Portside

The families of three workers who died after contracting the coronavirus in an Iowa meat plant outbreak sued Tyson Foods and its top executives Thursday, saying the company knowingly put employees at risk and lied to keep them on the job.

Many large labor unions have yet to make formal 2020 presidential endorsements.

One of the most transparent union-busting provisions of Iowa’s new collective bargaining law has failed to significantly reduce the number of workers covered by the state’s two largest public-sector unions: the Iowa State Education Association and AFSCME Council 61.

The new law bans public employee unions in most cases from negotiating over issues such as health insurance, evaluation procedures, staff reduction and leaves of absence for political purposes. Police officers and firefighters are exempted from that portion of the law, a move that AFSCME argues in the lawsuit violates the Iowa Constitution by creating "favored" and "disfavored" groups of government workers.

A bill proposed in the Republican controlled state legislature in Iowa will make it illegal for all public employees except “public safety employees” (police and fire) to negotiate over health care, transfers, job evaluations, procedures for workforce reductions, subcontracting, or anything related to seniority.