Starbucks Workers United (SWU) won its third store election February 28 in Mesa, Arizona. The vote was an overwhelming 25-3, with three additional contested ballots, despite heavy anti-union pressure from the company and in a state with only 5.4 percent union density. “We led with kindness and care and just did our jobs in the …
Kingspan employees in Santa Ana, California are demanding improved health protections—and a fair process to organize. As the acceptance of climate change becomes increasingly commonplace, more and more companies will be created or adapted to ?“fight” or ?“solve” it — or, at the very least, minimize its effects. Kingspan Group, which began as an engineering and contracting business …
Workers Say They Breathe Polluted Air at “Green” Insulation Facility Read More »
Aaron McCullough brought his 3-year-old daughter, Ariana, to a playground in a leafy neighborhood of Rochester, New York, on a day in mid-June when the temperature topped out at 94 degrees. The playground is one of seven spray parks in the city that offer cooling water whenever temperatures exceed 85 degrees. Except during a pandemic. …
Cities Brace For ‘Collision Course’ Of Heat Waves And COVID-19 Read More »
At a time of record unemployment, Cintya Medina feels lucky to have a job at the Barnes & Noble warehouse in Monroe, N.J.—but she does not want a job that puts her in danger. When Medina and her coworkers learned of several confirmed Covid-19 cases at the warehouse, they organized a protest on April 7 to demand …
It’s not just immigration. Donald Trump plans to use coronavirus as an excuse to weaken environmental, labor, health, and other regulations in exactly the ways he’s wanted to all along. While the White House negotiates with Congress, including Democrats, over what the next round of coronavirus relief could look like, regulatory changes can be made without congressional approval. The administration …
As we sit here mired in yet another pointless government shutdown stranding tens of thousand of workers without paychecks, we pause to reflect over the past year in workplace safety and health. The madness in Washington DC continues, and while we can’t make any guarantees for the White House or the Senate, things are at …
2018: The Workplace Safety and Health Year in Review Read More »
On September 24, just after 3 PM, a 36-year-old Haitian immigrant named Marianie Sanon was sitting on a particleboard bench in the back of a van overcrowded with 22 other Haitian temp workers on their way to the night shift at a factory in Evansville, Indiana. She noticed that the van driver seemed to be …
When Temp Workers Die While Being Taken to the Job, Who’s Responsible? Read More »
Pedro started getting worried when his hands were so swollen he needed a larger size of plastic gloves. Pedro (which is not his real name) would arrive at the chicken processing plant for Tyson in North Carolina at 5 p.m. to clock in for the second shift. For the next three hours, he says he …
The Hellish Conditions Facing Workers At Chicken Processing Plants Read More »
Paid sick leave isn’t just the right thing to do for people who currently face the choice of going to work sick, or going without pay. It’s a public health issue. Fifty-one percent of food workers — who do everything from grow and process food to cook and serve it — said they “always” or …
Half of Food Workers Go to Work Sick Because Lack of Paid Sick Leave Forces Them To Read More »
Walk through any supermarket poultry section and you can marvel at the wonders of the modern food processing industry: antiseptic aisles packed with gleaming, plump shrink-wrapped chickens, sold at bargain prices under the labels of trusted agribusiness brands like Tyson and Pilgrim’s. But all that quality meat doesn’t come cheap: it’s paid for dearly by …
How the Poultry Industry is Grinding Up Workers’ Health and Rights 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.
