The Trump NLRB needs to be removed [feedly]

The Trump NLRB needs to be removed
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-trump-nlrb-needs-to-be-removed/

That's it. The Trump appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) need to be removed for neglect of duty and malfeasance—now.

The latest outrage? Yesterday, the Trump board added to its long and growing list of anti-worker, anti-union actions, issuing new rules that undermine the longstanding practice of voluntary recognition, by which employers agree to recognize and bargain with a union when a majority of employees sign cards saying they want a union. The Trump board is now requiring these employers to post a notice telling workers they can file a petition and have an election to get rid of the union – the very same union that a majority of workers have just chosen. And the new rules call for running union elections and counting ballots even when charges have been filed alleging that an employer has engaged in illegal unfair labor practices that have tainted the election. In an Orwellian twist, the Trump board calls these new rules, which undermine workers' ability to form and keep their unions, rules to "Protect Employee Free Choice."

What makes this latest action so egregious and outrageous is that it is happening at the very same time that the Trump board had unilaterally halted all elections by workers seeking to form unions. Thousands of workers who were poised to vote on forming unions have had their elections cancelled—even though the elections could be held by U.S. mail, whose employees are courageously keeping the Postal Service going. Instead, workers are left without a voice, and the Trump NLRB has done nothing to discourage or prohibit employers from running anti-union campaigns while workers are left in the lurch.

That's right. The agency can't figure out a way to let workers vote when they want a union, but they found time to finalize a rule to make it harder for workers to form and keep unions. The double standard is obvious, it is outrageous, and it is a dereliction of these appointees' statutory duties. After the Trump Board got called out publicly on this double standard by Rep. Bobby Scott, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee with jurisdiction over the NLRB, and a petition campaign by the AFL-CIO, the Trump Board backtracked and today announced that elections will resume next week.

In recent days, we have seen a surge in strike and protest activity by workers seeking action by their employers to protect them from the deadly COVID-19 virus. Nurses seeking protective gear. Instacart workers seeking hazard pay. Amazon workers seeking better safety practices. And it goes on and on. Faced with unprecedented circumstances and challenges, workers are standing together with their co-workers to demand changes to protect them from getting sick and possibly dying from this new disease.

The NLRB was established by Congress to protect workers' rights to organize and engage in exactly this sort of protest activity. But the Trump Board has taken the law in exactly the opposite direction, issuing decision after decision undermining workers' rights to organize and giving employers more power to interfere in organizing campaigns. One of these actions resonates particularly loudly in this moment—a decision by NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb that Uber drivers—and presumably other "gig" workers—are not protected by the federal labor law because—according to Uber and Robb—they are independent contractors. Yes, that's right—the same workers who are most vulnerable in this current crisis won't be protected by the Trump NLRB if they are fired or retaliated against for protesting for better safety on the job.

Trump's appointees to the NLRB took an oath to faithfully uphold and execute a law whose purpose is to protect and promote the right of workers to form unions and engage in other group activity to improve their lives at work. The necessity and importance of these rights to working women and men is being demonstrated every day as workers confront the COVID crisis. But instead, Trump's appointees are willfully neglecting their statutory duties and promoting rules and policies that directly conflict with the law's purpose. Appointed officials cannot be removed lightly – they can only be removed for "neglect of duty or malfeasance in office." Sadly, Trump's appointees to the NLRB have met that standard. It is time for them to go.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Nearly 20 million workers will likely be laid off or furloughed by July: Updated state numbers project further job losses due to the coronavirus [feedly]

A grim report from EPI

Nearly 20 million workers will likely be laid off or furloughed by July: 

Updated state numbers project further job losses due to the coronavirus
https://www.epi.org/blog/nearly-20-million-jobs-lost-by-july-due-to-the-coronavirus/

As the United States comes to terms with the scale of the coronavirus pandemic, new economic projections continue to deteriorate, indicating an increasingly devastating impact on the U.S. economy. The latest Goldman Sachs forecast predicts a 9% contraction for the first quarter of this year and a 34% contraction in the second quarter. This large drop in GDP is consistent with 19.8 million jobs lost by July, bringing unemployment rates across the country into the mid-teens.

Our estimate is much larger than was predicted even a week ago, when the forecasting implied 14 million would be furloughed or laid off. Each escalating forecast is an indication that policymakers at every level of government need to be acting immediately to curb the spread of the virus and protect the health and economic well-being of their communities.

