#COVID 19 cleaning services

[gvcleaningservices]

Looking for reliable commercial cleaning near you? We offer superior cleaning services tailored for businesses in your area. Our expert team ensures spotless results, promoting a clean and healthy work environment. Contact us for professional commercial cleaning solutions right at your doorstep.

[market-insider]

Investigating the Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning Services Market: Dust to Shine

The global carpet & upholstery cleaning services market is expected to reach USD 83.50 billion by 2030. The primary growth drivers are the demand for clean and healthy living spaces, growth in the housing and commercial industry, increasing disposable income, growing old age population, and rising prevalence of allergies and respiratory disorders. 10% of all U.S. households engaged a cleaning service in 2021, according to the US Department of Commerce.

Gain deeper insights on the Car Detailing Services market and receive your free copy with TOC now @: Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Services Market Report

Moreover, with the aging population, more people require assistance with cleaning and maintaining their homes. Limited mobility leading to difficulties in cleaning living spaces coupled with susceptibility towards respiratory issues and allergies create a need for carpet & upholstery cleaning services among older people to maintain a clean and healthy living environment. According to the World Health Organization, the percentage of people over 60 in the globe will nearly double from 12% to 22% between 2015 and 2050.

With the expansion of the commercial sector, including office buildings, hotels, resorts, cafes, retail stores, and healthcare facilities, there is an increased demand for commercial carpet and upholstery cleaning services. This segment is expected to continue growing in the future, driven by increasing demand for specialized services, adoption of new technologies, outsourcing of cleaning services, and growth in the commercial sector.

[licleaning]

The Best Resident Cleaning Services in NYC By Immaculate Cleaning

In summary, Immaculate Cleaning Services is your go-to company for professional resident cleaning services in NYC.

[jigsawfacilities]

In today's hectic lifestyle, we often miss out on important things such as cleaning our homes thoroughly. However, jigsaw Facilities have made this easier for you. With our decades of experience, we offer Deep cleaning services to your house/ office. Now, we are offering free Covid cleaning services in Manchester. Request your free quote now. Terms and conditions applied.

[egreenclean]

Asking for a house cleaning service has a lot of benefits.

It's normal while cleaning by oneself to overlook little details or unanticipated dirt. You won't miss any cleaning if you hire a professional to handle it. Professional cleaners will take care of the details and infrequently cleaned regions. Leaving dust and filth behind can make people sick, and a lot of people have allergic reactions to indoor dust, so it's essential to clean everything thoroughly.

Household tasks take less time as a result. Many people usually spend plenty of time cleaning up after performing household tasks, especially those working throughout the day or having children. You can save time by hiring a cleaning service rather than doing the chores yourself. You'll feel better because they'll clean even the tiniest spaces. There are many advantages to cleaning your home by professionals. These include reducing the amount of time spent on housework and avoiding cleaning blunders.

Reason for hiring house cleaning service

Disinfection is one of the words that we all use the most frequently in the COVID 19 era.What about cleaning your home? Well, it still holds a lot of significance. Your top priority should be cleaning your house. Professional cleaning service providers take all precautionary measures to thoroughly clean and sanitize your living environment.

Hire a trustworthy home cleaning service if you want to create a clean environment in your home where you can live a healthy and balanced lifestyle. It simplifies and enriches your life while easing the burden of daily existence.

When you engage professional cleaning service, you can rely on them to thoroughly clean your property. In addition, hiring a skilled service provider reduces the amount of scrubbing, dusting, and vacuuming you have to do.

Employing expert cleaners also enables you to take advantage of numerous health advantages, like reduced allergy symptoms, thorough cleaning, dust mite elimination, and more. Since these experts are knowledgeable in the most efficient methods for removing germs, you don't need to worry about mold. 

If you want to preserve cleanliness and a healthy environment in your living space, you cannot resist hiring a professional home cleaning service. 

Consider EcoGREEN Cleaning Service

Offering all of our customers a dependable, trusted, and inexpensive service is something we believe strongly in. Our reputation for excellence has been established via steady growth. We promise to provide you with the greatest service at the most competitive cost. EcoGREEN Cleaning provides flawless service from beginning to end. For house, commercial, and other types of clients in Vancouver, we provide a wide range of cleaning services.

We spend the time to properly comprehend each client's requirements in order to ensure the best possible customized cleaning services for their properties. Our cleaning staff are skilled, driven, knowledgeable, and qualified. All of our on-staff cleaners have undergone background checks and are reliable. We always ensure that you receive the best cleaners who are also welcoming and qualified.

