Without Federal Protections, Food Sector Workers Remain at Higher Risk of Contracting COVID-19 Published Jun 9, 2021
The Biden administration is planning tomorrow to release an emergency temporary standard (ETS) requiring workplace COVID-19 protections for health care workers. While that is certainly good news for health care workers, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) expressed concern that such an ETS fails to provide other frontline workers such as grocery store staff, farmworkers, meatpackers and public transit operators with the same protection to reduce their risk of contracting COVID-19 on the job. These workers are more likely to be low-income, immigrants and people of color who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Coalition of labor and advocacy groups seek return of the mask
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A coalition of labor groups and advocacy organizations are urging Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to restore a requirement for everyone to wear masks in businesses and public settings. (Mike Groll/Office of the Governor)Mike Groll/Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
ALBANY A coalition of advocacy groups and labor organizations representing hundreds of thousands of essential workers across New York have called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to reinstate a mandate requiring masks to be worn in businesses.
In a letter sent to Cuomo and the state Department of Health, the groups urged the governor to revisit the decision to allow New Yorkers to be in public indoor spaces without masks.
A United Educators of San Francisco march (Photo: Facebook)
The United Educators of San Francisco has become the first American K-12 public school union to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). The resolution passed on May 19, at the height of Israel’s recent assault on Gaza.
J Weekly’s Gabriel Greschler reports that the resolution was submitted by ten educators working in San Francisco public schools and that it’s the first U.S. labor union to back the BDS movement since 2016.
In addition to the attacks on Gaza, the resolution also references the forced displacement in Sheikh Jarrah, the raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Israeli violence towards Palestinian protestors.
Editor’s Note: The following is a statement by Labor for Palestine.
Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.
As workers, labor, and anti-apartheid activists, we join millions around the world to unequivocally condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people: mass evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem, storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, waves of state-sponsored violence throughout the West Bank and the ’48 areas (stolen from Palestine in 1948), and merciless bombardment of Gaza that has already killed and wounded hundreds of people, many of them children.