Importantly, these latest estimates account for the recently enacted CARES Act and assume a fourth coronavirus-related federal relief bill that will ramp up state aid—a particularly effective form of stimulus. In other words, Congress must pass additional stimulus measures—especially aid to state and local governments—just to keep the losses where we are predicting them to be today. Policymakers could go one step further and use public debt to finance the wages of workers who would otherwise lose their jobs, as Britain and Denmark are doing. This would allow workers to keep their jobs, even if they are unable to work from home or their employer is closed. It would also allow some workers to save money that they could spend once the pandemic has subsided, which would help jumpstart the recovery.

In the map and tables below, we have updated our estimates of predicted layoffs and furloughs by state and added a projection of the resulting unemployment rates in each state. The map in Figure A shows that California is expected to have the largest number of jobs lost, with the state losing nearly 2.3 million jobs through June. Texas, Florida, and New York have the next largest job loss numbers at 1.7 million, 1.3 million, and 1.2 million jobs lost, respectively—losses representing between 14.7 and 17.0% of total private-sector employment in these states.

Figure A

Nevada is expected to have the largest job losses in percentage terms (20.1%), as the state's high concentration of retail, leisure, and hospitality jobs are likely to experience disproportionate losses. Social distancing measures are essential for stopping the spread of the coronavirus, but they have a disproportionate impact on businesses and workers in these industries, for whom teleworking is largely not possible.

Nevada will also have the highest unemployment rate (19.7%) of any state by July, while more than 1 in 6 workers are projected to be unemployed in Alaska (17.8%), Hawaii (17.8%), Mississippi (17.5%), and Delaware (16.8%).

We should note that not every one of these lost jobs would necessarily be captured by employment surveys. For example, if workers are furloughed rather than laid off, then they may still be on employer payrolls. This 19.8 million job loss number is a measure of lost labor demand that could show up as reduced hours, layoffs, a collapse in hiring, or furloughs.

Our unemployment projections simply add the projected job losses onto February 2020 unemployment levels in each state (the most recent available state-level data) and divide by the February 2020 labor force levels. (In other words, we are assuming no change in labor force levels or participation.)

These assumptions may overstate the actual change in the official unemployment rate since some workers hold multiple jobs, and it is unclear how the current circumstances will affect people's labor force status. Under normal circumstances, people are only counted as officially unemployed if they are actively searching for work—something that is not possible, nor desirable, with social distancing measures in place. Yet, they do indicate how dire the situation is likely to be for working people in every state. In the depths of the Great Recession, the highest unemployment rate any state reached was 14.6% in Michigan in June 2009.

Table 1

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Policymakers twice missed the chance to avert widespread job loss, now they should act to avoid more layoffs [feedly]

Policymakers twice missed the chance to avert widespread job loss, now they should act to avoid more layoffs
https://www.epi.org/blog/policymakers-twice-missed-the-chance-to-avert-widespread-job-loss-now-they-should-act-to-avoid-more-layoffs/

The economic impact of the coronavirus is well upon us. Though not yet officially declared, we are certainly now in a recession. Last week we learned that 3.3 million workers applied for unemployment insurance claims during the prior week alone, and we will see much worse in coming weeks. I have been a labor market economist for a long time—including through the Great Recession—and I have never seen anything like this.

Congress just passed a bill that, while problematic in important respects, will reduce the hardship for millions of people who are out of work because of the virus. The most effective parts of the bill are a $600 increase in weekly unemployment insurance checks and the creation of a special disaster relief program that expands unemployment insurance coverage to many of those who fall through the gaping holes in our current system, including gig workers and the self-employed.

But is important to remember that mass unemployment as a result of the coronavirus did not have to happen—in fact, policymakers twice missed the chance to avert widespread job loss. First, the failure to take the coronavirus seriously early on and to implement rapid and accurate testing means we cannot now distinguish between those who are sick and need to be quarantined, and those who are healthy and could largely continue normal activity. This in turn means that to avert a much greater disaster, we have no choice but to enforce widespread lockdowns rather than more targeted quarantines. In other words, the lack of early response turned a public health threat into an economic recession, which will continue at least as long as our testing and tracing capability is insufficient.

