The Oregon Labor Dispatch: August 28, 2025
- Oregon AFL-CIO
- 17 minutes ago
- 4 min read
The Oregon Labor Dispatch is a weekly email and blog series designed to keep Oregon’s workers informed of the latest news about unions, worker power, and much more. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of news stories, graphics, and information about upcoming events and actions. When Oregon’s Labor Movement is connected, updated and informed we are able to be stronger advocates for all working Oregonians.
If you have a news story, event or action you’d like to see featured in the Oregon Labor Dispatch please email us at communications@oraflcio.org.
🗓️ UPCOMING EVENTS
2025 Labor Day Picnics
NWMU Labor Day Rally
September 1 at Good Samaritan Hospital, Portland (NW 22nd & Marshall)
5:00-7:00 p.m.
We’re highlighting that over 200 hospitalists have been bargaining without a contract for 18 months, alongside five other NWMU physician/APP units, and we’re calling for fair contracts that support safe staffing and protect the patient-provider relationship.
September 4-6 at the Seaside Civic & Convention Center
Save the date for this incredible event filled with inspiring guest speakers, engaging workshops, union entertainment, and much more!
📣 TAKE ACTION: SPECIAL SESSION
Support Oregon Transportation Workers
Oregon’s 2025 legislative session ended without passing a transportation package – a top priority for members at SEIU, AFSCME, ATU, and more. This immediately resulted in nearly 300 SEIU 503 Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) workers facing layoffs and major cuts to the safety of our state’s critical infrastructure. And this is just the beginning.
If the Legislature fails to act, cuts are coming for transportation workers in local governments and public transit agencies across our state. After pressure from union members to save these jobs and protect our roads, Governor Kotek called a special legislative session for next Friday, August 29th for legislators to pass a transportation package that will protect these union jobs and the work they do. There is no guarantee that legislators will show up and pass this essential bill. We need your help to reach out to your lawmakers TODAY and tell them to come to the Capitol next Friday and pass this funding package.
Here’s how you can help:
Contact your Legislators. Click here to send a letter today.
Attend the rally on 8/29. If you are in the Salem area and want to do more, SEIU is hosting a rally in support of ODOT at the Oregon Capitol next Friday, August 29th, starting at 7 am. Register today and join us in showing what solidarity looks like. Let’s send a clear, LOUD message to lawmakers: Save These Jobs and Protect Oregon’s Roads!
📖 MUST READ
Aug. 27, 2025 | AFL-CIO
The leader of the nation’s largest labor federation emphasized, ‘Working people are going to save ourselves,’ in third annual address.
🏔️ OREGON LABOR
Aug. 27, 2025 | KGW
U.S. Labor Secretary and former Oregon congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer appeared to encourage the Trump administration to “crack down” on Portland Tuesday.
⚠️FEDERAL ATTACKS
Aug. 27, 2025 | The New York Times
The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court for the second time to allow the government to freeze, for now, billions of dollars in foreign aid. In an emergency request, the administration asked the justices to lift an order from a federal judge that requires the administration to spend funds Congress already budgeted for foreign aid.
Aug. 27, 2025 | Center for American Progress
The Trump administration claims that its actions are raising pay for the working class when in reality, they are empowering corporations to lower wages for millions of workers by eliminating minimum wage protections for federal contractors, disabled workers, and domestic workers providing home care and child care.
Aug. 28, 2025 | The Washington Post
The White House on Wednesday fired Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after she refused to resign amid pressure to change vaccine policy, which sparked the resignation of other senior CDC officials and a showdown over whether she could be removed.
Aug. 27, 2025 | Government Executive
A federal appeals court in California this week signaled that it may revisit a three-judge panel’s decision earlier this month to allow agencies to implement President Trump’s executive order aimed at stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights.
🚨ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS
Aug. 27, 2025 | AP
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has come to encapsulate much of President Donald Trump ’s hard-line immigration agenda, wants to seek asylum in the United States, his lawyers told a federal judge Wednesday. Abrego Garcia, 30, was detained Monday by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement in Baltimore after leaving a Tennessee jail on Friday. The Trump administration said it intends to deport him to the African country of Uganda.
🫱🏼🫲🏽 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Aug. 27, 2025 | Time
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a collective consisting of over 60 labor unions representing nearly 15 million workers, is also supporting the Workers Over Billionaires events.
🖼️ GRAPHICS TO SHARE
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