Every Thanksgiving, people across the United States gather with their family and friends to celebrate and eat and be with their loved ones. And at the same time, people across the United States are at work—maybe having rescheduled their holiday meal around their work and maybe having given up the celebration entirely. Well, this year is …
How much rage have you got left after four years of Donald Trump and nine months of coronavirus pandemic? Please set aside some to direct at the United States’ largest retail companies for their treatment of their workers. A Brookings Institution report shows how 13 of the nation’s 20 largest retail chains, with a combined …
‘We went from being essential to being sacrificial, all for the sake of the bottom line’ Read More »
Unemployment remains high, Republicans allowed expanded unemployment benefits to expire, and retail companies are using that desperation to get vulnerable people to risk their health or their lives for low, low wages. Early on in the pandemic, many retail chains paid their workers some amount of hazard pay. It was usually an inadequate amount and …
The United States’ surging coronavirus outbreak is on pace to hit nearly 1 million new cases a week by the end of the year — a scenario that could overwhelm health systems across much of the country and further complicatePresident-elect Joe Biden’s attempts to coordinate a response. Biden, who is naming his own coronavirus task …
Pandemic on course to overwhelm U.S. health system before Biden takes office Read More »
America’s frontline healthcare workers have rightly been called our country’s real superheroes. But the truth is that the US healthcare system is falling far short in its obligation to protect these essential workers in the face of the worst global pandemic in more than a century. A Failure to Protect It should perhaps come as …
Health and Safety Standards for Frontline Healthcare Workers Read More »
Latina Equal Pay Day was this week, and if it’s not bad enough that it took this long for Latinas to be paid as much as white men made in 2019, the coronavirus pandemic is dumping additional bad news on them. Women are dropping out of the workforce in large numbers, but Latinas are dropping out in …
Latinas are getting slammed in the COVID-19 economy, this week in the war on workers Read More »
For Sean Carlisle (a pseudonym) a 32-year-old graduate student and native of California’s Inland Empire, the last three years at his local Amazon fulfillment center have been an education. As a student of urban planning, he studies how built environments shape a community’s behavior. As a picker, he packs items at a breakneck pace amid stacks of inventory and snaking …
Hibaq Mohamed has worked for Amazon nearly as long as she’s been in the United States. In 2016, the twenty-something Somali immigrant landed in Minnesota by way of a refugee camp, joining one of the largest East African communities in the country. She soon joined the legion of workers who fuel the state’s main Amazon facility, the …
Meet the Warehouse Worker Who Took On Amazon Over Inhumane Conditions and Harassment Read More »
Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States early this year, frontline workers in sectors deemed “essential” have staged hundreds of strikes, sickouts and other job actions to protest unsafe working conditions. At hospitals, warehouses, meat processing plants, fast-food restaurants, transport and delivery services, and retail and grocery stores, workers have demanded their employers do …
OSHA Is Failing Essential Workers. Why Not Let Them Sue Their Bosses? Read More »
The United States played fast and loose with the health of essential workers during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, and the push to reopen businesses despite surging COVID-19 infections is no different. Essential workers and advocacy groups that represent them are calling for stronger health and safety protections, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ro Khanna …
Essential workers still lack essential protections Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
