In 2021, the Best Way to Fight Neofascist Republicans 

Is to Fight Neoliberal Democrats

As its policies gradually degrade the standard of living and quality 

of life for most people, neoliberalism provides a poisonous fuel 

for right-wing propaganda and demagoguery.

by

Norman Solomon

Published on Monday, January 04, 2021 

by

Common Dreams

 

A button features President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris'

 inauguration is on display by a street vendor during a canvass launch event at

 New Life Outreach Christian Center January 2, 2021 in Eatonton, Georgia. 

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The threat of fascism will hardly disappear when Donald Trump moves out of the White House in two weeks. On Capitol Hill, the Republicans who've made clear their utter contempt for democracy will retain powerful leverage over the U.S. government. And they're securely entrenched because Trumpism continues to thrive in much of the country.

Yet, in 2021, progressives should mostly concentrate on challenging the neoliberalism of Democratic Party leaders. Why? Because the neoliberal governing model runs directly counter to the overarching responsibilities of the left—to defeat right-wing forces and to effectively fight for a decent, life-affirming society.

"After four decades of neoliberal momentum, we can see the wreckage all around us."

Neoliberalism can be defined as a political approach that "seeks to transfer the control of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector"—and strives to "place limits on government spending, government regulation, and public ownership." Neoliberalism can be described more candidly as vast, systemic, nonstop plunder.

The plunder is enmeshed in politics. In the real world, economic power is political power. And privatizing political power amounts to undermining democracy.

After four decades of neoliberal momentum, we can see the wreckage all around us: the cumulative effects, destroying uncounted human lives deprived of adequate healthcare, education, housing, economic security and existence free of predatory monetizing. While Republican politicians usually led the wrecking crews, their Democratic counterparts often served as enablers or initiated their own razing projects.

As its policies gradually degrade the standard of living and quality of life for most people, neoliberalism provides a poisonous fuel for right-wing propaganda and demagoguery. Although corporate media outlets routinely assert that "moderate" Democrats are best positioned to block the right's advances, the corporate-oriented policies of those Democrats—including trade deals, deregulation, and privatization—have aided rather than impeded far-right faux populism.

In the long run, the realities of rampant income inequalities cannot be papered over—and neither can the despair and rage they engender. Phony and unhinged as it is, Trumpist extremism offers such rage a populist avenue, paved with a range of vile bigotries and cruelties. When Democrats fail to offer a competing populist avenue, their party is seen as aligned with the status quo. And in this era, the status quo is a political loser.

A myth of U.S. mainstream politics and corporate media is that the most effective way to counteract the political right is to compromise by ideologically moving rightward. When progressives internalize this myth, they defer to the kind of Democratic Party leadership that frequently ends up assisting instead of undermining the Republican Party.

That's what happened when, as incoming presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama filled their administrations' top-tier positions with Wall Street movers and shakers, elite big-business consultants and the like. Those appointments foreshadowed major pro-corporate policies—such as Clinton's NAFTA trade pact, and Obama's lavish bailout for huge banks while millions of homeowners saw their houses sink under foreclosure water—policies that were economically unjust. And politically disastrous. Two years after Clinton and Obama entered the White House, Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections.

"Without massive pressure from progressives, it's foreseeable that Biden—like Clinton and Obama—will run his presidency as a corporate-friendly enterprise without seriously challenging the extreme disparities of economic injustice."

Now, there's scant evidence Joe Biden is looking toward significant structural changes that would disrupt the ongoing trends of soaring wealth for the very few and deepening financial distress or outright desperation for the many. Without massive pressure from progressives, it's foreseeable that Biden—like Clinton and Obama—will run his presidency as a corporate-friendly enterprise without seriously challenging the extreme disparities of economic injustice.

"The stock market is ending 2020 at record highs, even as the virus surges and millions go hungry," the Washington Post reported. Wall Street succeeded at "enriching the wealthy . . . despite a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 340,000 Americans."

