https://labornotes.org/2020/04/nurses-across-us-protest-dangerous-conditions-and-profit-health-care

Nurse union activists organized actions at hospitals across the country yesterday, a national day of action to draw attention to how the U.S.’s profit-driven health care system is failing workers and patients alike.

The actions were coordinated through a series of calls organized by Labor Notes—which has been helping grow a network of rank-and-file nurse activists for more than a year—and were inspired by the protests organized at New York City hospitals in previous weeks.

Nurses and other frontline health care workers used the actions to highlight the disgraceful conditions in many hospitals, where medical staff are struggling to handle the surge of COVID-19 patients with diminishing supplies of respirators, ventilators, and gowns.

Last week activists published a series of demands that included:

The federal government should use the Defense Production Act to produce a surplus of necessary medical supplies.
Nationalize the country’s hospitals in order to coordinate the distribution of resources.
Expand Medicare so that the tens of millions currently uninsured would have their care paid for.
Have frontline workers determine what constitutes safe staffing in every department.
Provide frontline workers with childcare and housing during the crisis.
Health care workers highlighted how the relentless focus on cutting costs by eliminating any spare capacity left our system incredibly vulnerable to the coronavirus. The solution, they said, is to replace it with one that prioritizes patients over profits.

Here are reports from participants in five locations around the country. —Chris Brooks

everal dozen IBEW utility members have been sequestered at their work sites in California and New York since early April to protect critical power infrastructure and personnel from the threat of COVID-19.

Transmission system operators like San Diego Local 465 members Chris Sullivan, Al Lagunero and Lead Steward Blain Adams-Denner are highly skilled and few in number. Since early April, they have been living and working San Diego Gas & Electric property to protect them from exposure to the novel coronavirus.
The IBEW has also signed agreements with dozens more utility companies across the U.S. and Canada, setting the terms for housing the men and women who operate the power grid and run generation plants onsite for shifts lasting as long as four weeks.

“There are some jobs that are essential and can be done from home, some that are essential and can’t, and then there are some jobs that are so specialized, the number of people who can do them so limited, and their job duties so crucial, that they need special protection,” said Utility Department Director Donnie Colston.

It is not the first-time utility workers have sheltered in place. Only so many people can run nuclear or hydroelectric plants or coordinate the operations of the power grid. When hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, or fires threaten to limit access to hydro plants hidden in the mountains of Northern California, provisions have been made for IBEW members to stay on site for a limited time until the crisis has passed.

In some ways the pandemic is just another natural disaster where the power must stay on and the safest place for the people who can do that is right next to machineshttp://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/20Daily/2004/200416_Utility

https://labornotes.org/blogs/2020/04/what-are-my-rights-paid-leave-and-unemployment-during-pandemic

On March 18 Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), in part to discourage layoffs and in part to guarantee paid leave to workers who need to stay home due to the COVID-19 emergency. On March 27 Congress enacted the CARES Act to expand unemployment insurance eligibility and benefits. Both laws expire on December 31, 2020, unless extended.

What follows is a selection of questions relating to the new laws. Please note that this is a complicated and rapidly changing area. Although the U.S. Department of Labor has issued several regulations and guides, aspects of the programs remain hazy.

Moreover, enforcement is likely to be slow and spotty, as a poorly staffed federal Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor appears unable to effectively oversee the leave program and state UI agencies claim to be overwhelmed by the crush of applications. Union workers should always review their contracts to see if they have stronger protections.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22468/furloughed-disney-workers-florida-unemployment-coronavirus

At the end of this week, 43,000 unionized Walt Disney World employees will be furloughed, an unprecedented blow to families throughout the entire central Florida region. On top of the sudden loss of income, workers say that they face an even more immediate threat: the broken Florida unemployment system.

Disney is not just one of Florida’s most important employers—it represents a rare island of union power in a state where less than 7% of workers are union members. A coalition of six unions called the Service Trades Union Council that represents nearly 40,000 Disney workers negotiated an agreement with the company this week that guarantees employees will keep their benefits while they are furloughed, including health insurance. They’re also guaranteed the right to go back to their old jobs, with the same wages and seniority, when the theme parks finally reopen. Most of the employees stopped working in mid-March, but secured five weeks of pay. After April 19, however, they are on their own.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that these newly furloughed workers are now being forced to apply for unemployment benefits in Florida all at once—a virtual impossibility, since the state’s unemployment system is already overwhelmed, dysfunctional, and incapable of delivering the benefits that are owed to everyone who has found themselves newly without a job in recent weeks.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22470/mark_dimondstein_apwu_union_post_office_shut_down_trump_gop

Among the most prominent victims of the coronavirus financial crisis is the United States Postal Service, which could quite literally run out of money to operate if the federal government does not approve a rescue package for it soon. The Trump administration—which, like much of the GOP, has long advocated for cutbacks and privatization of the postal service—actively prevented the USPS from being bailed out in the CARES Act, even as Donald Trump has made a show of publicly thanking Fedex and UPS for their work. Not very subtle.

Fifty years ago last month, U.S. postal workers staged an unprecedented and historic eight-day strike, backing down the Nixon administration and winning the right to collective bargaining. A half century later, Mark Dimondstein, the leader of the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union, says that the Trump administration is using today’s crisis as an opportunity to destroy the postal service as a public entity once and for all. In These Times spoke to Dimondstein about the existential peril facing postal workers, and what they plan to do about it.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22467/corporations-crisis-coronavirus-covid-19-shock-doctrineIn

November 2008, Rahm Emanuel, then-chief of staff for president-elect Barack Obama, told a crowd of corporate executives: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The Great Recession’s historic economic downturn was by then in full tilt, which Emanuel saw as an opportunity to pursue bold policy ideas. “And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

While the Obama administration’s response to the crisis included some important reform measures, such as the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bold progressive policy change was hard to come by. In fact, the financial institutions whose thirst for profit had brought the global economy to its knees ended up even bigger and more powerful than before.

Now, 12 years after Emanuel offered that advice, corporate America seems to have again taken heed. As the coronavirus crisis has unfolded, corporate forces and conservative politicians have teamed up to cut regulations, roll back worker rights, restrict freedom, and otherwise take advantage of the turmoil

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https://aflcio.org/2020/4/15/finding-ways-help-working-people-weekly-list

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s the latest edition of the Working People Weekly List.