Our company only uses green products. To preserve the environment, secure the health of our clients, and safeguard our cleaners, we exclusively use environmentally friendly cleaning substances and products.

Depending on the things you need cleaned, cleaning time will vary. After visiting your location for a live inspection, our experts will inform you of the anticipated time frame.

We will have everything we need to perform and finish our cleaning operations when our cleaner comes up.

Consider lowering your household workload in order to improve your quality of life. Maximize the use of your precious time. Make time for your family as well as for yourself. At EcoGREEN, we focus on ease and top-notch services to provide peace of mind. Depending on the things you need to be cleaned, cleaning time will vary. After visiting your location for a live inspection, our experts will inform you of the anticipated time frame.

Disinfection and Sanitation services

To thoroughly eradicate dangerous bacteria and germs from the workplace or home and stop them from spreading throughout the building and spreading viral diseases, it can be beneficial to hire a disinfection service.

In order to sanitise your entire home, EcoGREEN home cleaning services in Vancouver have all the necessary disinfection and sanitising solutions as well as knowledge of all the methods to disinfect widespread and hard-to-reach locations.

[izooks]

Some of Joe Biden’s accomplishments:

**Domestic policy**

* **American Rescue Plan (2021)**: Provided $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief, including direct payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, and funding for vaccines and testing.

* **Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021)**: Allocated $1.2 trillion for infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, broadband, and clean energy initiatives.

* **Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (2022)**: Expanded background checks for gun purchases and provided funding for mental health services.

* **Child Tax Credit Expansion (2021-2022)**: Temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit to provide up to $3,600 per child in monthly payments.

* **Affordable Care Act Expansion (2021)**: Made health insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans by reducing premiums and expanding subsidies.

**Foreign Policy**

* **Withdrawal from Afghanistan (2021)**: Ended the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

* **Re-joining the Paris Agreement (2021)**: Re-committed the United States to global efforts to address climate change.

* **Strengthening Alliances with NATO and the EU (2021-present)**: Repaired relationships with key European allies after strained relations during the Trump administration.

* **Supporting Ukraine in the Ukraine-Russia War (2022-present)**: Provided military, humanitarian, and diplomatic support to Ukraine in its defense against Russia's invasion.

* **Nuclear Deal with Iran (2023)**: Revived negotiations with Iran on a comprehensive nuclear deal, aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

**Other Notable Accomplishments**

* **Appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court (2022)**: Made history by being the first Black woman appointed to the nation's highest court.

* **Signing the Respect for Marriage Act (2022)**: Ensured federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages.

* **Establishing the Office of the National Cyber Director (2021)**: Coordinated federal efforts to combat cybersecurity threats.

* **Creating the COVID-19 National Preparedness Plan (2021)**: Developed a comprehensive strategy to respond to future pandemics.

* **Launching the Cancer Moonshot (2022)**: Re-energized the government's efforts to find a cure for cancer.

[probablyasocialecologist]

“The ‘war on drugs’ may be understood to a significant extent as a war on people. Its impact has been greatest on those who live in poverty, and it frequently overlaps with discrimination directed at marginalised groups, minoritiesand Indigenous Peoples. In our reporting and experience, we have found that such discriminatory impact is a common element across drug policies with regard to the widest range of human rights, including the right to personal liberty; freedom from torture, ill-treatment and forced labour; fair trial rights; the right to health, including access to essential medicines, palliative care, comprehensive drug prevention and education, drug treatment, and harm reduction; the right to adequate housing; freedom from discrimination and the right to equal treatment before the law; right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; cultural rights and freedoms of expression, religion, assembly and association. Globally, drug control has had massive costs for the dignity, humanity and freedom of people of African descent, with reports showing that people of African descent face disproportionate and unjust law enforcement interventions, arrests and incarceration for drug-related offences. In various countries, the ‘war on drugs’ has been more effective as a system of racial control than as a tool to reduce drug markets. Policing interventions based on racial profiling remain widespread, whilst access to evidence-based treatment and harm reduction for people of African descent remains critically low. Around the world, women who use drugs face significant stigma and discrimination in accessing harm reduction programmes, drug dependence treatment and basic health care. Although one in three people who use drugs are women, women constitute only one in five people in treatment. Women are also disproportionately affected by criminalisation and incarceration, with 35% of women in prison worldwide having been convicted of a drug-related offence compared to 19% of men. The causes of women’s interaction with the criminal justice system in relation to drugs are complex, often linked to other factors such as poverty and coercion, and may reflect systemic gender inequality in society more broadly. Of note, most women in prison for drug related offences have little education. Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose capital punishment for the ‘most serious crimes’, meaning crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing. Drug offences clearly do not meet this threshold. However, drug-related offences are still punishable by death in over 30 countries, and human rights experts have raised concerns about evidence of its discriminatory impact on individuals belonging to minorities. Everyone without exception has the right to life-saving harm reduction interventions, which are essential for the protection of the right to health of people who use drugs. However, according to UN data, only 1 in 8 people with drug dependence have access to appropriate treatment, and the coverage of harm reduction services remains very low. The situation is particularly critical for women, LGBTIQ+ persons, and other marginalised groups, for whom harm reduction and treatment services may not be adapted or respond to their specific needs. Women and LGBTIQ+ persons also face even higher levels of stigma, including self-stigma, and discrimination than men who use drugs.

