Economy

The brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops turned out to be the last straw for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. …

For months, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have taken turns stalling the passage of any new round of relief for unemployed workers …

Millions are left vulnerable to eviction during a time when shelter is an even more important necessity …

Online townhall: June 20, 2020 …

All the pent up anger, all the weeks of being stuck at home, all the worry about getting sick, all the economic hardship, all the anxiety about the future, combined with the history of systemic racism dating back to slavery led to a response that exploded into the streets. …

As businesses reopen, those who still have jobs must think about how much protection there will be …

In mid-May there was a big announcement regarding the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. …

Anybody in the Bay Area knows that housing is a nightmare, but COVID-19 has made it a horror …

Billionaire techies like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google have been using the COVID crisis to meet U.S. military and other federal officials …

On April 9, George Leigh, a worker at Amazon’s DNY4 distribution center in Bethpage, New York, he died as a result of COVID-19. …

22 million Americans have lost their jobs and are scrambling to figure out what to do, but the billionaires in the U.S. have increased their wealth by 10%. …

California governor Gavin Newsom released a revised budget for the state of California on May 14. Who are the targets of his spending cuts? Workers, high-needs students, the elderly …

36.5 million workers had filed for unemployment, but most are waiting to see the funds appear. The viral hashtag #PendingPurgatory explains what it’s been like for working people …

Almost half of workers are making more on unemployment than they do in their regular jobs …

Then comes COVID-19 and our delicately balanced lives as gig workers come tumbling down …

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s wealth – 138 billion dollars right now – is more than the GDP of over 130 countries across the globe. And it’s only getting bigger. …

For several weeks, Trump has been playing on the distress of millions of us who have lost our jobs to rev up support for re-opening businesses …

As of April 24, the State of Georgia began the process of reopening at the direction of Republican Governor Brian Kemp. …

Covid-19 and the Global Food Chain with Raj Patel …

We are living through one of the greatest health crises in world history. So why are so many U.S. health care workers out of work? …

Politicians are rushing to reopen the economy and they don’t care how many coffins they fill. …

Although Covid-19 sparked the current economic crisis, it is not the root cause. In late March and early April, experts projected a recession similar to the 2008 “great recession” was coming. …

Agribusinesses are destroying massive amounts of food while people across the United States are standing in lines at food banks …

As New Jersey – like other states – sees billions in tax dollars disappear during the COVID-19 pandemic, we already hear talk of massive budget shortfalls! What does this mean? You guessed it …

On Wednesday, after saying that he was planning to dismantle the White House coronavirus task force, Trump reversed course and said that he would keep …

Report From a Childcare Worker: I had to turn them down to keep my family safe, a difficult decision …

On May 1, Tim Bray, Amazon’s Vice President for Web Services, resigned from his position at the company. …

BART is operating as if it is business as usual, endangering the lives of workers and riders. …

Senator Mitch McConnell announced a week ago that Congress wouldn’t provide any money to support state government employee pension funds. …

Huge, often violent, protests have rocked Lebanese cities in recent days. While the COVID-19 crisis may be a contributing factor, they are in fact a continuation of …

Count to ten. Guess what? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made $30,182 while you were counting. …

The same day it was announced that over 30 million people applied for unemployment benefits in the past six weeks, Wall Street announced it had its best month since 1987. …

How is it that being poorer means I pay more for health coverage instead of less? …

Sanders was right to say we need a movement, but channeling it into the Democratic Party is a dead end. …

News reports confirm that Jeff Bezos, already far and away the world’s richest man, increased his wealth by $25 BILLION in only six weeks! How did he do this? …

this article is reprinted from Labor Notes As we head into the fifth month of …

3.7 million. That’s how many gallons of milk are being dumped each day by U.S. dairy farmers during the COVID-19 pandemic. …

The main reason it’s so hard to access social programs is that governments intentionally want to pay out as little as possible …

From a Biotech Student: This pandemic begs the question; what kind of world are we graduating into? …

At a press conference in March, President Trump said that “nobody knew” there’d be a pandemic of this proportion. He’s lying. …

From a Contract Worker: This crisis is demonstrating the precariousness of my situation. …

From a Bay Area Biotech Worker: The measures that businesses take need to be more than just a facade. …

As Covid-19 has spread to the pacific, so has resistance from its residents. …

With the Covid-19 crisis, almost ten million people have filed for unemployment in the course of two weeks …

The Trump administration’s criminal failure to act and to coordinate a response to the coronavirus …

The government has rushed in to the rescue – of banks and corporations …

Written notes from the meeting, attended by CEO Jeff Bezos, detail Amazon’s strategy to fight union organizing, as well as efforts to obtain COVID-19 tests and protective masks for workers. …

You would think that to fight the coronavirus, the government would pull together the best minds among relevant researchers and health care providers, decide what needs to get done, get industry to make the necessary supplies …