Daily Kos: Labor

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not primarily known for her positions on labor issues, though of course many feminist issues are also workplace ones, and Ginsburg’s anti-discrimination work in the 1970s opened up new possibilities for women. In recent years, Ginsburg wrote powerful dissents to the courts’ conservatives’ support of forced arbitration, in which workers are required to sign away their right to a day in court as a condition of employment. She also got the chance to cast a vote for the rights of pregnant workers.

Advocates for workers stepped up to remember Ginsburg. 

The coronavirus pandemic just keeps bringing out new ways people treat domestic workers terribly. At the beginning of the shutdowns, many employers unceremoniously dismissed their nannies and house cleaners and other domestic workers without notice, pay, or any indication of when or if that might change.

Now it’s been long enough to see disgusting behavior like the case reported by The New York Times where a family called their housekeeper back to clean their house without telling her that the entire family had had COVID-19. The only clue they offered was leaving the cleaner, Maria Del Carmen, some bottles of Lysol. After hours of cleaning, she found out from a neighbor.

Mismanagement at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) endangers more than just the timely delivery of ballots for November’s elections. It endangers the lives of Postal Service workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 10,000 postal workers have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 83 have died. But the agency isn’t screening workers for symptoms, testing them for the virus, or doing meaningful contact tracing. Social distancing and mask-wearing are not always enforced, according both to workers interviewed by ProPublica and to many of the more than 250 complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The House is expected to take an important vote on Thursday, moving forward with the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. This legislation has been around for years and 30 states and the District of Columbia now have protections for pregnant workers stronger than what you’ll find in the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which dates to 1978.

That patchwork of state laws is one reason some big corporations are lining up in support of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act this time around. In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is even supporting it. 

U.S. teachers are still having to spend their own money on basic classroom supplies—but now, it’s personal protective equipment for themselves and, in some cases, their students. A new poll of teachers, done by Hart Research for the American Federation of Teachers, found that 86% of teachers have bought their own PPE and 11% had bought PPE for students—a number that will presumably rise as more schools go back in person.

Almost two out of three of the 816 K-12 teachers polled were worried “that our school district will move too quickly to fully reopen schools, risking the safety of students, families, and teachers, while just 19% worried that reopening would happen too slowly. For 56% of teachers, doing the right thing meant staying all-remote for longer, while 30% favored a hybrid model and 14% wanted schools fully open in person.