As the world grows older, drug use among people over 65 has also increased. The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health and well-being of older persons, and studies show an increased use of pain relievers, tranquillizers, and sedatives among this age group. Older drug users are also more often using the dark web, social media, and online forums to obtain illicit substances resulting in a rise of drug-related deaths among older populations. The criminalisation of substances traditionally used by Indigenous Peoples such as the coca leaf can also result in the suppression, undermining and marginalization of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and medicine, which has wide-ranging health impacts and is rooted in discriminatory hierarchies and conceptions. Forced eradication of crops, including through the aerial spraying of highly hazardous pesticides, can cause serious harm to the environment and clean water, as well as to the health and welfare of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples that might be affected by these and other drug control operations must be meaningfully consulted, and guarantees should be given that their lives, cultural practices, lands and natural resources are not violated. Criminal laws and the punitive use of administrative and other sanctions stigmatise already marginalised populations. Criminalisation results in significant barriers to access to health services (including those for HIV and palliative care) and in other human rights violations. As called for by the UN system Common Position on drug-related matters, drug use and possession for personal use should be decriminalised as a matter of urgency. Drug use or dependence are never a sufficient justification for detaining a person. Compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation centres need to be closed and replaced with voluntary, evidence-informed, and rights-based health and social services in the community.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Killing of Lacey Fletcher: She moulded into the sofa.

Lacey Fletcher was autistic and was reportedly bullied in high school. Her parents Sheila and Clay Fletcher later withdrew her from school in favor of homeschooling. Sheila and Clay were known to complain about Lacey, stating that they did not want to be caregivers when they became parents.

When Lacey was 24 years old,a decline in her cognitive health led to her being unable to leave the house.She became confined to the family's leather couch. Instead of seeking medical assistance for Lacey, Sheila and Clay left Lacey on the couch. Sheila and Clay left her on the couch and placed towels next to it, so Lacey's faeces and urine would be easier for them to clean. The rest of their house was well-cleaned, except for the couch, where Lacey remained unable to move from the couch on her own. Over time, Lacey's clothes began to no longer fit her, simply draping off of her body. Clay and Sheila would frequently leave for days on end to go on vacation, leaving her there to starve.

Over time her muscles atrophied, and vermin began to eat at her extremities under the couch leaving mouse droppings and maggots to thrive in the space. There were signs she had been trying to lift herself out of the couch to avoid the pain, but due to severe malnourishment and atrophy in her leg muscles, she was unable to. Her body fused into the leather couch cushions as she was covered in urine and feces, as well as maggots living in her hair and inside her. She suffered starvation and bone infections, leading finally to sepsis which caused her death. She had faeces and couch cushion both under her fingernails and in her stomach contents, showing she had attempted to save herself by eating her surroundings before dying on the couch whilst or shortly after Clay and Sheila vacationed for the holidays. Lacey was found at autopsy to have COVID-19.

On January 3, 2022, Sheila called 911 and stated that she had found Lacey dead on their couch. Emergency services and the coroner arrived at the home and discovered Lacey's dead, partially clothed and malnourished 96-pound (44 kg) body fused into the family's leather couch, with clear signs of neglect. It was determined that Lacey had been dead for one to two days before Sheila had finally decided to call 911. Sheila and Clay lied to police that it had been Lacey's own decision to lie in those conditions for 12 years. Her autopsy ruled her death a homicide. Investigators stated they could not sleep or eat after investigating the killing due to the mental distress that the gruesome nature of the case caused them.

