#Nick Baumgarten, "It's No Picnic," The New Yorker, March 11, 2021. - "All over town [New York City], restaurants were entrenching with a Soviet-caliber regimen of contradictory demands." "Meanwhile, parking spots, now widely displaced outdoor-dining structures, were scarcer than ever, at a time when more people spooked or betrayed by public transportation, were looking for parking."
"A survey by the Hospitality Alliance found that ninety-two per cent of restaurants were unable to meet their obligations in December." "At the beginning of 2020, restaurants employed about twelve million people nationally. Automobile manufacturers, some of which got a bailout after the 2008 financial crisis, employ fewer than a million. The airlines, which got a COVID bailout, employ fewer than half a million."
#Abigail Abrams, "Workers in the line," TIME, February 15/February 22, 2021. - "In 2020, the total number of workers in unions across the U.S. dropped by 321,000, to reach a low of 14.3 million, as national employment fell, and companies pressed legal advantages to deter employees from organizing." After four years of employer friendly decisions under Donald Trump, the Biden Administration has reset the tone in a flurry of moves hailed by labor."
"The Trump Administration's NLRB rolled back and weakened worker complaints, while OSHA was criticized for its lax treatment of worker complaints in 2020."
#Justin Worland, "Rebuilding the U.S. for a climate changed world," TIME, March 15/March 22, 2021. - "The Texas power outage delivered a dose of reality, as all fuel types failed to some degree. Wind turbines froze and instruments at nuclear and coal-fired power plants iced over, shutting them down. Most significantly, the state's national gas infrastructure couldn't stand the extreme cold, as wells froze in the heart of the state's gas-producing region. In other words, the problems were not with any one energy source, but with a system-level failure of the grid."
#Eliona Dockterman, "Love or money," TIME, March 15/March 22, 2021. - ""More than 23 million women have dropped out of the labor force since February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A Census Bureau and Federal Reserve analysis found that 1 in 3 women not working in July cited childcare issues as the reason."
"The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) mandates that employers offer 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, but about 40% of American workers are not covered by this law." "The Center for American Progress (CAP), and the Century Foundation estimated that if women remained out of the workforce at the same levels as last spring for a year, it would cost the country $64.6 billion."
"A survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children published in July found that without government help, 40% of children programs would shutter."
"Women overall still make 82 [cents] for every dollar men make, with Back, Latina and Native American women earning far less, according to the U.S. Census Bureau."
#Melissa Chan, "Slow Notions," TIME, March 15/March 22, 2021. - "More defendants , especially those with health problems, are striking plea deals to avoid sitting in virus-infected jails while waiting their day in court, defense attorneys say. And virtual courts are exposing the disadvantage of the poor, who are less likely to have Internet service, as a staggering number of new criminal cases stack up. New York City alone is bogged down with about 49,000 pending criminal court cases, and Maine has 22,000, court officials say." "At the end of November, about two dozen U.S. district courts nationwide resuspended jury trials and grand-jury proceedings, making a 'significant pause' in efforts by federal courts to resume full operation. court officials say."
"In a prepandemic world, state trial courts typically resolved 18 million felony and misdemeanor cases annually, according to a NCSC study in August, and an estimated 8 million to 10 million U.S. citizens reported for jury duty each year." Of the nearly 80,000 defendants facing federal criminal cases in 2018, about 90% pleaded guilty and only 2% went to trial, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data collected by the federal judiciary. At the state level, jury trials in 2017 accounted for fewer than 3% of criminal dispositions in 22 jurisdictions with available data, the NCSC says."
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