Workers and the fallout from covid-19

NDPP wrote:

White House adviser Kevin Hassett: 'Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.' (and vid)

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1264996588834996226

How capitalists/politicians really view workers.

Human capital stock...it's people!

Bacchus wrote:

In a Charlton Heston voice?

Yes

New Jobs Figures Show 42.6 Million U.S. Workers Filed for Unemployment During Pandemic

The U.S. Labor Department has just released its latest unemployment numbers: 1.9 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week; 42.6 million U.S. workers have filed claims since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, a study by Bloomberg News finds the U.S. Treasury has failed to pay out a staggering $67 billion in unemployment benefits during the pandemic — about one-third of all the money owed to jobless Americans.

U.S. schools lay off hundreds of thousands, setting up lasting harm to kids

quote:

Macias will join the staggering number of public school personnel across the United States who have lost their jobs in the wake of school closures amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In April alone, 469,000 public school district personnel nationally lost their jobs, including kindergarten through twelfth-grade teachers and other school employees, a Labor Department economist told Reuters.

That is more than the nearly 300,000 total during the entire 2008 Great Recession, according to a 2014 paper by three university economists financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. The number of public school teachers hasn’t recovered from that shakeout, reaching near-2008 levels only in 2019.

Multiple school district administrators, public officials and teaching experts have warned that the current school personnel job loss will last for years, hurting the education of a generation of American students. It also could be a drag on economic recovery, for one thing because school districts are big employers.

The Labor Department reported on May 8 that 20.5 million non-farm workers lost jobs in April, including 980,000 government workers. Of those, 801,000 were local government employees. Although the Labor Department report does not break out the number, 469,000 of the 801,000 local government workers were K-12 public school teachers and other school personnel, the department economist told Reuters.

BIG BLOW TO POOR AREAS

School districts in poor areas face the most punishing blows. A Brookings Institution paper in April predicted that education layoffs “would come at the worst possible time for high-poverty schools, as even more students fall into poverty and need more from schools as their parents and guardians lose their own jobs.”

Low-income districts are particularly troubled because of plunging revenue amid the Covid-19 recession. Districts rely for revenue on local property taxes and state subsidies. Poorer districts, where property tax revenue is low, rely on states for most of their income. With states hit hard by falling income and sales taxes, aid to school districts is dwindling in many places.

The job losses at public K-12 schools are bigger and coming faster than experts anticipated. Michael Griffith, a senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, says “we’re looking at record cuts in teaching positions.”.....

Workers' Anger Grows As Auto Companies Continue Coverup of COVID-19 in the Factories

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/15/auto-j15.html

The major US automakers are continuing their policy of covering up the spread of coronavirus in auto plants as reports filter out of new cases in several factories. The attempt to hide the extent of COVID-19 is a transparent effort to keep production going in the face of mounting workers' anger over the danger to themselves and family members amidst a nationwide resurgence of the virus due to the ending of all lockdown measures. General Motors and Ford have made it an official policy not to report the number and locations of confirmed COVID-19 cases at their factories. Fiat-Chrysler have also apparently stopped reporting coronavirus cases as well..."

Liberals looking to extend COVID-19 help ahead of parliamentary showdown

The Liberals are putting together a plan to extend one of the key COVID-19 benefits ahead of a parliamentary showdown on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday he'll detail later this week how the Canada Emergency Response Benefit might be extended as millions of Canadians have almost maxed out how much they can claim.

"In the last few weeks, things have started to look up for a lot of people but that said, we also know that far too many Canadian are still struggling," Trudeau said Monday during his daily press conference outside his home.

"If you're having troubles finding a job you shouldn't also be worrying about whether you'll hit the limit of your CERB benefits. So right now we're working on a solution to extend the benefit for people who can't return to work yet."

quote:

Demand for the CERB has surpassed expectations, pushing its budget to $60 billion from $35 billion.

quote:

"But even with the economy reopening we know there are many jobs that aren't going to be coming back in the short term and that's why we're looking at continuing to help people who are on the CERB who can't find a job."

Canada's Grocery Chains Slash Wages As Pandemic Continues to Rage

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/17/groc-j17.html

"In a highly provocative and apparently coordinated move, Canada's three main grocery store chains announced last week that they were scrapping a $2 per hour COVID-19 pandemic 'premium' or bonus effective Friday, June 13. This decision will mean a significant pay cut for hundreds of thousands of workers who have performed, and continue to provide, an essential service amid the worst pandemic in a century..."

