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Tesla settles lawsuit by Black worker who alleged widespread racism at Fremont electric car factory
Automaker still fighting similar court battles
www.mercurynews.com/2025/04/21/tesla-settles-lawsuit-black-worker-widespread-racism-fremont-elect…
Production associates work on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont Calif. on
Wednesday July 18 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Production associates work on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont Calif. on Wednesday July 18 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)Ethan Baron business reporter San Jose Mercury News for his WordPress profile. (Michael Malone/Bay Area News Group)By ETHAN BARON | ebaron@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
April 21 2025 at 4:26 PM PDT
Tesla has settled a lawsuit by a worker in its Fremont electric car factory who claimed she was harassed and discriminated against because she is Black.Raina Pierce sued the automaker in 2022 alleging that her manager referred to the facility as “the plantation” and the “slave house” and that her supervisor called her a racial slur that was pervasive in the factory. Pierce still worked at Tesla when she filed her lawsuit but has since left the company her lawyer said Monday.Tesla led by CEO Elon Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Pierce’s case first filed in Alameda County Superior Court and moved the next month to San Francisco U.S. District Court is one of several claiming widespread anti-Black racism at the Fremont plant. Two are scheduled to go to trial in September.Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the court filing Friday about the agreement. Pierce’s lawyer Hunter Pyle said the settlement was confidential. The deal followed court-ordered arbitration that started in March 2023 and mediation in October 2024 that concluded early this month in the agreement according to an earlier court filing.Pierce had claimed that when a manager noticed she had been assigned to push two carts that were too heavy for one person and notified her direct supervisors one of them angrily claimed she got him in trouble and later made a vulgar comment about not being able to tolerate Black people. Pierce’s supervisors let non-Black workers swap work stations regularly but denied her requests to switch stations and also disciplined her more frequently and severely than non-Black colleagues the lawsuit claimed.
Pierce had reported alleged harassment and discrimination to Tesla’s human resources department in May 2021 after she had begun a month before to feel a sharp pain in her left knee and lower leg that was made worse by standing for long periods walking long distances or carrying heavy items the lawsuit said. A few months later suffering from the leg pain and an infection she called out sick and was told she was being put on leave the lawsuit claimed.
Tesla in addition to discriminating against her on the basis of race and gender and failing to stop the alleged race-based harassment retaliated against her by making her stay on leave for more than three months the lawsuit alleged. She was seeking unspecified general punitive and compensatory damages.The car maker continues fighting a number of legal actions claiming it failed to properly address anti-Black racism in its facilities.California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing — the state’s civil rights regulator — filed suit against Tesla in 2022 alleging Black workers at the company’s Fremont facility were paid less than White workers denied advancements and faced daily racist abuse including a noose drawn in a bathroom next to a lynching reference and a racial slur. Tesla has called the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court “misguided” and “unfair.” The case is set to go before a jury Sept. 15.In the widest-ranging ongoing racism case against the pioneering EV company hundreds of current and former Black workers for Tesla filed declarations supporting a 2017 class-action lawsuit by former Tesla contractor Marcus Vaughn alleging that despite complaint after complaint the company did not stop race-based abuse and discrimination with Black workers segregated into the hardest most dangerous lowest-paid jobs and subjected to a barrage of racist treatment language and images. Thousands of current and former Black workers at Tesla have signed on to the lawsuit.Tesla said in a 2022 blog post that it “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment” and claimed it “has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways.” The judge in the case Noël Wise said last year that the experiences of workers who submitted declarations “might reasonably be characterized as race harassment.” A jury trial in the Vaughn case is scheduled to start Sept. 8 in Alameda County Superior Court.In 2021 a San Francisco federal court jury awarded a Black former Tesla worker Owen Diaz almost $137 million after he sued the company over alleged “daily racist epithets” in a workplace where colleagues drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the facility. San Francisco U.S. District Judge William Orrick later cut the award to $15 million saying “disturbing” evidence supported the verdict against Tesla but legal principles compelled him to slash the payment. Diaz rejected the award in favor of a new trial where a jury found that Tesla should pay $3.2 million. After Diaz filed a court notice that he would appeal he and Tesla reached a confidential final settlement in March 2024.In May an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay $1 million to Melvin Berry a Black former Tesla factory worker called racial slurs by supervisors.The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla in 2023 accusing the company of “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and … subjecting some of these workers to retaliation for opposing the harassment.” Tesla in a court filing claimed the lawsuit arose from “run-amok competition” between the commission and the California civil rights regulator and that it lacked “any sound factual basis.” The next hearing in the case is scheduled for June.
Published: April 21 2025 at 2:35 PM PD
Tesla settles lawsuit by Black worker who alleged widespread racism at Fremont electric car factory
www.mercurynews.com
Two lawsuits claiming rampant anti-Black racism at Tesla’s electric car plant in Fremont are set for trial later this year.
How Trump Deportations Fit Into War Against American Workers
www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/04/trump-deportations-are-not-about-strengthening-american-labor-but…
Posted on April 21, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
The Trump administration is ending work authorizations for two hundred union members who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. It also revoked the visas of several members of the Graduate Workers Coalition at the University of Indiana. The union frequently strikes and pickets for better wages for student teachers.
Mostly lost in the firestorm around Abrego Garcia, the man who was illegally deported to the notorious hellhole prison in El Salvador, is that for the past year he worked as an apprentice with the Sheet Metal Air Rail & Transportation Local 100 union. Perhaps that fact contributed to what the Trump gang calls the “administrative error” that led to his rendition. Judging from the larger pattern, it doesn’t appear to have been an error at all.
While the number of deportations under Trump lags behind the pace of the Obama and Biden administrations, Team Trump looks to have a goal in mind. Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas, had this to say to Truthoutabout the crackdown on farmworker organizers:
From the beginning, we thought Project 2025 and its plan for mass deportations was meant to send a chill among farmworker organizations that had been gaining momentum. It was meant to silence the organizing, deport as many people as possible, and to bring in a captive workforce through the H-2A program.
We think that might be the ultimate plan: to get rid of all the immigrant workers who are organizing and fighting back for better conditions, and to bring in a workforce that’s under the complete control of their employer with basically no rights. It’ll make it even harder to organize with farmworkers if more H-2A workers come. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it’ll be more difficult. All the gains that have been made in the last couple of years for farmworkers are at risk.
While Project 2025 wants to get rid of labor protections in almost every fashion, it actually calls for reducing H-2 visas, which allow employers to hire foreigners for temporary work. H2-A is used for agricultural workers and represents 70% of H-2 issuances, and the H-2B for non-agricultural workers represents the remaining 30%.
