Posts tagged Pandemic
25 states will hike minimum wage in 2024
December 22, 2023 // Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, said many food and hospitality workers already earn more than their state minimum. He noted that employers have raised salaries to compete for a shrinking pool of applicants. “Raising state and local rates does hurt the smaller businesses, the classic mom and pop enterprises, who will employ local high school or college-age kids if they can but may not be able to justify that if the minimum rate increases,” Mr. Higgins said.
The 4-day workweek was a longshot. The UAW isn’t giving up
December 20, 2023 // And once the union and automakers started making progress toward the deal that would eventually end the strike, there was little discussion of a four-day week ever again. The union did win a record contract, with an immediate wage gain of at least 11%, an additional 14 percentage points of raises throughout the life of the contract, a return of cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) and improved retirement benefits, among other gains. Most hourly workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis will be paid at least $43 an hour by the time the recently ratified contract ends in April 2028. That comes to about $1,700 a week for a 40-hour week. And the COLA is likely to raise it further than that. And while a hypothetical pay structure for an alternate deal featuring a four-day work week may be unknowable, paying that weekly wage for a 32-hour week would increase the hourly wage by about 25%, on top of the just negotiated wage hikes.
Labor organizers hope to maintain support after summer of strikes
December 13, 2023 // Labor organizers have since been trying to appeal to workers by tapping into frustrations about those inequities and taking action. Here in Ohio, Former State Sen. Nina Turner has established a nonprofit called We Are Somebody just to help those efforts nationwide. “We Are Somebody is a capacity building organization for the working class,” Turner said. “Our goal is to organize, amplify and fund workers on the front line, and that could be workers that are officially in a labor union, but also workers that are not in labor unions.”
Opinion: After pandemic ‘labor hoarding,’ hospitality jobs may be cut
December 13, 2023 //
INDIANAPOLIS: Nurses at IU Health’s University and Methodist hospitals eye unionizing
December 11, 2023 // Other IU Health hospitals would not be part of the union. IU Health is currently in the process of expanding its downtown Indianapolis facilities – with the expectation that University and Methodist hospitals will eventually be consolidated sometime in 2027. “In the next five-plus years, or whenever that big building is done, we will be one hospital,” Armes said. Travel nurses would not be included in the union, but Armes said they have been supportive of their organizing. Bailey Pollard is another nurse working to unionize the two hospitals. He said nursing shortages are not a problem unique to IU Health.
Teachers’ union boss blames math test slide on COVID — after fighting to keep remote learning
December 6, 2023 // The leader of the second-largest teachers’ union in the US linked the worldwide drop in math scores on a key international test to the COVID-19 pandemic — during which she had lobbied against a full return to in-person learning. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten issued a statement that said remote learning was to blame for the drop in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math evaluation after scores were released Tuesday.
Behind the last-ditch effort to save a trucking company that owes $700M to taxpayers
December 1, 2023 // Estes Express earlier this fall offered $1.53 billion "stalking horse" bid for Nashville-based Yellow's shipment centers. That would easily be enough to repay around $500 million in debt held by senior lender Citadel — which purchased the notes from Apollo, post bankruptcy — plus other creditors and the CARES Act loan. Then we got a wrinkle, just ahead of the bankruptcy auction kicking off this past Tuesday. It was a bid led by the owner of auto trucking company Jack Cooper to restart Nashville-based Yellow, not just scoop up logistics properties or other assets. This new proposal, as reported by the NY Times, would repay private creditors immediately, but postpone the Treasury loan repayment to 2026 from 2024. It's this second deal that's being supported, at least in principle, by a chorus of U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Rep. French Hill
What to know about the ‘Make Amazon Pay’ strike campaign
November 27, 2023 // An organizer with GMB Union, a U.K.-based labor union, described the effort as “the largest day of industrial disruption in Amazon’s thirty-year history.” The effort garnered support from more than 400 lawmakers from 38 countries for a protest in 2020, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and former U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Supporters also planned protests at Amazon facilities in Massachusetts, Georgia and Illinois. Outside the U.S., organizers planned protest action in Japan, India and throughout Europe, including Germany, France, Spain and the U.K. Hundreds of workers were striking Friday at warehouses in Coventry, U.K., and in multiple German cities, Reuters reported.
Wages are rising. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody’s happy.
November 21, 2023 //
Commentary: Teachers Union Head Mystified by Increase in Homeschooling
November 19, 2023 // Parents started seeking accountability on their own terms, at home. The surge in homeschooling during the 2020 school year has not dropped off, attracting enthusiasts from diverse racial and income backgrounds. While there are many reasons for the shift, a significant factor is leaders like Weingarten left a vacuum parents had to fill. When they did, parents learned they could do it without the leaders who left them in the lurch. Their kids' education could be flexible and tailored, without the constraint of having to sit at a desk between four walls for seven hours a day. Parents learned they had the power to fix some of the problems the pandemic posed.