Welcome to the American Dream, run by a lunatic challenged by a geriatric. Home sweet home of the Capitalist Paradise. So Proud to be destroying the Planet. Now with the Covid massacre nearing 100,000 we are to be forced back to work or starve to death. But rejoicing together that we can once more put a Man in Space…
Back to work, or else: Trump administration tells states to pull unemployment benefits – People’s World– People’s World
WASHINGTON—GOP President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, and his #2 who runs the agency that oversees jobless benefits want employers to report—and states to bar benefits from—workers who fear returning to their old jobs because their employers won’t protect them against the coronavirus.
President Donald Trump and Tony Stallings, vice president of integrated supply chain at Honeywell International Inc., right, interrogate a worker about his job during a tour of a Honeywell plant that manufactures personal protective equipment, May 5, 2020, in Phoenix, as Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows watch. | Evan Vucci / AP
The memo, from John Pallasch, a GOP operative, an advocate for so-called charter schools and a former top Kentucky Employment Department official under right-wing GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, makes clear the intention is to deny jobless benefits to those jobless workers.
“States must work to maintain program integrity by ensuring claimants”—workers—“are not continuing to claim benefits when they have been offered suitable work,” he declared. In other words, if you’re offered your old job, regardless of conditions, you must take it.
That drew the ire of the Communications Workers.“When you put a union-buster in charge of the Labor Department, workers are the ones who suffer,” said Micki Siegel de Hernández, CWA Deputy Director of Occupational Health and Safety, referring to Scalia’s own past anti-worker record.
“When the Labor Department should be putting its full efforts into making sure Americans are safe on the job, Scalia is continuing to focus on instilling fear in the workplace, allowing hazardous conditions while shielding employers from liability and creating more red tape for states trying to get unemployment benefits to people who desperately need them.”
“The Trump administration’s actions have been disgraceful and show blatant disregard for workers’ lives,” she added. Also told of the memo, Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry responded to other media: “It feels like governments and corporations feel some lives in this nation are worth sacrificing.” /continues below
see also ..How to force Americans back to work, Starve them …Many Americans have run out of food. They cannot feed their children, pay any bills. Trump and the Republicans know this. They know this will force people backtowork in order to feed their families. Crimes Against Humanity.
Protests were held by truck drivers in southern California, Arizona, Sacramento, California, Lansing, Michigan, Washington DC and Chicago, Illinois, over decreased freight rates and working conditions during the pandemic.
see also.. Food workers say they would rather starve than go back to work Food workers say Donald Trump is sacrificing lives for profit by reopening plants and insist they would rather starve than go back to work as nation braces for peak …
/continued The mass closures and stay-at-home orders forced by the coronavirus pandemic—and the Trump regime’s inadequate, mismanaged, politicized-against-blue-states response—have thrown at least 36.5 million people out of work since mid-March. Now, Trump and Scalia, catering to their corporate sponsors, want to reopen the businesses again—regardless of whether it’s safe to work at them or not.
volunteers at the Food Bank
That didn’t stop Scalia and Pallasch, assistant secretary for employment and training.
“To support states that identified claimants who have turned down suitable work, states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits,” said Pallasch’s memo to the DOL staff. “We also strongly encourage states to remind employers and the public about the claimant and employer fraud resources within each state.”
from People’s World, shared with thanks
see also .. Trump Wants to Starve States Into Opening Before It’s Safe … A situation is being set up where people will start to return to school and work very soon, which is good. The young and the healthy should do so as the fatality rate of this virus is probably …
McDonalds STRIKE
Fast-food workers with the Fight for $15 and a union campaign have organized one-day strikes and protests in California, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Tennessee through the pandemic.
Ieshia Townsend, a McDonald’s worker in Chicago for five years, participated in one of the strikes and walked off the job in protest of lack of hazard pay, proper personal protective equipment, paid sick leave and lack of health insurance benefits.
“Workers like me are going on strike because McDonald’s and other billion-dollar corporations do not care about us as workers. They don’t care if we’re safe on the job, they don’t care if we’re sick on the job,” said Townsend, who has also experienced significant cuts to her work schedule during the pandemic. /via The Guardian
The Free 