On March 20, 2024, they were sentenced to 20 years in prison, with a consecutive 20-year suspended sentence

[thelastharbinger]

Did not have the U.S. government holding hearings on previously classified information and lying making confirmations under oath that they are in possession of alien bodies and ufos in order to distract from the fact that covid-19 is still the leading cause of death in children, the cost of living is astronomical, cop city is well underway despite Atlanta residents overwhelmingly crying out against it, we are experiencing the hottest & deadliest temperatures on record, the state of Florida trying to rewrite history to say that slavery was just a mutually beneficial unpaid internship, trans lives and rights are under attack, anti drag laws, FLINT MICHIGAN STILL DOES NOT HAVE CLEAN DRINKING WATER, anti-discrimination laws being reversed, Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, Roe v. Wade undone, universal free school lunches are on the ballot, ongoing mass shootings, climate change, big pharma killing off people by withholding live saving drugs at ungodly market prices, the erasure of separation of church and state, AI surveillance being implemented to detect fare evasion for increasingly costly public transport services, the rise of fascim, proud boys showing up with military grade weapons at libraries and day care centers, the permitted attempted coup of the capital, labor union strikes happening all over the country, people dying of heat in Texas because evil landlords want to cut off cooling over an unpaid $51 utility bill, train derailments causing toxic waste spills, corruption within the highest court in the land, homelessness rates the highest its ever been, migrants and asylum seekers being kicked out of temporary housing, the cost of food, book bans, Miranda Rights no longer being stated, mayors deciding to no longer publicly disclose how many people are dying pre-trial in detention facilities, federal minimum wage still $7.25, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, oil pipeline constructions on native lands, something like 30-50% of the nation's drinking water contaminated with forever chemicals, the rich remaining untaxed, biden going back on his campaign promises to forgive all student debt, still no free universal healthcare, ICE deportations increasing under biden admin, the u.s. yet maintaining colonies, teens and women getting jail time for miscarriages and abortions, 100 companies globally responsible for 70 or 80-something percent of all CO2 emissions, we are living in a police state, diseases resurfacing after years with no cases due to rising temps, death penalty, public services being defunded to increase military and police spending budgets, and abusers suing victims for defamation cases in court so that they legally cannot talk about it, and setting a dangerous precedent in the process in my 2023 bingo card but here we god damn are.

[gumjrop]

The Weather

While not in the US, an article from CBC News in Canada offers a look into the upcoming respiratory illness season. Data from Internal Alberta Health Services shows that patients hospitalized with COVID passed 900 and “roughly doubled” in a month. Accurate data are hard to find, however, as the provincial government changed how COVID statistics are reported. Cameron Westhead, second vice-president with United Nurses of Alberta, commented, “This government likes to talk about personal responsibility and making decisions that are best for yourself and your family. But we don’t have the data to make those kinds of decisions.” In addition, an outbreak in the community has the potential to overwhelm hospital systems again. Isolation requirements, PPE needs, and healthcare worker burnout are all major concerns with COVID patients. Rather than stripping healthcare of the precautions we need to control the ongoing pandemic, we must advocate for more support for healthcare workers, masks in healthcare, and acknowledgment of the severity of COVID infections.

Wastewater

We continue to wait for Verily, the organization taking over the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) contract from Biobot, to provide a readable Nationwide representation of the current wastewater levels. According to WastewaterSCAN, COVID wastewater concentration is medium nationally, apart from high levels in the Northeast. As of October 16, 2023, the national average of wastewater levels is 216.9 PMMoV Normalized. Regionally, the Midwest is 317.0 PMMoV Normalized, the Northeast is 589.82 PMMoV Normalized, the South is 152.3 PMMoV Normalized, and the West is 164.7 PMMoV Normalized. We emphasize that Wastewater SCAN has fewer wastewater sites represented as compared to Biobot. Combined with some other caveats, including the difficulty of interpreting their plots, we remain skeptical of Wastewater SCAN’s data.

The above graphic shows the overall trend for the United States. The y-axis is a scale for the quantity of nucleic acids, PMMoV Normalized (x1 million). While concentrations have been trending downward–with a possible recent uptick–we urge the importance of layers of protection. As the Northern Hemisphere enters winter and many folks celebrate holidays, please protect yourself and others with masking, distancing, clean air, vaccines, and other layers of protection. For more on layers of protection, refer to this writeup on PeoplesCDC.org.

Vaccines

NPR reports that parents are finding it difficult to find pediatric doses of the new COVID vaccines for their children. The CDC reports that pediatric doses are available, but several factors are limiting their spread. Faulty websites or outdated information from public and private organizations, shipping delays or errors in the number of doses shipped, and issues with public and private insurance all contribute to a lackadaisical approach to public health. Parents are frustrated at the situation and scared for their kids, especially as we enter flu season. We hope that if you haven’t been able to receive an updated 2023-2024 COVID vaccine, you are able to access a dose soon. If you have questions about insurance coverage, visit the KFF information page here. For children covered under state insurance, see information about the Vaccines for Children program. Uninsured adults may receive assistance through the Bridge Access Program. Please note not every pharmacy or clinic participates in this important program.