There is clearly friction between MAGA and big business as the H1-B visa showdown demonstrated, Trump usually sides with the money as he did in that case. The MAGA movement about ethnic belonging as some form of essential right as an American citizen and rebuilding the mostly white working class. Silicon Valley and other financial stakeholders are about destroying labor, which means engineering an easily exploited workforce.
If an individual anywhere in the world can contribute to the bottom line of American monopolies, then they are welcome in the US — as demonstrated by Trump’s “Gold Card” scheme, in which visas are up for sale. Here’s Trump:
“A person comes from India, China, Japan, lots of different places, and they go to Harvard, the Wharton School of Finance. They go to Yale. They go to all great schools. And they graduate number one in their class, and they are made job offers, but the offer is immediately rescinded because you have no idea whether or not that person can stay in the country. I want to be able to have that person stay in the country. These companies can go and buy a gold card, and they can use it as a matter of recruitment.”
Lowly farmworkers and hotel cooks and cleaners won’t be getting a gold card but they can contribute just the same.
At an April 10 cabinet meeting Trump said that undocumented people working on farms and in hotels would be allowed to leave the country and return as legal workers if their employers vouched for them. Here’s the quote:
“We have to take care of our farmers, the hotels and, you know, the various places where they tend to, where they tend to need people…So a farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people, saying they’re great, they’re working hard. We’re going to slow it down a little bit for them, and then we’re going to ultimately bring them back. They’ll go out. They’re going to come back as legal workers.”
What —or who— does he mean? And why is the administration deporting people who were already here legally?
A White House official told NBC News that Trump wants to “improve” the H-2A and H-2B programs, which coincidentally his businesses increasingly rely on.
Let’s briefly look at some numbers. As of 2024 there were 384,900 H2-A and 215,217 H2-B workers in the US. About 40 percent of U.S. farmworkers are undocumented, and as of 2020 there were more than 406,000 individuals with Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to reside and work legally in the US due to unsafe conditions in their home country. The similar humanitarian parole covered another 530,000-plus like the 200 union members in Kentucky mentioned above.
Key about those latter two categories is the ability to stay in the US is not directly tied to work. Team Trump is working to end those programs but facing legal obstacles.
It’s not clear what exactly the improvements are that Trump plans to make to the H2 program. So far, it appears as though the goal is to simply replace current undocumented workers, asylum recipients and other protected immigrants with more of an H-2 workforce would be a boon for employers as H-2 employees would be more vulnerable to abuse than those they would be replacing. It’s also likely to hurt American workers. The Food & Environment Reporting Network on how:
…these visas are notoriously abusive to foreign workers. That’s because they effectively create a captive workforce: In contrast to other immigrant workers in the U.S. — including recipients of certain humanitarian programs, like TPS — H-2 workers’ presence in the country is tied to a particular job and employer. H-2 employees are eligible to work for whoever sponsors their visa, and it can be prohibitively difficult for them to switch jobs even if they’re mistreated. If they quit, they’re sent back to their home countries, which would ruin many H-2 workers and their families financially. (Over half of all H-2A farmworkers enter the country in debt to illegal recruiters, who charge fees for connecting workers with job contracts.)
…Predictably, some employers take advantage of the power the H-2 program gives them over their employees. The nonprofit Polaris, which runs a U.S. human trafficking hotline, has connected the H-2A visato rampant human trafficking, as have a number of criminal cases and media investigations. Wage theft is also a pervasive problem. In an interview with Prism media, Mike Rios, a DOL regional agricultural enforcement coordinator, said that wage theft is “baked into” the H-2A visa, and described the program as the “literal purchase of humans.”
H-2 workers have so little bargaining power that some employers prefer to hire them over U.S. citizens — which ends up disenfranchising the American-born workers Trump and Miller say their deportations will benefit. Under federal law, employers must show they were unable to hire American workers before they’re approved to hire H-2 workers, but some employers circumvent that rule and commit visa fraud to avoid hiring Americans at higher rates. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has filed a string of complaints with the DOL, alleging that meatpacking companies have repeatedly requested increased allocations of H-2B workers as a way of undercutting wages.
How’s that for “America First”?
But it’s not just Trump. While he always acts as an accelerant, this is a process decades in the making ever since neoliberal ideology took over both American political parties nearly half a century ago. The role of immigration in the ongoing class war is succinctly described here by Michael Macher:
…the US immigration system runs not on the enforcement of immigration laws, but on their selective nonenforcement. Employers have relied on the state to ignore the exploitation of undocumented labor while holding the credible threat of deportation over workers. This has had the effect of strengthening employer bargaining power generally against all workers—lowering wages, weakening unions, and shifting the politics of work away from collective bargaining and wage-and-hour regulation. The interest in labor that is weak and disorganized has driven US politicians, consciously or not, to adopt the role of petty bosses, threatening the deportation of significant portions of the US workforce. But if Trump can afford to blow up this arrangement, it is because the precarity of the undocumented worker represents the future of labor relations in the US, not its past.
How so? In essence, the administration is engaged in a workforce engineering project reminiscent of university founder Leland Stanford’s brutal equine engineering in early Silicon Valley. Here’s Malcolm Harris’ description from his book ‘Palo Alto’:
It’s worth retracing our steps to the Palo Alto system, in which potential counts for everything –– but only a specific kind of potential. A colt that won’t pull a cart is no good to the system, no matter how fast. And a colt that organizes all the horses to strike? That’s no potential at all.
Organized laborers — and especially immigrant organizers — not only don’t have potential, but are part of what the administration and its Silicon Valley stakeholders consider “nihilistic violent extremists.”
With Trump and DOGE’s gutting of the National Labor Relations Board, attacks on federal workers unions, selective deportations, Gold Cards, and promotion of H-2 workers, this Palo Alto system vision is coming into view.
It heralds a day where all workers are as exploitable as the immigrant and accelerates a decades-long trend in that direction. Where is this leading? We can turn to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 for clues. Written by numerous now-Trump administration officials, it includes in its recommendations the steps Trump has already taken, as well as many more. Among them:
Make overtime pay available to fewer workers. Trump cut the pay of hundreds of thousands of federal workers by rescinding an order that their wages be indexed to inflation.
Abolishing all public sector unions. Trump is trying to get rid of collective bargaining labor protections for federal employees. In the name of national security, of course.
Ban the use of card check, one of labor’s most effective tools to organize workers.
Gut worker health and safety protections. As just one example, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is no longer enforcing its rule titled, “Lowering Miners’ Exposure to Respirable Crystalline Silica and Improving Respiratory Protection.” And DOGE is closing 33 MSHA field offices in 19 states, accelerating a trend of closures, which means fewer inspectors and mine inspections.
