance cameras and paid for a police officer wellness initiative. He has donated to Tipping Point, and he told the Chronicle last year that Lurie “is well aware that I … will continue to advocate and donate to help San Francisco thrive.” His wife, Lyna Lam, is a Cambodian refugee who started the Khmer Buddhist Foundation in San Jose. … See MoreSee Less

These are the people the S.F. mayor could tap to fund his work

www.sfchronicle.com

Daniel Lurie spent nearly two decades raising vast sums of money to fight poverty. Now, he plans to tap into that experience to push his agenda at City Hall.

United Public Workers for Action

2 days ago

Federal Workers Organize Bottom-Up to Tell Musk Hands Off!

socialistcall.com/2025/02/18/federal-workers-organize-bottom-up-to-tell-musk-hands-off/

Federal workers are the canary in the coal mine for all workers. Elon Musk’s goal is to bring down conditions for everyone. Solidarity is the answer, take action February 19!

MARK SMITH | FEBRUARY 18, 2025 LABOR

Mark Smith is an occupational therapist and health educator at a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in San Francisco. A year ago, he was elected president of Local 1 of the National Federation of Federal Employees. In his day job he trains doctors and nurses how to do patient education about diabetes, asthma, congestive heart failure, and the like.

He is a leader in the Federal Unionists Network, a cross-union, cross-agency, bottom-up group which is organizing resistance to the Trump/Musk assault on federal employees. When he was interviewed February 14, he noted that he was speaking in a personal capacity. His views are his own and do not represent the views of the U.S. government or the Department of Veterans Affairs.

What is the overall mood among federal workers right now?

It’s multi-polar. There was already a burnout crisis in the VA following COVID. We’ve had 10 years of creeping privatization and outsourcing. The Choice Act passed under Obama and the Mission Act under Trump, with bipartisan support. They’ve meant that we’re spending an increasing portion of the VA budget on outsourced care instead of direct care; it’s now up to 40%. We have a staffing crisis and a budget crisis. So the mood was already burnout.

As the outsourcing has increased, the focus on lean production has increased. Productivity requirements have been steadily increasing while staffing has not increased. The Pact Act, passed under the Biden Administration, expanded eligibility for veterans. Two million new veterans were brought in but we didn’t have the staff to take care of them. So for example, if mental health providers are not available, they go to outsourced care, and it’s a self-fulfilling doom loop where we don’t have staff so we send them to the private sector and we have to pay for that. It’s a calculated move to break the VA. Good providers are leaving who can go other places.

Then you throw this chaos and turmoil on top of it and people are angry. I don’t think people were angry before; they were demoralized and burned out, but now they’re pissed. Which is much more of an action-inspiring emotion. I’ve seen them much more willing to take action. Before it was more individual: “I’m just going to quit.” Now it’s “I’m going to join my union, I’ll march in the streets, fight back and defend the public services that we provide.”

What has Trump or Musk done that’s affected the VA?

Two things: First the hiring freeze. Thousands of job offers were rescinded across the country. Our hiring process is slow and complicated. Health care workers are in demand, they can’t sit around waiting for an offer. But then four days later, they said “just kidding, health care workers are exempt from the freeze.”

Then that “Fork in the Road” email to 2 million federal employees, offering the chance to resign. “We encourage you to leave your low-productivity job in the public sector and join a high-productivity job in the private sector.” If you want to piss off health care workers…. They come to the VA because they believe in the mission, and they don’t have to deal with insurance companies. You know, Canada has single-payer, but at the VA we have the crown jewel, government-run health care.

All the unions said “don’t do it, it’s a trap, you can’t trust these people. Look what happened to all the Twitter workers Musk laid off — they didn’t get their severance package.” I didn’t hear from too many people who wanted to resign — mostly people who were ready to retire or they were probationary and afraid they’d be let go anyway. But then they announced that 300 occupations at the VA were ineligible for the program. Meanwhile we had two weeks of people freaking out.

Also, if you’re LGBTQ you’re probably not going to want to work for the federal government if they’re telling you you’re less than human. The new VA Secretary, Dave Collins, his first email to all employees, 400,000 people, said effective immediately, only authorized flags will fly at VA facilities, no unauthorized flags will fly in break rooms or cubicles. This meant no rainbow flags. I’m in San Francisco; a significant portion of our staff is LGBTQ; our facility is a leader in LGBTQ health care.

