Four of Condé Nast’s publications—Ars Technica, Pitchfork, Wired, and The New Yorker—have already unionized. But this week brought big news, in the form of a companywide union at the publishing giant’s other brands. That’s more than 500 workers, which is very small compared to the Amazon warehouse that unionized this week, but very big compared to, say, a Starbucks store.
A large study confirms it: Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for COVID-19. If you have parasites, the drug might be a good choice—follow your doctor’s advice on that. But a double-blinded study of 1,300 patients in Brazil, half of whom got ivermectin and half of whom got a placebo, found no benefit from the drug.
Ivermectin does not reduce the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19, the study found.
The House voted to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress back in December. But the Justice Department has not yet taken action on that criminal referral, and members of the Jan. 6 select committee are getting irritated. The committee only has so much time to investigate a violent insurrection, given that it is a midterm election year, and yet the Justice Department, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, does not appear to consider this an urgent issue.
The New York Times has done a deep dive on how Sen. Joe Manchin got rich off of the coal business, and in a nutshell: Holy crap, is Joe Manchin corrupt.
If you pay attention to Manchin, you might know that he gets around $500,000 a year in income from his own personal coal company.
From now on, every Supreme Court decision on which Justice Clarence Thomas is the deciding vote comes with a giant asterisk: This matter was decided by a man whose wife advocated for the overthrow of the government. Those aren’t the only Thomas votes that require the asterisk, though. Take the Supreme Court’s January rejection of Donald Trump’s attempt to block the Jan. 6 select committee from getting White House documents. Thomas was the only dissent on that.
Let me fix that headline for you, Washington Post: It’s not “Race hovered over Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing.” It’s “Racism hovered over Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing.” Although, really, racism was so prevalent in the hearing that the way it hovered was, COVID-like, in the air after belching out of the mouths of Republican senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
From now on, every Supreme Court decision on which Justice Clarence Thomas is the deciding vote comes with a giant asterisk: This matter was decided by a man whose wife advocated for the overthrow of the government. Those aren’t the only Thomas votes that require the asterisk, though. Take the Supreme Court’s January rejection of Donald Trump’s attempt to block the Jan. 6 select committee from getting White House documents. Thomas was the only dissent on that.
Let me fix that headline for you, Washington Post: It’s not “Race hovered over Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing.” It’s “Racism hovered over Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing.” Although, really, racism was so prevalent in the hearing that the way it hovered was, COVID-like, in the air after belching out of the mouths of Republican senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
Equal Pay Day is coming on March 15. The day represents how long into 2022 the average woman in the U.S. has to work to have been paid as much since January 1, 2021, as the average man was paid in 2021. March 15 is the day we observe Equal Pay Day for women of all races, but for Black and Latina and Native women, the date comes much later—and more so this year, following a recalculation based on pandemic-era employment patterns that pushed many women out of full-time work.
This week saw two winning union votes with big margins and special significance. Workers who’d been organizing at a Manhattan REI store voted to unionize by an 88 to 14 margin. REI has 170 stores, and as we watch Starbucks stores unionizing—with three out of four that have voted so far having voted yes, the most recent one by a big margin—you have to wonder what supposedly progressive retail or food service chain is next.
Outdoor gear retailer REI remains committed to breaking the union-organizing effort by workers at its Manhattan store, but it also remains committed to pretending to be committed to social justice—in hilarious fashion in the case of a podcast episode featuring CEO Eric Artz and chief diversity and social impact officer Wilma Wallace.
Los Angeles. Philadelphia. Tallahassee. Starbucks workers are moving to unionize all across the country following two union victories out of three elections held in Buffalo in late 2021. They’re getting some great community support—if you’re ordering at Starbucks, especially one where there’s a union effort, you can join in by giving your name as “union strong” or another pro-worker message.
The floodgates appear to have opened on Starbucks workers trying to form unions. On Friday, voting in a union representation election concluded at a Mesa, Arizona, Starbucks. On Monday, the two Buffalo stores that already voted to unionize started bargaining, while ballots went out for three more Buffalo-area stores.
Last week, workers at a Manhattan REI store filed for a union representation election, seeking what would be the first union at the outdoor equipment retailer. It didn’t take REI management long to start churning out anti-union messaging, including anti-union statements read by managers at captive audience meetings and workers being pulled into one-on-one meetings with managers.