Moreover, even after we failed to test for the virus on a sufficient scale and control its spread, we still could have protected jobs. Other countries have chosen to compensate coronavirus-impacted employers for close to the entire amount of their workers' salaries, as long as they keep their workers on payroll. Making it possible for businesses to keep workers on payroll is crucial because at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the threat of the virus will be over, and the economy will be able to restart. People who have been on lockdown will be very excited to go out to restaurants and do other things they have missed out on (count me among them!). But that sudden surge in demand could go one of two ways. If employers still have their workers on payroll, they will be able to turn the lights back on and deal with the rush of customers. But if they had to lay off workers, they will need to spend great deal of resources posting jobs, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and training. This scramble to re-match workers with jobs will prolong the pain of the recession much longer than necessary.

And for workers, not losing their job would obviously matter enormously. For one, it would mean being able to hold on to employer-provided health benefits. But it would also mean that these workers —and their families—would not face the long-term scarring effects of job loss. Losing a job can have lasting effects on earnings and can negatively affect the whole family for years. For example, research shows that children whose parents were laid off have lower earnings as adults than other children.

The bill that passed Congress does have some provisions that will preserve jobs. For example, it makes clear that workers who are furloughed because their workplace closed due to the coronavirus will be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits and provides businesses with a payroll tax credit for keeping workers on health insurance. The bill also includes loans for small businesses that will be forgiven if the money is used to preserve jobs and wages. These measures will incentivize employers to keep workers on payroll. However, a glaring hole in the bill is the fact that its single biggest tranche of money goes towards industry bailouts that do not include adequate safeguards to ensure that the money is used to preserve jobs, rather than to preserve the wealth of shareholders, creditors, and corporate executives. This is a mistake that will cause lasting harm to workers who would have kept their jobs if the conditions on the bailouts had been stronger, and it will prolong the downturn.

Based on new GDP forecasts, we project that nearly twenty million workers will be laid off or furloughed by July as a result of the coronavirus shock. These lob-loss estimates are based on GDP forecasts by Goldman Sachs that, shockingly, include the impact of the $2 trillion relief package that was passed last week and also assume another relief package will be passed that will focus on aid to states, which is a particularly effective form of stimulus. In other words, far more than 20 million workers will be laid off or furloughed unless we get another relief and recovery package that includes a substantial amount of state aid.

Though we should have acted sooner, Congress should now turn to crafting another relief package that includes not just state aid but also includes policies to encourage employers to keep workers on payroll or on furlough during the lockdown—rather than laying them off—so as few families as possible face the near- and long-term consequences of job loss and so that workers are ready to jump back in to work as soon as the lockdown is over.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

The New Front-Line Workers: The Working People Weekly List [feedly]

The New Front-Line Workers: The Working People Weekly List
https://aflcio.org/2020/3/31/new-front-line-workers-working-people-weekly-list

AFL-CIO

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here's the latest edition of the Working People Weekly List.

The New Front-Line Coronavirus Workers: Grocery Clerks, Delivery Drivers: "Much of the American workplace has shut down, sending millions of employees home to wait out the coronavirus pandemic. Among those still on the job are grocery-store clerks, prison guards and delivery drivers. 'Who would have ever thought that we would be on the front lines?' said Joyce Babineau, a 67-year-old supermarket supervisor in Dartmouth, Mass., a coastal village 60 miles south of Boston."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Discusses the Labor Movement's Respose to the Coronavirus Pandemic: "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined Bloomberg TV this morning to talk about the labor movement's response to the coronavirus pandemic and why we need to invoke the Defense Production Act."

What Grocery Store Workers Need: "As of this writing, supermarket workers in Denver, Oregon and Washington state have tested positive for COVID-19. Here in New York City, two Trader Joe's supermarkets have suddenly faced temporary closures after workers at the Soho and Union Square stores became confirmed cases of the disease. The closures at these stores, which have seen huge increases in customer traffic since the onset of the crisis, highlight the dangers grocery store workers—performing their jobs in close quarters with other workers and customers—are facing, typically for low pay and benefits. The situation is set to become even more precarious as more New Yorkers become ill, with the peak of the pandemic apparently still awaiting us weeks or even months in the future."

AFL-CIO's Trumka: Coronavirus Relief Package 'Not Perfect' but 'Going to Do a Lot of Good': "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka expressed support for the coronavirus stimulus package moving through Congress, although he said it's 'not perfect'."