More people signed up for the union in a week than in the past six months. We’re open shop in the federal sector. The unions had not been super-active; people didn’t see the relevance. Now they’re getting a direct lesson in the importance of a collective bargaining agreement. It’s much easier to do education now. We’ve been doing weekly “Lunch and Learns,” doing “Unions 101” for our bargaining unit, and getting 170 people regularly on those calls. These are folks who are new, who are trying to learn what unions do.

What has been the membership level of federal unions before now?

The average dues-paying membership is 20%. We are one of the higher density locals in the federal sector; ours is close to 60%. San Francisco is a union town. One of the only other areas where density is high is the IRS. But now membership is growing, growing, growing.

Few Rights

What rights do federal unions have and not have?

Our scope is much, much more limited. We do not have the legal right to strike, nor to assertthe right to strike. All federal employees sign a thing when you join the federal service: you can be fired for asserting the right to strike.

Our scope of bargaining is quite limited. We don’t bargain over wages or benefits, that’s all set by Congress. We only bargain over working conditions. Even then the federal labor-management statute has extremely strong management rights clauses. Management has rights over the number of employees, contracting out, how to fill positions. We have to bargain over the impact and implementation of those things.

Without the right to strike we don’t have a ton of leverage, obviously. It’s not quite like the public sector for teachers or others who have gone on illegal strikes successfully. We have the lesson of PATCO in 1981, which put a chill on federal sector militancy. Thirteen thousand air traffic controllers struck and were fired and didn’t work for the federal government again; they lost their pensions.

We’re also limited by the Hatch Act. We can’t talk about partisan political things. There’s a lot that keeps federal employees fearful, for good reason. But in any situation a bad boss is the best organizer and we have a real bad boss right now.

When was the Federal Unionists Networkfounded, what’s it done, what’s it doing now?

It started as a WhatsApp chat in summer of 2023. We formed as a result of a bunch of federal sector folks getting together on a campaign to pressure Chuck Schumer to confirm appointees to the Federal Labor Relations Authority; it can’t do its work without a general counsel. Chris Dols and others from IFPTE [Professional and Technical Engineers] Local 98 cold-called local presidents. That campaign didn’t work but a bunch of us started getting together, focused mostly on building our locals.

At the 2024 Labor Notes Conference we hosted a federal workers meet-up; it was the first time all of us had met in person. That was really exciting. We had about 60 people from all different agencies, all different federal unions. Chris Dols and Colin Smalley launched their campaign for IFPTE vice presidents. And it kept growing, with folks looking to build more of a fighting federal union.

FUN Growing Exponentially

Then Trump was elected. The WhatsApp community began growing exponentially.

We organized a roundtable in December, our first public event: “Fighting Back while under Attack,” with Sara Nelson and Joe McCartinand six of us local leaders as panelists. We got strong attendance, 280 people, and we had breakout sessions about organizing new bargaining units, building stronger locals.

We knew a shit-storm was coming. We wanted to scale up and build our infrastructure, we knew there would be a massive influx into our unions.

We organized another roundtable after Trump took office; we knew the executive orders would start coming. On February 3 we had almost 300 people.

So we are organizing against mass layoffs of probationary employees; the shutdown of entire agencies, like Consumer Protection, USAID, the Department of Education; unauthorized access to data of public employees.

You have a Day of Action planned for February 19. What will happen?

There will be both virtual and in-person events. The virtual component is folks can take a selfie with their coworkers wearing red, white and/or blue and holding up signs telling: how does your work help the public?

If you’re a community person, your sign can say how federal workers’ work helps you. The demands are no cuts to vital services, no mass layoffs, end the funding freeze, respect federal workers’ contracts, no cuts to science and health research. That’s the social media portion.

Post your photos online with the hashtag #SaveOurServices.

The action we’re doing is rallies or pickets in front of Tesla dealerships. Stop Musk, get your hands off. We want to generate lots of backlash against Musk. We have plenty of Republicans in our union and a lot of people voted for Trump. But whatever they think of Trump, even folks who voted for him might not approve of Musk, especially when he went marauding through people’s data.

