Category: Economic Security

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

House of Representatives votes to continue paying America’s bills past midterm elections

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

With the mem­o­ry of last autum­n’s dis­as­trous man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis and com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down still fresh in their minds, the lead­er­ship of the U.S. House Repub­li­can Cau­cus today allowed a bill to come to the floor to autho­rize the U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury to pay the nation’s bills for anoth­er year, through […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Move King County Now! Local leaders prepare to go to the ballot to save Metro, bypassing Rodney Tom, Andy Hill, Senate Republicans

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Mak­ing good on last mon­th’s promise to act in the event that the Repub­­li­­can-con­trolled state Sen­ate con­tin­ued to block leg­is­la­tion allow­ing King Coun­ty to save Metro and KCDOT from evis­cer­a­tion, coun­ty law­mak­ers vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly today to take the first step towards putting a fall­back plan before vot­ers in April. The Coun­cil used its exist­ing author­i­ty under […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

Anguished Machinists narrowly vote to accept Boeing’s most recent offer on 777X work

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists and Aero­space Work­ers have vot­ed by a nar­row mar­gin to accept the terms of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny’s most recent con­tract exten­sion offi­cer, IAM lead­ers announced tonight in Everett. By a vote of 51% to 49%, the union agreed to Boe­ing’s terms, with many mem­bers telling reporters and writing […]

Posted inEconomic Security, National Defense, Policy Topics

United States needs and deserves a budget that puts people — and the planet — first

by Gael Tarleton

Con­gress votes and the deal’s done. What does it mean? Wash­ing­ton’s senior U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and her nego­ti­at­ing part­ner Con­gress­man Paul Ryan have avert­ed yet anoth­er bud­get cri­sis head­ing into the 2014 bud­get nego­ti­a­tions. The Sen­ate still has to vote, but the House has, by a sur­pris­ing­ly large mar­gin, gone ahead and signed off on […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Scam alert! An unknown entity, the “Labor Standards Compliance Office”, is trying to sell labor posters with letters that look like bills

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

An unknown enti­ty call­ing itself the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” is mass mail­ing decep­tive let­ters to Wash­ing­ton busi­ness­es and non­prof­its that appear to be bills from the gov­ern­ment, but are in real­i­ty solic­i­ta­tions for labor posters that can be freely obtained, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has learned. One of these sus­pi­­cious-look­ing let­ters showed up this […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Right-wing think tanks plotting Eymanesque campaign against our cities and counties

by Robert Cruickshank

Last week, reporters for The Guardian pulled the cur­tain back on a net­work of well-fund­ed, well-orga­nized right-wing think tanks and their extreme agen­da. Doc­u­ments obtained by The Guardian show the bland­­­ly-named State Pol­i­cy Net­work is work­ing to under­mine edu­ca­tion, health­care, and rev­enue col­lec­tion in near­ly every state in the coun­try. Their spe­cif­ic pro­pos­als are extremely […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics, World Commmunity

Pope Francis denounces income inequality and greed in new apostolic exhortation

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The Vat­i­can today pub­lished the text of His Holi­ness Pope Fran­cis’ first apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion, writ­ten by the Holy Father over the sum­mer, which is Fran­cis’ first major writ­ten work as Pope. It presents Fran­cis’ views on issues of the day, some­what like a polit­i­cal par­ty plat­form, and clocks in at eighty-four pages. Help­ful­ly, the Vatican […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

Machinists reject Boeing’s unreasonable offer on 777X work by a two-to-one margin

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The thir­ty thou­sand plus mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists and Aero­space Work­ers Dis­trict 751 have over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed to reject an offer from the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny that would have replaced their exist­ing labor agree­ment with a new long-term con­tract, the union’s lead­er­ship announced ear­li­er tonight. At a press con­fer­ence in Seat­tle, IAMAW 751 President […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Economic Security, Policy Topics

U.S. Senate passes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, in historic vote

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

It took longer than it should have, but today, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate made his­to­ry by pass­ing the Employ­ment Non-Dis­­crim­i­­na­­tion Act (ENDA) which out­laws dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The vote was six­­ty-four to thir­­ty-two, with four sen­a­tors not vot­ing. As is increas­ing­ly the case, Repub­li­cans sup­plied every sin­gle one of the […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Legislative Advocacy

Ending the anti-tax mantra: Boeing and the Association of Washington Business support raising taxes to help themselves

by Patrick Stickney

As the Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­ture enters its sev­enth spe­cial ses­sion in three years, dis­rupt­ing fall plans, meet­ings, and speak­ing appear­ances for the mem­bers of both state hous­es, the ses­sion called by Gov­er­nor Inslee deserves notice for where key play­ers in statewide bud­get and rev­enue fights are lin­ing up–mainly that Boe­ing and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness have come out in support […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

U.S. House passes “Citibill” to partially roll back the Dodd-Frank Reform Act

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Once again, some­thing is rot­ten in the peo­ple’s House. Ear­li­er today, the Repub­­li­­can-con­trolled U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed two hun­dred and nine­­ty-two to one hun­dred and twen­­ty-two to pass H.R. 992, offi­cial­ly titled the Swaps Reg­u­la­to­ry Improve­ment Act. Like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, we’re call­ing H.R. 992 Citibill because it was pri­mar­i­ly authored by Cit­i­group lob­by­ists. It […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Tentative deal averts grocery strike here; Bay Area’s BART work stoppage ended by accord

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

And now, for some good news! The Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers announced this evening that its nego­ti­at­ing team has been able to reach an agree­ment with Allied Employ­ers on a new (and pre­sum­ably fair) con­tract, there­by avert­ing a strike against Fred Mey­er, QFC, Safe­way, and Albert­son’s stores through­out west­ern Wash­ing­ton. Mean­while, down in Cal­i­for­nia, striking […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Know where to shop for groceries in the event that UFCW members go on strike

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

As of this morn­ing, we are twelve hours away from a pos­si­ble strike against Fred Mey­er, Safe­way, Albert­son’s, and QFC by our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial Work­ers, Local 21. The hard­work­ing mem­bers of Local 21 are try­ing to nego­ti­ate a new con­tract with the big chains, but so far, they […]