Maybe the most egregious example is the big comeback of child labor— again this predates Trump but he acts as an accelerant. In some cases the exploitable (immigrant adults) are now being exchanged for the more exploitable (immigrant children). This comes as the administration just canceled millions of dollars in international grants that a Department of Labor division administered to combat child labor and slave labor around the world.
The list goes on and on. The assault on worker protections has been relentless. Despite all these actions and the high-publicity “ICE Barbie” at the Department of Homeland Security, what the administration has yet to do is go after employers of illegals, which is the easiest and most effective way to stop the hiring of illegals.
For decades, every administration has promised to go after employers and failed to follow through. Instead, we have only gotten more power going to employers who leverage the threat of deportation with impunity and use immigration law as a shield against labor law.
Trump is looking to further these trends, as he did in his first term. During that time the temporary work visa programs steadily grew a total of 13 percent larger, and he used the Covid emergency to help make it happen:
During the pandemic, his administration issued a series of emergency measures that made H-2A and H-2B visas more flexible and employer-friendly. Workers were allowed to stay in the country for longer periods of time, in part because they had been deemed “essential workers,” and wages for H-2A workers were effectively frozen.
With trade war and worker shortage emergencies just around the corner, it won’t be surprising to see the administration try to make a similar move with regards to the H-2 programs.
In conclusion, the administration’s immigrant-labor overhaul is more about strengthening the oligarchic police state than gains for the MAGA workers.
Rather than manufacturing jobs, we’re getting a militarized border with big handouts to well-connected surveillance and population control tech companies, as well as the private prison industry to remove the “horses” no longer showing potential.
Rather than cracking down on employers exploiting foreign labor, we’re getting an assault on universities and rendition of immigrant activist students in order to cow elites, silent dissent, and please the Zionist crowd.
And rather than better pay and working conditions to entice American workers, we’re likely to get an increase in H1 and H2s to further drive down wages and worker protections. High-profile cases in the news day after day of ICE smashing car windows and dragging out brown people and students being snatched up from bougie universities with billion-dollar endowments, well, that might make it seem like Trump is really doing something.
When that high wears off, however, and the dust settles on the latest assault on worker rights, everyone might be feeling a little more vulnerable. Kind of like an immigrant.
A Kaiser strike by NUHW mental health workers drags on — setting a US record — as talks resume
BY JOE GARCIA
APRIL 15, 2025
calmatters.org/health/2025/04/kaiser-strike-mental-health-workers/
Three women wearing matching red shirts sit on air mattresses in a room as they participate in a hunger strike.
Aida Valdivia, a psychiatric social worker with Kaiser Permanente, sits on a blow-up air mattress that is set up in a room at West Hollywood United Church of Christ in West Hollywood on April 10, 2025. Kaiser's mental health workers have been on strike for six months, and the group in this room is on the fourth day of a five-day hunger strike. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Almost half a year into the dispute, eight striking Kaiser mental health workers wrapped up a hunger strike as broken-off negotiations were set to resume.
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Nearly six months into their labor union dispute against Southern California Kaiser Permanente, eight mental health care workers banded together last week in an organized five-day hunger strike to highlight their cause.
“Kaiser’s trying to starve us out, that’s clear — so, give them what they want,” said Adriana Webb, a member of the National Union of Healthcare Workers who chose to subsist solely on water and electrolytes from Monday morning through Friday evening. “I feel hungry for equity. I feel hungry for change. How is this any different?”
Now engaged in the longest mental health strike in U.S. history, the Southern California workers have been seeking a new union contract that would include:
more mandated time between therapy sessions for patient follow up
restoration of pension benefits that were removed from new employee contracts in 2015
cost-of-living wage adjustments
After a long list of Democratic members of the state Assembly and Senate wrote Kaiser in December urging it to accept the union’s “reasonable contract proposals” — and after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Feb. 6 written request for both sides “to prioritize the common good that have allowed Californians to rise above our difficulties and resolve our differences” — state Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly and former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg have agreed to mediate.
Union negotiators voted unanimously on March 11 to suspend further mediation when they felt Kaiser refused to bend on any of the three major contract issues. Today bargaining talks are scheduled to resume.
Steinberg mediated a similar open-ended strike for Northern California Kaiser mental health care workers in 2022, which lasted 10 weeks and resulted in Kaiser meeting most of the union’s demands.
“We know Kaiser can provide all these things if they wanted to,” said Webb, a medical social worker in the infectious disease unit who stood on the picket line in front of Kaiser’s Los Angeles Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard. “They already provide it to our Northern California counterparts, and all we’re asking for is the same thing. Kaiser still can’t explain why we deserve less or our patients deserve less.”
In a written response to CalMatters questions, Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Terry Kanakri discussed Kaiser’s overall commitment to work with more than 40 unions that represent 80% of its employees.
“Every one of the 80 contracts is different, and each reflects the differences in operational needs, local market economics and wages, professional classifications of the employees in each local, and a host of other factors,” said Kanakri.
“Our goal is and has always been to reach an agreement that makes Kaiser Permanente the best place to give and receive care. We have made — and repeatedly improved — our proposals during bargaining in an effort to reach an agreement. However, in nearly nine months of bargaining, NUHW has made very little movement on the key bargaining issues.”
People walking one behind the other turn a corner while holding signs that read "NUHW On Strike" while protesting at a medical building.
Kaiser Permanente mental health care workers on a company-wide strike picket outside Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Although not aware of any specific details of the 2022 NorCal strike or the current SoCal strikes, University of Southern California professor of healthcare finances and economics Glenn Melnick gave his overview on today’s health care labor climate.
“Northern California has the highest wage index in the country,” he said. “I think it’s 20 points higher than L.A. — maybe 25%. So there’s economic reasons why there’s differences. An economist would say, ‘Mental health care worker, you want these benefits? Move to San Francisco.’
“And many employers are cutting back pension benefits these days. Ten or 15 years ago, pension benefits were much more generous across the board. Kaiser could easily afford to give them these benefits and not think twice, but it’s bigger than just these workers. It’s the ripple effect, right?”
Melnick also speculated that health care workers’ negotiating power has waned as the COVID pandemic, which drove demand for their services, has somewhat subsided.
Kaiser could easily afford to give them these benefits and not think twice, but it’s bigger than just these workers. It’s the ripple effect, right?
USC PROFESSOR OF HEALTHCARE FINANCES AND ECONOMICS GLENN MELNICK
From April 8 through 12, the hunger strikers spent eight-hour days alongside their picketing fellow union members and each night together fasting at a West Hollywood church. Sleeping in a community space barely big enough for eight air mattresses huddled beside the piano against a back wall, they shared a bathroom and took turns showering in a motel room next door.