Federal employees are skittish about partisan political activity. But Musk is not a partisan political figure. He is an unelected figure.

Solidarity Works

What can other union members and DSA members do to support federal workers who are on the tip of the spear?

The biggest thing is to get active in your unions. Many federal workers have never thought about their unions as places to do this kind of work. If you’re in a private sector union, make sure your union is supporting federal workers. We can’t strike legally. We need the rest of the labor movement to be in solidarity with us, to help us.

In 2018 Sara Nelson and the flight attendants union (AFA) threatened to strike if air traffic controllers weren’t paid — that got the federal government’s attention. That threat ended the impending government shutdown, basically. We need unions to be on our side and create a political crisis for this administration. It’s not just a solidarity/charity kind of thing; we saw what happened with PATCO.

The treatment of federal workers and their unions is a bellwether for the rest of the labor movement. It’s a signal. Corporations look to the federal government and see what it’s doing. When Biden walks a picket line, that’s a signal to corporations that this administration is going to take a different approach than if the sitting federal government says it’s open season on federal workers.

In 1981 the corporations took their cue from Reagan. Again, it’s a bellwether for how corporations will feel emboldened to act towards their own unions and own workers. Ultimately I think that’s what the mission and goal is for Musk, to lower workers’ conditions across the board. As treatment of federal workers goes, so goes the rest of the workforce. Chris Dols had a good quote: “We’re the canary in the coal mine.” Just like it’s emboldening for workers when they see other workers going on strike and winning, corporations see union busting and it’s emboldening for them.

DSA chapters can see if you have federal workers among your members. And we can use volunteer help with technical things and logistics. Reach out to info [at] federalunionists [dot] net.

How do we follow what FUN is doing?

Follow our social media handles: Federal Workers United on Instagram, X, and Bluesky.
To find our February 19 rallies, go to bit.ly/SOSaction. … See MoreSee Less

Save Our Services Day of Action

bit.ly

On Wednesday, Feb 19th, federal workers and everyday Americans are coming together to say NO to Elon Musk’s push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs. Find a Save Our Services day of action…

United Public Workers for Action

3 days ago

Trump’s firings strike the nation’s health agencies
Many of those terminated worked on issues critical to consumers, from improving health care to regulating food packaging to responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/18/trump-health-firings-fda-cdc/
February 18, 2025 at 5:12 p.m. EST5 minutes ago

Demonstrators protest the mass firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees in front of the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)
By Rachel Roubein, Lena H. Sun and Carolyn Y. Johnson
The nation’s health agencies were upended over the weekend by a confusing, slow-motion rollout of terminations that left staff worried about the future of various projects, including those to improve maternal health, discover new cancer treatments and provide help for 9/11 responders.
Several thousand probationary employees across the Department of Health and Human Services were notified they would be terminated after four weeks of leave — fired in what some are calling a “Valentine’s Day massacre.” The termination notices, which arrived over the weekend, capped a chaotic week of speculation about when the cuts would come and who would be affected.
The terminations had a swift impact. The Food and Drug Administration’s top food official resigned Monday, citing the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 staff members from the agency’s food program and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rhetoric toward staff.

“I was looking forward to working to pursue the Department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, wrote in a letter — reviewed by The Washington Post — to the agency’s acting commissioner. “It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.”

Overall, several thousand people from the more than 80,000 workers employed at HHS agencies were told they were terminated. All were probationary, meaning they had just a year or two on the job or had recently been promoted. Many worked on issues critical to consumers, such as improving health care, regulating food packaging or responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.
In interviews, they described a bewildering process that often required them to inform their own bosses they had been terminated.

Demonstrators protest the mass firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees in front of the CDC headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/ AP)
The termination messages cite poor job performance, according to more than half a dozen letters from various agencies obtained by The Post. The people who were fired disputed that characterization.

“Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment in the agency,” the termination notices state.
The cuts swept across health agencies such as an emergency preparedness office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the FDA. Patient advocacy groups — as well as current and former employees — expressed deep alarm over the cuts.
“The cumulative effects of threatened cuts to federal health research funding and forced departures at our nation’s premier health agencies will put our global leadership and our nation’s health at risk,” a coalition of patient groups, including the Friends of Cancer Research and the American Diabetes Association, wrote in a joint statement.

