Iowa Worker’s Almanac news, unionizing, layoffs and more: Sept. 12, 2025

• Miller-Meeks said she liked clean energy tax credits, but her vote for the Big Beautiful Bill shows she didn’t care, writes Stefanie Warnick, a union construction worker with the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 43. “Our state needs leaders who will fight for the livelihoods of Iowans, not just sign letters and then vote the other way when it counts,” Warnick wrote.
• Noncompetes are back: President Donald Trump’s FTC voluntarily stopped defending its ban on noncompete agreements—meaning bosses can go back to limiting who you can work for to suppress your wages and job mobility.
  
• 450 Korean workers were detained in Georgia in ICE’s largest raid so far this year—yet they were brought in as temporary workers to get the plant online, after which they’d hire Americans. (This, it turns out, has not made South Korea—the country’s “biggest foreign direct investor”—very happy.)
  
• Companies are suing the federal government over tariffs, after a federal court ruled Trump didn’t have the right to impose them. This could cost our federal government $1 trillion, and the rich could take it all.
• ‘Take back this state’ was Rick Moyle’s message at the recent International Association of Machinists union conference in Altoona last month. “Whether you know it or not, we’re under attack, and we have been for the last 10 years,” the president of the IAM Iowa council said. “So we have to continue politically to engage our members.” Watch the short video here.
  
• Kawasaki is trying to destroy the union: Workers in the Kawasaki United Labor Union (KULU) in the Philippines have been on strike for over 90 days and are requesting solidarity and support. Sign a petition, donate to their strike fund, or picket a dealership near you.
• Immigrants make up 32% of home health care workers, and that includes noncitizen workers. Deporting them, or otherwise forcing them to leave the country, is exacerbating the health care worker shortage.
• What does it mean to lose a union contract? “Deteriorating services, moms forced back from maternity leave, and more” for federal workers, says a new investigative article from Workday Magazine and The American Prospect.
• Voting on a union: Twenty-four full- and part-time radiographers with American Ordnance in Middletown vote Sept. 17 on whether to unionize with IAM Local 1010. A total of 1,776 full- and part-time registered nurses and PRNs at Iowa Methodist Medical Center, Blank Children’s Hospital, Methodist West Hospital, and Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines vote Oct. 5-7 on whether to unionize with Teamsters Local 90.
• Starting up a union: Fifty full- and part-time workers at River Hills Community Health Center in Ottumwa refiled a petition to unionize Aug. 8 with River Hills United/Teamsters Local 90.

Upcoming layoffs:

All information taken from Iowa Workforce Development’s WARN Act website. Read WARN Act and Iowa WARN Act criteria here.

• TreeHouse Foods in New Hampton is closing and laying off 48 workers by Friday. Read more here.
• John Deere in Waterloo is laying off 71 workers at the Waterloo Works (Foundry) by Sept. 19. Read more here.
  
• Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off 44 workers by Sept. 22, 10 workers by Oct. 4, and 10 workers by Oct. 18.
• Lennox Industries in Marshalltown is laying off 49 workers by Sept. 28. Read more here.
• The Quad City Times in Davenport is laying off 49 printing press workers by Sept. 29. Read more here.
• Winnebago Industries is closing and continuing to lay off, including one worker in Forest City by Sept. 29, three workers in Forest City by Oct. 10, and 26 workers in Charles City by Dec. 12. Read more here.
• Smurfit Westrock Company in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 100 workers by Oct. 4. Read more here.
• Maverik in Des Moines is laying off 100 workers at its corporate headquarters by Oct. 6. Read more here.
• Fox River Mills in Osage is closing, relocating to North Carolina, and laying off 105 workers by Oct. 10. Read more here.