Link Roundup January 2024

36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burned out by overtime

But several labor unions say employers should be doing more to fill the persistent vacancies, like raising wages or improving working conditions to attract new workers, rather than placing the burden on their existing employees. In some cases, labor groups say employers are using overtime as a cost-saving measure. “What we have seen is an aggressive normalization of understaffing,” said Michelle Mahon, assistant director of nursing practice for the union National Nurses United. “The hospital industry has been capitalizing on this narrative that there’s a nursing shortage, when in fact there is not. There are a million nurses who are licensed to practice in this country who are not working in nursing largely because of understaffing and poor working conditions.”

Housing is now unaffordable for a record half of all U.S. renters, study finds

In fact, more such households and many others also now struggle to pay rent, according to a newly released report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. It finds that in 2022, as rents spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, a record half of U.S. renters paid more than 30% of their income for rent and utilities. Nearly half of those people were severely cost-burdened, paying more than 50% of their income.

After Two Decades Undercover, She’s Ready to Tell the Real Story of Human Trafficking

What they are seeing is a lot more insidious and a lot more homegrown. A report released in 2018 by the State Department ranked the U.S. as one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking. While the Department of Justice has estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into this country every year, this number pales in comparison to the number of American minors who are trafficked within it: A 2009 Department of Health and Human Services review of human trafficking into and within the United States found that roughly 199,000 American minors are sexually exploited each year, and that between 244,000 and 325,000 American youths are considered to be at risk of being trafficked specifically in the sex industry. Heartbreakingly, many of these children are victimized not by strangers who’ve abducted them from mall parking lots but rather by people they know and trust: Studies have found that as much as 44 percent of victims are trafficked by family members, most often parents (and not infrequently parents who were trafficked themselves). Between 2011 and 2020, there was an 84 percent increase in the number of people prosecuted for a federal human-trafficking offense. Of the defendants charged in 2020, 92 percent were male, 63 percent were white, 66 percent had no prior convictions, and 95 percent were U.S. citizens.

A step-by-step guide to finding a therapist

Some county mental health departments and non-profit organizations like Mental Health America provide free and low-cost therapy for people on Medicaid, people who receive social security for disability, and those without insurance. That's what's called "community mental health, as opposed to traditional outpatient or inpatient treatment," Nguyen explains. Some health centers that receive funding from the federal government also offer low-cost or free mental health care. Find federally-funded health centers in your zip code using this searchable directory.

As diversity, equity and inclusion comes under legal attack, companies quietly alter their programs

The Wisconsin Institute filed another lawsuit in October, this one on behalf of two construction firms. The lawsuit seeks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which dates back to the Reagan administration and requires that 10% of funds authorized for highway and transit federal assistance programs be expended with small businesses owned by women, minorities or other socially and economically disadvantaged people.

Inside the final hours of Ron DeSantis' ill-fated campaign

DeSantis announced his departure in a post on X, in which he also endorsed Trump. "They have had obvious huge policy differences, but he sees Nikki as a corporate sellout and globalist and, outside of Covid, philosophically agrees with Trump,” the adviser said. “That decision needed to be made, as far as he is concerned.”

To Lower Your Medicare Drug Costs, Ask Your Pharmacist For The Cash Price

Kala Shankle, policy and regulatory affairs director for the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents 22,000 independent pharmacies, says insurers have punished pharmacists who violate gag orders by dropping them from the plan's network.

A secret shelf of banned books thrives in a Texas school, under the nose of censors

Kasey Meehan of the free speech advocacy group PEN America says she's watched things in Texas escalate. She points to a teacher fired last year for sharing a graphic novel with her students that showed Anne Frank having a romantic daydream about another girl. Another teacher featured on an NBC podcast left her job under pressure after making literature available to students featuring a positive transgender character.

A college in upheaval: War on ‘woke’ sparks fear in Florida

In January, DeSantis and his allies overhauled the 13-member Board of Trustees and installed a majority of conservative figures. The new trustees promptly fired the college president and replaced her with a Republican politician, the first of several administrators to lose their jobs. Next, they dismantled the office of diversity and equity. They have not revealed future plans but trustees have posted vague warnings on social media like: “You will see changes in 120 days.” Changes so far have come in tandem with a new bill DeSantis unveiled Jan. 31 aimed at overhauling higher education in Florida. The bill would ban gender studies majors and minors, eliminate diversity programs and any hiring based on diversity, weaken tenure protections and put all hiring decisions in the hands of each university’s board of trustees.

New College in Exile: Hampshire College

During the protest, which she says swelled to about 40 students and faculty members, Harrity — then the president of New College's student senate — felt obligated to act as “the voice of the student body.” She approached Rufo: “I tell him my full name, my title, and I say, ‘You must listen to us.’” As the police dragged her back, Harrity says, she spat on the ground twice, once near Rufo’s feet. Two months later, Harrity learned from a Tampa Bay Times reporter that Rufo had posted a document with her name and birthdate on it to his over 500,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter, pressing charges of battery, alleging Harrity spit on him. Harrity says she got a lawyer, who was able to strike a deal: If Harrity left New College and left Rufo alone, he would drop the charges.

Science thinks it’s unbiased. Queer scientists know that’s not true

QTPOC also face additional challenges. Homophobia, transphobia, and racism are all interrelated, and when marginalized identities are combined, people at the intersection of these identities are subject to unique forms of discrimination. One student told me that being trans and Latinx was so difficult in his animal science department that he dropped out. “Many of my peers in animal science came from farming backgrounds and I don’t think it was healthy for me to hear people talk about Mexicans like they are property,” he said. “One time my friends and I were attacked… and it felt like a pretty charged incident since all of us were Latinx or Black and visibly gay.”