The pandemic has inspired city dwellers and investors to buy land in rural areas. That’s driving up farmland prices and pushing some beginning farmers out of the market. Abel Dowden, age 20, grew up on his family’s beef farm in the Missouri Ozarks. He just got married and is ready to start his own farm. Dowden …
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Republican governors in at least 22 states are ending federal unemployment assistance. The cuts will hit hard in rural areas and communities of color. After Lisa Wilkinson, 54, got laid off from her factory job in December 2019, she knew it would be difficult to …
How Cuts to Unemployment Benefits Will Hurt Rural People Read More »
This is sickening. We’ve known that the meatpacking industry has acted with callous disregard for its workers’ lives in the coronavirus pandemic, keeping them on the job in unsafe conditions. But according to a lawsuit by the family of the late Isidro Fernandez, it’s worse than that. At the Tyson pork processing plant where Fernandez worked in Iowa, …
Lawsuit over meatpacking worker’s COVID-19 death alleges truly grotesque abuses Read More »
In April, despite his fever, a meatpacking worker continued to carve neck bones out of pig carcasses at a JBS plant in Iowa. Two weeks later, he would test positive for COVID-19. But in the meantime, he said, he kept clocking in because of a punitive attendance system widely used in meatpacking plants: the point system. Under the policy, workers …
Meatpacking Workers Say Attendance Policies Force Them to Work With Covid-19 Symptoms 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.