Medically cleared beforehand, they received daily wellness checks from volunteer union nurses.
“Right now, I feel like I could go another month,” said Zhane Sandoval, propped up on an elbow from their mattress on the morning of April 11, day four of the hunger strike. “So test me, Kaiser!
“Kaiser says that it’s a union employer, but all we’re seeing is union busting. All we’re seeing is separation, trying to divide. But their efforts just lead us to unite.”
Union organizer Rachel Forgash, who stayed overnight with the hunger strikers at the church, expressed frustration over the protracted standoff.
“Kaiser has exceeded all of our expectations in their unwillingness to bargain in good faith and drag this out as long as possible,” she said. “In Southern California, they’re about to start bargaining with the Alliance, which is a huge group of unions at Kaiser, and I think they’re afraid that — when we win — it’s going to set a precedent for other unions to fight just as hard.”
People wearing red or black t-shirts gather in a room with air mattresses and other personal belongings while they participate in a hunger strike.
A group of Kaiser Permanente mental health care workers who are currently on a five-day hunger strike, at the West Hollywood United Church of Christ in West Hollywood on April 10, 2025. Kaiser’s mental health workers have been on strike for six months. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
A person with short and curly black hair and wearing glasses with a black t-shirt sits at the edge of a mattress while looking into the camera.
A person wearing a black hat and a red t-shirt holds pink teddy bear on their lap as they look directly into the camera.
Zhane Sandoval, left, a psychiatric counselor with Kaiser Permanente, sits in a room at the West Hollywood United Church of Christ in West Hollywood on April 10, 2025. Melissa Chavez, right, a medical social worker with Kaiser, shows off her son’s stuffed animal. Both participated in a five-day hunger strike as part of an ongoing strike by mental health workers against Kaiser. Photos by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Aida Valvidia, a psychiatric social worker at Kaiser’s Sylmar facility, and Melissa Chavez, a medical social worker at Riverside, both started working for Kaiser before the 2015 contract negotiations reached a settlement, so they each have pension benefits that 70% of their fellow mental health care union members do not. Yet both chose to participate in the hunger strike.
“For the people who don’t have pensions, I think it’s unfair,” said Valvidia. “Why do I have a pension and you don’t? Because you started later? That makes no sense to me. We’re equals.”
Chavez and her husband have been on strike together since Oct. 21. “Kaiser members deserve equity and access to timely quality care,” she said. “Workers are experiencing high caseloads, inadequate and unsafe staffing, lack of time, lack of tools.”
The hunger strike week started with iconic labor leader and activist Dolores Huerta visiting the picketers on April 8, two days before her 95th birthday. “I know that you’re not just doing this on your own behalf,” said Huerta, surrounded by cheering union members in their red union T-shirts. “You’re actually doing this on behalf of all the patients at Kaiser that are not getting the mental health services that they deserve.”
The union cites a recent 88-page report from the state Department of Managed Health Care, which notes that Kaiser’s failures to remedy 19 of the 20 violations in 2022 led to $200 million in state fines. The union has also filed its own complaints alleging Kaiser mismanages patient triage and appointment scheduling, by hiring unlicensed clerical staff and using algorithmic programming.
They take out ads in the paper saying everything’s fine — that they’re providing adequate care to their patients and everything is top-notch. It’s so bizarre and unbelievable.
HUNGER STRIKER NICK NUNEZ, A THERAPIST IN KAISER’S VIRTUAL MEDICAL CENTER
“Despite the persistent efforts of NUHW to mislead the public, the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has not identified new deficiencies in our mental health care,” said Kanakri’s statement. It went on to say that Kaiser met with the state department “last week in our first quarterly review and demonstrated the extraordinary progress we have made on all the deficiencies outlined in the Corrective Action Work Plan.”
“We’re in disbelief,” said hunger striker Nick Nunez, a therapist in Kaiser’s Virtual Medical Center, which lends support to any patients in need across Southern California. “They take out ads in the paper saying everything’s fine — that they’re providing adequate care to their patients and everything is top-notch. It’s so bizarre and unbelievable.”
Andrew Kane worked as an associate clinical social worker at the Los Angeles Medical Center he now pickets and fasted at. “It’s a little odd, a little surreal,” he said, noting that he happened to see a patient in the world outside of Kaiser. “Fortunately — or unfortunately — he didn’t notice me, so we didn’t have to have that interaction.”
Kane started in June 2024, so he’s been on strike longer than he’s received a Kaiser salary.
As the strike persisted without end in sight since October, many workers have returned to Kaiser due to financial concerns. But some communicate the problems they see internally while back at work.
“They’re actually the ones documenting all the things going wrong,” said hunger striker Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, a psychiatric social worker in Kaiser’s ADAPT virtual online treatment program. “We have DMHC investigators talking to a lot of our returned back staff. Unfortunately, a lot of our managers are combatting them.
“And so, a lot of our members are kind of scared, having to advocate for our patients.They’re fighting a different kind of battle inside.”
Rage Against the Machine guitarist and political labor activist Tom Morello joined the Kaiser picketers on April 9 to perform a short acoustic set, and U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo visited the strikers April 11.
Hours later, they broke their fast with religious leaders passing around a ceremonial bread loaf.
“We can’t just be treated like numbers,” said hunger striker Ana Vargas Garcia, who also saw members remotely through the ADAPT program. “Patients can’t be treated like numbers. There’s real lives behind everyone that we see, behind every worker at Kaiser. That’s a big part of why we’re doing this.”
A Kaiser strike by mental health workers drags on — setting a US record — as talks resume
calmatters.org
Nearly half a year into the dispute, eight striking Kaiser mental health workers wrapped up a hunger strike as negotiations resume.
Class Struggle To Heat Up
DOGE layoffs of federal mediators leave grocery chain talks and other labor disputes in limbo
www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-04-21/doge-layoffs-hit-southern-california-grocery-labor-medi…
Signs reading "Ralphs employees on unfair labor practice strike" are stacked on a table.
Organizers at UFCW Local 770 headquarters in Los Angeles prepared strike-ready signs as negotiations soured in 2022. A federal agency that aids unions and employers in resolving labor disputes has largely been dismantled by the Trump administration. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
By Suhauna Hussain
Staff Writer
April 21, 2025 1:02 PM PT
In late March, Isael Hermosillo received an ominous message from his supervisor around 7 a.m. ordering him to cancel all his meetings scheduled that day.