Long COVID

An article from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) argues that Long COVID studies in children are lacking. Estimates of prevalence of Long COVID in children range from 1% to 70%. Children may have different experiences with Long COVID from adults, as well as having limited vocabulary to describe their symptoms. Poor study design also contributes to artificially low numbers. Hannah Davis, co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, suggests that further studies could use a prepandemic cohort or electronic health record data to serve as controls rather than a cohort defined by negative PCR tests, which could contain false negatives. Additionally, more longitudinal studies are needed. The article highlights a huge range of uncertainty reflecting a lack of research. Children with Long COVID deserve recognition, care, and support.

Take Action

Reminder to either submit a written comment or register to give an oral comment to the CDC’s HICPAC meeting on November 2-3, 2023. National Nurses United provided some guidance on talking points one can use during the oral comments. You can submit written comments to HICPAC@CDC.GOV starting November 1, 2023, with the deadline at 11:59 pm on November 6, 2023. To request time for an oral comment during the webcast, submit your request to the oral comment submission form no later than 11:59 p.m., EST, October 23, 2023.  As the CDC is poised to weaken protections for patients and healthcare workers, please sign on with National Nurses United and demand the CDC be transparent. At the link, you can fill out a form to send an email to CDC/HICPAC leaders that emphasizes the need to post the updated guidelines in full for public review, make meetings and comments open to the public, and use a science-based approach to aerosol transmission.

Notes: 1) The numbers in this report were current as of 10/20/2023. 2) Changes in testing access as well as data reporting have led many federal data sources to become less reliable. 3) Wastewater data are being sourced from WastewaterSCAN and no longer from BioBot due to the end of the contract with the CDC. 3) Check out the links throughout & see our website for more!

[girlactionfigure]

The dark-haired girl on the right with the impish smile, her name was Eddie Lou, she was about 8 years old when this photo was taken in 1909. The picture was taken at the Tifton Cotton Mill, Tifton, Georgia. The girls worked there.

The photograph was taken by Lewis Hine, who visited factories such as this mill and took photographs of the children who worked there as evidence for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).

In another part of the country, Mary Harris Jones, also known as "Mother Jones", led a march of children from Philadelphia to New York in what would be known as the March of the Mill Children, a three-week trek by striking child and adult textile workers on July 7, 1903.

Children had been forced to work in coal mines and mills, when their fathers were killed or injured, unable to support the families. As a result, many children suffered stunted growth and were injured, maimed. Mother Jones described the children, "some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped things, round shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten years of age, the state law prohibited their working before they were twelve years of age."

“Since 2000, for nearly two decades, the world had been making steady progress in reducing child labour,” according to the United Nations. “But over the past few years, conflicts, crises and the COVID-19 pandemic, have plunged more families into poverty – and forced millions more children into child labour. Economic growth has not been sufficient, nor inclusive enough, to relieve the pressure that too many families and communities feel and that makes them resort to child labour. Today, 160 million children are still engaged in child labour. That is almost one in ten children worldwide.”

This is an update of a series of stories that have been posted for Labor Day. You can find those stories in the Peace Page archive or Google the information on your own to find out more.

~~~~~

“Over 100 years ago, the National Child Labor Committee used photos of children doing industrial work to demand change in America. Several states adopted child labor laws, and after much debate and several setbacks, the Fair Labor Standards Act became law in 1938. Its protections included the nation’s foundational child labor laws, including restrictions on the age of workers and hours they can toil,” wrote Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Chicago

Max McCoy of the the Kansas Reflector wrote today on September 3, 2023:

“After more than a century of progress, you might think child labor is a thing of the past, something we condemn other countries for but that we don’t need to worry about here. Tragically, that shadow army of workers is still with us, and many of those workers are children. These underage exploited are often immigrants . . .”

“In February of this year, a cleaning company was fined $1.5 million for employing children ages 13 to 17 at meatpacking plants in eight states. The firm, Packers Sanitations Services Inc., was the target of a federal Department of Labor investigation that found 102 children working illegally, including 26 at the Cargill meatpacking plant at Dodge City.

“Appallingly, many states are now racing to loosen — not tighten — child labor laws.

“Arkansas, for example, in March did away with the requirement that the state’s Division of Labor had to give permission or verify the age of children under 16 to be employed. Although those under 14 still cannot be employed, the ending of age verification requirements is an invitation to child labor abuses.

“Other states are making similar moves.

“Iowa, for example, has made it legal for teenagers to work in meatpacking plants and children as young as 16 to bartend. New Jersey and New Hampshire have also lowered ages for some types of work. The argument goes that work builds character and that overly restrictive laws prevent young people from fully developing their capacity to earn a living.

“But such arguments stink like the stuff you find on a slaughterhouse floor.”

