The Covid Pandemic Sparked A Workers' Rights Movement, But Congress Hasn't Caught Up

- One Fair Wage President Saru Jayaraman speaks during a rally to call for addition relief for restaurants to allow them to pay workers a full minimum wage with tips at the House Triangle of the U.S. Capitol, Wash., D.C., Feb. 8, 2022. - Ed.
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- Daily Kos, March 23, 2022. This article was originally published at 'Prism.'

Two years ago this month, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since then, the virus has killed over 960,000 people as well as infecting nearly 80 million and counting in the U.S., prompting a public health crisis that has mobilized workers to organize for safer conditions, higher pay, and better benefits amid the increased risks. Worker-activists are making waves on union campaigns, organizing sickouts and walkouts, or quitting en masse in a de facto declaration to employers they need better pay and benefits both during the pandemic and into the future.

But although workers have advocated for federal laws that would buttress their demands by mandating things like a $15 federal minimum wage, more paid time off options, virus protections through better air filtration, and—perhaps the most adamant demand across the board—a seat at the negotiating table in order to create national standards for employers, so far federal worker-protective legislation hasn’t become part of the new normal. And workers, in their day-to-day grind, are still the ones dealing with the gaps.

WORKERS LEFT BEHIND BY CONGRESS: “Nothing really has changed, to be honest,” said Courtenay Brown, an Amazon Fresh fulfillment center worker in New Jersey. Amazon has “gotten better at hiding and sneaking around and avoiding things.” Her hourly wages have risen to just under $21 an hour after she started at $13.85 five years ago. Despite those increases, paid leave policies remain abysmal for Brown at 48 hours a year—fewer than 5 work days when accounting for 10-hour shifts, according to Brown. And as if working at the fulfillment center during massive coronavirus outbreaks wasn’t enough, Brown’s mother was diagnosed with cancer last summer and died in September after catching COVID-19.

“I was a complete mess,” Brown, 31, says. In the months leading up to her mother’s death, she took off some unpaid time through Amazon’s cost-savings option that permits managers to send workers home early without getting paid—known as voluntary time off. "I was trying to spend as much time with my mom, & trying to help my dad & be there for my brothers.” When her mother died, she took 3 days of paid bereavement leave & another month of unpaid time before returning to work in Oct. She was glad she could take that time, partly due to an empathetic boss. But the financial hole was brutal. “We’re still paying for it now,” she said. “Honestly, I never even got the chance to actually grieve.”

Under an emergency COVID-19 relief package in 2020, employers with 500 or fewer employees were required to provide up to 2 weeks of paid sick leave if an employee had COVID-19, but the requirement expired at the end of 2020.

Mandatory paid sick leave policies exist in 14 states & Washington, D.C., but the lack of a federal standard leaves it up to local agencies to inform workers about such laws to begin with...

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/23/2087205/-The-pandemic-sparked-a-workers-rights-movement-but-Congress-hasn-t-caught-up