Neumos security staff won their union election: The National Labor Relations Board tallied their votes Friday and everyone who showed up voted yes. Workers at Neumos, Barboza and The Runaway, all owned by Fokus Industries, began organizing publicly this spring, with the security staff announcing a union earlier this month. Neumos Security Union organizer Ozi Goldstein emailed The Stranger the following after results were announced:
“We achieved this result because workers already saw that they can achieve improvements to working conditions through collective action with our previous all-staff organizing as Neumos Workers United. Now we are interested in going further to secure an actual contract for security staff at Neumos. As security, our top priority is always safety, whether it’s safe shows, safe jobs, safe wages, or safe staffing. The best way we can achieve this safety for staff, patrons, and artists, is through a fair contract.”
Feds rule striking Washington workers can’t claim unemployment unless they apply for jobs: Washington workers have had the right to claim unemployment benefits while on strike since a new state law came into effect on January 1. But after a ruling by the US Department of Labor, striking workers are no longer exempted from applying for jobs as part of the process to claim unemployment benefits, the Washington State Standard reports. With 16,000 Boeing workers poised to strike in October if the company doesn’t give them a fair contract, that’s fortuitous timing for the aerospace company’s managers.
According to the rule change filed Friday by Washington’s Employment Security Division, if they don’t make striking workers apply for jobs to receive unemployment benefits, “the Department may lose federal funding for administration of the unemployment insurance program.”
Seattle teachers vote whether to authorize a strike tomorrow: Their contract is up at the end of the month, and representatives of the 6,000-strong Seattle Education Association say the district still isn’t offering to pay them enough to live here, the Seattle Times reports. Considering the school year begins on September 2, that means city leaders have about a week to make a deal before school is canceled indefinitely and parents start calling politicians complaining that they have to waste valuable time with their kids that they could be spending with their bosses.
Spokane fires caused more than $1 billion in damage: That makes the Spokane Complex fires the worst the state has ever seen, the Spokesman Review reports. The tally comes from the Spokane County Assessor, who so far has counted 833 homes destroyed by the fires. The record might not stand for long. The previous most expensive fire was also recorded in Spokane County just three years ago.
In lighter news, “There’s a big dead whale in the Port of Tacoma. Here’s what we know” is a masterclass in headline writing by the Tacoma News Tribune: If this headline were written by the Seattle Times it would read something like “This popular ocean attraction was found wrong-side up at a local harbor.” Anyway, the whale might have been struck by a cargo ship in Commencement Bay, and NOAA says the corpse does not look bloated enough with gases to risk exploding, per the Tribune.
Washington Post forced to rehire columnist fired for refusing to mourn Charlie Kirk: Karen Attiah didn’t quite get the message that local book depository magnate and CIA contractor Jeff Bezos was reflagging WaPo as a right-wing newspaper to please Trump for money before she posted after Charlie Kirk’s assassination that “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence.” Management likely would not have fired her had she praised a slain leader of America’s white supremacist youth movement, but in any event, a private arbitrator ruled Attiah was wrongly terminated, and she’s back on the job, the New York Times reports.
Right-wing Democrats are trying the “Independent” strategy in Nebraska too, and it’s never not embarrassing: Remember a few weeks back I brought up how the right wing of the Montana Democratic Party destroyed the organization by racing Republicans to the right and was now trying to claw back a seat in Congress by running a fake Independent candidate? There’s a similar situation going on in Nebraska: The Democrat running for US Senate dropped out, and the party central committee voted not to fill the vacancy on the ballot in a push to clear the field for a totally independent, and definitely not a Democrat, candidate.
Congressional candidate salutes grandfather “who gave his life for his country,” which was Nazi Germany: Most of the time when Western politicians praise their Nazi families’ war service, they have the good decency to hide it behind a veil of anti-communism so that everyone is too distracted thinking about the Soviet menace to remember the Holocaust. But brave New York State Sen. Peter Oberacker needed no such nuance when he posted a Facebook photo of his Nazi grandfather who died fighting the United States with the caption “I debated on whether to post this picture, my Grandfather Ludwig Oberacker who gave his life for his country. I salute all who served.” Politico dug it up last week.
US takes Syria off terror list after replacing government with al-Qaeda: Syria’s current president is Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was installed by the US after a Turkish-backed offensive by his rebel group toppled the country’s secular Ba’athist government after a long and bloody civil war inflamed by the United States. He’s a US ally now, but President al-Sharaa got his start in politics in al-Qaeda (not always a US ally) in 2003 fighting in the Iraqi insurgency against US troops. He founded Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate during the Syrian Civil War, which always played nicer with the West than the old Iraqi affiliate. They became ISIS (not a direct US ally).
This is why Marco Rubio’s announcement is so funny. Syria was put on the US State Department’s state sponsor of terror list in 1979 mostly for its armed opposition to Israel, which al-Sharaa says he’s not about. The Israelis, feuding with his Turkish backers, do not believe him and keep bombing and invading Syria.
Does anyone else remember when Soulja Boy rapped “fuck all the Army troops, fighting for what?” in 2011 and then the Army troops got mad at him:
