The New York City Council voted to dramatically strengthen protections for fast food workers with two bills this week, both supported by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The really big deal bill would ban fast food restaurants from firing workers without just cause—that means workers could only (“only”) be fired for performance issues or other serious problems, not just because the boss felt like it.
Most workers in the U.S. are currently “at-will,” which means exactly that—your boss doesn’t actually need a reason to fire you. As Jared Odessky explained at Data for Progress last summer, moving to a just cause standard could help crack down on discrimination: “Currently, the burden is on a fired worker to show that they were terminated for an impermissible reason like their race or sex. This is true even though the employer has greater access to and control over information about the firing. After the worker makes out a case of discrimination, the employer can then point to another basis for the termination, benefiting from an at-will presumption that permits employers to fire workers for almost any or no reason. In reality, employers can simply invent reasons after the fact. The burden then falls to the worker to show that the reason the employer gave was a lie.”
The other bill passed by the city council would require layoffs to go in order of seniority. Both bills apply to fast food stores belonging to chains with more than 30 locations.
● Stanford Medicine says it's revising its vaccine distribution plan after its plan for the first 5,000 doses only included seven of the residents doing much of the in-person care of COVID-19 patients:
“Residents are patient-facing, we’re the ones who have been asked to intubate, yet some attendings who have been face-timing us from home are being vaccinated before us,” said Sarah Johnson, a third-year OB-GYN resident who has delivered babies from COVID-positive patients during the pandemic. “This is the final straw to say, ‘We don’t actually care about you.’”
● This open letter to Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, is classic Hamilton Nolan.
Amazon needs a union. And I am happy to say: Mackenzie Scott, you can help with that. It’s hard to organize a company like Amazon, both because it is a larger beast than any individual union has resources for, and because it will spend a great deal of money on lies and intimidation to prevent its workers from exercising their fundamental right to organize. But money can help to even the playing field. For a small fraction of the money you just gave out — say, $100 million — it would be possible to hire organizers nationwide with the express purpose of unionizing Amazon.
● It's been a long nightmare before Christmas for UPS and postal workers.
● State attorneys general taking on protection of workers' rights.
● Labor unions battle for working-class Georgians.
Victory in Georgia depends in large part on activating this army of working-class people. As Daniel Blackman, a progressive candidate for Georgia’s Public Service Commission whose runoff is also January 5, put it at the rally, “Georgia can’t win without labor. We can’t win without standing up for our working families. We cannot win if you guys aren’t organized … Gone are the days of people forgetting that we’re here because of labor.”
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