Hermosillo rushed to notify several locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union as well as attorneys for Albertsons and Kroger that he would not be able to attend a session in Buena Park later that morning — the third consecutive meeting set to be held that week for labor talks between major Southern California grocery chains and unions representing their workers.
Two hours later, Hermosillo found himself on a video conference call where he was informed by his supervisor that he would be put on a monthlong paid administrative leave, and that his job would be terminated.
Hermosillo is among 130 federal mediators who were fired on March 26 after the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), effectively shuttered a 79-year-old federal agency that mediates labor disputes.
The terminations at the agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, have fueled concern among unions and employers alike about who will step in to help ease labor conflicts in Southern California and beyond.
Though relatively small and obscure, the agency plays a vital role in helping to settle disputes so as to avoid labor unrest that can disrupt the free flow of commerce, according to former federal mediators and experts.
Besides brokering negotiations for private employers, the mediators handle worker grievances; train joint labor-management committees; appoint arbitrators if a dispute cannot be resolved; and assist with negotiation impasses in the federal sector. These services are offered at little to no cost.
“We are the ones that come in quietly when people are having issues or contract negotiations aren’t working and are falling apart,” Hermosillo said. “We go in and assist, and then move on to the next group that may need our assistance. I think that’s a lot of why the American people don’t know who we are and what we do.”
Hermosillo works out of the agency’s Los Angeles office in Glendale, staffed by five mediators and a supervisor.
His termination caught employers and unions off guard — coming weeks after the labor contracts covering some 55,000 unionized grocery workers in California had expired — and threw a wrench in negotiations, said Kathy Finn, president of UFCW Local 770.
Finn said that because Hermosillo has worked on negotiations for many years, on multiple cycles since around 2017, both sides trust him and they engage him very early on in the process — which has helped to avert strikes.
“We always have difficult negotiations with these companies. … We’ve gotten very close to going on strike many times, ending or reaching a deal minutes or hours before a deadline — or after,” Finn said. “The help Isael has provided has been very valuable.”
UFCW Local 770 is among seven locals representing workers from San Diego to Santa Barbara in labor talks with Albertsons, parent owner of the Vons and Pavilions chains, and Kroger, which owns Ralphs.
LOS ANGELES-CA-MARCH 21, 2022: Tyson Kehm, left, and Andrea Garcia, right, help make strike-ready signs at UFCW Local 770 headquarters in Los Angeles on Monday, March 21, 2022. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
BUSINESS
‘We’re prepared to strike’: Southern California grocery workers authorize walkouts
March 27, 2022
Finn said mediators like Hermosillo are highly effective. Without them, negotiations can break down into finger-pointing rather than become productive sessions focused on the substance of a contract, Finn said.
Neither Kroger nor Albertsons returned requests for comment.
DOGE and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget also did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, UFCW joined a dozen major unions in bringing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to reverse the closure of the federal agency. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, argues that the Trump administration’s dismantling of the mediation service is in “clear defiance” of Congress’ constitutional powers to create and dissolve such agencies.
In fiscal 2024, the agency, which has a budget of $54 million, employed about 143 full-time mediators who conducted more than 5,400 mediated negotiations and provided some 10,000 arbitration panels. And recent estimates show that the mediators’ services save the economy more than $500 million annually, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit cites data from the agency’s website that have been scrubbed in recent weeks.
Just five mediators and a few support staff workers remain at the agency after the cuts, according to the lawsuit.
Some major employers and trade associations have been petitioning the Trump administration to reverse the decision, said Martin H. Malin, a professor emeritus at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and a mediator who served on the Federal Service Impasses Panel during the Obama and Biden administrations.
“No one will talk about this publicly,” Malin said. “They can see this hair trigger mentality in the White House. Everybody is afraid.”
DOGE has said the agency will limit its services to labor disputes that involve more than 1,000 employees. But Malin said even with those restrictions, the workload will be too much for the remaining mediators.
“It’s impossible for four mediators to cover the entire country,” Malin said. “The situation, it’s pretty dire.”
Tina Littleton, another federal mediator in the Glendale office who had worked at the agency for 15 years, was stunned by the decision.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk standing aside each other
BUSINESS
These departments investigating Elon Musk have been cut by DOGE and the Trump administration
March 27, 2025
“Do I feel this was done correctly or appropriately?” Littleton asked. “My answer is no.”
Littleton recently facilitated negotiations between some 200 workers and their employer, which manufactures plastic pouches used to dispense IV infusions in medical facilities.
“It doesn’t matter to us whether big or small, they still have some part that they play in making sure interstate commerce continues,” Littleton said.
Martha Figueroa, a field representative who helps the California Federation of Teachers negotiate contracts, said she has frequently relied on a federal mediator in discussions with Head Start, the child development nonprofit targeted by the Trump administration for funding cuts. She worries about potentially having to turn to private mediators, who are “really, really expensive.”
“When you have a private mediator, it’s very stressful to both parties,” Figueroa said. “The more you’re at the table, the more they get paid. And that’s not the case when you have a public mediator.”
Hollywood, CA – March 20: People blur by the Hollywood and Highland shopping complex along Hollywood Blvd, in the heart of Hollywood, CA, as COVID-19 restrictions are loosened and people filled the sidewalks Saturday, March 20, 2021. This is one year and one day, after California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay at home order, "to protect the health and well-being of all Californians and to establish consistency across the state in order to slow the spread of COVID-19." As of March 19, 2021, 57,510 people died from the coronavirus, with more than 3million positive cases. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
BUSINESS
Rather than saving money, dismantling the agency will create more inefficiencies, said William Resh, associate professor of public policy and management with USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.
“What you have without mediation are disputes that are going to be more prolonged, more contentious,” Resh said. “These are highly professionalized individuals with a lot of experience in bargaining and conflict negotiation.”
California and several other states are exploring how they might fill the gap.
California’s Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees disputes between state workers and their employers, also has the authority to offer mediation services to private employers, but it doesn’t have the budget to do so, said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation. Labor groups have been pushing state lawmakers in budget talks to augment the board’s budget by several million dollars, she said.
“In the long run the state does benefit. We don’t want people to go on strike. Sometimes, it’s needed, but for the most part, if mediation is able to help get a good resolution, we prefer that,” Gonzalez said.
DOGE layoffs of federal mediators leave grocery chain talks and other labor disputes in limbo
www.latimes.com
Isael Hermosillo, a mediator who was negotiating labor contracts for California grocers, was one of 130 terminated in March.