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the terminations, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
The firings at the nation’s health agencies are part of the Trump administration’s swift overhaul of the federal workforce. Thousands of trial and probationary workers across the government have been fired, and courts have been asked to halt the actions.

Protesters hold signs near a demonstration in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Administration officials have cast the effort as an attempt to make the government more efficient and productive.
Kennedy, who was sworn in last week as HHS secretary, has previously stated a desire to clean house at some of the agencies he now oversees — and his allies say massive change is needed to reverse course in America’s explosion of chronic disease.

“Our plans are radical transparency and returning gold standard science [to] NIH, the FDA and CDC, and ending the corporate capture of those agencies,” Kennedy said after being sworn in as HHS secretary.
In a statement, HHS defended the cuts.
“HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government,” the department said. “This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard.”
The initial list of terminations at agencies such as the CDC, FDA and NIH was reduced, according to multiple federal health officials. Many employees were notified that they were placed on administrative leave until March 14, when their terminations would take effect.

At the FDA, hundreds of staffers received termination notices, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. That includes those who work on medical devices, tobacco and food.
Those terminated in the food program were working on nutrition, infant formula and food safety response, as well as 10 staff members who were charged with reviewing potentially unsafe chemicals in the nation’s food supply, Jones wrote in his resignation letter.
The FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An HHS spokesperson thanked Jones for his service, adding that the department welcomes resignations for those “who do not fully align” with the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.
In late spring, Arielle Kane joined the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Innovation Center to help launch a program aimed at reducing maternal mortality and severe complications in 15 states’ Medicaid programs. She received a firing notice Saturday and said she is worried about the future of the project.

At the Atlanta-based CDC, senior leaders were informed Friday that 1,269 people — nearly 10 percent of the agency staff — would receive termination notices. But Friday evening, the CDC was sent a smaller list, with 750 names. It’s not clear whether additional names will be sent, three federal health officials said.
On Tuesday, dozens of protesters gathered in front of the agency’s main campus to protest the firings.
Among those who received notices were about 20 fellows in an elite laboratory science program, about half of whom were deployed across the country, according to a public health official who had direct knowledge of the terminations. The scientists were part of several outbreak investigations, the official said, including those involving skunk rabies, dengue fever and Oropouche, a viral disease spread by small flies and mosquitoes that causes sudden fever and headache, and that turned deadly for the first time last year in Brazil.

About 130 fellows in another elite public health program that assigns them to state and local health agencies also received termination notices. In the past two years, they have responded to fires and flooding in New Mexico, an environmental disaster in San Diego and an ongoing tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, said one fellow in his 30s who received a notice. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
“We are the ones that support most of these outbreaks,” he said. “With these cuts you’re hitting the people actually doing the field work.”
Several employees who had worked at the CDC for years also received termination notices. The staffers had received promotions, bumping them from one hiring authority to the next, which reset their probationary periods, according to two federal health officials.

Anthony Gardner, 48, said he was among those who received a termination notice. Gardner had been a contractor but was hired as a federal employee nearly two years ago.
Gardner’s brother died on the 83rd floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Years later, Gardner became a public affairs specialist for a CDC program that oversees medical monitoring and treatment of first responders and survivors of the attack.
On Saturday, he received a termination notice — along with, he said, 15 of the 90 program employees. Like others who received the notices, Gardner said the reason cited was poor performance, which he argued is not true.
He said he got the top rating — “outstanding” — on each of his last two performance evaluations plus other awards for high performance and excellence.
At NIH, between 1,000 and 1,200 people received letters as of Sunday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
For some, notices arrived around dinnertime Saturday. Among those recipients was a scientist with specialized skills who was recruited to NIH to build a laboratory focused on speeding up cancer drug discovery.
One project, which aimed to find a way to block a protein that helps cancer cells survive, was set at the end of February to start screening a vast library of molecules to see which ones might be developed into drugs. That work is now effectively paused.
The purge of probationary employees was the latest disruption to shake the world’s premier biomedical research agency, which has been mired in uncertainty and which saw some senior leaders abruptly retire last week.
After the weekend’s firings, Kennedy held an official welcome ceremony at HHS headquarters Tuesday morning. He pledged to usher in “radical transparency” and suggested global trust in the health agencies he now oversees had declined. … See MoreSee Less

Trump’s firings strike the nation’s health agencies

www.washingtonpost.com

Many of those terminated worked on issues critical to consumers, from improving health care to regulating food packaging to responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.

