Even better for these families, the 19-day lockout of nurses and health techs at Connecticut's Lawrence & Memorial Hospital
ended the same day. And while lockouts are a tool of bosses trying to preemptively weaken unions and workers, it's more good news for these workers that they seem to feel greater solidarity with each other because of the lockout. They'll need it, because their fight for quality, community-based care and decent working conditions isn't over, even though they're back on the job.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Workers of all kinds continue to be locked out by management, and these orchestra musicians are taking things into their own hands:
The musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, who have been locked out by management since Oct. 1, 2012, announced on Thursday that they will present a series of 10 concerts on their own, without management involvement. And in a sign of where the music world’s sympathies are, they have lined up a few big-name guests, most notably the violinists Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell.
- A small group of equipment and repair technicians are getting a union vote at an Amazon warehouse in Delaware. Meanwhile, next door in New Jersey, a temporary worker was crushed to death in an Amazon warehouse.
- Low-wage concession workers at BWI airport continue their campaign to unionize.
- Worker misclassification: Workers suffer. Honest businesses suffer. We all suffer.
- Pregnant worker seeks justice in court with the help of the National Women's Law Center and the ACLU:
Asia Myers’ story is all too common. After suffering a threatened miscarriage, Asia brought her employer a doctor’s note with a lifting and pushing restriction. If Asia had been injured at her job, as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Hope Healthcare Center in Michigan, or if she had a medical condition other than pregnancy, this would have been no problem. With a doctor’s note, these other categories of employees were routinely given light duty assignments such as hair and nail care for residents, shaving residents, paperwork, feeding residents, and performing showering tasks that don’t require lifting.
But Asia was pregnant and Hope Healthcare Center maintains a discriminatory policy that denies pregnant employees reasonable accommodations that it permits for non-pregnant employees with similar restrictions. So when Asia asked for light duty, she was refused. Hope Healthcare Center forced Asia to choose between a steady paycheck and a healthy pregnancy. When she chose her pregnancy she was required to take unpaid leave. She lost her health benefits and struggled to make ends meet at a time when she most needed healthcare and a steady paycheck.
- Could Amazon's Jeff Bezos survive one of his company's own warehouses for a week?
- This is quite a story:
An undocumented worker who wound up in deportation proceedings after he accused his employer of wage theft has been granted permission to work temporarily in the United States, dramatically changing a case that had outraged advocates for immigrant workers. He's also been designated the victim of a crime, making it possible for him to apply for a rare work visa.
Click through and check out where the guy worked.
Education