Posts tagged Trump Administration
Furloughed federal workers face delays getting unemployment pay during shutdown
November 4, 2025 // The specifics vary. Massachusetts has a high-end weekly benefit of $1,105 per week for up to 30 weeks. In Mississippi, it’s no more than $235 weekly for up to 26 weeks. Roughly half the states pay less than $600 a week maximum, according to U.S. Department of Labor numbers. Not everyone gets the maximum weekly rate. Some states offer fewer than 20 weeks. And the limits can grow in some states when unemployment rates are particularly high. Around the nation’s capital, the maximum weekly payment is $444 in Washington, D.C., $430 in Maryland and $378 in Virginia. In Texas, where Avila-Thomas lives, the weekly maximum is $605, for up to 26 weeks.
U-M graduate student research assistants seek to unionize
November 3, 2025 // Ahead of the rally, over 1,500 graduate student research assistants have signed unionization cards. They need a few hundred more to sign up to reach the mandated 30% to set a union vote.
Unions sue Trump over immigrant drivers license crackdown
October 28, 2025 // The employee unions challenged a rule implemented by Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy restricting foreign individuals from receiving commercial drivers licenses. Commercial drivers licenses are used for operating large vehicles such as tractor-trailers and buses. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow unauthorized immigrants to receive commercial drivers licenses. In California, more than 25% of commercial drivers licenses were improperly issued, according to a Department of Transportation press release.
CALIFORNIA: Unions opposing Trump agenda pouring money into Proposition 50 campaign
October 27, 2025 // Besides opposing pleas from former President Obama and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s powerful, left-leaning labor unions are another factor that may influence the outcome of the Nov. 4 special election. Unions representing California school teachers, carpenters, state workers and nurses have plowed more than $23 million into efforts to pass Proposition 50, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure reports about donations exceeding $100,000. That’s nearly one-third of the six-figure donations reported through Thursday. Not only do these groups have major interests in the state capitol, including charter school reform, minimum wage hikes and preserving government healthcare programs, they also are deeply aligned with efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats to put their party in control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 election.
Union Lawsuit Challenges NASA National Security Rebrand
October 27, 2025 // The IFPTE lawsuit, filed earlier this month, challenges the White House’s assertion that national security is NASA’s “primary function,” adding that NASA has been collectively bargaining with IFPTE local unions for over 60 years and “at no time has such bargaining ever been questioned as inconsistent with national security.” It argues that President Donald Trump’s actions exceed his authority and unfairly target the union, which has publicly protested the administration’s cuts at the agency. IFPTE represents approximately 6,000 employees at NASA. The lawsuit follows an August executive order that bars some agencies — including NASA and parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — from engaging in collective bargaining on the grounds that negotiating union contracts could hinder agencies’ ability to operate effectively and quickly, creating a national security risk.
Interior Department reveals plans to lay off more than 2,000 employees
October 21, 2025 // According to the documents, the RIF would involve: 474 employees in the Bureau of Land Management 12 employees in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management 30 employees in the Bureau of Reclamation 7 employees in the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement 143 employees in the Fish and Wildlife Service 272 employees in the National Park Service 7 employees in the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement 770 Interior headquarters and Interior Business Center employees 335 employees in the U.S. Geological Survey In an earlier filing last week, the department said it had been planning the staff cuts for months, and until they were blocked by a restraining order, officials had planned to abolish the positions “imminently” and issue RIF notices to the staff in those roles.
How are unions pushing back against Trump’s attacks on labor and layoffs?
October 21, 2025 // Unions are battling the administration in federal courtrooms nationwide, after filing dozens of lawsuits to try to halt attempts to shed hundreds of thousands of government employees, strip collective bargaining rights from over a million workers, and gut some federal agencies. On Wednesday, they made a significant breakthrough: Judge Susan Illston, of the US district court’s northern district of California, granted a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s latest mass layoffs from the government shutdown.
Starbucks Baristas File Brief Urging Supreme Court to Allow President to Remove Rogue Agency Officers
October 21, 2025 // The brief concludes with the Foundation’s legal argument that Humphrey’s “cannot neuter the President’s ability to supervise those who exercise substantial parts of [executive] power.” Therefore, the Supreme Court “should make clear that the President’s removal power applies to every agency that exercises executive power, including the NLRB.”
The UAW Is Still Fighting to Unionize Auto in the South
October 18, 2025 // Daniel Kopp At the time of your election in 2024, you had a rather supportive National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Biden administration. This is no longer the case, as Donald Trump is starving it of resources. Has that influenced your strategy at Mercedes? Jeremy Kimbrell You don’t change your strategy, because organizing is organizing. Workers have to have courage. You have to understand that the risk will never be zero. Inherently, you hope and expect that the risk is limited.
OMB delays firing federal workers to comply with court order
October 18, 2025 // The unions and other opponents of the reductions say the firings are a significant departure from the norm in a shutdown and are not the type of work agencies can undertake during a shutdown. Previous shutdowns, including during President Donald Trump’s first term, did not result in any reductions in force. In all other shutdowns, federal workers who are classified as “excepted” employees remained on the job while all others were furloughed, and all received back pay after the government reopened.