'Just Keep the Faith': Workers Are Stepping Up to Beat Coronavirus: "The Machinists union and the AFL-CIO have circulated a brief video of [Trevar] Smedal as part of an effort to highlight the role union workers have played in addressing the coronavirus outbreak. Looking into the camera, he tells an anxious America, 'Just keep up the faith. I know that my co-workers, we're going to show up every day and we're going to get out as many as we can.'"

Nurses Call for More Protective Gear, Training in the U.S.: "In some parts of the country, nurses are already struggling to secure the equipment and training they need to safely care for their patients, while protecting themselves from the infectious disease. Without the proper protection or training, the risk is high for nurses, especially since they have the most direct contact with patients. To understand the impact this pandemic is having on nurses, The Takeaway spoke to Jean Ross, the president of National Nurses United, the largest organization of registered nurses in the United States, and Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, a registered nurse at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and the president of the New York State Nurses Association."

Who Is Most at Risk in the Coronavirus Crisis: 24 Million of the Lowest-Income Workers: "This week, unemployment claims soared as state and federal officials restricted public gatherings and shuttered stores to prevent the spread of the COVID-19. Using wage data from the U.S. Department of Labor and working conditions surveys from O*NET, we analyzed those who are most vulnerable."

Unions: "Essential" Workers Need More Coronavirus Protection: "Union leaders, representing workers that have been deemed 'essential' as Illinois battles the coronavirus, called Monday for more protective gear to guard members against infection."

Women's History Month Profiles: Roxanne Brown: "For Women's History Month, the AFL-CIO is spotlighting various women who were, and some who still are, leaders and activists working at the intersection of civil and labor rights. Today, we are looking at Roxanne Brown."

Fighting the Coronavirus: Making Ventilators: "Trevar Smedal is a member of Machinists (IAM) Local 1406 employed at General Electric's Datex-Ohmeda in Madison, Wisconsin. He and his co-workers are in a race against the clock to produce ventilators needed in the worldwide fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Watch the video to hear Trevar's story."

Put Workers First: In the States Roundup: "It's time once again to take a look at the ways working people are making progress in the states."

Women's History Month Profiles: Jessie Lopez de la Cruz: "For Women's History Month, the AFL-CIO is spotlighting various women who were, and some who still are, leaders and activists working at the intersection of civil and labor rights. Today, we are looking at Jessie Lopez de la Cruz."

Talking About COVID-19: Labor Podcast and Radio Roundup: "In addition to the AFL-CIO's own 'State of the Unions,' there are a lot of other podcasts out there that have their own approach to discussing labor issues and the rights of working people. Here are the latest podcasts from across the labor movement in the United States."

Kenneth Quinnell Tue, 03/31/2020 - 11:27  

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

PK: Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish) [feedly]

Interesting take by PK on stimulus vs disaster relief target of federal aid, coming down solidly on the disaster relief bias. Until the virus is beaten, stimulus aid (keeping GDP up, for example) is like pushing on a string.

Still does not clear up what a real stimulus would look like after several months of quarantine....but...one step at a time, sweet Jesus!

  

Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish)

Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/notes-on-the-coronacoma-wonkish.html

Text Only:

The economic contraction we're experiencing is the fastest on record, by a large margin; we've probably lost as many jobs over the past two weeks as we did in the whole of the Great Recession. The policy response is also gigantic, several times as large a share of GDP as the Obama stimulus.

But it seems to me that we're still not having a very clear discussion of the economics of what's happening, why we're doing it, and what implications all this will have for the longer term, once the pandemic ends. So I've been trying to think it through in terms of a simple model — not even one involving any explicit equations, although I don't think that would be hard to do.

The main moral of this analysis is that what we should be doing — and to some extent what we are doing — is more like disaster relief than normal fiscal stimulus, although there's a stimulus element too. This relief can and should be debt-financed. There may be a slight hangover from this borrowing, but it shouldn't pose any major problems.

The nature of the problem

What we're experiencing is not a conventional recession brought on by a slump in aggregate demand. Instead, we're going into the economic equivalent of a medically induced coma, in which some brain functions are deliberately shut down to give the patient time to heal.