Fascists Want To Outsource Fed Courts
www.salon.com/2025/04/19/doge-is-trying-to-outsource-the-us-government–and-wants-big-law-to-make…
DOGE is trying to outsource the US government — and Trump wants Big Law to make it happen
Portia Allen-Kyle
Sat, April 19, 2025 at 4:23 AM PDT
Donald Trump; Gavel Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
The White House has effectively extorted some of America’s most prestigious law firms to provide almost $1 billion in pro bono legal servicesto the Trump administration. This comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., publicly threatened to eliminate entire federal courts if he doesn’t like how they rule. Both of these actions should set off alarms—not just for lawyers, but for anyone who cares about democracy.
Some lawyers and legal analysts insist these agreements are “unenforceable,” or will only advance causes supported by the president, but not actual pro bono services for the government. However, the increased attacks on the integrity and structure of government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) make it clear that these propositions aren’t mere suggestions. These agreements are an intentional effort to outsource government work in alignment with their efforts to downsize and deconstruct the government. President Trump and his allies want to use big law to conduct government business as their “solution” to laying off thousands of federal working people. They also want to use this to continue their attacks against foundations, universities, civil society organizations and corporations that refuse to comply with their agenda.
To justify their actions, the Trump administration is distorting the meaning of “pro bono,” which traditionally translates as “for the good of the public,” to instead mean “for the good of President Trump’s interests.” People are right that this is abnormal and unheard of, but it’s part of a neo-segregationist power grab aimed at cementing power for the wealthy by destabilizing our government institutions and undermining our democratic system of checks and balances.
Understanding this context forces us to examine the legal profession's influence and responsibility in this moment because lawyers aren’t bystanders, and far too often, our profession has protected power rather than challenged it, whether by defending corporate interests at our expense or embracing “neutrality” as cover for complicity. Lawyers make a choice when they refuse to reject blatantly unconstitutional aims of the neo-segregationist agenda and instead offer legal legitimacy to its work. Historical titans of the profession like Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Pauli Murray and Clarence Darrow stand out because of their legal prowess and their courage to stand up to power, something that can be uncommon in our profession because many are willing to roll with the punches of oppression for prestige and monetary gain.
Most of us—across race, class, and background—want the same things: to be treated fairly, live with dignity, and have a justice system that works for all of us. And while the courts haven’t always delivered on that promise—especially for Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor, working-class, and LGBTQ+ communities—they’ve long served as one of the few institutions where everyday people can push back against unchecked power. What’s happening right now is not a matter of opinion or partisanship — it’s a test of whether we believe in the foundational idea that the law should protect people, not just power.
As a mother, I recognize the stakes of how this will impact my daughter’s future freedoms. Watching the coordinated erosion of justice from all sides should drive us all to action — whether it’s fighting back against billionaires funding lawsuits to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, protesting lawmakers threatening the courts, or holding law firms accountable for prioritizing prestige over principle. The Trump administration is not just testing the boundaries of power—they’re testing whether we’ll use ours. So, it’s time to use our power to resist and reject these efforts, loudly.
To my fellow lawyers reading this: Your bar license is not just a ticket to power — it’s a tool of public trust. Like any tool, you can use it to build or to break. You can use your skills to defend communities under attack, protect the independence of the courts, and fight for the people systems often leave behind. Or you can use your skills to fast-track their suffering and attack the rule of law. The difference is the choice you make.
To those outside the legal field: The fight for justice has never belonged to the courts alone. The law only has meaning when we, the people, demand it live up to its promise. And we each have so many ways to demand the law live up to its promise. From protests and community coalitions to our roles in boardrooms and voting booths, this moment isn’t solely about the legitimacy of the courts or law firms. It’s about what kind of country we want to live in — and what each of us is willing to do to build it. Otherwise, people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mike Johnson will simply decide that you don’t have a choice or a voice in what our future looks like. And I’ll be damned if my choice is silence.
DOGE is trying to outsource the US government — and Trump wants Big Law to make it happen
www.salon.com
The White House distorts the meaning of “pro bono” to justify a hostile takeover of America’s biggest law firms
Mack Trucks announces layoffs at Lehigh Valley plant, blames tariffs-UAW Members Hit
penncapital-star.com/briefs/mack-trucks-announces-layoffs-at-lehigh-valley-plant-blames-tariffs/
BY: PETER HALL – APRIL 17, 2025 6:51 PM
Mack Trucks facility in Macungie, Pa. (Capital-Star photo by Peter Hall)
Mack Trucks will lay off between 250 and 350 workers at its Lehigh Valley Operations center outside Allentown over the next three months, due to economic uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs, a company spokesperson said Thursday.
“Heavy-duty truck orders continue to be negatively affected by market uncertainty about freight rates and demand, possible regulatory changes, and the impact of tariffs,” spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo said.
“Today we informed our employees that this unfortunately means we’ll have to lay off 250-350 people at LVO over the next 90 days,” Pupillo said. “We regret having to take this action, but we need to align production with reduced demand for our vehicles.”
Union leaders announced the company had confirmed layoffs Thursday afternoon. The plant in Macungie employs around 3,050 workers.
“Due to the market being in decline, there will be a rate and line reduction. I have heard all the same rumors you guys have heard. This is the first time I have an official word from the company that there will be a layoff,” United Auto Workers Local 677 shop chair Tim Hertzog said in a letter posted on the union’s Facebook page Thursday.
State Rep. Josh Siegel (D-Lehigh) said the layoffs are “a clear signal of the dangerous economic instability being fueled by the Trump administration’s chaotic tariff policies.”
“The tariffs — erratic, broad and poorly targeted — are crushing core U.S. industries like trucking and manufacturing. Supply chains are snarled, costs are soaring, and confidence among employers is collapsing,” Siegel said in a news release.
President Donald Trump said on the campaign trail last year that tariffs would return manufacturing to the United States and generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.
At the beginning of April, Trump announced tariffs on products imported from other countries beginning a universal 10% duty and increasing with additional reciprocal tariffs as high as 50% against countries with large trade deficits or other barriers to exports.
The announcement sparked a massive stock market sell-off that erased trillions of dollars in value that was followed by the largest single-day increase when Trump announced a 90-day reprieve for most countries. He doubled down on tariffs for Chinese imports, raising the duties to 125%.
Siegel called on U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-7th District), whose district includes the Lehigh County Mack plant, and Senators John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) to “take back Congress’s constitutional authority on trade and end this economic sabotage before more livelihoods are lost.”
(This article was updated at 9:26 a.m., April 18, 2025, to correct the number of employees at Mack Trucks’ Lehigh Valley Operations facility.)
Mack Trucks announces layoffs at Lehigh Valley plant, blames tariffs • Pennsylvania Capital-Star
penncapital-star.com
Union leaders announced the company had confirmed layoffs Thursday afternoon. The plant in Macungie employs around 1,200 workers.
