Folks,
Greetings from the Burgh, where Corey O’Connor just dodged some questions from Payday on his ties to union busters in front of Hemlock House in Regent Square.
(See our reporting on O’Connor’s ties to unionbusters here)
AFGE to Lay Off Half of Its Staff
The nation’s largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), announced that they intend to reduce their permanent staff from 355 employees to 150 employees, eliminating more than half of their staff.
“It’s going to demolish us,” Justin Youngblood, president of an AFGE chapter that represents workers at a VA hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, told the AP. “That’s going to cut the legs off of AFGE and all of the locals.”
Labor Dept to Lose 20% of Staff
According to a Bloomberg Law analysis, more than 2,700 of the 14,578 employees at the Department of Labor; nearly 20% of the department’s staff.
The move comes as the Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-Deremer warned employees that more layoffs were coming at the Department and encouraged people to take early buyouts.
For more, check out Bloomberg.
DOL Weaponizing Free Speech
Another factor driving the mass exodus of employees at the Department of Labor is threats by the Trump Administration to prosecute Department of Labor employees engaged in first amendment rights.
Writing for The American Prospect, former Labor Secretary Julie Su described the intimidation tactics:
In the latest example, staff at the Department of Labor, which I used to oversee, received an email this week copied and pasted from the authoritarian playbook. Somewhere between “spread lies to undermine the public’s belief in truth,” “dismantle legitimate institutions,” and “suppress free speech and the free press” they came up with this: an email that prohibits DOL employees from having any communication, including “informal conversations, emails, texts, and social media,” about the devastating actions inside the agency.
The email from the DOL chief of staff threatens employees who communicate in this manner with “potential criminal penalties, depending on the nature of the information and the applicable laws” as well as “immediate disciplinary actions, up to and including termination from the DOL.” Staff are also prohibited from speaking to the media, “whether on the record, off the record, or anonymous.” This will also “be treated as a serious offense.”
Sure, an organization is permitted to designate who speaks to reporters officially on its behalf. And disclosure of confidential or classified information can be subject to penalty and discipline. DOL employees are already well aware of these protocols. (It’s too bad the current administration doesn’t adhere to those rules themselves, since the personal and confidential data of countless Americans has been given to who knows how many unauthorized individuals since January.)
But this email to Department of Labor staff goes way beyond that. It threatens employees for exercising fundamental rights, particularly when such rights collide with the administration’s desire to pursue its anti-worker policies under cover of darkness. And these are employees who are supposed to look out for the labor rights of others, now seeing their own rights at work diminished.
For more, check out The American Prospect.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Wife Profiled in The Washington Post
Finally, The Washington Post has a moving profile of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife. From The Washington Post:
Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, met Abrego García in 2016, introduced by a co-worker who happened to be one of his closest friends. They didn’t start dating right away. For nearly two years, they stayed in each other’s orbit, as Vasquez Sura tried to recover from an abusive relationship and focus on raising the two kids born from it.
The eight years that followed have become fodder for the legal and political fight over her husband’s future, with the Department of Homeland Security and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt both posting to X a 2021 domestic violence petition filed by Vasquez Sura that she quickly abandoned.
Vasquez Sura acknowledged that the relationship hadn’t been perfect. There were fights, dark seasons, moments when the weight of everything — money, parenting, trauma from a 2019 immigration detention that is at the root of the current legal case — felt like it might break them.
Vasquez Sura watched her husband try to claw his way out of a severe depression that took hold after he was detained for seven months by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The arrest was a shock for them after federal officials, relying on a since-decommissioned Prince George’s County police gang registry, accused him of being an active member of MS-13 — a claim he has vehemently denied.
Abrego García, who fled El Salvador as a teenager because of gang threats, had nightmares so vivid he cried in his sleep, his body drenched in sweat by morning, his wife said.
For more, check out The Washington Post.
News & Headlines Elsewhere
- ICE reversing some student visa terminations under pressure from universities
- 4,000 University of Oregon student employees to strike on Monday
- Nashville Uber driver banned from airport for protesting
- Vermont advocates demand release of migrant dairy workers arrested in Berkshire
- NJ Transit rescinds contract offer to locomotive engineers as strike deadline looms
- IWW Strike at Urban Ore In Berkeley, CA enters fifth week
- Maryland commuter bus drivers on strike against contractor Martz
- Bryn Mawr College unveils new art path honoring Black workers
- Democracy Labs is doing their own mapping of various resistance events
- Finally, Brazilian workers sue coffee supplier to Starbucks over ‘slavery-like conditions’
Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending story ideas, tips, comments, and complaints to melk@paydayreport.com
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Love & Solidarity,
Melk
