LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a legal advocacy organization, filed a complaint with the New York State Attorney General against Lidl, a German grocery company which recently acquired Best Market, for the company's compliance with labor protocols mandated for essential businesses. Employees are demanding Lidl for consistent cleaning, full information on and access to paid leave, and hazard pay.
The Shift Project's survey examines how service industry workers are being protected from COVID by employers. The survey finds that about two-thirds of employees said cleaning in their workplaces had improved, but companies are still not doing enough to provide protective equipment such as masks and gloves.
This tracker, containing data from The Shift Project, examines which companies exempt from the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act have announced paid sick leave policies.
In their op-ed, Kristen Harknett and Daniel Schneider outline service industry workers continued lack of adequate access to paid sick leave, despite the health risks posed by COVID. Despite national efforts to expand paid sick leave, such as through The Federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), these have fallen short due to exemption, leaving individual states to enact orders.
Due to COVID, there has been a reigniting of labor movement across California, and the rest of the country. Unions are pushing for new policies that cover worker safety, pay, and benefits.
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), a union that represents 1.3 million people, is calling for grocery store workers to be temporarily designated as first responders or emergency personnel.
According to The Shift Project's study, only 8% of workers can take off at least 14 days—the length of a recommended COVID-19 quarantine—and even fewer report being able to take more days. The report also notes how many employees report having to skip medical care due to affordability issues (27%), how many have faced hunger hardships (34%), and how many do not have $400 available for an emergency (45%).
Brookings outlines what "just-in-time" scheduling practices are, which groups they affect, across which industries, the consequences on personal and family life, and what is being done across cities, states, and companies create more fair scheduling.
Violet Moya, a Texas resident, describes her spontaneous firing from Sephora and how, from her point of view, the incident exemplifies that Sephora never really cared about employees like her. She describes herself as one of the hourly service sector workers that wanted more hours, but instead was given unstable schedules and few benefits.
