We know that unemployment is sky-high, but that’s not the end of the story. The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz sounds a warning that, if lawmakers don’t act, we’re looking at a depression.
“If the federal government provides sufficient aid during this crisis so that people’s income doesn’t drop dramatically (even if they have been unable to work), so that businesses stay afloat (even if they have been totally or significantly shuttered), and so that state and local governments whose tax revenues are plummeting are not forced to make drastic cuts that will hamstring the economy, then those furloughed workers could get back to their prior jobs and the recovery could be rapid because confidence and demand would be relatively high,” she writes. “But if the federal government doesn’t act, then those furloughs will turn into permanent layoffs and the country will face an extended period of high unemployment that will do sweeping and unrelenting damage to the economy—and the people and businesses in it.”
● The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Michael Leachman sounds a similar note with an eye to state budgets, writing “Federal aid that policymakers provided in earlier COVID-19 packages isn’t nearly enough. Only about $65 billion is readily available to narrow state budget shortfalls. Treasury Department guidance now says that states may use some of the aid in the CARES Act of March to cover payroll costs for public safety and public health workers, but it’s unclear how much of state shortfalls that might cover; existing aid likely won’t cover much more than $100 billion of state shortfalls, leaving nearly $665 billion unaddressed. States hold $75 billion in their rainy day funds, a historically high amount but far too little to meet the unprecedented challenge they face. And, even if states use all of it to cover their shortfalls, that still leaves them about $600 billion short.”
● One way to protect workers in a pandemic: Make it harder to fire them, Dave Jamieson writes.
● Massachusetts Teachers Association Vice President Max Page calls for a New Deal response to the pandemic, and the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center has long since identified 14 options for raising progressive revenue.
● We talk about them a lot, but who are essential workers?
● A quiet frenzy of union organizing has gripped the nonprofit world, Hamilton Nolan writes.
During a two-week period in the month of April, as the coronavirus crisis raged, the economy buckled, and office workers fled to their homes, the NPEU announced seven successful union drives, boosting their number of shops by a full third. That record is likely unmatched anywhere in the union world. Blado says that the organizing at all of them had begun before the crisis, but was accelerated by the urgency of the moment.
● Hamilton Nolan again, arguing that the case for sectoral bargaining is stronger than ever.
● Hundreds of apple workers on strike in Washington state.
● JBS meat plant clinic told eighth COVID-19 victim she had a "normal cold," daughter says.
● "Way too late": Inside Amazon's biggest outbreak.
● Minnesota Senate rejects bill giving hourly school workers job security, Michelle Chen reports.
● The price of being "essential": Latino service workers bear brunt of coronavirus:
For Lupe Martinez, who does the laundry at a Riverside nursing home, each day presented an agonizing choice: Go to work and risk getting the novel coronavirus or lose the $13.58-an-hour paycheck her family relies upon.
Martinez went to work.
Even after the masks started running low. Even, she said, after a patient whose room she had entered without protective equipment fell ill and was put into isolation.
● Working moms deserve a new deal, Esta Soler and Rebecca Dixon write:
To emerge from this crisis a stronger nation with a stronger economy, we have to stand in the shoes of the most vulnerable. We need a new New Deal that does not leave out domestic workers and farmworkers like the first one did, but rather sets workers up for stability both during this crisis and in the recovery to follow — a stable floor so that workers don’t fall through the cracks.
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