On Workers Memorial Day April 28, 2025, Remember The Dead, Protect The Injured & Defend Workers Health & Safety
Workers in the US and around the world are being killed and injured on the job because of a profit system that drives bosses to put profits over lives.
In 2024 5,486 workers were killed on the job in the United States and an estimated 120,000 workers died from occupational diseases.
Today in US, the national government is shutting down OSHA and many other agencies that are supposed to protect the health and safety of workers on the job.
President Trump has nominated David Keeling who represented from UPS and Amazon. The Federal government is closing down operations in states that they are responsible for running the OSHA program and also are engaged in destroying documents. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has removed and potentially destroyed several key documents related to worker-safety.
These documents may have been destroyed simply because of their use of words related to “diversity” and “gender,” regardless of the context in which those words were used. By eliminating guidance to help employers comply with OSHA standards, including dealing with toxic chemical exposure, preventing workplace violence in health care facilities, and preventing musculoskeletal disorders in nursing homes and grocery stores,
the Trump Administration is workers’ lives at risk.
At the same time, the corruption and capture of many OSHA programs and workers comp programs by the corporations and insurance companies that are supposed to be regulated is resulting in workers being denied any protection and also timely medical care for their injuries that results in workers
being permanently disabled.
Join us On Workers Memorial Day April 28 join our panel to tell us your story.
Initial Speakers:
Ashley M. Gjøvik, OSHA & Environmental Whistleblower at Apple
Tramaine Palms, ILWU Local 19 Injured Worker
Becky McClain, OSHA Whistleblower At Pfizer
Daniel Berman, Health and Safety writer and author of Death On The Job
Branton Philipps, Tesla UAW Supporter At Fremont Tesla
Vincent Ward, ILWU Local 10 Injured Member
Adrienne Williams, Former Amazon Worker & Organizer and research fellow with Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
Sponsored by California Workers Memorial Day & WorkWeek
www.workersmemorialday.org
For more info contact
labor media1@gmail.com
When: Apr 28, 2025 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/eXTT9NVoR2a5K8dZCEBexw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
us02web.zoom.us
Workers Memorial Day on April 28, 2025 commemorates workers injured and killed on the job. Today the destruction of all health and safety protection agencies by the fascist government and the total de…
Getting Profiteers Out Of Healthcare:Unions, Healthcare Privatization & Public Control Of Healthcare
youtu.be/NA4vU6AfLVo
Working people in the United States face a major attack on their healthcare and benefits with the privatization of medicare through Medicare Advantage and the destruction of medicaid.
WorkWeek interviews Kate Tillow with Unions for Single Payer Healthcare and with the National Day of Action for Single Payer On May 31, 2025. She reports on the growing collapse of the healthcare system and the need for workers to fight to remove the insurance companies, hospital associations and billionaires from the control of the healthcare industry.
For More Info:
National Action For Single Payer
nationalsinglepayer.com/national-day-of-action/
nursenpo@aol.com
unionsforsinglepayer.org
www.facebook.com/unionsforsinglepayer
Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
“We Can’t Afford AFT UFT Mulgrew Anymore” — ABC Video Goes Viral
abettercontract.org/p/we-cant-afford-mulgrew-anymore-abc
“We Can’t Afford AFT UFW Mulgrew Anymore” — ABC Video Goes Viral
Thousands have viewed our latest video campaign ad already that shows why we can’t afford another 3 years of Mulgrew or his Unity administrative caucus’ lack of leadership. Let’s share it with others!
A BETTER CONTRACT
APR 18, 2025
🚨 Watch and share this video!!! — WE CAN’T AFFORD MULGREW ANY LONGER!
❌ Sub-inflation raises as the cost of living skyrockets in NYC
❌ Higher copays on healthcare … 150 ER VISITS up from 50 bucks, in 2014.
❌ 15 dollar urgent care visits now 50 to 100 dollars
❌ Placed co-pays on retirees for the first time ever.
❌ An ordinary trip to the dentist can now cost thousands out of pocket
❌ He tells us no prescriptions are denied. But they are.
❌ He designed his Mulgrewcare Medicare Advantage plan forcing retirees to spend millions in court to fight it.
❌ Fewer doctors are accepting the healthcare plan we have after it’s been gutted — especially therapists, mental health providers, specialists.
❌ He DIDN’T fight or stop Tier 6 and now new teachers pay out of pocket toward their pension for decades until age 63. We may need to wait a generation under his leadership to see meaningful reforms to Tier 6.
❌ Paras have to work 2-3 jobs because he failed to approve a plan for collective bargaining tailored to their needs for salary, pensionable increases, longevity raises, LODI, tenure ….
Paras need a living wage — FIX PARA PAY!
❌ He failed to use 450 million dollars beyond the pattern in our last contract towards paras needs for a living wage.
❌ The healthcare stabilization fund is now ENTIRELY bankrupt because he used it to pay for retro raises and to transfer millions into our welfare fund and now we sit on over 1 billion dollars in reserve … while members dig into there own pockets to cover expenses.
❌ All while safety and work conditions erode more and more as well.
We CAN’T AFFORD MULGREW ANY LONGER!
Vote for A Better Contract – UFT Members
Help us spread the word
✅ Like, comment and share this video on Facebook: www.facebook.com/share/v/16McPbHyXa/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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The Crackdown on Campuses Is a Crackdown on Unions
capitalandmain.com/the-crackdown-on-campuses-is-a-crackdown-on-unions
Many students losing visas and research funding are union members. Some in the labor movement are pushing back.
DSC07681-scaled.jpegMembers of United Auto Workers picket at UCLA on May 23, 2024. Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld.
Published on April 17, 2025By Frances Madeson
As the Trump administration escalates its crackdown on campus dissent, unionized graduate students are increasingly caught in the crosshairs. Some, who are foreign students, have had their visas revoked. Others have seen vital research funding threatened. And student activists have become targets of online attacks, including from Trump supporters and a senior administration official.
Allie Wong, a graduate student at Columbia University, a U.S. citizen and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers Local 2710, has experienced that pressure firsthand. Last month, she accompanied fellow union member Ranjani Srinivasan as she fled to Toronto fearing deportation. The State Department had just revoked Srinivasan’s student visa, inviting her to “self-deport,” and federal immigration agents had repeatedly visited her university-owned apartment.
Wong remembered the relief she felt after she and Srinivasan, who is also a doctoral student at Columbia University, crossed the border into Canada. “It felt like a collective exhale,” she said. But her relief was short-lived. When Wong returned to New York she learned that U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem had posted a video of them in the airport on X, calling them “terrorist sympathizers.”