United Public Workers for Action

3 days ago

U.S. Marines Start to Leave Japan, Decades Behind Schedule The American base on Okinawa has relocated 105 Marines. But an agreement to move 9,000 in total is colliding with the perceived threat from a rising China.
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/world/asia/us-marines-japan-okinawa.html
Martin Fackler.pngChang W. Lee.png
By Martin FacklerPhotographs by Chang W. Lee
Reporting from Camp Foster and Naha, Okinawa
Feb. 18, 2025
Before Christmas, a contingent of 105 U.S. Marines who would have been sent to Okinawa were redirected to a new base on the United States territory of Guam instead. The small reshuffling marked a major milestone: This was the first time the Marines cut their head count on Okinawa as part of a deal between Washington and Tokyo to shrink an oversized American military presence on the Pacific island that dates back to World War II.

Under the agreement, 9,000 Marines — just under half the force currently on the island — are eventually supposed to leave. But their departure is already two decades behind the original schedule and may not happen for more than a decade to come, until construction of replacement bases is completed.
ImageA man sits on the ground looking unwell as three others in soldiers’ uniforms gather around him.
U.S. Marines simulating rescuing an injured pilot left in enemy territory during training in Okinawa.
Their redeployment was agreed to in a deal signed 12 years ago, the result of negotiations and renegotiations going back to 1995, when three U.S. servicemen raped an Okinawan schoolgirl. That crime touched off mass protests that forced the United States and Japan to agree on shrinking the American bases, which were built after the United States stormed Okinawa during a bloody battle in 1945.

Major U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa

okinawa-Artboard_1.png
Will be returned to Japan
Will remain operational
Jungle Warfare
Training Center
Camp
Schwab
Camp
Hansen
OKINAWA
Camp
Courtney
Kadena
Air Base
White Beach
Naval Base
Camp
Foster
The forces at the bases that will be returned will move to bases in the north of the island, mainland Japan or Guam.
Tokyo
JAPAN
Okinawa
8 MILES
Note: A portion of Camp Foster has been returned to Japan. The rest remains operational.Sources: Base map from Mapbox and OpenStreetMapBy Weiy Cai
The first iteration of the deal, agreed upon in 1996, was supposed to reduce the burden within five to seven years by building an air base on the northern end of the island to replace an existing one in a crowded city. A generation later, the old airfield remains in use and the new one is at least 12 years from completion.

While some islanders are growing impatient, this state of constant delay seems fine with the governments of both the United States and Japan, who have a big geopolitical reason — the rise of China — for wanting to keep the Marines in place.

“So a dozen years later, only a hundred Marines have moved,” said Christopher B. Johnstone, a former director of Northeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who helped lead U.S. negotiations of the current 2013 deal. “Both sides know things aren’t moving forward, but neither side is incentivized to take action.”
Image
A man wearing a khaki hat confronts a line of people in blue and yellow uniforms .webp
Protesters face off against guards at the construction site of a new U.S. base in Henoko, Okinawa.
The urgency to relocate the Marines has been undermined as China has increasingly made its presence felt with military exercises. Last week, Japan’s Defense Ministry reported tracking four Chinese warships sailing between Okinawa and a nearby island.

The growing Chinese presence is felt in Tokyo and Washington, but also in Naha, the Okinawan capital, where Chinese-speaking tourists crowd Kokusai Dori, the main shopping street. Recent mayoral elections across Okinawa have been swept by conservatives who take a more favorable view of the U.S. bases as a protective presence that also supply much-needed jobs.

While anti-base demonstrations still draw hundreds of shouting protesters, many show up with walking canes. Younger Okinawans are more likely to be found at shopping malls such as the American Village, where they mingle with U.S. personnel and their families.
Image
Bright colorful lights shine from venues behind a packed parking lot.webp
Shops at the American Village in Mihama, Okinawa, where many young people on the island like to hang out.
There are still many Okinawans who are furious at the bases. They blame Tokyo as much as Washington, saying the American presence proves that Japan still views their island — which was an independent kingdom until the 19th century — as little more than an internal colony. The current governor, Denny Tamaki, has been a leading opponent of the bases, but he and his predecessor ended up slowing down the process of reducing the American presence by refusing permits and seeking court orders to block construction of the new airfield. Last month, Japan’s Supreme Court rejected his final lawsuit, clearing the way for building to proceed.

