Essential workers, activists plan to protest at Governor s Mansion on Monday
By FOX 7 Austin Digital Team
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AUSTIN, Texas - Groups of essential workers and activists including Restaurant Organizing Project, Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, Austin Mutual Aid, and Texas Amplified Sound Coalition plan to gather at the Governor s Mansion Monday to protest Governor Abbott s order to lift the mask mandate.
A press release from Restaurant Organizing Project states: Governor Abbott has spent the past year fighting against restricting in-door dining, reduced capacity, and the mask mandate. Through executive order, Gov. Abbot is lifting the mask mandate and reinstating full capacity across the state of Texas. Abbott is declaring that the lives of service industry workers (servers, bartenders, cooks, janitorial workers, delivery drivers), food and agricultural workers, United States Postal Service workers, manufacturing workers, grocery store workers, public transit wo
New Organizing Model Helps Build Worker Power Among the Unorganized During COVID
Nurses of Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital on 2 days strike after contract negotiations ended with no agreement, in New Rochelle, New York, on December 1, 2020.
Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns started in March, a new class of “essential workers” continued to go to work across the United States under new dangerous conditions. As stories came out about workers lacking personal protective equipment, or PPE, and working in crowded workplaces, union workers began to take action. They stopped work, organized sick-outs, won hazard pay, protested employer COVID-19 policies that left them unsafe and negotiated for improvements.