With no firm national standards about shutting down construction projects as the coronavirus stalks the nation, building trade unions and their members are facing a grim multidimensional crisis.
It is impossible for any contractor, project owner or union steward to monitor the protection of each worker to the fullest under these conditions.
As front-line healthcare workers care for patients with COVID-19, they commit themselves to difficult, draining work and also put themselves at risk of infection. More than 100 throughout the world have died.
European Left calls for social benefit protections for all migrant and contingent workers, increased pay for health care, transport, food service, postal and other essential workers, and defense of the right to strike during the pandemic
Some Instacart and Amazon warehouse workers have walked off the job to demand greater safeguards against the coronavirus, even as both companies are speed-hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers to handle a surge in delivery orders.
GE workers who normally make jet engines say their facilities are sitting idle while the country faces a dire ventilator shortage.
As the coronavirus has shuttered swaths of America’s offices, many workers in corporate call centers say they are still expected to work, risking their own health.
The catastrophe demonstrates the results when public health is subordinate to private profit and to a governmental apparatus that adulates the superiority of private over public administration.
Flight attendants are aviation’s first responders. We have now become frontline workers during a global pandemic. For many of us, however, the immediate threat of the COVID-19 virus is not our top concern.
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