Okinawa, a Small Island Caught Between Big Powers
Feb. 18, 2025
“Keeping the bases places an excessive burden on the people of Okinawa,” said Mr. Tamaki, a former social worker whose father was a U.S. Marine. “The pressure that they put on us, in the form of crime and noise and accidents, is a type of structural discrimination.”

Still, the thinking in the two nations’ capitals has clearly shifted. When the original deal was signed, the United States was unchallenged in the western Pacific. China’s military might now puts Okinawa within easy missile range, and North Korea has also built a nuclear arsenal.

Japan would be on the front line of any conflict in Taiwan, which lies within sight of the southernmost island in the Okinawan chain. In 2022, a Chinese military exercise meant to intimidate the self-ruling island also dropped missiles into waters near Japan.
Image
Shoppers carrying bags cross an intersection through a busy street.webp
The central Kokusai Dori shopping street in Naha, Okinawa, which is popular with Chinese tourists.

“We all recognize that the world has changed since the 1990s,” said Kevin Maher, a former U.S. diplomat who was consul-general of Okinawa. “That makes people think, ‘Oh, do the Marines actually have to start moving?’”

Still, Mr. Maher and many other American officials say the current plan remains the best option. Recent incidents like four reported sexual assaults by American servicemen last year underscore the risk of renewed anger at the U.S. bases, and Tokyo has little stomach for reopening a tortuously negotiated deal.

Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, repeated his commitment to the current plan during a meeting last week with President Trump, according to Japan’s foreign ministry. Mr. Ishiba has previously said that the gap left by the departing Marines could be filled by Japanese forces or joint bases.

“We will continue to work on reducing the base burden,” Mr. Ishiba said last month during the equivalent of a state-of-the-union speech. But he added that “as the balance of power in the region undergoes a historic shift, we must continue to secure the United States’ regional commitments.”

Japan is not rushing to complete the relocation, whose centerpiece remains the new airfield at Camp Schwab, a U.S. installation an hour north of the existing air base that it will replace.
Giant construction machinery sits next to a mound of dirt along the coast..webp
A new U.S. Marine airfield is being constructed at Camp Schwab in Henoko, Okinawa.
The coral-filled waters off Camp Schwab are now busy with big barges, which are creating an area of landfill five times larger than the Pentagon building. V-shaped runways here will one day host helicopters and Osprey rotating-rotor airplanes, relocated from the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the dense residential neighborhoods in the city of Ginowan.

During a visit to Okinawa in December to mark the relocation of the first Marines, Japan’s defense minister at the time said the airfield will not be ready for use until at least 2036 — 40 years after the first agreement to build it.

The slow progress reflects Japan’s overall lack of urgency, said Hiromori Maedomari, a professor at Okinawa International University who teaches about issues raised by the military bases. “Japan wants to keep the status quo of the Marines in place as long as possible, even if that means Okinawa is expendable,” he said.

Other parts of the relocation plan are only now entering full swing.

At Camp Foster on the southern half of the island, two dozen cranes are building a new headquarters, schools and housing, part of a plan to concentrate Americans on this base, allowing other bases to close.

“It’s finally happening,” said Col. Leroy Bryant Butler, a Marine managing the building projects. “We haven’t seen this level of construction here since the 1950s, when these bases were built.”
Image
A man and a woman carrying young children look out from a viewing platform .webp
The Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa, which is scheduled to be moved away from a densely populated area.
Marines will also move to bases in Okinawa’s north, away from crowded population centers. About two-thirds of the U.S. bases in the southern part of the island will eventually be vacated, including a logistics hub filled with warehouses, a seaport and the Futenma air base.

Japan cost for the construction is about $1.5 billion a year. That’s in addition to the $2.8 billion that Tokyo spent to build a new base on Guam, Camp Blaz, which opened last month and is supposed to house about half of the Marines who leave Okinawa.

