Search

Illinois has successfully abolished cash bail through the Pretrial Fairness Act, becoming the first state to do so. This law has led to significant changes in the criminal justice system, with judges now making decisions based on factors other than wealth. The law has resulted in a decline in the jail population, without causing a surge in crime rates, and has been viewed as a model for other states interested in similar reforms. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the success of the U.S. President Joe Biden administration's economic policies, particularly through "Bidenomics." Topics include the emphasis on worker empowerment and unionization; the impact of government intervention on economic recovery; the importance of industrial policy and infrastructure investments in sustaining economic growth; and Biden's approach has led to significant job growth, wage increases & a strong recovery, offering valuable lessons for the future.

Pandemic-era benefit boosts worked for jobless recipients and the economy. Why did they go away? LaShondra White worked at a Kohl's in Detroit, Michigan, for a decade before the pandemic [...]

This article explores the toxic culture at Tesla's auto manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. It sheds light on racial harassment, sexual abuse, and workplace injuries. Black employees have reported experiencing racism, including racial slurs and discriminatory treatment, while women describe a work environment filled with sexual innuendo and inappropriate behavior. The article suggests that CEO Elon Musk may contribute to this culture. Tesla has not responded to requests for comment. Workers have filed complaints alleging racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and unsafe working conditions. The article emphasizes the need for unions to protect workers' rights and includes personal accounts from former employees who have chosen not to work at Tesla due to their negative experiences. [Extracted from the article]

WHEN I SPOKE with Mandi Remington in late January, she had just seven bucks left in her bank account and she'd run out of milk. Toward the end of most [...]

Lina Khan, the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is leading the charge against corporate consolidation and anticompetitive practices. Despite facing criticism and backlash, Khan is using existing laws and proposing new rules to enforce regulations and increase accountability. However, there is still resistance from the judiciary and a need for legislative action to strengthen antitrust laws. Khan remains focused on creating lasting change and ensuring that corporations are held accountable for their actions. [Extracted from the article]

Silicon Valley billionaires, including Marc Andreessen and Reid Hoffman, have formed a group called California Forever and purchased over 50,000 acres of land in Solano County, California. They plan to build a new city from scratch, aiming to create a middle-class community with good jobs and better schools. However, many local farmers and residents are concerned about the impact on the agricultural community and economy. Some farmers have already lost access to leased land and are facing financial difficulties. The group is also facing opposition from Solano County residents who want development to occur in existing cities rather than in rural areas. [Extracted from the article]

RACHEL, THE UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT ATTENdant, ended up connecting with a lawyer at the ACLU. FEATURES RACHEL STARTED WORKING AS A FLIGHT ATTENDANT WHEN SHE was 24. Many airlines, such as American and Southwest, only offer unpaid leave after the birth of a baby, so flight attendants who haven't banked enough vacation or sick time often return to work quickly to make an income. The lawsuit accuses the airline of banning flight attendants from pumping while at work. [Extracted from the article]

Rosa DeLauro has spent 30 years in the House fighting for an adequate Child Tax Credit and paid family leave. She's finally getting someplace. Elizabeth Warren first met Connecticut congresswoman [...]

The article "Deportation's Price" discusses the potential economic consequences of mass deportations in the United States. If President Trump were to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country, it is estimated that the GDP would drop by at least 4.2%, resulting in a loss of over $1 trillion. Research shows that immigrants contribute positively to the economy, and past examples of deportation have led to negative economic impacts. Additionally, the cost of deporting all undocumented immigrants is estimated to be at least $315 billion, with potential long-term costs reaching almost $1 trillion. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses President Trump's creation of an advisory commission called DOGE, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to cut government spending and regulations. The commission aims to eliminate a significant portion of government spending, excluding Social Security and Medicare. The article highlights the essential roles of government agencies like the EPA, FDA, Department of Transportation, Department of Labor, and CFPB in ensuring public safety, fair labor practices, and consumer protection. It emphasizes the importance of government in maintaining infrastructure, workplace safety, and financial security for Americans. [Extracted from the article]

Small-business owners providing child care struggled to survive with low pay and long hours before the pandemic. Now they're verging on collapse. Ask nearly anyone who runs a child care [...]

Marilyn Sorensen has been a personal care provider for elderly, disabled, and sick patients in Denver, her native city, for about a quarter century. She loves her work. 'My whole [...]