Eat the rich.

"Here it is plainly stated; we are prepared to accept the deaths of migrant farm workers in order to maintain the 'integrity' of the supply chain and the profits of a few...I can't process this without being overcome by shame. Where are our priorities?"

https://twitter.com/SharkawyMD/status/1275976958741024768

Once again COVID reveals the real Canada. Aside from some nominal and perfuctory virtue-signalling perhaps, few will notice or care. Let alone act.

NDPP wrote:

Workers' Anger Grows As Auto Companies Continue Coverup of COVID-19 in the Factories

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/15/auto-j15.html

The major US automakers are continuing their policy of covering up the spread of coronavirus in auto plants as reports filter out of new cases in several factories. The attempt to hide the extent of COVID-19 is a transparent effort to keep production going in the face of mounting workers' anger over the danger to themselves and family members amidst a nationwide resurgence of the virus due to the ending of all lockdown measures. General Motors and Ford have made it an official policy not to report the number and locations of confirmed COVID-19 cases at their factories. Fiat-Chrysler have also apparently stopped reporting coronavirus cases as well..."

No no no, don't you see that the real problem isn't corporate malfeasance, but individuals moving about their daily lives doing what they do? That's what we need to focus on! Let's make people so scared to do anything in their personal lives that they will always be watching on eggshells, worried about every little action that has a very negligible chance of spreading the virus! That way we can keep covering up larger systemic problems, like large workplaces not protecting their staff from infectious diseases, not properly protecting our elder care homes, and not protecting migrant workers, when these systemic problems are actually responsible for driving the bulk of the covid spread!

Pondering wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

NDPP wrote:

Workers' Anger Grows As Auto Companies Continue Coverup of COVID-19 in the Factories

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/15/auto-j15.html

The major US automakers are continuing their policy of covering up the spread of coronavirus in auto plants as reports filter out of new cases in several factories. The attempt to hide the extent of COVID-19 is a transparent effort to keep production going in the face of mounting workers' anger over the danger to themselves and family members amidst a nationwide resurgence of the virus due to the ending of all lockdown measures. General Motors and Ford have made it an official policy not to report the number and locations of confirmed COVID-19 cases at their factories. Fiat-Chrysler have also apparently stopped reporting coronavirus cases as well..."

No no no, don't you see that the real problem isn't corporate malfeasance, but individuals moving about their daily lives doing what they do? That's what we need to focus on! Let's make people so scared to do anything in their personal lives that they will always be watching on eggshells, worried about every little action that has a very negligible chance of spreading the virus! That way we can keep covering up larger systemic problems, like large workplaces not protecting their staff from infectious diseases, not properly protecting our elder care homes, and not protecting migrant workers, when these systemic problems are actually responsible for driving the bulk of the covid spread!

So you propose opening up even more large work places? From the beginning the message has been that they are trying to slow down the virus not stop it.  The goal has always been to keep it at a rate the hospitals can manage. Outbreaks amongst workers were expected.

That is a complete misunderstanding of what I have been saying on this topic. My contention is that covid oubreaks have primarily been driven by large scale systemic failures, like NDPP's post that I was responding to, and that if we really want to control these things, that is where we should focus our attention. The media isn't really paying as much attention to these things as it should.

Perhaps I can clarify things and reduce misunderstandings by saying this: I am far more scared of covid being spread through a large workplace or through nursing homes or through employers not adequately protecting migrant workers (note there is next to no media coverage about this) than I am about spread through people singing in church or through a trip to the supermarket (which the media seems to love to talk about). Please also note that the media is essentially a mouthpiece for corporate interests, and that is what will influence their coverage and slant on the pandemic.

Here we go again:

Quote:

The federal government has conducted mostly remote inspections of Ontario farms that employ migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of physically entering the properties to make sure the labourers' living conditions are safe.

Employment and Social Development Canada, the department responsible for the inspections, told CBC News that over the last four months, all the farms it inspected during the initial 14-day mandatory quarantine period complied with the rules as of June 12.

But the department admitted in most cast cases, inspectors didn't actually travel to the farms in question.

"For the safety of everyone involved, the majority of inspections are still being conducted remotely," the department said in a statement. By some accounts, the inspections are done virtually. CBC News has asked for details on how the remote monitoring is conducted, but so far, the department has not provided details.