~~~~~

"In the early 1900s, Hine traveled across the United States to photograph preteen boys descending into dangerous mines, shoeless 7-year-olds selling newspapers on the street and 4-year-olds toiling on tobacco farms. Though the country had unions to protect laborers at that time — and Labor Day, a federal holiday to honor them — child labor was widespread and widely accepted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that around the turn of the century, at least 18 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 15 were employed," according to the Washington Post.

Mother Jones would say after the march, "I held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children. That their little lives went out to make wealth for others. That neither state or city officials paid any attention to these wrongs. That they did not care that these children were to be the future citizens of the nation."

Many industries hid the fact that they employed children. They took advantage of poor families, such as Eddie Lou's family. Eddie Lou's father had died and left her mother with 11 children and no income. Her mother was forced to work at the cotton mill for $4.50 a week. Eddie Lou and four siblings also worked there and they were all together paid $4.50 as well. Eddie Lou and her youngest siblings would eventually be sent to an orphanage because her mother wasn't able to provide for them.

“If we don’t hold the line on child labor, we risk losing one of the things the has sets us apart as a nation founded not only on laws, but of morals,” wrote McCoy. “Of course children provide cheap labor, but business profits should not be the gauge of our society. In addition to the mental and physical tolls that children suffer in jobs that are inappropriate — and can you really imagine a 16-year-old wiping down the bar and asking what’s your poison? — there’s also a danger these children will become primary breadwinners for their families, with their educations coming a distant second.”

The children at the march carried banners that said, "We want more schools and less hospitals" and "We want time to play."

~ jsr

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[kp777]

Montana youths take climate case to trial in historical first

By Megan Michelotti

Independent Record

Feb. 15, 2023

Some Montana youths say they are fed up with their big sky being polluted in Big Sky Country and their Treasure State losing its value to the obtrusive hands of climate change.

On March 13, 2020, 16 young Montanans filed a constitutional climate lawsuit against the state of Montana — two days before COVID-19 started shutting down the United States. Held et al v. Montana is now the nation's first-ever youth constitutional climate case set to go to trial.

The case asserts that by supporting a fossil fuel-driven energy system, the state is violating its own constitutional rights “to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities,” according to Article II, Section 3 of Montana’s Constitution.

Montana's Constitution was adopted in 1972, replacing the original 1889 constitution.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare Montana’s State Energy Policy, parts C-G and the Climate Change Exception in the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Section 2, part A that was passed in 1971 as unconstitutional. They also ask that the state be ordered to develop a remedial plan based on what scientific research recommends to protect the youth plaintiff's constitutional rights from continuing to be infringed upon.

Lander Busse, one of the 16 plaintiffs, said it is a matter of accountability. 

“As much as we want to think about the historical retrospect or how big of an impact this could have on a wider scale, our mission right now is to make sure we’re holding our Montana government accountable for their violations of our state constitution,” he said. “... It’s sad that it’s falling on us, the youth, to do this and not the adults, our elected officials, who know this material best.”

Montana’s State Energy Policy has goals of developing and utilizing Montana’s “vast coal reserves” and increasing oil and gas exploration in the state. In MEPA, Montana lawmakers codified a provision that prohibits the state from considering regional, national or global impacts when debating permits for projects that require an environmental impact statement.

The case states how greenhouse gas emissions are “triggering a host of adverse consequences in Montana,” such as increasing temperatures, extreme weather events, wildfires, glacial melt, changing precipitation patterns, droughts and floods and causing adverse health risks to many, especially children.

Other defendants named in the 104-page lawsuit are former Gov. Steve Bullock and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Montana Department of Transportation, and the Montana Public Service Commission.

The trial is scheduled for June 12 in front of Montana 1st Judicial District Judge Kathy Seeley.

Read more.

