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07_07_25_am_headlines Ainsley Coogan
Safeway and King Soopers contracts
Tentative contracts have been reached with the unions at the King Soopers and Safeway grocery chains. The Safeway agreement, which has not yet been ratified by employees, would bring an end to a three-week-long strike. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 is telling its Safeway members to be back on the job no later than today.
In announcing the Safeway agreement Saturday, the union said their negotiations with the company produced all gains and no concessions. Details of the agreement have not been disclosed, but the issues that led to the strike included wages, dental and vision benefits, a fully funded pension, and protection against union work going to gig companies like DoorDash, according to the Denver Post.
The union also reached a tentative contract agreement with King Soopers and its parent company Kroger.
They said the three-year contract includes a wage increase and improved health benefits, according to Denver7.
The King Soopers contract is also waiting on a ratification vote by employees.
BoCo Commissioners Statement
The Trump administration’s controversial budget bill received final approval in the U.S. House of Representatives last week on a 218-214 vote, and has since been signed into law.
Colorado’s congressional delegation voted along party lines, with all four Democratic representatives voting against it, and all four Republicans voting for it. After it passed, Governor Jared Polis said, “Colorado Republicans and Donald Trump now own the devastating impacts, cost increases, and chaos this bill will impose on hardworking Coloradans and Americans.”
Boulder County Commissioners said that while the bill will have devastating consequences for nearly all Americans, the cuts it makes to the social safety net will disproportionately hurt people in need.
The Commissioners said in a statement that it will take time to determine exactly how the final legislation will affect Boulder County.
But they said the bill shifts some of the cost of programs like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to states. With Colorado already facing its own fiscal deficits, the Commissioners said other state services will have to be scaled back to prevent people from going hungry.
The statement also said that cuts to programs like Medicaid, will cause reduced life-expectancy for some Coloradans, impact child development and educational achievement, and cause emotional harm as a result.
The commissioners said Boulder County government can make up for some of what is being lost, but not all of it. They said they are committed to spending local dollars where they will make the most impact.
EPA dissent letter
Three Denver-based Environmental Protection Agency employees are under investigation and have been placed under administrative leave after signing a letter critical of the EPA’s administrator Lee Zeldin.
In what is being called the “Declaration of Dissent,” 139 EPA employees signed a letter accusing Zeldin of undermining the agency’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The letter was sent to Zeldin last Monday, and published on the Stand Up for Science website.
The Denver-based employees are being investigated for using government time and computers to sign the letter, according to The Denver Post.
Britta Copt, president of labor union Local 3607, said that the union demands that the EPA recalls the workers and terminates the investigation.
In a statement to The Post, EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the agency has “a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”
Under Zeldin’s administration, the EPA has cut funding for environmental justice, proposed repealing rules that limit coal emissions, reduced employment across the country, frozen grants for clean energy projects and tried to undo a ban on asbestos.
Employees placed on leave who were in the office were escorted out by security.
West Nile Virus in Denver
For the first time this summer, Denver County has found the West Nile virus in a mosquito.
Denver is now the second county on the Front Range to confirm the presence of the virus in mosquitoes this summer, according to the Denver Post. An infected mosquito was found in Larimer County on June 23.
West Nile is a mosquito-borne illness, but isn’t usually found this early in the summer. It may be early this year because of a wet spring, but the Post says health experts aren’t sure yet.
Not all counties trap mosquitoes for testing, so just because people in some areas haven’t heard about local cases of West Nile doesn’t mean it isn’t in their mosquitoes.
There were 76 recorded cases of West Nile virus in Colorado last year, but none of them were fatal. 51 people died from it in Colorado the year before.
