The Weekly Download

“On the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, tucked away in the south west corner, lives a sweeping portrait of early 20th-century America. Thomas Hart Benton’s masterpiece America Today privileges the viewer to step into the life of this fragile republic as it existed 100 years ago. Spanning decades, Benton’s mural tells the story of a soaring but broken country that faced crippling inequality, economic insecurity, racial division, and escalating international tensions. While these problems are familiar today, our collective response to them has not lived up to Benton’s vision. As we see a similar scale and similar qualities of crises in our version of America today, we would benefit from studying the solutions that Benton celebrated.”

“Over the past few years, various unions and worker organizations have published a series of principles, public statements, frameworks, and resolutions articulating a vision for how AI and other digital technologies should be developed and deployed in the workplace. We analyzed 17 of these documents by 15 organizations and identified key values being put forward. This report represents our interpretation of these documents.”

“We are in a mess right now. Labor and community organizations are under attack. A cascading list of Executive Orders, cancellations of government funding, attacks on non-profit status, and arrests of union leaders and immigrant organizers may be just the beginning. The Supreme Court’s recent court decisions giving Trump legal carte blanche to do whatever he wants may also include the complete destruction of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and other progressive reforms of the past 90 years. Some foundations and other progressive funders are decreasing funding when they should be increasing their support. These attacks are destroying our ability to organize when we need it most.”

“Episode #10 of the Power Half-Hour has arrived! The Power Half-Hour is a livestreamed, fast-paced, bi-weekly roundtable with a rotating group of regular guests. Our guests discuss the biggest labor story of the preceding week and the labor story everyone should be talking about over the next two weeks. Joining Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris for this episode are:”

“The last time Regina heard from her mother, Laura Murillo, she was calling from inside the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, last Friday. “She just told us that she loved us. She seemed shocked, and she said she’s wanting to fight the case,” Regina says. Regina, 19, is standing at the street vendor booth in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, where Murillo was detained. She’s now missing college to work at the booth, selling tamales and champurrado, a Mexican hot chocolate drink, to make sure the business doesn’t go under. Video footage shows Murillo, 54, being arrested by at least three masked federal agents at this site last week, while onlookers shouted at them to let her go.”

“A coalition of unions in the federal sector signed on to an extraordinary Federal Unionists Network letter September 29 urging the Democrats to fight Trump administration cuts, even at the price of a government shutdown.”

“Federal employee unions are challenging the Trump administration’s threats to conduct mass layoffs of government workers amid the latest shutdown. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees allege that the Office of Management and Budget has taken a ‘legally unsupportable’ position to use a lapse in appropriations as grounds for eliminating programs and jobs that are not considered current priorities for the president. In guidance published last week, OPM authorized agencies to move forward with reductions in force, including issuing RIF notices to federal workers while also preparing for furloughs ahead of a shutdown.”

“On Tuesday September 30, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 288 (‘AB 288’), which grants a California state agency the authority to enforce federal labor law in the absence of action by the National Labor Relations Board (‘NLRB’). With this bill, California joins the State of New York in passing legislation that allows state agencies to usurp the powers delegated to the NLRB by Congress... AB 288 arrives at a time where there is still major uncertainty at the NLRB as it still lacks a quorum and Trump’s recent nominees to the Board are still pending confirmation by the Senate.”

“The federal government is shutting down right now because President Trump and his administration chose chaos and pain over responsible governing. Now, countless jobs, the essential government services we all rely on and the economy powered by our workforce are in jeopardy—all because the administration wants to take one more swing at wrecking the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and throwing working people off our health care….The labor movement’s message to the administration is clear: Get to work. Fund the government. Fix the health care crisis. Put working people first.”

“ChatGPT is not yet causing the massive upheaval in the US labor market that many have feared since the chatbot’s launch in 2022, according to a new study by a research center at Yale University. The study comes amid widespread concerns that the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence, the technology that underpins ChatGPT, could put many jobs at risk as US companies increasingly turn to AI to cut costs through greater automation. The researchers looked at changes since the launch of ChatGPT in the distribution of workers among all the jobs available in the economy. The chatbot is underpinned by generative artificial intelligence technology, which can create original text, images and other content in response to prompts from users.”

“Catch up on new organizing from September feat. Starbucks workers in West Palm, registered nurses in Florida's largely non-union panhandle, and more…Florida, like other states in the South, is regularly dismissed as a ‘non-union’ state, where decades of anti-union policies and deep-rooted corporate and political resistance to unions have stunted the labor movement’s growth and degraded its power. Only about 6% of workers in Florida even have union representation, and just 5% are dues-paying union members — below the national average. But new organizing does happen here in the Sunshine State, maybe more often than you’d think.”

