With Republicans threatening workers’ unemployment insurance if they don’t go back to work as soon as employers call, even if their jobs aren’t safe, 224 groups called on the Department of Labor (DOL) to “aggressively enforce these workers’ right to refuse to return to workplaces that are hazardous to their health and well-being,” the National Employment Law Project said.
At issue is the fact that amid these threats, “at no time since this pandemic hit has DOL issued guidance reinforcing the fact that under federal law, workers only have to return to jobs where the ‘prevailing conditions of work’—including health and safety conditions—are the same as before layoff; and that under Disaster Unemployment Assistance regulations applicable to the PUA program, workers have the right to refuse work that would ‘present an unusual risk to the health [and] safety’ of the worker.’”
● Acclaimed novelist Min Jin Lee writes beautifully about work, class, coronavirus, and humanity:
My city is five boroughs, and each borough has many neighborhoods, and each neighborhood is made up of numerous blocks, and on each block, there are businesses, and in each one, there is a counter, and that’s where you and I meet.
I hope when we can take off our masks, I get to tell you how much I need you.
● Paid leave debt is a thing. Sarah Jaffe looks into it.
● What are your rights if you worry it's not safe to go back to work? (And you live in Massachusetts.)
● Trump's National Labor Relations Board, everyone!
A single, invalidated vote defeated a unionization campaign at a Portland, Ore., hospital for about 840 medical, mental health, food services, and other staffers, in a case in which the federal labor board also established a new rule for judging union election ballots containing atypical or stray marks.
The National Labor Relations Board decided that ballots that contain more than one potential indicator of the voter’s preference will be presumed void. Board officials will no longer try to determine whether such ballots are valid because, for example, the voter erased a second, stray mark.
● Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy found guilty of violating NY State student privacy law.
● Being an "essential worker" won't save you from deportation.
● How Amazon workers are organizing for the long haul.