To simplify things, think of the economy as consisting of two sectors, nonessential services (N) that we can shut down to limit human interactions and hence the spread of the disease, and essential services (E) that we can't (or perhaps don't need to, because they don't involve personal interaction.) We can and should close down the N sector until some combination of growing immunity, widespread testing to quickly find and isolate cases, and, if we're very lucky, a vaccine let us return to normal life.

For those (like me) still receiving their regular paychecks, this period of shutdown — call it the coronacoma — will be annoying but not serious. I miss coffee shops and concerts, but can live without them for however long it takes.

Things will, however, be very different and dire for those who are deprived of their regular income while the coronacoma lasts. This group includes many workers and small businesses; it also includes state and local governments, which are required to balance their budgets but are seeing revenues collapse and expenses soar.

How big is the N sector? Miguel Faria-e-Castro of the St. Louis Fed summarizes estimates that are as good as any: 27 to 67 million people, which he averages to 47 million. That's a lot; we could be looking at a temporary decline in real GDP of 30 percent or more. But that GDP decline isn't the problem, since it's a necessary counterpart of the social distancing we need to be doing.

The problem instead is how to limit the hardships facing those whose normal income has been cut off.


Disaster relief with a dash of stimulus

What can be done to help those cut off from their normal incomes during this period of national lockdown? They don't need jobs — we don't want them working at a time when normal work routines can spread a deadly disease. What they need, instead, is money. That is, what's needed now is disaster relief, not economic stimulus.

OK, a few qualifications. Some idled workers may be able to switch to doing other things at fairly short notice — say, Uber drivers making deliveries for Amazon. But that can't absorb more than a small fraction of the idled work force.

A more important point is that if we fail to provide enough help to those afflicted by this crisis, they will be forced to sharply cut their spending even on goods and services we can still produce, leading to a gratuitous further rise in unemployment (and a multiplier process as laid-off workers cut spending even more.) So aid to those in the shutdown sector actually does include an element of conventional fiscal stimulus, even though that's not its central goal.

Finally, the sudden shutdown of revenue streams for many businesses is creating financial stresses that resemble those of 2008-2009, with prices of risky assets plunging and investors trying to pile into government bonds. So the Fed is right to be going all out — doing "whatever it takes" — to stabilize financial markets.

In other words, there are pieces of this crisis that resemble conventional recession-fighting. But the core issue remains disaster relief for those hit hardest by the lockdown.

How do we pay for relief?

Where will the government get the money for the $2 trillion bill Congress has already passed, a bill that's much better than nothing but still far short of what we should be doing? The answer is, borrow. Real interest rates on federal borrowing are negative; the markets are basically begging the feds to take their money.



But why is borrowing so cheap? Where's the money coming from? The answer is private savings that have nowhere else to go. When we finally get data on what's happening now, we'll surely see a sharp rise in private saving, as people stop buying what they can't, and a fall in private investment, because who's going to build houses or office parks in a plague?

So the private sector is going to be running a huge financial surplus that's available for government borrowing. And this is no time to worry, even slightly, about the level of government debt.

Still, the pandemic will eventually end. Will there be a debt hangover?

From the point of view of government solvency, none at all. We live in a world in which interest rates are consistently below the growth rate, so that government debt melts instead of snowballing. The government won't have to pay back the money it's borrowing, just return to a sustainable level of deficits (not zero) and let the debt/GDP ratio decline over time.

There might, however, be a slight macroeconomic issue when the pandemic ends. The private sector will have added several trillion dollars to its wealth via more or less forced saving; between that wealth increase and, perhaps, pent-up demand, there might — might — be some inflationary overheating when things return to something like normal.

This may be a nonissue in an era of secular stagnation, when we might welcome the extra demand. Even if it is an issue, however, it's unlikely, given the numbers, to be something the Fed can't contain with modestly higher interest rates. You could imagine a world in which the costs of the immediate crisis eventually require some future fiscal austerity, but I don't think we're living in that world.

Let me summarize where we are. We're facing a period of unknown length when much of the economy can and should be shut down. The principal goal of policy during this period should not be to boost GDP, but to alleviate the hardship facing those deprived of their normal incomes. And the government can simply borrow the money it needs to do that.


