#workplace protections

[absurdlakefront]

Supreme Court rules existing civil rights law protects gay and lesbian workers

The decision said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person's sex, also covers sexual orientation.

Some good news!

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

Protecting Farmworkers Is Paramount for our Food Supplies

People laboring to get food from farm to fridge deserve basic workplace protections and equitable access to healthcare.

While food chain workers have always been essential in myriad ways, historically their health and safety has not been prioritized. The COVID crisis exacerbates this underlying inequity. As COVID-19 cases and deaths skyrocket in previously unaffected rural areas, people laboring to get food from farm to fridge deserve basic workplace protections and equitable access to healthcare in the event that they get sick. The CARES Act—Congress’s third stimulus package in response to the coronavirus pandemic—lays some important foundations on which agencies and Congress can build to ensure that happens, but much more needs to be done in the next stimulus package being negotiated now to adequately protect workers and therefore our food supply, meet everyone’s basic needs, and keep food on the table by preventing major supply disruptions in the future.

[sataniccapitalist]

Will New Mexico's Historic Labor Win Spark Change in Other States?

The exclusion of domestic and care workers from labor laws is racist and sexist and must end, say advocates.

[ryansallans]

Almost all transgender employees experience harassment or mistreatment on the job, a new study shows

Transgender respondents said they had to hide their gender identity, delay their transition, or quit their job due to fear of negative repercussions.

[jennyboom21]

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 HAPPY PRIDE! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Justices rule LGBT people protected from job discrimination

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimi

[sataniccapitalist]

Marriott Hotel Strikers Set a New Industry Standard

Employees stopped Marriott from making them choose between wages and benefits.

[designforwork]

Workers’ control may seem a distant dream, but it may be that – as Marx envisaged – the contours of an alternative mode of organising work and life can be seen already within the innovations of capital.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/adam-fishwick/organising-against-gig-economy-lessons-from-latin-america

Not to get too much down a Marxist or soapboxing rabbit hole, this Open Democracy post looks elsewhere -- specifically, Latin America -- at solutions to the gig economy and workers rights that may be applied in North America.

It is this option – of coming together through a shared, precarious experience of work and developing a collective, cooperative form of work organisation – that represents a clear possibility for contesting the vagaries of the gig economy. ...

Cooperatives in the US, for example, have been successful in challenging the dominance of Uber. Taxi cooperatives formed in Austin and in Denver, have shown how drivers can compete with – and win against – the ride-sharing firms of the gig economy. Moreover, the precarious conditions of work experienced across the gig economy are clearly analogous to the experiences of precarious work in and across Latin America and so they can offer some important strategic lessons for organising.

...

As capitalism changes – pushing heightened insecurity and deepening exploitation – so too do the foundations for collective actions and the terms on which workers can begin to fight back.

(A related NY Times post from Sept. 2015.)