(uplifting music) (pensive music) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Jay Martin Jr., filling in for Paris Jackson.

In today's episode, unpaid wage complaints have stacked up against the State's Worker Protection Agency.

After a group of interpreters say they're owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for their services, we'll take a look at details from the lawsuit.

Plus, carbon auction prices in Washington are down this year.

We'll give you the latest revenue figures from the controversial program.

And a crew of Filipino fishermen are still waiting on investigations from both the United States and the Philippines after their employer allegedly abandoned them at the Westport Marina.

Unpaid wage complaints have piled up against Washington Labor and Industries, the State's Worker Protection Agency.

A group of interpreters have filed a wage theft lawsuit against L&I.

As workers allege, the contractors are collectively owed more than $380,000 for work done over the past three years.

The group, many of whom are women of color, also argued in a separate complaint that a recent change in scheduling companies has resulted in missed wages that left workers scrambling to pay their household bills.

The May 30th lawsuit seeks owed payments for interpreting services performed for self-insured companies that opt out of the public workers' compensation system.

The lawsuit names L&I and several companies and contractors as defendants.

L&I declined to comment on the lawsuit, but spokesperson Matt Ross emphasized the crucial role interpreters serve at the agency.

(uplifting music) Washington's latest carbon auction raised around $237 million, bringing 2020 four's cap-and-invest revenue up to $561.7 million with one more quarterly auction left before the year ends.

Carbon-emitting corporations, including oil companies, bid every three months on state allowances for their pollution emissions.

In 2023, the first year of the new program, quarterly auctions brought in about $2 billion.

Auction prices that year were significantly higher than they had been expected when the program was designed, but both auction prices and related fuel prices have gone down in 2024.

Reasons for the lower 2024 auction prices are unknown, but one theory is that the bidders are unwilling to spend money on a program that could disappear at the end of 2024 after voters decide on a state initiative to repeal the cap-and-invest program.

(pensive music) One year after being allegedly stranded by their employer in a Westport, Washington Marina, six Filipino migrant workers are still waiting to return home to their families.

The fishermen are among the two dozen Filipino crew members that were confined to tuna fishing vessels for months last year without US visas.

This, while waiting for back pay from their employer, California-based McAdam's Fish, and a recruitment agency.

With help from Filipino community organizations, the six fishermen have stayed in the Seattle area to pursue claims against their former employer and assist with multiple investigations in the US, as well as the Philippines.

The six crewmen, calling themselves the United Six, told Cascade PBS that the US Department of Homeland Security recently placed a new investigator on their case.

McAdam's Fish has disputed any wrongdoing and says that it is available to answer any government inquiries.

(pensive music) Also from the Cascade PBS Newsroom, earlier this month, supporters and tenants from mobile home parks owned by Hurst & Son gathered in Bremerton for a rally advocating for stronger tenant protections.

It's part of a larger effort to connect Hurst & Son residents from across the state to organize in response to a rising rents and new park policies.

Visit our website to find more coverage of this story.

I'm Jay Martin Jr.

Thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Visit cascadepbs.org for more great local coverage.

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