Union membership as a percentage of all U.S. workers dropped from 10.8% to 10.3% in 2021, returning to its 2019 level. The bump in 2020 is instructive, since it came because, in the mass job loss of the pandemic, more nonunion workers lost their jobs. But the lousy numbers for union membership are also important to understand in the context of popular opinion and U.S. labor law.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, essential workers were widely dubbed “heroes.” That didn’t mean they were treated well or protected with adequate safety measures, but people were talking about their contributions. Since then, company after company has rolled back already inadequate safety measures and benefits.
Democratic National Committee staff announced this week that they are unionizing, joining the Service Employees International Union. Former Rep. Donna Edwards counted the union cards as management voluntarily recognized the union.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) confusing, widely panned (and widely mocked) shift from 10 days of quarantine after a positive COVID-19 test to five days for asymptomatic cases was seen by many as a gift to employers eager to keep workers on the job no matter what—an interpretation quickly confirmed by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who said the shift was intended to “keep the critical functions of society open and operating.
When you hear the phrase “life-changing amount of money,” what is the number that comes to your mind? According to one 2019 poll, the average American named $19,800 as the amount that would change their life—but for millennials, it was just $5,000. On the other hand, in April 2021, an unnamed tech millionaire wrote in New York magazine: “I thought that I’d make a little bit from an IPO, maybe $200,000.
Animals are a very popular subject with young children—which offers a great opportunity to raise environmentalists, by emphasizing how the survival of animal species is very much in the hands of human beings, and how habitat destruction and climate change threaten animals. And there are a lot of books about what’s wrong.
I don’t listen to a lot of Christmas music, but when I do, this is it.
What are your Christmas music favorites, be they standards or off the beaten path?
(Here’s where I confess that while I generally dislike Mariah Carey, I can tolerate “All I Want for Christmas.
My colleague Gabe Ortiz has been following the story of workers at a Kentucky candle factory who were threatened with firing if they tried to escape a deadly tornado. Those Kentucky workers aren’t alone.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois were also told to keep working despite the weather, and say they lacked adequate safety training.
Starbucks workers in Buffalo made history this week by becoming the first in the U.S. to unionize at a corporate-operated store. Union representation elections were held at three Buffalo-area Starbucks stores, with three different results. Workers at the Elmwood Avenue store voted yes, 19 to eight. Workers at another store voted no by a 12 to eight margin, but the union is contesting that outcome, saying that some votes may not have been counted.
In the news today: The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed phone records for more than 100 people, even as key potential witnesses are refusing to talk. Elsewhere in government, Republicans continue their quest to make the United States a worse place, holding up important legislation and forcing Congress into some really stupid contortions to get the basics done.
The whole “critical race theory” uproar is really about stripping schools of any teaching about racism or the contributions of Black people and other people of color to U.S. history, rolling back any tenuous progress made at teaching those important subjects in recent years. And, go figure, Black parents are noticing and taking issue with that—but, of course, their voices are getting much less amplification.
Do you need to hear a happy story? A “so hundreds of thousands of people have died and large swaths of the country have refused to try to save lives and we’ve seen the Capitol attacked in an attempt to overturn an election but everything isn’t terrible all the time” kind of story?
So my son turned 4 early in this historic, life-altering pandemic, and obviously we had to cancel his birthday party.
This week, 10,000 John Deere workers ended their strike after six weeks. It was also a really good week for unions on TV, between a typically sharp John Oliver segment explaining union-busting, and a Tonight Show performance by Tom Morello (featuring grandson) in which Morello highlighted workers on strike across the country, offering them high-profile solidarity.
Watch both videos. Share them with your friends and family.
You may have heard about school bus driver shortages this year. Maggie Koerth’s fabulous in-depth look at the job shows why that would be. The headline might give you all you need to know: “Would you manage 70 children and a 15-ton vehicle for $18 an hour?” But the headline leaves out a very important piece: It’s a part-time job, so that $18 an hour might only be for four hours a day, timed so that it’s difficult to have another job.
The coronavirus pandemic’s shake-up of the U.S. economy still hasn’t fully resettled, and it’s clearly visible in reporting on businesses looking for workers and workers looking for jobs. On the one hand, top retailers say their industry is heading into its busiest time of the year desperate for more workers—so much so that some top retailers are raising pay or offering signing bonuses or referral bonuses.
Around 2,000 health care workers at South Buffalo Mercy Hospital have been on strike since Oct. 1. Now, they have a tentative agreement and picket lines are suspended while the workers vote whether to ratify the contract.