Folks,
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro, where polling shows that Lula is headed for a tight race this October in the Brazilian presidential election, and Payday is closely tracking several major developments in the US.
Polls: Lula’s Election Against Bolsonaro’s Son Very Close
Last December, when former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was sent to prison, public opinion polling showed that President Lula was leading his son Senator Flavio Bolsonaro by double digits.
However, a new series of polls released in Brasil show that Lula’s lead is tightening as right-wing support coalesces around Flavio Bolsonaro. A new poll of 2,000 Brazilian voters by Genial/Quaest shows that Lula’s lead over Flavio Bolsonaro has shrunk to 43%-38%.
While all polling has to be taken with a grain of salt, one thing is clear: this is a very fluid race, and it is no guarantee that Lula will win.
For more on the polling, check out Bloomberg.
Donate to Help Us Hire Freelancers in US While Melk’s in Brasil
While I am down in Brazil for the next month, we have folks back in the US helping to make sure we keep tracking worker uprisings and covering them. (See our story from earlier this week, back in Pittsburgh, “Carnegie Mellon Sees New Levels of Student Activism Amidst "ICE Out” Movement”)
Please, if you can, spare a few bucks so that we can keep covering stuff back in the US.
NYC Nurses Vote 73% Against Contract & Protest Against Union
On Tuesday, after several other NYC hospitals had settled contracts, union leaders announced that a contract had been settled for 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
However, on Wednesday, the union’s membership voted 3,099 to 8,637 against the contract. That means 73% of the nurses on strike voted against the contract and voted to continue the strike.
Later in the day, nurses marched on the New York State nurses union headquarters and delivered a petition signed by 1,500 nurses calling on the union to investigate two of its top executives, Nancy Hagans, the NYSNA president, and Pat Kane, its executive director, for pushing a union contract that the union’s executive committee leadership had repeatedly rejected From The City:
NYSNA’s decision to forge ahead with a vote at NewYork-Presbyterian had infuriated members who said they stood by their executive committee’s assertion that the deal did not meet their needs. NYSNA has executive committees at each of its hospitals; those committees are made up of union members who participate in contract negotiations.
Beth Loudin, a neonatal nurse and member of the executive committee at NewYork-Presbyterian, said top union leadership informed her it was moving ahead with a vote Tuesday afternoon — days after she and the committee rejected it.
“I can’t even call it a memorandum of agreement, because there’s no signature on it,” said Loudin. “This is a rush job to get a vote out, because it’s in alignment with the other hospitals. It was very jarring.”
As Ford Plans to Lay Off 1,600, Kentucky BlueOval Workers Demand Union Recognition
In August, workers in Glendale, Kentucky at BlueOval, a subsidiary of Ford, narrowly voted to unionize. For 6 months though, Ford has been delaying recognizing and bargaining with the union.
Now, Ford has announced that they intend to lay off 1,600 people at the plant on February 14th and the UAW is demanding they bargain with the union.
“It’s time for Ford to do the right thing by BlueOval SK workers, recognize the union, and sit down to negotiate the future of Glendale,” said UAW’s Ford Department Vice President Laura Dickerson in a statement. “As a legacy UAW company for over eighty years, this is a disappointing choice from Ford. Our union is going to stand up and fight for the more than 1,600 livelihoods this company is upending without any second thought.”
For more, check out the statement from the UAW.
NLRB Union Elections Fell By 30% Under Trump
With the Trump Administration gutting the National Labor Relations Board and overturning pro-union Biden-era rules, union elections fell by 30% according to a new study by the Center for American Progress. From the study:
The number of workers voting in new NLRB-overseen union elections also fell in 2025. Figure 2 shows how this number had also steadily grown since 2020, in no small part the product of campaigns that unionized workers in difficult-to-organize service jobs as well as a series of successful high-profile strikes, with a total of 142,000 workers voting in union elections in 2024.
In 2025, 59,000 fewer workers cast ballots in these union elections, a decrease of 42 percent.
Not only were there fewer NLRB-certified elections and fewer workers casting ballots, a new union’s likelihood of winning fell slightly in 2025: Although the proportion of representation elections won by unions rose from 65 percent in 2020 to over 72 percent in 2023, the union win rate fell back to 69.8 percent in 2025—still above pre-pandemic win rates but below the 10-year-high rate reached in 2023.
For more, check out the study from the Center for American Progress.
Department of Labor Aide, Whose White Supremacist Posts Raised Alarms, to Leave for DHS
Finally, a Department of Labor aide, whose white supremacist-themed social media posts raised alarms, is going to leave to help run social media at the Department of Homeland Security. From the New York Times:
Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department’s social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump’s image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins’ arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website.
Agency posts of late have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like “Restore American Greatness” and “the globalist status quo is OVER.” An image of Mr. Trump, with bombers flying overhead, was accompanied by the message, “One of One.”
Mr. Rollins has also claimed credit for a massive banner with Mr. Trump’s visage that has hung from the Labor Department’s headquarters.
During the period when those posts were made, the department’s social media following exploded, even as colleagues warned superiors that the department’s accounts could be seen as promoting white supremacist rhetoric, Nazi imagery, and QAnon conspiracy theories.
For more, check out The New York Times.
Links & Headlines Elsewhere
- Twin Cities health care workers describe 'fear,' 'intimidation' due to ICE in hospitals
- Filipino caregivers are applying lessons from resisting authoritarianism under Philippine dictator in the 1980s as they battle Trump
- Silicon Valley worker activism makes a comeback
- Texas Education Agency threatens to investigate schools that allow student walkouts
- Mamdani seeks new mission for pro-business agency: fighting for workers
- Ecuadorian Indigenous groups, farmers, and unions prepare for recall vote
- Finally, Guatemala to phase out Cuban doctors under U.S. pressure
Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending tips, complaints and comments to melk@paydayreport.com
