Delta Means Business

 Delta Means Business

Natural Selection at Work

 

The Delta coronavirus variant is on the rise here and across the country. It recently killed six prominent conservative anti-vaccination, anti-mask talking heads and is overwhelming our national hospital system where over 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. The nightly news showcases people in intensive care units struggling with COVID who regret not getting vaccinated when they had the chance.

 

Locally, we have county, municipal and school district officials bowing to pressure from the false flag freedom believers and embracing refusals to adopt mandatory vaccinations and mask requirements. Washington County has some of the lowest vaccination rates in Wisconsin. When last I checked, our local hospital had just one open ICU bed.

 

In the midst of this avoidable phase of the pandemic, there are small rays of hope. Government officials who are trying to keep up with and follow science-based recommendations from those who are studying the data on infection rates, vaccine efficacies and newly emerging variants of the disease are stepping up the pressure. 

 

The Federal Government is starting to impose vaccine and mask mandates for its employees and contractors, those who travel on transportation systems, employers with more than 100 employees, military personnel, and many other segments of the society. The goal is to reach 70-80% vaccination rates as quickly as scientifically reasonable. 

 

Many in the business sector, often resistant to governmental mandates, are embracing these new requirements. Some offer incentives for getting the shots. Others have imposed penalties on employees who refuse to get vaccinated such as increasing premiums for employer-based health insurance or withholding coverage for healthcare costs associated with Covid caused hospitalizations or deaths. Some have gone so far as to require vaccination against the virus as a condition of continued employment. All of these measures should be applauded and encouraged. 

 

Unions are embracing employer vaccination requirements without even going back to the bargaining table. They recognize that a fully vaccinated workplace is a safer workplace for their members. 

 

Other economic pressures are being brought to bear on those who refuse to follow the science and protect those under their umbrellas. School districts which refuse to require staff and student vaccinations or measures such as mandatory mask requirements and other recommended mitigation strategies are beginning to get warnings from their insurance carriers that coverage may be denied for Covid related lawsuits. School Boards listening to the rabidly unvaccinated anti-mask crowds may find themselves unprepared and financially unable to defend lawsuits from parents of children who catch Covid at unprotected schools. 

 

Our legislature and governor recently implemented a limited liability shield for schools from Covid related lawsuits, but it does not provide protection for intentional acts or omissions, such as refusing to follow government mandated measures to keep kids safe. 

 

Local businesses are stepping up by requiring masks in public establishments and vaccinations as a condition of employment. Entertainment venues are starting to require proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test as a condition for entry. All means of public transportation are under mandatory mask orders for all passengers and drivers. Airlines and cruise ships are starting to require vaccinations for travel, no exceptions.

 

All these efforts are meant to help protect those like children under 12 who cannot yet get the vaccine. They are meant to help the immunocompromised like transplant patients and the elderly. They are meant to stop deaths, not compromise anyone’s freedom.

 

Pretty soon, we will be divided into the protected and unprotected. Those who choose to be unprotected and unwilling to protect others will pay the ultimate price with their lives as they crowd into hospitals without space, beds, or staff able to treat them. Once you get the virus and have to turn to the scientists to save your life, it is too late to get the vaccine.

 

Worse yet are those who spread misinformation about the disease and promote fake claims of cures like horse dewormers and gargling with anti-bacterial solutions. Google is not competent to provide medical care and advice, especially to those who have consumed too much of the Covid hoax Kool-Aid. Perhaps, this is just the latest form of natural selection, weeding out the weakest members of the population and preventing them from contributing to the gene pool. 

 

It is time for those who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask to take a step back and reconsider. Either you will need to and get the shots and wear that mask or you will face further ostracization, not to mention a substantially increased risk of needing hospitalization or death. 

 

If you get terribly sick and die, your freedom to choose won’t mean very much.

Celebrate Labor

 Celebrate Organized Labor

Labor Transformed America

 

This weekend we take time to celebrate Labor Day. For many, this just means a three-day weekend. For those of us who are children of the Labor movement and a vibrant middle class, Labor Day means a lot more. 

 

The labor movement in the United States started in earnest in the early years of the 20^th century, growing out of protests over working conditions imposed by robber barons in the coal, steel, and transportation industries. Soon, garment workers, printers, brewers, auto workers, electricians, iron workers, newspaper workers, teachers and other laboring people joined up to demand safe working conditions and living wage. 

 

Through collective action, organized workers transformed American labor practices and forced changes in laws governing the workplace. 

 

The Labor movement was directly responsible for overtime pay, the weekend, sick leave, parental leave, domestic partner benefits, child labor laws, Social Security, paid vacations, pension benefits, the 40 hour work week, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), employer paid health benefits, worker compensation programs, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, equal pay for equal work, farm labor rights, grievance procedures, the right to organize in a workplace, and living wage laws. Labor has always been a major player in the passage of civil and voting rights legislation.

 

Early labor leaders also recognized that their movement needed to look beyond wages and working conditions to help create time and support for the families of working people. Some of those early pioneers, my grandfather was one of them, created schools for the children of working people and colleges to train union organizers. Unfortunately, with the creation of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the movement lost sight of these broader goals and shifted the focus to wages and working conditions. 

 

At the height of the union movement in post-World War II America, union membership reached 35 plus percent of the work force. This helped build the post-war vibrant middle class of my parents’ generation. This enabled folks to make it on a single income, to buy houses, educate their children and live more comfortably. Workplace excesses were exposed and corrected. Labor was recognized as the backbone of a Democratic society and corporations paid their fair share of the tax burden.

 

As with most societal movements and pressures, the gains sought and achieved by the Labor movement were resisted by financiers, business owners and corporate stockholders as they saw wealth created by their companies being redistributed to the very people who created most of that wealth. This pushback led to so-called “right to work laws,” restrictions on union organizing, limitations on the powers of government labor regulators and in, Republican controlled administrations, anti-labor activists being put in control of government regulatory efforts.

 

The push backs, combined with a rising economy and the movement of industrial activity overseas to avoid the costs involved in maintaining a unionized workplace, led to a decline in union membership and a weaker Labor presence.

 

The Labor movement is at cross-roads on this Labor Day. The newly elected leadership of the AFL-CIO with its first woman President and African American Vice President, has an opportunity to re-invigorate a movement of working people that will continue to grow with more service and health care workers, office workers, retail and restaurant employees and a host of others who have not been part of the unionized workplace historically. Recent polling shows union approval ratings at their highest levels since the 1960s. A new Labor movement, allied with other progressive organizations can again transform America into that “more perfect union” envisioned by the founders of the republic.

New organizing efforts will do well to not only celebrate the Labor movement’s past successes but return to those early roots where Labor leaders embraced support for working families that included education, healthcare and voting rights for all. 

 

Celebrate this weekend. Be proud of what organized Labor has achieved. When you go to work on Tuesday, help your working brothers and sisters by helping to organize them into an effective and strong voice for all.