 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Nine in 10 farmworkers could be covered by the paid leave provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act—but not if smaller employers are exempted [feedly]

Nine in 10 farmworkers could be covered by the paid leave provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act—but not if smaller employers are exempted
https://www.epi.org/blog/9-in-10-farmworkers-could-be-covered-by-the-paid-leave-provisions-of-the-families-first-coronavirus-response-act-but-not-if-smaller-employers-are-exempted/

Key takeaways:

• Starting on April 1, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) will require employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide paid sick days and paid family and medical leave for workers if they have been impacted by the coronavirus, but the law includes a possible exemption for smaller employers with fewer than 50 employees.
• The U.S. Department of Labor is currently developing regulations to implement the FFCRA and they are expected sometime in early April. The agency is likely to include guidelines regarding the small business exemption for paid leave, which will have an impact on how many farmworkers are eligible.
• Data show that nearly all farms in the United States have fewer than 500 employees (99.8%); nine out of every ten farmworkers (88.3%) are employed on those farms and would be covered by the FFCRA's new paid leave provisions.
• However, most farms are smaller and employ fewer than 50 employees (96.6% of all farms). If all farms with fewer than 50 employees are exempted under the small business exemption in the FFCRA, just over one-third of farmworkers (36.2%) would be eligible for paid leave—those employed by farms with 50-499 employees.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the second of the three coronavirus stimulus packages passed by Congress in response to the ongoing pandemic, was enacted on March 18, 2020. During the period beginning on April 1 and ending on December 31, 2020, the FFCRA will require employers with fewer than 500 employees—but with a possible exemption for smaller businesses with fewer than 50 employees—to provide paid sick days and paid family and medical leave for workers if they have been impacted by the coronavirus.

The farmworkers who grow, pick, and pack the food that ends up on our grocery store shelves have been deemed essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, but are vulnerable and need additional healthand safety measures in place to protect them from being infected by, and spreading, the coronavirus. One major agribusiness lobby has publicly stated that farm employers "would be losing way too much money" if basic safety measures were implemented, while some major producers report they're putting new safety measures in place. The current reality for farmworkers is that most lack paid sick days and paid family and medical leave—but if they qualify, the FFCRA could offer them a lifeline.

There are no reliable estimates of how many farmworkers may be eligible for the FFCRA's emergency paid leave benefits, but our review of the available data sources suggests that almost all farmworkers could be eligible. However, if smaller farm employers are exempted, just over one-third of farmworkers would be eligible.

Paid sick and family and medical leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act

Current federal law does not require U.S. employers to provide paid sick days to their employees. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires certain employers with 50 or more workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons.

The FFCRA created a temporary federal paid sick leave requirement and expands FMLA coverage by requiring employers to pay eligible employees a share of their salary if they take leave for qualifying reasons related to the coronavirus pandemic. (For a detailed look at the benefits provided, see the fact sheet posted by the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Q and As and fact sheets posted on the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)'s website.)

The new paid sick and family and medical leave benefits must be provided by all public and private-sector employers with fewer than 500 employees but the law includes a possible exemption for certain employers with fewer than 50 employees, allowing them not to provide paid leave if it "would jeopardize the viability of the business as a going concern." DOL's Wage and Hour Division is currently developing regulations to implement and enforce these provisions in the FFCRA, and its interim final regulations are expected sometime in early April. Presumably DOL will include guidelines regarding the small business exemption, and it's possible that small businesses will be able to apply for it.

Most farmworkers would be eligible for paid leave benefits, but not if small businesses are exempted

No one knows exactly how many farmworkers will be affected by the coronavirus directly and indirectly, but coverage under the FFCRA can be calculated by looking at the number of hired workers employed by agricultural businesses. There are three major data sources, but only one offers the level of detail needed to shed light on the number and share of farm employers and farmworkers who are covered by the FFCRA.

The Census of Agriculture (COA) is conducted every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and publishes data on farm employers who hire workers directly but does not provide data on workers brought to farms by nonfarm employers such as farm labor contractors. Some 513,100 U.S. farm employers reported hiring a total 2.4 million workers directly in 2017, including 35,500 farms that hired 10 or more workers directly. The COA does not publish data on how many employers employed more or fewer than 500 workers, limiting its utility to estimate the FFCRA's impacts.