However, the Marines have made no secret of their reluctance to reduce their forces, and decline to provide a timetable. If a conflict breaks out, infantry in Guam would likely have to fight their way back to Japan against a foe who can challenge American air and sea superiority.

“Japan is now in the weapons-engagement zone,” said Wallace Gregson, a retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the Marine force on Okinawa. “We need to change the conversation to problems that are relevant in 2025.”

Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting.
Martin Fackler is the acting Tokyo bureau chief for The Times. More about Martin Fackler

Chang W. Lee has been a photographer for The Times for 30 years, covering events throughout the world. He is currently based in Seoul. Follow him on Instagram @nytchangster. More about Chang W. Lee … See MoreSee Less

U.S. Marines Start to Leave Japan, Decades Behind Schedule

www.nytimes.com

The American base on Okinawa has relocated 105 Marines. But an agreement to move 9,000 in total is colliding with the perceived threat from a rising China.

United Public Workers for Action

3 days ago

On Pacifica's Capitalism, Race & Democracy: USAID and US Foreign Policy in Latin America; DOGE Shuts Down AFL-CIO Solidarity Center; Mutual Aid Campaign for Veteran Black Panthers in California; Tesla Worker Quits, Speaks Out
capitalismraceanddemocracy.org/2025/02/17/usaid-and-us-foreign-policy-in-latin-america-doge-shuts…

By Capitalism, Race & Democracy
–
February 17, 2025

Block Report Radio’s JR Valrey recently sat down with Obi Egbuna Jr., the External Relations officer of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association to discuss the US government’s 63-year blockade on Cuba. They also talked about the deportation of US migrants to Guantanamo Bay and El Salvador, the history of US foreign policy towards Colombia, and Trump’s recent attack on USAID.
***
The National Endowment for Democracy, the largest funder of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, has been shut down under Trump and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Led by AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler, the center received 96% of its funding from USAID and the State Department, operating in 62 countries with a $73 million budget and over 400 employees—as many or more than the AFL-CIO itself.
Despite its major role in the AFL-CIO, Schuler and other leaders have remained silent on the shutdown, failing to inform affiliates or address the future of their international operations and impacted workers.
For decades, labor activists have demanded transparency on AFL-CIO’s international activities, including its historic collaboration with the CIA in overthrowing Chile’s Allende government and supporting U.S.-backed coups across Latin America.
Pacifica’s Steve Zeltzer spoke with Purdue University Professor Kim Scipes and retired UAW Local 909 President Frank Hammer about the significance of this closure and the urgent need to hold AFL-CIO leaders accountable.
***
Next, JR Valrey of Block Report Radio sat down with Jordan McGowin of Community Movement Builders to discuss the Mutual Aid for Veteran Black Panther Party Members campaign that is currently underway in California, where every month different veterans in need are given supplemental income, since being a revolutionary community organizer does not come with a pension in the USA.
***
Branton Philipps, an assembly line worker at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, quit the company last month after years working there. He talked about the real conditions working at Musk’s factory, which employs 20,000 workers, and why he’d had enough. He spoke to Pacifica’s Steve Zeltzer.
***
We thank all of Pacifica’s sister stations and affiliates who contribute to the production of this show. Today’s program was produced by the Capitalism, Race & Democracy collective, with contributions from JR Valrey and Steve Zeltzer.
Host: Ann Garrison
Editor: Polina Vasiliev
You can find this and all previous episodes at our website “capitalism race and democracy dot ORG”. Make sure you click the subscribe button. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, @PacificaCRD.
Thanks for listening!
Music:
Locksmith – “America” (Official Video)
Mos Def, “Can U C The Pride in The Panther?”
Kill the Autocrat, “Gimme More” … See MoreSee Less

USAID and US Foreign Policy in Latin America; DOGE Shuts Down AFL-CIO Solidarity Center; Mutual Aid Campaign for Veteran Black Panthers in California; Tesla Worker Quits, Speaks Out – Pacifica Radio's Capitalism, Race and Democracy

capitalismraceanddemocracy.org

  Block Report Radio’s JR Valrey recently sat down with Obi Egbuna Jr., the External Relations officer of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association to discuss the US government’s 63-year blockade …