Wong, who is pursuing a PhD in urban planning, has since been doxxed and inundated with threats. “I’ve received death threats, rape threats, messages of folks saying they hope I’m beheaded by Hamas,” she said.
Over the last few years, university campuses have become key battlegrounds for labor rights, with graduate student workers leading organizing drives aimed at improving working conditions. Many of those same union members have been among the most outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Their activism has drawn the ire of lawmakers who often equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Critics describe the ongoing campaign targeting university budgets and pro-Palestinian student activists as a repressive attempt to silence dissent and chill political speech on campuses.
The attack on universities comes amid a broader right-wing offensive — championed by the Trump administration and its allies — against so-called “woke ideology,” including diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.
Unions and their members are responding with protests, lawsuits and statements condemning the administration — and the universities they say are caving to pressure from the president and from Republican members of Congress and their donors.
More than 1,400 foreign students and recent graduates have had their visas revoked as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities.
Iris Rosenblum-Sellers, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and member of UAW Local 4811, noted that the Trump administration’s campaign against universities coincides with widespread protests against the administration’s cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and that those protesting the targeting of student activists are keenly aware of this. “I think they, rightly, see the deportations and threats to international student workers as an effort to suppress the kind of mass response we’re seeing to these issues,” Rosenblum-Sellers said.
From Berkeley to Boston, more than 1,400 foreign students and recent graduates have had their visas revoked as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities, according to data compiled by Inside Higher Ed. Some, like Srinivasan, had done little more than publish a few social media posts supportive of Palestinian rights.
The most high-profile case involves Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs as well as a former UAW Local 2710 member, who played a central role in negotiating with the administration to end last year’s occupation of Hamilton Hall, a campus building. Last month, Khalil was detained by federal immigration agents at his apartment in front of his pregnant wife, and he is now being held in a detention facility in rural Louisiana.
The Trump administration is also threatening to withhold tens of billions in federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding to research universities. Columbia faced the prospect of losing $400 million in NIH grants after the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism imposed a series of preconditions for the funds’ release. The university ultimately complied with all of the task force’s nine demands, including agreeing to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under “administrative receivership.” Columbia was the first of more than 100 universities across the country to see protest encampments spring up on their campuses. In 2023, NIH funding supported over 400,000 jobs in the U.S.
To protect the workforce, labor has hit the streets. Earlier this month, a coalition of unions sponsored dozens of simultaneous “Kill the Cuts” demonstrations in cities across the country to protest the loss of NIH grants that fund scientific and medical research. The American Association of University Professors sued the Trump administration in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, alleging that its detentions of foreign students are violating the First Amendment and “terrorizing students and faculty.”
After Khalil was detained, the Communications Workers of America rank and file circulated a petition calling for his release, and International Union of Painters and Allied Trades President Jimmy Williams Jr. wrote in an op-ed in In These Times that “this moment is a clarion call for the labor movement.”
Harvard University made headlines this week when its president, Alan Garber, wrote in an open letter that he would not accede to the Trump administration’s list of demands. But some prominent universities have sought to cooperate with the administration and Republican lawmakers, a practice Ellen Schrecker, a historian of academic freedom, has called “anticipatory obedience.”
“During McCarthyism,” she said, “there were only a select few criminal prosecutions, but they did have an impact. The main thing, though, was that people were fired, and in many cases, like in the universities, they were blacklisted. And that can shut you up pretty quickly.”
Grant Miner, president of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710, had been pushing to include protections for international students in the union’s contract when he was expelled.
In a letter written from detention last month, Khalil blames Columbia University for enabling the Department of Homeland Security to target him and for bowing to federal pressure, citing his arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who separated him from his family, as one example. The day before his arrest, he’d emaileduniversity officials expressing his fear that “ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home.”
The day after Khalil was taken by federal agents, his former union, UAW Local 2710, publicly demanded the restoration of Columbia’s so-called sanctuary status. Since 2016, it’s been Columbia’s policy not to allow immigration officials on campus without a warrant and, mirroring New York City’s sanctuary protections, not to share the immigration status of students without a subpoena. In March, the University published a protocol stating “exigent circumstances” may allow ICE agents to enter university buildings without a warrant.
The crackdown on student protesters has delayed collective bargaining at Columbia. According to Wong, Local 2710 President Grant Miner had been pushing to include protections for international students in the union’s contract with the university when he was expelled in mid-March. His expulsion — 21 other students were either expelled, suspended or had their degrees temporarily revoked — occurred one day before a session between union negotiators and the university administration on the topic was scheduled to occur. Miner was expelled for occupying Hamilton Hall, a building that has been “occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history,” he wrote in The Nation. After his expulsion, he lost his job, his health benefits and his ability to represent his colleagues.
On the day of the expulsions, Columbia issued a brief statement on the sanctions imposed by the University Judicial Board. While it referenced a process for the potential return of suspended students, it made no mention of any procedures for reversing expulsions.
Miner’s expulsion, Wong said, sends a chilling message that “nobody is safe from the Trump administration, and nobody is safe from Columbia.”
The national United Auto Workers union described Miner’s removal as an attack on free speech and freedom of association. “If they can come for graduate workers, if they can arrest, deport, expel, or imprison union leaders and activists for their protected political speech, then they can come for you. For your contract. For your paycheck. For your family. And for your rights,” the union said in the statement.
The National Labor Network for Ceasefire, a network of seven major national unions (including the UAW) and over 200 union locals, also released statements opposing the threatened deportation of Khalil and Miner’s expulsion and firing and called on the labor movement to “reject racist scapegoating and conflating criticism of Israel’s actions with antisemitism.”
Columbia University’s public affairs office did not respond to Capital & Main’s repeated requests for comment. But Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, did address some of the broader concerns in an open letter posted on April 14, hours after the letter from Harvard University’s president appeared. Acknowledging the “enormous anxiety” felt by international students, she wrote that the university would “reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community.”
UCLA lecturer Kristoffer Smemo is a labor historian at a campus that was the site of protest encampments and violent counterprotests last spring. He said universities face an existential choice with parallels to the Red Scare-era witch hunts: Comply with the Trump administration’s demands — potentially compromising principles of academic freedom and free speech — or resist and risk losing federal funding. For him, the choice is clear.
“If we give in, we’re going to end up losing everything,” Smemo said. “That seems to be the kind of knife’s edge we’re on right now.”
The Crackdown on Campuses Is a Crackdown on Unions
capitalandmain.com
Many students losing visas and research funding are union members. Some in the labor movement are pushing back.