USDA's Farm Labor Survey (FLS) conducts surveys of employers to obtain data on the workers they hire directly. In April 2019, when the total number of hired workers was 629,000, 71% were hired by employers with 50 or fewer workers, while 29% were hired by employers with more than 51 workers (see Table 1). In 2019, when employment peaked in July, the total number of hired workers was 802,000, and 63% were hired by employers with 50 or fewer workers, while 37% were hired by employers with more than 51. Like the COA, the FLS does not report the number or share of farms that employ fewer than 500 workers, also limiting its utility to estimate the FFCRA's impacts.

Table 1

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in DOL, reports data on directly hired workers and workers brought to farms by nonfarm employers such as labor contractors. Those data come from the information that employers provide to state unemployment insurance (UI) agencies when they pay the payroll taxes that support UI benefits. One major limitation of the QCEW data is that they cover only three-fourths of the estimated total average employment of 1.7 million in U.S. agriculture, because smaller farm employers in some states are not required to report to UI agencies and some employers are not required to count H-2A guestworkers as employees in their UI reports.

The QCEW reports employment by size of employer, but only for the entire United States (i.e., not by individual state) and only for the payroll period that includes the 12th of each month. Table 2 shows QCEW data for March 2019; we use March because it corresponds most closely to the nationwide farmworker employment levels in the same month the FFCRA was enacted. (Employment in crop agriculture is relatively low in most states in March except in Arizona and Florida; farmworker employment nationwide peaks in July.)

Table 2

Table 2 shows that the vast majority (99.8%) of the nearly 106,200 farm establishments in the United States that report to the UI system had fewer than 500 employees on their payrolls in March 2019, and these less-than-500 employee establishments hired 88.3% of all farmworkers who were reported to the UI system. A slightly smaller share of farms, 96.6%, had fewer than 50 employees, and they collectively hired 52% of all farmworkers.

These QCEW data suggest that the FFCRA could apply to nearly all agricultural employers that reported to UI agencies—and almost nine out of every ten farmworkers in the United States could be covered by the paid leave requirements of the FFCRA.

However, DOL's interpretation of the small business exemption in the FFCRA will ultimately determine the number of farmworkers who are able to access paid leave during the coronavirus pandemic. If all farm employers with fewer than 50 employees apply for and receive an exemption, then the FFRCA's paid leave benefits would cover only 3.3% of farm employers and 36.2% of farmworkers—i.e. those employed by farms with between 50 and 499 employees

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Unions are giving workers a seat at the table when it comes to the coronavirus response [feedly]

Unions are giving workers a seat at the table when it comes to the coronavirus response
https://www.epi.org/blog/unions-are-giving-workers-a-seat-at-the-table-when-it-comes-to-the-coronavirus-response/

We have never seen such immediate and sweeping changes at so many workplaces in modern history. What are unions doing to ensure that workers have a seat at the table?

EPI reports and blog posts have documented the ways that workers through their unions solve problems and make changes that improve their lives and their communities. This includes ensuring broader access to paid sick leave and health insurance, two issues of particular importance in the current pandemic. This blog post, culled from public news sources, summarizes just a few ways unionized workers are using their bargaining rights to have a say in how they are going to safely and effectively do their jobs during the pandemic. We encourage readers to share their stories to add to these examples.