“On January 27, workers at a Philadelphia Whole Foods voted to become the first store in the Amazon-owned grocery chain to unionize. When the result was announced that night, produce worker Ed Dupree, who helped organize the monthslong campaign, ran to the produce cooler with his coworkers….The celebratory mood quickly evaporated. Later that night in Washington, barely a week into Donald Trump's second term in office, the Republican U.S. president fired Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board who he accused of disfavoring business interests. Suddenly the NLRB, a 90-year-old U.S. government agency that oversees private sector labor relations, had fewer than the minimum of three members needed to carry out its core functions such as resolving disputed union elections. Many companies have seized upon this paralysis as they fight labor campaigns, a Reuters review of NLRB filings showed. Since Wilcox's removal, employers have lodged at least 50 appeals with the NLRB challenging union elections to an agency that cannot resolve them, the Reuters review found, with the appeals coming at a highly vulnerable point in the union organizing process.”

“SAG-AFTRA has issued a statement condemning Tilly Norwood, the AI ‘actress’ who has become a contentious subject in Hollywood after her creator, Eline Van der Velden, recently claimed that multiple talent agents were interested in signing the AI creation. The acting guild believes ‘creativity is, and should remain, human-centered’ and ‘is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.” 

“It’s difficult to overstate the significance of last week’s final approval of a $233 million settlement between the Walt Disney Co. and the tens of thousands of Disneyland employees whom the company has underpaid for years. This is a battle that dates to 2018, when Anaheim voters passed a measure — backed by a coalition of unions — that was squarely intended to force the House of Mouse to pay workers something approaching a living wage. Instead, Disney resisted the law for years before finally being held accountable. The settlement certainly matters at the top line. Most of that money will be going to more than 50,000 Disneyland workers who for several years were paid less than they should have been — in some cases, far less.”

“As contract negotiations for 1,600 essential janitors in St. Louis continue, member leaders are making their voices heard. For months, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1 members in St. Louis have been talking to coworkers and fellow union members about the importance of showing up to rallies and delegations so decision makers hear them loud and clear, and know they mean business.”

“Broadway actors may soon go on strike if the demands of a major union, Actors' Equity, are not met at the negotiating table with producers. The strike would be the first of its kind in 57 years, and it is poised to shut down 32 stage productions. Over 1,000 Broadway actors signed a letter in solidarity with the union. Some of the signees include Brooke Shields (Actors' Equity president), Darren Criss, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Helen J Shen (Maybe Happy Ending), Michael Urie (who will star in Richard II later this month), Sean Astin (SAG-AFTRA president), Brandon Uranowitz (Ragtime), and many others.”

“Something remarkable happened last week. Tech giant Microsoft announced that it is partially terminating the Israeli military’s access to proprietary technology that it was using to conduct mass surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank…in my opinion, the biggest labor story in the United States is happening there: a tech-worker-led revolt from within Microsoft, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, under the banner of the “No Azure for Apartheid” (NOAA) campaign. Highly specialized, well-paid workers in the heart of Big Tech, in the most corporate, nerdy, non-union, Northface-wearing-ass environment you can imagine, have been repeatedly putting their jobs, safety, and even their immigration status on the line to answer Gaza’s call and use their position as tech workers to try to stop a genocide.”

“Journalists at the Everett Herald ratified a historic first contract, winning stronger job protections, fair raises and improved working conditions. The newsroom was first organized under Sound Publishing, which once dominated Washington’s local news market. Midway through bargaining in 2024, ownership transferred to Carpenter Media — a fast-growing chain known for aggressive cost-cutting. Soon after, Carpenter tried to push through illegal layoffs. In response, Herald journalists walked off the job for three days, forcing management to back down and negotiate.”

“When Lumen announced four months ago that it would sell its most profitable mass-market fiber assets to AT&T, workers’ voices and futures were left out of the deal. After decades of loyal service and union contracts, Lumen’s proposed deal offered no protection for workers. CWA District 7 members fought back and reached a tentative agreement this week to protect themselves in case of future sales and to empower more Lumen workers to join our union.”

“UAW Local 5 members voted on Thursday, September 25th to ratify a new contract with AM General. Around 400 UAW members at the company’s Mishawaka complex build the Humvee and next generation Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the nation’s military.”

“Pensions are not considered the sexiest corner of the labor movement. But they are one of the most important. Pensions are where all the money that workers fought so hard to earn is going. Union researcher Chris Bohner has calculated the combined financial assets of American unions at about $35 billion, but the total assets held by collectively bargained pension plans stand at trillions of dollars. Until we shift the perception of pensions from ​’a delicate resource that we must hoard’ into ​’a weapon,’ the working class is leaving a chunk of its power on the table.”