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Belabored Stories: Weary at Walmart
“Please tell people to stop thanking grocery workers for working. We don’t have a choice. You can thank us by staying home.”
“Please tell people to stop thanking grocery workers for working. We don’t have a choice. You can thank us by staying home.”
“$2.50 is not a wage. It is a guacamole upcharge.”
Academic instructors who were already underemployed and insecure before the crisis face an uncertain future, with little prospect for federal relief.
Veteran labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. on how the labor movement can cope with the crisis and salvage itself.
A server who worked at IHOP for twelve years had her final paycheck withheld until she agreed to return her uniform and officially quit.
Walmart is on a hiring spree as workers fear for their lives.
At a company that provides services to public health agencies tracking the coronavirus, workers sit in cubicles “like sardine cans.”
McDonald’s boasted about distributing protective equipment to employees. But one worker said masks, hand sanitizer, and gloves were only available “for a brief period of time. So it was only to get us to be quiet.”
States like California have yet to roll out a system to process gig workers’ unemployment-assistance applications. Rideshare drivers are running on fumes.
“We take in a lot and don’t talk about it,” a nurse in Chicago said. But healthcare workers are talking now—not just about how to save their patients, but about rebuilding the system from the bottom up.
The broken federal funding system is reflected in the dangerous conditions faced by many mail carriers.
Art handlers in New York City have filed an NLRB complaint alleging that their employer fired workers for organizing a union.
Workers in the fields in Immokalee, Florida, are demanding public health infrastructure that takes into account cramped living and travel conditions. “Social distancing is not possible.”
A group of laid-off service workers in Denver is pushing for a total cancellation of rent, mortgage, and utility payments, for at least the next ninety days.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that “any hospital operating off the crisis protocols should let him know,” said one nurse in Brooklyn. “Well, this is us letting him know.”