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U.S. labor movement looks for path forward after Amazon defeat

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By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) – Regina McDowell was not surprised that workers overwhelmingly rejected a union at an Amazon.com Inc warehouse in Alabama last week.

She spent 42 years working in a unionized electrical equipment factory in Indiana and was active in organizing drives — including traveling to the South to track down workers at their homes to make the pitch for her union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

“They’d sometimes shoo you off their property with a gun,” she said, adding that union dues were a sticking point for many.

“I think that gets them,” said the 63-year-old grandmother, “that it’s less money they’ll have.”

The landslide failure of the Amazon vote at the warehouse in Bessemer has sparked soul-searching in the labor movement over what went wrong and what unions need to do differently in the future to regain ground.

“Organizing in America is no longer a fair fight. Our labor laws are no longer an effective way to capture the will of American workers to form unions,” said Tim Schlittner, communications director for the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation.

“The sentiment this reinforces is that there’s an overdue and dramatic need for labor law reform in the United States.”

WORTH THE RISK?

Still, for many workers, labor experts reckon the decision whether to support a union campaign often boils down to a risk assessment.

“Once they know how strongly Amazon opposes them, and how much resources Amazon is willing to spend to defeat a union, then their fear sets in,” said Tom Kochan, a professor of industrial relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

Kochan has conducted surveys that show high, and even growing, support for unions among Americans. But when it comes to individual campaigns in a workplace, “the reality sets in –

when the employer campaigns so hard that you think you’re putting your job at risk.”

Changes in the economy have exacerbated the problem. Big companies like Amazon have operations dotting the country, making it easier for them to shift work. Compared to a steel mill or a car assembly plant, an e-commerce warehouse has fewer fixed investments in equipment, which also makes it easier to shift jobs.

“Why should I as an individual worker, earning $15 an hour, risk three years of a battle with my employer to get something done,” said Kochan, “and at the same time, risk losing my job?

The traditional view, shared by Kochan and many other labor experts, is that company measures to fight unionization, including tactics that would be illegal in other advanced countries such as requiring workers to attend meetings to hear anti-union arguments, need to be reined in.

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed legislation last month that would expand protections for labor organizing and collective bargaining.

But the measure faces a difficult path in the Senate, where the two parties are evenly split and most legislation needs at least 60 backers to pass. A block of Republican senators from anti-union, “right-to-work” states is set to oppose the measure.

DASHED OPTIMISM

There was optimism among activists in the final months of the Amazon campaign, as it drew high-profile endorsements and national and international media attention, including a speech by President Joe Biden criticizing Amazon for hindering union drives at its warehouses.

Biden, a Democrat, is widely viewed as the most pro-union president in modern times.

But none of that was enough to counteract the view of some workers at the facility that pay and conditions were relatively good on top of the everyday barriers that have combined over recent years to drive union membership in the United States to historic lows.

Only 6.3% of private-sector workers belong to unions, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The comparable rate is 15.8% in neighboring Canada.

One response in recent years has been new types of organizing, which sidestep many legal restrictions on formal union campaigns to gain collective bargaining agreements with employers.

The Southern Workers Assembly, for instance, is a group that organizes protests and conducts education campaigns aimed at promoting labor and other social causes. The group helped organize events in February across the country in support of the Amazon workers.

Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University in Indiana, said unions need to refurbish their image. Many workplace advances such as the 40-hour week were enacted decades ago. Recent years have seen waves of factory shutdowns where companies have blamed unions for making the operation uncompetitive.

“Here in the Midwest, every time a factory closed, it had a huge spillover to the rest of the community,” he added. “It caused restaurants and bars to close, so the loss of other jobs.”

Younger generations have little contact with unions, simply because the share of workers covered by contracts has diminished so greatly.

McDowell, the former electrical worker, has seen these forces play out in her hometown of Peru, Indiana. Her plant, owned by France’s Schneider Electric SE, closed last April after a battle by the local union to retain it. The company said it was a difficult decision to close but necessary to remain competitive. Part of the work moved to Mexico.

Many workers viewed the move as an effort to get out of a unionized operation, a charge the company has denied.

But it also has eroded the stature of the union in the eyes of some, said McDowell, who remains strongly pro-union. “There were people who felt the union should have done more” to save the factory, she said.

“But once the company said they were going to close it, what can we do? It’s their company.”

