May is Mental Health Awareness Month. After fifteen months of the COVID-19 pandemic – which has placed unprecedented stress on Americans dealing with isolation and fear, while juggling closed schools and businesses, homeschooling children, working from home, and economic uncertainty, including ensuring basic necessities – Americans are struggling to recover. One study published by the …
PROVIDENCE, R.I.?—?Five former White Electric Coffee workers gather at the Dexter Training Grounds next to the Providence Armory, slightly stunned. Earlier that morning, April 14, they signed the purchase agreement to own the café. In just 10 months, this small group of baristas went from forming a union to creating a workers cooperative to buying the business for around half a million dollars. …
When These Workers Unionized, Their Cafe Was Put Up for Sale—So They Bought It Read More »
Currently pending before the Arizona legislature, Senate Bill 1648 would prohibit discrimination in the workplace (and elsewhere) against individuals who have not received or who refuse to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. As proposed, the bill would prohibit any employer from requiring a person to receive or disclose whether they have received a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition …
The lockout began May 1, known in most parts of the world as International Workers’ Day. In a matter of hours, the ExxonMobil Corporation escorted 650 oil refiners in Beaumont, Texas, off the job, replacing experienced members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13?–?243 with temporary workers?—?and hoping to force a vote on Exxon’s latest contract proposal. USW maintains the proposal violates basic …
They Wanted to Keep Working. ExxonMobil Locked Them Out. Read More »
14 STATES HAVE ADOPTED COMPREHENSIVE COVID WORKER SAFETY PROTECTIONS SO FAR As the COVID-19 pandemic surges in the United States, workers have continued to protest and organize for their safety and health—but action is needed at all levels of government, starting with the top. To date, the Trump administration—specifically, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—has resisted issuing any workplace …
WHICH STATES AND CITIES HAVE ADOPTED COMPREHENSIVE COVID-19 WORKER PROTECTIONS? Read More »
The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which represents many grocery workers, is … not happy about the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ (CDC) new guidance that vaccinated people can go unmasked indoors. Food and retail workers, after all, have been contending all along with people who refused rules about masks, and are now guaranteed to have …
What everyone’s thinking about this week: Should workers still be required to wear masks on the job? When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly updated its guidance last week to allow fully vaccinated Americans to gather without masks indoors and outdoors, even if some in their group are unvaccinated, the agency created confusion about …
The past year has seen several lockdowns as a result of the pandemic, which have had a deep impact on education, employment and the way we work globally. These factors have had an especially stark effect on women. For more than 168 million children worldwide, schools have been closed for almost a year, forcing them to resort …
Migrant Women Are Holding Society Together During This Pandemic Read More »
Chad Longpre Shepersky repeatedly took COVID-19 tests—and waited on pins and needles for results each time—during a coronavirus outbreak at Guardian Angels Health and Rehabilitation Center in Hibbing, Minnesota. Longpre Shepersky, a certified nursing assistant (CNA), never contracted the virus. But he watched in agony as dozens of his patients and coworkers fell ill and …
How Americans Can Help the Frontline Workers Battling COVID-19 Read More »
We’re back with Season Four of Working People! In this urgent episode, we talk with Dr. Amir Atabeygi, a physician at MultiCare Indigo Urgent Care in Thurston County, Washington. On November 23, amid a terrifying surge in COVID-19 cases around the country, Dr. Atabeygi joins his fellow physicians, physician assistants, and advanced registered nurse practitioners on the picket line as …
As Covid Surges, Doctors Are Striking Against “Retail Health” 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.