Abruzzo has also sought injunctions - emergency measures asking a court to intervene quickly on behalf of workers before a charge can be fully litigated before the board - against employers that she has alleged are violating their workers' right to organize during a campaign. Abruzzo has gone after employers not just to secure back pay and reinstatement after a worker is illegally fired, as is commonly done, but also for "consequential damages" - compensation for, say, penalties incurred by a worker if they couldn't pay their bills on time. Without such changes, Abruzzo can't do much to help increase the pitifully low share of American workers who belong to unions - 10.1 percent at last measure - and she has limited power over whether and when unionized workers get contracts. FEATURES THE GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, A federal agency founded in 1935 to protect the right of private employees to organize in order to improve their working conditions, doesn't come off as either a frumpy bureaucrat or a firebrand. [Extracted from the article]

FEATURES MICHELLE FITZGERALD, WHO GOES BY "SHELLY", DATES HER connection to Roncalli, a Catholic high school in Indianapolis, to when she was 5 years old and attending a kindergarten that feeds into the school. But in 2017, more than a decade after Fitzgerald began working at the school, Roncalli and the archdiocese required her and other employees, without explanation, to sign can't determine whether religious leaders are competent at their job and therefore whether their firing is justified. It states that "the exception is not limited to "ministers" or members of the clergy" and suggests that the most important factor in whether an employee is a minister is what an employer says, not what an employee does in their job. And First Liberty Institute published a "Religious Liberty Protection Kit for Christian Schools" that says a school's "employment practices may be further secured by ensuring that its employees fit within the 'ministerial exception,'" because ministerial employees, who are "most, if not all of your school employees", "are outside the scope of government regulation - a very strong protection.". [Extracted from the article]

Instacart seemed like a dream when Elisabeth Davis first found out about it. As a mother of four children with a husband in the Navy--which requires moving around a lot--it [...]

In 2023, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia implemented a strict work requirement for Medicaid as a way to provide healthcare coverage, despite the state's refusal to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act. However, only 5,118 people were enrolled in the program by October, far below the projected numbers. Georgia's work requirement is particularly harsh, applying to a wide range of individuals and lacking flexibility compared to other states. The state has spent nearly $58 million on the program, mostly on administration and consulting fees, rather than medical expenses. Expanding Medicaid would have been a more cost-effective and inclusive solution, but a proposal to do so was defeated by state lawmakers. The high cost and inefficiency of the work-requirement plan mirror similar programs in other states, which have not significantly impacted employment or improved access to healthcare. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the benefits and popularity of universal school meals, specifically focusing on the program implemented in Minnesota. Universal school meals have been found to decrease student hunger, stabilize families' finances, and improve academic outcomes. The current free and reduced-price school meals program has barriers that prevent some families from qualifying, and it also stigmatizes certain students. Universal school meals have gained strong support from voters in Minnesota, with over 70% approving of the program. Eight states currently provide free meals to all public school students, and other states are considering similar legislation. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the nationwide wave of lockouts by the New York City housing court. Topics include the effect of eviction moratorium on the citizens of U.S.; action of Brooklyn Housing Court on the eviction cases, Activity in New York City's housing courts used to process more eviction cases than any other city in the nation and rising in the number of eviction after the pandemic moratorium.

They claimed that the investment bank's ownership "ultimately saved over 1,000 jobs" and that the supply shortages were not specific to the hospital.) Johnson, the Kaiser Permanente nurse, said that there are still hundreds of open, unfilled positions at her hospital. FEATURES IN THE EARLY HOURS OF JULY 26, 2021, ABOUT 200 NURSES began to assemble outside of Community First Medical Center in Chicago. One study found that if hospitals in Illinois stuck to a ratio of four patients to each nurse, they would not only avoid nearly 1,600 deaths but also save over $117 million a year thanks to shorter patient stays. "Hospitals have taken advantage of that and have long put nurses into these impossible working conditions because nurses will continue to show up.". [Extracted from the article]

"Women are not just working", Claudia Goldin states in her new book, Career and Family. Goldin also insists that what she calls "greedy work" - work that pays a premium for extra hours put in on the job and rewards in-person time and being on call - is the only remaining barrier to workplace equality between men and women. "Working from home can still mean that the employee is presumed to be available at odd hours, and available whenever the client or the manager wants a job done", Goldin notes. While Goldin doesn't take us fully up to the present, her fifth cohort is composed of the many women currently working in white-collar jobs. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses about unionizing of workers at Starbucks, chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves, demanding better staffing in stores, zero tolerance for harassment, an increase in health and safety measures. It informs that the workers are also demanding to create a labor-management committee to oversee store working conditions, among other measures.

In response to the escalating housing crisis, Chainbreaker has launched a campaign to turn the Midtown campus into a community land trust. Like many places in the United States, Santa Fe had a housing crisis long before the pandemic. Groups like Goldstein's pushed for investments in social housing, or housing provided by the government, and a government guarantee of housing, or the right of each person to a home. FEATURES AS YOU DRIVE ONTO A COLLEGE CAMPUS in the up-and-coming Midtown neighborhood in Santa Fe, N.M., you run into a security gate where you might expect to be asked for some identification. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on the heat standard proposed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that is being opposed by state governments, while outdoor workers suffer under extreme heat fueled by climate change. It informs about the laws passed in Florida and Texas blocking cities from instituting protections for outdoor workers, as well as the opposition of employers in New Jersey to a bill that would exempt agricultural workers from heat-related protections.