[berniesrevolution]

CATALYST JOURNAL

While the uptick in strike activity in 2021 is heartening, its influence should not be exaggerated. The number and extent of job actions was noticeable but still very small by historical standards, and union density continued to decline. A significant labor upsurge might be in the works, but it is not in evidence yet.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis spoke movingly of the workers keeping the world turning in dark times:

People who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines or on the latest television show, yet in these very days are surely shaping the decisive events of our history. Doctors, nurses, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caregivers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests, men and women religious, and so very many others. They understood that no one is saved alone.1

These workers have done everything we’ve asked of them and more. They have been through hell, particularly those who have risked their health and well-being to care for the sick, educate the young, feed the hungry, and deliver the things the rest of us need to get through this period of grinding uncertainty. Employers, politicians, and talking heads have lauded them as essential workers, but the stark gap between the praise and the grim realities of working life in the United States — which was already miserable for millions before the pandemic — have pushed many to the breaking point. Indeed, record numbers of American workers have quit their jobs in what the media has dubbed the Great Resignation. According to the US Labor Department, 4.5 million workers voluntarily left their jobs in November 2021. The number of monthly quits has exceeded three million since August 2020, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.2 Job switchers span the employment ladder, but turnover has been largely concentrated in the low-wage service sector, where workers are taking advantage of the very tight labor market to get a better deal for themselves. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, workers with high school diplomas are currently enjoying a faster rate of wage growth than workers with bachelor’s degrees, a remarkable situation that has not occurred in decades.3

Worker discontent is not only finding expression in the form of quitting and job switching. In 2021, we witnessed a modest increase in the frequency and visibility of collective action in the workplace. Tens of thousands of workers, union and nonunion alike, challenged employers through protests and strikes across sectors and in many different geographical regions. Workers in health care and social assistance, education, and transportation and warehousing led the way, but they were joined by workers in hotels and food services, manufacturing, and other industries. Protests and strikes tended to be concentrated in states where labor is relatively stronger, namely California, New York, and Illinois, but some states with low union density, like North Carolina, saw an uptick in labor action, too. Pay increases were easily the most common demand, but health and safety, staffing, and COVID-19 protocols were high on the agenda as well.

The year 2021 was less a strike wave than a strike ripple, and it has not yet resulted in any appreciable increase in unionization. A few trends stand out. The first is that labor protest and strike action were heavily concentrated among unionized groups of workers. Unionized groups of workers accounted for nearly 95% of all estimated participants in labor protests and more than 98% of all estimated participants in strikes. The second is that protests and strikes were concentrated by industry — namely health care and education, which together accounted for roughly 60% of all labor actions. Finally, protests and strikes were heavily concentrated geographically. Just three states with relatively high levels of union density — California, New York, and Illinois — accounted for more than half the total estimated participants in protests and strikes. In short, collective workplace action is by and large taking place where organized labor still retains residual sources of strength. In this context, spreading protest and strike action beyond its current industrial and regional confines depends on unionization in new places.

Conditions conducive to labor action — rising inflation, pandemic-related pressures, and a tight labor market — are likely to persist into 2022, and the Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been meaningfully supportive of worker organizing. US labor is probably not on the verge of a historic breakthrough, but in this context, workers may have an opportunity to make modest material and organizational gains.

Making new organizational gains is critical to the fortunes of the labor movement and the reviving US left. The vast majority of the workers involved in strikes and labor protests last year were already members of unions, not unorganized workers looking to unionize. This is why it is so concerning that last year’s uptick in labor action occurred amid a further decline in union density in 2021. The overall rate of union membership stands at 10.3% of the total labor force, while the total number of union members, just over fourteen million in 2021, continues its long decline.4 While some have argued that treating union density as the key measure of labor’s strength is a mistake, it seems clear that, at least in the US context, where union density and union coverage almost entirely overlap, it does provide an effective measurement of working-class power.5

Boosting the level of union density should therefore be among the leading priorities of progressives and socialists in the United States. As the power resources school of welfare state scholars has long argued, the relative strength of the labor movement and its affiliated political parties has been the single most important factor shaping welfare state development over time and across countries. Here in the United States, where we have never had a nationwide social democratic party aligned with a strong labor movement, the weakness of working-class organization is clearly reflected in the fragmentation and stinginess of our welfare state. The state-level wave of attacks on organized labor that began in 2010 have made it that much harder for unions to defend working-class interests and reduce inequality. But the fact that they were able to meaningfully mitigate the growth of inequality, even during the period of neoliberal retrenchment, shows that rebuilding the labor movement needs to be a chief priority of any progressive political agenda.6 The Biden administration’s pro-union stance suggests it understands this. But if it’s unable to act decisively to boost union membership, all the pro-union rhetoric it can muster will ultimately amount to little.