 

(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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From transmission to symptoms, what to know about avian flu after B.C. case

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A B.C. teen has a suspected case of H5N1 avian flu — the first known human to acquire the virusin Canada.

The provincial government said on the weekend that B.C.’s chief veterinarian and public health teamsare still investigating the source of exposure, but that it’s “very likely” an animal or bird.

Human-to-human transmission is very rare, but as cases among animals rise, many experts are worried the virus could develop that ability.

The teen was being treated at BC Children’s Hospital on Saturday. The provincial health officer said there were no updates on the patient Monday.

“I’m very concerned, obviously, for the young person who was infected,” said Dr. Matthew Miller, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

Miller, who is also the co-director of the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub, said there have been several people infected with H5N1 in the U.S.,and almost all were livestock workers.

In an email to The Canadian Press on Monday afternoon, the Public Health Agency of Canada said “based on current evidence in Canada, the risk to the general public remains low at this time.”

WHAT IS H5N1?

H5N1 is a subtype of influenza A virus that has mainly affected birds, so it’s also called “bird flu” or “avian flu.” The H5N1 flu that has been circulating widely among birds and cattle this year is one of the avian flu strains known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) because it causes severe illness in birds, including poultry.

According to the World Health Organization, H5N1 has been circulating widely among wild birds and poultry for more than two decades. The WHO became increasingly concerned and called for more disease surveillance in Feb. 2023 after worldwide reports of the virus spilling over into mammals.

HOW COMMON IS INFECTION IN HUMANS?

H5N1 infections in humans are rare and “primarily acquired through direct contact with infected poultry or contaminated environments,” the WHO’s website says.

Prior to the teen in B.C., Canada had one human case of H5N1 in 2014 and it was “travel-related,” according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

As of Nov. 8, there have been 46 confirmed human cases of H5N1 in the U.S. this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. There is an ongoing outbreak among dairy cattle, “sporadic” outbreaks in poultry farms and “widespread” cases in wild birds, the CDC website says.

There has been no sign of human-to-human transmission in any of the U.S. cases.

But infectious disease and public health experts are worried that the more H5N1 spreads between different types of animals, the bigger the chance it can mutateand spread more easily between humans.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF H5N1?

Although H5N1 causes symptoms similar to seasonal flu, such as cough, fever, shortness of breath, headache, muscle pain, sore throat, runny nose and fatigue, the strain also has key features that can cause other symptoms.

Unlike seasonal flu, most of the people infected in the U.S. have had conjunctivitis, or “pink-eye,” said Miller.

One reason for that is likely that many have been dairy cattle workers.

“At these milking operations, it’s easy to get contamination on your hands and rub your eyes. We touch our face like all the time without even knowing it,” he said.

“Also, those operations can produce droplets or aerosols, both during milking and during cleaning that can get into the eye relatively easily.”

But the other reason for the conjunctivitis seen in H5N1 cases is that the strain binds to receptors in the eye, Miller said.

While seasonal flu binds to receptors in the upper respiratory tract, H5N1 also binds to receptors in the lower respiratory tract, he said.

“That’s a concern … because if the virus makes its way down there, those lower respiratory infections tend to be a lot more severe. They tend to lead to more severe outcomes, like pneumonias for example, that can cause respiratory distress,” Miller said.

WILL THE FLU VACCINE PROTECT AGAINST H5N1?

We don’t know “with any degree of certainty,” whether the seasonal flu vaccine could help prevent infection with H5N1, said Miller.

Although there’s no data yet, it’s quite possible that it could help prevent more severe disease once a person is infected, he said.

That’s because the seasonal flu vaccine contains a component of H1N1 virus, which “is relatively closely related to H5N1.”

“So the immunity that might help protect people against H5N1 is almost certainly conferred by either prior infection with or prior vaccination against H1N1 viruses that circulate in people,” Miller said.

HOW ELSE CAN I PROTECT MYSELF?

The Public Health Agency of Canada said as a general precaution, people shouldn’t handle live or dead wild birds or other wild animals, and keep pets away from sick or dead animals.

Those who work with animals or in animal-contaminated places should take personal protective measures, the agency said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.



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Wisconsin Supreme Court grapples with whether state’s 175-year-old abortion ban is valid

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A conservative prosecutor’s attorney struggled Monday to persuade the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reactivate the state’s 175-year-old abortion ban, drawing a tongue-lashing from two of the court’s liberal justices during oral arguments.