But advocates want the city moving in the opposite direction: They want to see nonpolice actors responding to more calls, not fewer, and to eventually get emergency response to mental health calls "out of the hands of the police entirely", Lowenkron said. That was five years ago; since then, more than a dozen New Yorkers, the majority of them Black, have been killed by the police while experiencing mental health crises, including Kawaski Trawick, a 32-year-old with a history of mental illness who was shot and killed by police in his apartment in 2019 less than two minutes into the encounter. At the height of the protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, demonstrators across the country started to make a potent demand: "Defund the police." Advocates got a win in November, when voters rejected a ballot measure that would have required the city to hire at least two police officers per 1,000 residents, which would have added hundreds of millions of dollars to the police budget. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the Democrats' shift towards bold federal spending, departing from the moderate approach of previous administrations. It highlights the internalization of the lesson from the Great Recession, encouraging expansive policies like the American Rescue Plan, and emphasizes the positive impact of significant government spending on economic recovery and societal well-being.

- Brandon Will, family caregiver "We call it the non-system of long-term care." In retirement, Janice lives on a modest 401(k) account and receives a portion of Brandon's father's pension. AARP has ranked the state number two in the country for providing long-term care supports, in part because over 60 percent of its Medicaid and state-funded long-term care funding goes to home-based care, compared with a national average of 45 percent. SPECIAL UTOPIA SECTION BRANDON WILL HAD A LIFE PLAN: go to grad school for creative writing in New York City and eventually get a job in publishing. [Extracted from the article]

FEATURES AT 7 AM ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, KAITLIN MCCANN, A SEVENTH-and eighth-grade history teacher at the General George A. McCall School in Philadelphia, arrived at work. - Alejandro Estrada, fourth-grade teacher in Oakland New normal: Teachers have adapted their lesson plans for remote and outdoor classes, as pictured here, in New York City. More recently, teachers at McCann's school were asked to take on additional responsibilities; McCann and the union fought the proposals, and the superintendent backed off. "That moment gained a lot of trust between members", she said. The teachers were furious, but Maryland law bars them from striking, so they have implemented a "work to rule" action in which they work only within their contractually mandated hours - the first time teachers in the county have done so since the 1990s. [Extracted from the article]

Then, in May 2019, corporate lawyer Janet Dhillon was sworn in as Trump's choice for the EEOC's chair, and Sanghvi soon found the kinds of cases she could pursue restricted. Worse, EEOC staff may decide it's not even worth trying to get litigation approved if the Republican commissioners continually vote it down and may try to settle cases instead - though without the threat of litigation, the settlement amounts will almost certainly drop. Before Dhillon's conciliation pilot program began, all of the parties - King, her client, the EEOC investigator, and the employer - would gather and discuss the case and how it might be resolved without litigation. Under her pilot program, EEOC investigators are required to give an employer virtually all of the information they used to determine that it broke the law, including the EEOC's legal theory of the case, as well as any potentially exculpatory evidence, including anything that "raised doubt" about whether discrimination occurred. [Extracted from the article]

BOOKS & the ARTS In the morning, i shower right after i wake up. i choose from a number of products to clean myself, yet they are made by just two companies: Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. As Dayen notes, four hog firms control two-thirds of today's market. When she contacted the management company, she had to wait months for repairs before getting a Zillow alert for her own house: The management company had listed it for rent even though she had just paid up. Certainly, private equity funds have bought up companies in a number of sectors, leading to consolidation. [Extracted from the article]

LOIS JONES STARTED AT MCDONALD'S WHEN SHE WAS IN HER 20S. - Lois Jones, former McDonald's employee On notice: In 2016 protesters called attention to a series of sexual harassment complaints against McDonald's outside one of its restaurants near Times Square. - Emily Anibal, former McDonald's employee Too close: Space behind the counter at McDonald's is tight, and women said some male coworkers used the cramped quarters as a pretext to abuse them. - Maribel Hoyos, McDonald's employee On strike: In 2018, McDonald's workers took part in the first nationwide strike against sexual harassment in the fast-food industry. [Extracted from the article]

Advocates would also like to see settlements for police brutality come out of police budgets, not general revenue. Still, after a majority of council members said in early June they opposed Mayor Jim Kenney's proposed $14 million increase in the police budget, prompting him to drop it, they reached a deal to reduce police funding by $33 million on June 17. Meanwhile, the City Council passed an emergency police reform bill focused on limiting the use of force and increasing transparency without touching the budget question. A number of those who are calling to defund the police are demanding not just that their budgets be reduced and redistributed but also that the money eventually be zeroed out and police eliminated. [Extracted from the article]

In a recent poll conducted by Caring Across Generations, huge majorities said they placed a greater value on the work of nursing home attendants, home health aides, and child care providers since the coronavirus hit. Governors may acknowledge that, for example, child care is key to ensuring essential workers can go to work, but not all of them have offered more funding to help providers stay open. The Minnesota legislature passed $30 million in grants for child care providers at the end of March - the most Marte and other advocates have ever been able to secure for child care in the state. Nurses are commuting to work on buses and subways alongside child care providers. [Extracted from the article]