TRACKING LABOR ACTION

Researchers at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) began documenting strikes and labor protests in late 2020. Their ILR Labor Action Tracker provides a database of workplace conflict across the United States, based on information collected from government sources, news reports, organizational press releases, and social media. It counts both strikes and labor protests as “events” but distinguishes between the two. The major distinction between strikes and labor protests, according to this methodology, is whether the workers involved in the event stopped work. If they did, the event is defined as a strike; if they did not, it is defined as a labor protest. The Labor Action Tracker also collects data on a number of additional variables, including employer, labor organization (if applicable), local labor organization (if applicable), industry, approximate number of participants, worker demands, and more.7

ACTION TYPES

In 2021, there were 786 events with 257,086 estimated participants.8 Over 60% of the events were labor protests, while less than 40% were strikes (there was one recorded lockout). Roughly one-third of the estimated number of workers participated in labor protests, while roughly two-thirds participated in strikes. Further, the average number of estimated workers per labor protest (188) was significantly smaller than the average number of estimated workers per strike (553, see Table 1 for details).

DURATION

Neither labor protests nor strikes tended to last very long, which tracks with the generally sharp decline in strike duration in recent decades.9 Labor protests in particular were very short affairs. Of the labor protests with a start and end date, 96% lasted for just one day or less. Strikes also tended to have a short duration, but they typically did not end as quickly as protests. Of the strikes with a start and end date, one-third lasted for one day or less. Roughly two-thirds of strikes (68%) ended within a week, and over 90% ended within thirty days. One strike stands out for its unusually long duration: a 701-day strike by United Auto Workers (UAW) members against a metallurgical company in Pennsylvania, which began in September 2019 and ended in August 2021.

INDUSTRIES

An informed observer will not be surprised by which industries saw the largest number of labor action events (Table 2). The leading two industries by far were health care and social assistance and education, which are both highly unionized and have been subjected to enormous pressures during the pandemic. Together, they accounted for nearly 40% of the total labor protests and strikes. These industries also comprised over 60% of the overall number of estimated labor action participants — health care with 41.5% of the estimated participants, education with 18.8%. The overrepresentation of health care and education workers becomes even starker when we compare this to their employment shares in the overall labor force. In 2020, these two industries accounted for 16.3% of total nonfarm employment — health care with a 13.8% share and education with 2.3%.10 Put another way, the share of health care workers in 2021 labor actions was roughly three times larger than their share in the nonfarm labor force, while the share of education workers was more than eight times as large.

These two pace-setting industries were followed by a second tier of industries including transportation and warehousing, accommodation and food services, and manufacturing. It is not surprising to see these listed among the most turbulent industries, as they contain a mix of highly unionized employers and nonunion employers that have become a major focus of labor organizing activity, namely Amazon — the most frequently targeted employer, with twelve total labor actions — which was the target of twice as many labor actions as McDonald’s, the second-most targeted employer.

The industrial distribution of labor protests generally follows the overall distribution of labor action, with the notable exception of manufacturing, which saw far more strikes than protests. While the health care industry did not experience the largest number of strikes, it accounts for more than half of estimated strike participants (53%). Workers in education (12.4%) and manufacturing (16%) also accounted for outsize shares of the estimated number of participants.

(Continue Reading)

[zestywaffles]

things about my *sigh* INTP uncle

used to work as an engineer for an aerospace company

now lives with his mother, taking care of her

✨✨duct tape✨✨

studies Hebrew and enjoys teaching the family little tid-bits of interesting info and connections to things and stuff

i have never seen someone not care about their physical surroundings as much as he does. like nothing compares. absolutely no care. whatsoever

practically LIVES in the dark, all the curtains are always closed (grandma is too old to be aware), lights are always off, the house feels like a cave, i just... [internal screaming]

kinda tries to clean but that house has never smelled good my entire life

okay i’ll stop ranting about living conditions now...

uhhhh

grandma is his favorite person in the whole world. living proof that an INTP can show love and affection. super gentle and kind to her, tends to every need she has.

his love language is acts of service for sure

hates coffee, calls it bean water lol

wears the super cheap black tennis shoes and guess what’s keeping them together?

sigh

duct tape

...

still hasn’t realized that words hurt people, i think my whole family has been bruised by him at some point

P O L I T I C A L   C O N S P I R I S Y  T H E O R I E S

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN DECEMBER

COVID 19 IS A BIG COVERUP

ThE APocoLIPsE iS COMiNg

now my mom is convinced the end of the world is around the corner. 

lives organic, swears by it

he absolutely REFUSES to follow a recipe exactly.

yeah, did i mention he cooks?

it’s mid but i’ll cover it up with italics so i’m not being mean

almost completely lives on solar that he installed himself

what are vegetables?

only drinks Taheebo tea, he doesn’t drink water. at all. guys, i’m being serious.

“Taheebo tea will cure cancer” - my intp uncle (2022)

literally put a brand new thermostat on the wall without taking off the packaging. 

proof: 

I'm making one for every type. you can find my completed ones in #things about my mbti fm