If these farms are too dangerous to send an inspector on site for a few hours it would take to do the inspection, is it not by definition too dangerous for temporary foreign workers to spend entire days there?

Workers “Strike for Black Lives” Across the Country

Tens of thousands of workers across the country walked off the job Monday as part of the “Strike for Black Lives” in support of the nationwide uprising against racism and police brutality. Workers demanded the companies they work for do more to dismantle white supremacy, economic inequality, and to address the public health emergencies facing Black and Brown communities. In Washington, D.C., demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill to call for the passage of the HEROES Act, a coronavirus relief package approved by the Democrat-controlled House. This is McDonald’s employee Wanda Lavender, who joined the action in Wisconsin.

Wanda Lavender: “Like many Black workers who are struggling, who are stuck in low-paying jobs, I keep going to work through this pandemic. I can’t work my job from home, from the safety of my home, and I can’t afford to take time off. And a few times, I’ve been scared that I had COVID-19 myself. Even though I was feeling sick, coughing my lungs out, my job told me that I had to come in. They said, 'If you take sick leave, you don't have a job to come back to.’”

A Carrot for the Bosses and the Stick for the Workers

The dominant public discourse in this society is based on the proposition that the rich need incentives, while workers and poor people must be disciplined. Income support for those outside the workforce has always been provided reluctantly and inadequately, while state handouts to employers and corporations are always lavish and provided with very few conditions. The response of the Trudeau government, in the face of the pandemic lockdown, is no exception to this longstanding approach.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau has now told us that the Canada Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB) will be ending in September. Implying that those forced to turn to this benefit have been kept in a state of pampered dependency, Yahoo Finance >reports that “Canadians must now prepare to wean themselves off the popular CERB program.” At the same time, however, employers, far from facing any “weaning” process, are to have their benefit system extended and enriched. As he announced the end of the CERB, Morneau also informed us that the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) will continue until at least December and the rules will be relaxed to ensure there is even more room at the trough. Up until now, in order to have 75 percent of its wage bill covered out of public monies, a company would have to show a 30 percent decline in revenues, but this condition will now be dropped and the change will be retroactive to July 5.

Lockdown impacts

CERB had to be hastily improvised in conditions of pandemic-induced dislocation because the established system of social benefits in Canada has been decimated by a decades-long austerity agenda. Allegations that it is a lavish or generous form of emergency provision are entirely preposterous. It has only blunted, rather than alleviated, an explosion of hardship and hunger that has developed during the pandemic lockdown and that will continue in the conditions of mass unemployment that follow it. Three million jobs were lost in Canada during March and April and a further two-and-a-half million workers had their hours of work reduced. The unemployment rate of 13.7 percent that was reported on June 5 had still only fallen to 12.3 percent as of July 10. This is hardly an indication that there is no longer a need for emergency provision measures.

Food insecure Canadians numbered 4.4 million even before the pandemic, and the months of lockdown have made that much worse. Between mid-March and the end of April food bank use across the country tripled. So many tenants have been unable to pay their rent during the lockdown period that the threat of mass evictions and an explosion of homelessness hangs over many communities. In Toronto, it is estimated that up to 260,000 people could be “delinquent” in their rent. A brief prepared by the Toronto Foundation affirms that, “Considering that the Landlord Tenant Board typically sees 4,000 eviction cases a month across the entire province, the scale of this issue compared to the typical is unprecedented.” This is the context in which the Trudeau government will be “weaning” people off the CERB, which provides $2,000 a month (with a maximum of 24 weeks of benefits), when the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $2,300......

Faculty, Staff Protest University of Toronto's Plan for Fall

https://www.utfa.org/content/faculty-staff-protest-university-toronto-s-...

"University of Toronto staff unions and the U of T Faculty Association (UTFA) are protesting the university's plans for in-person classes in the fall, which contrast with other Ontario institutions that have chosen to teach the semester online. The groups fear U of T's plan could compromise student, faculty and staff health and safety, and are calling for greater adoption of online education. Five U of T unions and the UTFA launched a petition called 'U of T's Reopening Plan is NOT Safe Enough. We Need To Take Fall 2020 Online..."

"Four years ago, Toronto had 483 children living in its homeless shelters. This year there were more than a thousand. Then COVID hit..."

https://twitter.com/cathycrowe/status/1292111691854028805

And in the way of such things here, few Canadians that weren't homeless paid the slightest attention.