Sheboygan County’s Republican district attorney, Joel Urmanski, has asked the high court to overturn a Dane County judge’s ruling last year that invalidated the ban. A ruling isn’t expected for weeks but abortion advocates almost certainly will win the case given that liberal justices control the court. One of them, Janet Protasiewicz, remarked on the campaign trail that she supports abortion rights.

Monday’s two-hour session amounted to little more than political theater. Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet told Urmanski’s attorney, Matthew Thome, that the ban was passed in 1849 by white men who held all the power and that he was ignoring everything that has happened since. Jill Karofsky, another liberal justice, pointed out that the ban provides no exceptions for rape or incest and that reactivation could result in doctors withholding medical care. She told Thome that he was essentially asking the court to sign a “death warrant” for women and children in Wisconsin.

“This is the world gone mad,” Karofsky said.

The ban stood until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide nullified it. Legislators never repealed the ban, however, and conservatives have argued the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe two years ago reactivated it.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit challenging the law in 2022. He argued that a 1985 Wisconsin law that prohibits abortion after a fetus reaches the point where it can survive outside the womb supersedes the ban. Some babies can survive with medical help after 21 weeks of gestation.

Urmanski contends that the ban was never repealed and that it can co-exist with the 1985 law because that law didn’t legalize abortion at any point. Other modern-day abortion restrictions also don’t legalize the practice, he argues.

Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper ruled last year that the ban outlaws feticide — which she defined as the killing of a fetus without the mother’s consent — but not consensual abortions. The ruling emboldened Planned Parenthood to resume offering abortions in Wisconsin after halting procedures after Roe was overturned.

Urmanski asked the state Supreme Court in February to overturn Schlipper’s ruling without waiting for a lower appellate decision.

Thome told the justices on Monday that he wasn’t arguing about the implications of reactivating the ban. He maintained that the legal theory that new laws implicitly repeal old ones is shaky. He also contended that the ban and the newer abortion restrictions can overlap just like laws establishing different penalties for the same crime. A ruling that the 1985 law effectively repealed the ban would be “anti-democratic,” Thome added.

“It’s a statute this Legislature has not repealed and you’re saying, no, you actually repealed it,” he said.

Dallet shot back that disregarding laws passed over the last 40 years to go back to 1849 would be undemocratic.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin filed a separate lawsuit in February asking the state Supreme Court to rule directly on whether a constitutional right to abortion exists in the state. The justices have agreed to take the case but haven’t scheduled oral arguments yet.

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This story has been updated to correct the Sheboygan County district attorney’s first name to Joel.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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When to catch the last supermoon of the year

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Better catch this week’s supermoon. It will be a while until the next one.

This will be the year’s fourth and final supermoon, looking bigger and brighter than usual as it comes within about 225,000 miles (361,867 kilometers) of Earth on Thursday. It won’t reach its full lunar phase until Friday.

The supermoon rises after the peak of the Taurid meteor shower and before the Leonids are most active.

Last month’s supermoon was 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) closer, making it the year’s closest. The series started in August.

In 2025, expect three supermoons beginning in October.

What makes a moon so super?

More a popular term than a scientific one, a supermoon occurs when a full lunar phase syncs up with an especially close swing around Earth. This usually happens only three or four times a year and consecutively, given the moon’s constantly shifting, oval-shaped orbit.

A supermoon obviously isn’t bigger, but it can appear that way, although scientists say the difference can be barely perceptible.

How do supermoons compare?

This year features a quartet of supermoons.

The one in August was 224,917 miles (361,970 kilometers) away. September’s was 222,131 miles (357,486 kilometers) away. A partial lunar eclipse also unfolded that night, visible in much of the Americas, Africa and Europe as Earth’s shadow fell on the moon, resembling a small bite.

October’s supermoon was the year’s closest at 222,055 miles (357,364 kilometers) from Earth. This month’s supermoon will make its closest approach on Thursday with the full lunar phase the next day.

What’s in it for me?

Scientists point out that only the keenest observers can discern the subtle differences. It’s easier to detect the change in brightness — a supermoon can be 30% brighter than average.

With the U.S. and other countries ramping up lunar exploration with landers and eventually astronauts, the moon beckons brighter than ever.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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