News briefs for Iowa’s workers:
- Heart attacks during working hours only: UnityPoint Health-Finley in Dubuque has cut the hours of its cath lab—which provides cardiac procedures—to just nine hours instead of round-the-clock, citing “hiring struggles and a lack of demand.” Hospital officials will transfer patients outside of those hours.
“You do not close a fire department because there aren’t enough fires in a particular area to justify the expense,” said Abby Butler, a nurse who has worked at Finley for four years. “The purpose of a fire department is to be there when the emergency happens.” - John Deere hired back some of its laid-off workers recently, including 375 in the Quad Cities and 60 workers in Waterloo.
- Tyson workers in the Quad Cities region are still fighting to reopen the Illinois plant that closed recently, laying off 2,500 workers.
- Teachers and school administrators, take note: A court has finally defined “sex act,” which Iowa Republicans couldn’t be bothered to do in their law banning books containing them. Here are the clarified rules.
- Diesel prices continue to rise well above $6 per gallon, an added expense farmers don’t need during harvest.
- The rent is too damn high: In 2024, 14% of renters said they couldn’t always pay the full rent on time. In 2025, that jumped to 20%.
- Instead of just fully funding the Child Care and Development Fund, Trump is floating a plan to take that money away from low-income households and instead give it to two-parent married households where one parent stays home.
- Trump also wants a freeze on pay for federal workers.
- Drivers who are deactivated from Uber and Lyft don’t have much of an appeals process, and rarely get their jobs back. Some states are working to change that.
- Companies are ripping us all off, but instead of maybe, IDK, regulating them, we’re just given tips on how to prevent it. Good luck out there!
- For every 1,000 autonomous trucks that hit the highway, more than 2,000 truck drivers will be laid off.
- Get in the Zone, union busters: The worker who formed the first union at auto parts chain AutoZone got fired a day after they won it. Help him here.
- Union endorsements: The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Locals 222IN, 431, 1846, and the UFCW International Union, endorsed Josh Turek for US Senate on Wednesday. “Josh has sponsored legislation to raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to join a union in Iowa,” said UFCW Local 431 President Simplice Kuelo. “That kind of leadership is what Iowa’s workers and UFCW members in our state deserve.”
Upcoming layoffs:
All information taken from Iowa Workforce Development’s WARN Act website. Read WARN Act and Iowa WARN Act criteria here.
- Great Southern Bank is closing two Iowa locations by today and laying off:
5 workers in Ankeny
4 workers in Pleasant Hill
Read more from the company here. - Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off:
7 workers by Saturday
14 workers by Oct. 17
5 workers by Oct. 31
35 workers by Nov. 14
Read more here. - Lund Food Holdings in Lake Mills is closing and laying off 23 workers by Oct. 9. Read more here.
- RTX in Cedar Rapids is laying off 1 worker by Oct. 30.