• Teamsters have negotiated an agreement with UPS providing paid leave, and are pressing UPS for extra protections. The Teamsters' UPS and UPS Freight National Negotiating Committees and UPS reached an agreement that provides for paid leave for any worker who is diagnosed with COVID-19 or quarantined because a family member in their household is ill with the virus. According to Transport Topics, "the paid-leave agreement applies to about 300,000 full- and part-time hourly employees, primarily drivers, package handlers and mechanics, if they should become directly impacted by the novel coronavirus." The leave pay includes pension contributions. Workers who use paid time off to self-quarantine and are later diagnosed with COVID-19 can get that time back in their leave bank.
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  UPS is also implementing other protective measures, such as altering delivery requirements to minimize direct contact with customers, specifically by not requiring signatures from customers. Efforts to keep workers safe are ongoing. For example, the president of a local Teamsters chapter in Boston is insisting that UPS step up its cleaning of trucks and equipment  These protections are especially important, as UPS union members will reportedly be delivering and picking up test kits and supplies for COVID-19 drive-through testing sites.
• Teamsters have secured job security commitments from Waste Management. The Teamsters Waste and Recycling Divisionrepresents more than 32,000 workers in the private sanitation industry. The division sent a letter to the three largest companies in the industry—Waste Management, Republic Services, and Waste Connections—asking the companies to outline what they are doing to ensure the safety and health of sanitation workers and requesting specific changes to attendance and paid-time-off policies. Subsequent communications with Waste Management have secured proposals for job security, guaranteed pay, and excused absences for workers.
• The United Auto Workers (UAW) is negotiating plant operations with Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, including plans to make face shields and ventilators. The UAW represent about 150,000 auto workers at General Motors, Ford, and Fiat-Chrysler. In mid-March, UAW officials urged the companies to shut down their factories for two weeks to protect autoworkers from the spreading coronavirus. The request followed union members' concerns that continued work at the plants would expose them to the virus (a worker at a Fiat Chrysler transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana, tested positive for COVID-19) and was made the day before UAW members at a Fiat Chrysler factory in Warren, Michigan, went on strike to protest the unsafe working conditions caused by working in close quarters. Initially the companies agreed only to creating a joint task force with the union to implement protection measures for workers and cutting shifts so that factories would be cleared of workers on a rotating basis for deep cleaning of the facility and equipment. But shortly after that agreement was announced, the automakers announced plans to halt production at plants across North America.The UAW and the automakers also said they would work together on plans to restart the plants when it is safe to do so, according to a statement from Ford.
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  Meanwhile, Ford and the UAW announced that they will start assembling plastic face shields —clear plastic shields that can be used to protect health care workers and others who deal with the public from virus-containing droplets—at a Ford manufacturing site, and start making ventilators at another Ford plant. As Reutersreports, Ford officials say the safety procedures followed to keep workers safe as they produce the ventilators "will be adapted from work Ford and the UAW have been doing to prepare for the automaker to reopen other U.S. factories." These efforts are part of a recently announced entree by the automakers into production of ventilators, face masks, and face shields for health care workers and first responders.
• Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have won paid leave for Verizon workers. According to Labor Notes, "the unions representing 34,000 workers at Verizon have negotiated paid leave for union members who can't work during the COVID-19 outbreak." Telephone workers, like many health care workers and grocery workers, are considered essential workers and thus must stay on the job. The agreement between the unions and Verizon specifies that workers will get paid leave if they are diagnosed with COVID-19, are directed by a doctor to stay at home due to underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable, have to care for a child whose school or day care has been closed due to the pandemic, or have to care for a person in their family who has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Labor Notes quoted a statement from Teamsters for a Democratic Union: "The paid leave won by the union at Verizon surpasses anything even raised by our International Union for Teamsters working in parcel, trucking, grocery, food, beverage, waste, and other essential frontline services that put workers at risk."
• Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) has secured masks for health care workers. SEIU UHW represents more than 97,000 front-line health care workers in hospitals, clinics, and other facilities in California as well as patients and health care consumers. After hearing from members about the lack of protective equipment, the union found a supplier and secured 39 million of the N95 masks, according to the Bay area NBC affiliate. The masks will be distributed to state and local governments and health care systems. Union officials also said they found suppliers of protective masks and face shields.

A broader seat at the table for all workers

Not only are unions helping workers at individual workplaces, they are also seeking a broader seat at the table for all workers.

For example, the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents 200 million members of 332 affiliates in 163 countries and territories, joined with the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to send a letter to G20 leaders. They called for coordinated action through International Labor Organization, World Health Organization, OECD, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank to "protect the health of all people and the incomes and jobs of all working people as the key to stability of business and the real economy."

The letters calls for urgent investment in public health and measures to support all workers regardless of their employment status, including those in the informal economy, including paid sick leave from day one; wage/income protection; managed reduction of hours where necessary, with government support to maximize income security; mortgage, rent and loan relief; universal social protection and free access to healthcare; and, child care support for frontline workers working in health care, supermarkets, pharmacies and other vital areas.

Keep the vital stories coming

Stories keep coming in of ways union workers are demanding protections and winning health and safety protections. In her recent blog post on the very ill-timed and harmful rulemakings affecting union organizing, my colleague Celine McNicholas notes how "grocery unions have won personal protective equipment, paid sick time, and hazard pay for their members." That is the kind of seat at the table that is so crucial—at all times, but especially now.

Please keep these important stories coming. If you have examples of unions winning critical provisions to help their members stay safe and navigate workplace changes during this crisis, please email me at lengdahl@epi.org.

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