Good evening everyone,

It’s Tuesday, Jan. 27, and welcome back to another edition of the Keystone Labor Report.

There’s an old saying in the labor movement that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” and today, we mourn the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and a union member with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

Pretti was shot in the back and killed by a group of federal agents on Saturday while he was recording their operations and helping a woman injured by agents who would kill him moments later.

His death came less than one day after Minneapolis residents pulled off one of the country’s largest general strikes since the 1940s. It took place as a response to ICE shooting and killing another citizen, Renee Good, on Jan. 7th.

This latest act of state-sponsored violence from President Donald Trump’s administration, and the torrent of lies and falsehoods that followed, sparked universal condemnation from labor leaders across the country and has renewed a fight within the Democratic Party over the future of ICE and how immigration should be handled.

ICE, which was created in 2003 and is now funded to the tune of $75 billion thanks to Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ needs to be dismantled and our immigration system should be turned into an administrative task for the federal government rather than a law enforcement task.

Sean Kitchen,

Political Correspondent, The Keystone

(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Labor leaders from across Pennsylvania are calling on US Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Dave McCormick (R-PA) to vote against the $770 million increase to DHS funding in a spending bill designed to keep the federal government fully operational.

Democrats have united against voting for the clean spending bill, risking a partial government shutdown, over of the outrage stemming from Pretti’s death on Saturday.

“The members of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, our commonwealth’s largest healthcare union, mourn the loss of one of our own, a fellow care provider, union member and advocate for justice,” the Executive Board of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania said in a statement.

“We honor his legacy and send our heartfelt condolences to his family and coworkers. And we demand that Senator Fetterman vote against the $770 million in additional ICE funding, which would be complicity in Alex’s killing.”

(Sean Kitchen / The Keystone)

Cozying up to Trump is about to pay off big time for Pennsylvania’s richest billionaire, Jeffrey Yass.

BBC reported last week that ByteDance, which is TikTok’s parent company and Yass’ golden goose, will retain a 20% stake in the social media company’s new ownership structure.

Yass, who was the first American investor in TikTok, owns roughly 7% of ByteDance and, thanks to these investments in the social media giant, his net worth has skyrocketed from a measly $2 billion in 2018 to $65 billion in 2025.

“This is yet another example of billionaires using their wealth and power to influence politicians and enrich themselves,” Aly Shaw, research analyst at Little Sis, said in a statement.

“Yass will not only likely massively profit from this TikTok deal, but it also gives rightwing billionaires like him even greater control over the content and information that tens of millions of American TikTok users see every day.”

State Rep. Valerie Gaydos (R-Allegheny) celebrated the Trump administration’s decision to remove signage about slavery from Independence Mall by saying “good riddance” in a social media post.
US Sen. John Fetterman has called on President Donald Trump to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem even though he was one of seven Democrats who voted to confirm her.
Alex Pretti’s killer may also be a union member of the AFGE – and that is a problem. Jewish Currents reports that border patrol agents and VA nurses belong to the same union.

(AP Photo/Tassanee Vejpongsa)

“A martyr to a cause.”

That’s how labor leaders remembered Carl Mackley, a 22-year old hosiery worker and union member, after a strikebreaker shot and killed him during a labor dispute in Philadelphia in March 1930.

Mackley’s name may not be significant to many readers, but his name is immortalized in the Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up.

His funeral attracted over 25,000 workers from Juniata, Kensington, and nearby river ward neighborhoods. Five years following his death, funds from the New Deal program were used to build an apartment complex and affordable housing for union members and families in the Juniata section of Philadelphia. The Carl Mackley Houses were the first of their kind benefitting union members.

Like Mackley, Pretti and Good died in pursuit of making their communities better and safer, and like Mackley, they too will be remembered and honored for generations to come.