Link Roundup September 2021

[wepon]

Washington state employees, health care workers must be vaccinated against COVID

Some public-employee union representatives also voiced concerns, including those representing police, jail and correctional officers. Dennis Folk, president of the King County Corrections Guild, which represents staff at the county’s jails, estimated that only 40% to 50% of his union’s members are vaccinated.

Arkansas doctor who prescribed ivermectin to jail detainees for COVID now under investigation by medical board

Eva Madison, a county elected official, had raised the issue during a finance and budget committee meeting Tuesday night. Jail officials were presenting their 2022 budget, which included the jail's physician who is now being investigated, Dr. Rob Karas, asking for a 10% increase in the medical services contract.

Arkansas jail inmates say they were unknowingly given unproven COVID-19 treatment ivermectin: 'They were running experiments on us'

Several inmates from the Washington County jail said they were told the pills they were given to treat COVID-19 were antibiotics, steroids, and vitamins.

No contracts, no snacks: Everything you need to know about the Nabisco strike

On Aug. 10, about 200 workers represented by the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) union went on strike in Portland. They were followed by workers in Colorado, Virginia, Illinois and — most recently — Georgia.

The Supreme Court Will Allow Evictions To Resume. It Could Affect Millions Of Tenants

The CDC's latest move to modify and extend its federal eviction order followed a week in which the moratorium became a political football in Washington. After Congress failed to extend it past July 31, that led Democratic congressional leaders and progressives to call on Biden to extend the moratorium through Oct. 18. But on Aug. 2, Gene Sperling, who oversees the White House's rollout of the COVID relief, said Biden "has double, triple, quadruple checked" on whether he could unilaterally extend the eviction moratorium, but determined it was not possible.

Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is

Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events. Infection-prevention measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more transmissible Delta variant has meant sharply decreasing manufacturing capacity and reducing manpower at busy container ports. (Vietnam has fully vaccinated a single-digit percentage of its population, while Malaysia is beginning to recover from its own massive Delta spike, in spite of good vaccination rates.)

Rikers chief medical officer: Jail needs ‘outside help’

Advocates have called on de Blasio to release a portion of the approximately 6,000 inmates on the island, including many who are pre-trail detainees. So far, the administration has not said it is considering that as an option.

CEOs Who Called for Climate Action Now Scrambling to Block Climate Action

“Make no mistake, these policies are a step backward for the U.S. economy that will harm all Americans,” reads a statement earlier this month from the Business Roundtable, a lobby group that Gelsinger belongs to along with top executives at corporations like Apple, Microsoft, BlackRock, and Disney. The Roundtable is reportedly waging “a significant, multifaceted campaign” costing potentially millions of dollars to defeat the corporate tax hikes which would help fund and make possible Biden’s Build Back Better plan — even as its individual members say there is nothing more important than stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions.

How the video game industry can unionize in the wake of Activision Blizzard

A union provides a floor of economic security for workers who face systemic oppression (BIPOC, queer people, and women, in particular). A union allows workers to level the playing field and rebalance the inequitable power dynamic where executives have unilateral power over our work and our lives. A union can result in better pay, better working conditions, and better healthcare.

Free rapid at-home coronavirus tests could make pandemic life easier

Scientists in this country and public health leaders elsewhere agree. Epidemiologist Michael Mina has been advocating massive investment in rapid at-home testing since last year. Germany has provided free tests to everyone since winter (though is considering ending the program). As of April, you can get a seven-pack free at any pharmacy in the U.K. There’s no real reason that we couldn’t implement similar policies in the United States, but we haven’t: Instead, one of the makers of rapid tests told their factory to destroy inventory and scale back production as of June, convinced that the pandemic was over. Now they are hard to find, even though interest in them is surging based on recent search statistics.

Apple just banned a pay equity Slack channel but lets fun dogs channel lie

The company’s rules for the in-office chat app say that “Slack channels for activities and hobbies not recognized as Apple Employee clubs or Diversity Network Associations (DNAs) aren’t permitted and shouldn’t be created.” But that rule has not been evenly enforced. Currently, Apple employees have popular Slack channels to discuss #fun-dogs (more than 5,000 members), #gaming (more than 3,000 members), and #dad-jokes (more than 2,000 members). On August 18th, the company approved a channel called #community-foosball. The cat and dog channels are not part of official clubs, and all of these channels were specifically created to talk about non-work activities.

Google workers demand back pay for temps company underpaid for years

Google employees and subcontracted workers are demanding that the company pay back wages to temporary workers, following a Guardian report that revealed Google had knowingly and illegally underpaid thousands of temps for years.

Warnings instead of prosecution for Class A drug users

Prosecutors can also refer people accused of drugs offences for "diversion", where they are dealt with by social work teams or other agencies rather than the criminal justice system.

One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia

The claim is attributed to War of Extermination, a compendium of academic essays originally published in 1995. Coffman knows the book is legit, because she happens to have a copy on loan from the library. When she goes to the cited page, she finds a paragraph that appears to confirm all the Wikipedia article’s wild claims. But then she reads the first sentence of the next paragraph: “This is, of course, nonsense.”

An Ancient Tablet, Stolen Then Acquired By Hobby Lobby, Will Be Returned To Iraq

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago is headed back to Iraq. Known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, it was acquired by the company Hobby Lobby in 2014 for display in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. U.S. authorities seized it in 2019, saying it was stolen and needed to be returned.