News of the Week: Supreme Court hears arguments in Janus case

NewsFebruary 27, 2018

Each week we share articles on subjects that are important to NUHW and its members. Here are several must-read stories over the past seven days:

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on the Janus case, which is expected to spell the end for unions charging non-members fees to represent them in collective bargaining.

The American Propsect looks at the right-wing billionaires push the legal case. And The Intercept questions whether the expected ruling against unions could actually offer legal protections for unions fighting to protect their bargaining rights:

The U.S. Supreme Court declined the Trump Administration’s request to immediately review lower court rulings blocking his action to end the program that protected from deportation approximately 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. This means that the Dreamers will not face immediate deportation when the Obama-era program expires on March 5. But they will remain in limbo unless Congress passes a law protecting them.

Federal immigration agents have arrested more than 150 undocumented immigrants in Northern California during a sweep this week, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has faced the ire of Trump Administration officials for announcing over the weekend that a sweep was likely.

The National Labor Relations Board reversed a 3-2 December ruling that would have made it more difficult for fast food workers to form unions, Mother Jones reports. The reversal came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised concerns that the decisive vote was cast by a former pro-management lawyer whose firm would benefit from the ruling.

Delegates to last weekend’s California Democratic Party Convention in San Diego declined to endorse Sen. Dianne Feinstein for re-election, KQED reports. Her top challenger is fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon, who also failed to reach the 60 percent threshold needed for an endorsement. None of the Democratic candidates for governor garnered the party endorsement either. One candidate who did receive the party’s endorsement — as well as NUHW’s — was Dr. Hans Keirstead, who is running for Congress in Orange County.

This New York Times op-ed about the decline of hospitals notes that the number of hospitals and hospitalizations have decreased over the last three decades. It also warns that hospital mergers create local monopolies that raise prices to counter the decreased revenue from fewer occupied beds.

Twenty GOP-dominated states are suing the federal government seeking to once again dismantle Obamacare, according to Reuters. The lawsuit claims that Obamacare is unlawful now that the Republican tax law did away with the mandate that individuals without the individual mandate, which was eliminated as part of the Republican tax law signed by President Donald Trump in December, Obamacare was unlawful.