The reporting came from a newspaper owned by the richest person on earth, Jeff Bezos (who currently has an estimated wealth of $190 billion that he can't take with him). In a world of so much suffering, the accumulation of such wealth is beyond pathology.

What's imperative for progressives is not to "speak truth to power" but to speak truth about power—and to drastically change an economic system that provides humongous wealth to a very few and worsening misery to the countless many.

Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" (2006) and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State" 

America Was Always Going to Bungle the Vaccine Rollout

"It isn't hard to think up a simple set of rules that would ensure shots are going into arms as quickly as possible."

by

Ryan Cooper

 Published on Sunday, January 03, 2021

by

The Week

Howard University Hospital staff members received Covid-19 vaccination doses 

on December 15, 2020 in Washington, D.C. 

(Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Vaccines are being shipped out across the country, but most of them have not yet made it into actual Americans. Bloomberg has been tracking vaccination progress across the country—at time of writing, about 12.5 million doses have been sent out, yet just over 3 million shots have actually been administered. At this rate, it will take something like seven years to inoculate the whole country, and many doses may expire before they can be used.

There was no way this wasn't going to be a disaster.

President Trump, of course, has completely failed to organize anything at the federal level. For all his manic shattering of political norms, his most characteristic behavior is simply not doing anything in a moment of crisis. Since early November, over a thousand people a day have died of COVID, steadily increasing to nearly 4,000 on some recent days, but Trump has done virtually nothing except try to overturn the election with tweets, play golf, watch television, and pardon his criminal friends. What federal action that is happening is being rigged up by the remaining shreds of the bureaucracy Trump has not yet destroyed. He says himself that states are on their own.

That of course is making things exponentially more difficult for those lower levels of government. The federal government has always played a central role in previous mass vaccination efforts, because it is the only entity that can coordinate the whole country. States and cities have already endured brutal austerity, laying off millions of employees and cutting back services. Now they are trying to organize a massive logistical operation during a murderous pandemic by the seat of their pants.

Trump's constant firehose of lies and misinformation have also done terrible damage. The Los Angeles Times reports that even many frontline health-care workers are hesitant about taking the vaccine, in part because they are skeptical of the political and economic motives behind the production of the vaccine. Clear and consistent communication is vital in pandemic control, so the population will trust that control measures will work. Instead Trump has undermined trust in everything.

That said, it is clear that many states and cities could be doing much better than they currently are. It has been obvious since January 2017 that the Trump administration would provide little help in a crisis. States and cities have had months to lay out a plan, and scrounge up the relative pittance needed to get shots into arms — cannibalizing every other department if necessary, for there can be nothing more important than getting that vaccine out.

Yet a great many states and cities are whiffing it. It appears that the culprit here is some combination of authorities getting tangled up over who deserves the vaccine the most, snarling the process with elaborate eligibility requirements (a classic American neurosis), and the blistering incompetence that has characterized nearly every level of the American state response to the pandemic. As Dr. Ashish K. Jha writes in the Washington Post, the public health departments that are at the center of distribution have been starved of resources for decades, particularly after 2008.

Just talked to a pharmacist in the panhandle who’s currently watching 30 doses of the vaccine go bad because they can’t find enough “eligible” recipients. We had a year to figure this out

— Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) December 31, 2020

It isn't hard to think up a simple set of rules that would ensure shots are going into arms as quickly as possible. First, vaccinate all the health-care workers interacting with COVID patients, then everyone in nursing homes (as is conventional wisdom, to be fair). Then distribute shots to hospitals and pharmacies, or set up temporary distribution sites, and instead of trying to prioritize people according to some complex need calculation, do simple age cutoffs so only a driver's license or some other ID card is needed.

Start by inviting people over 90, who will get vaccinated on a first-come-first-serve basis. Write their names and contact info down so they can be called in for their second shot. Then if there are any doses left, invite everyone over 85, and so on down the age ranks. When the next batch of vaccine comes in, run through that process again — and if shots are near expiration and there isn't time to set up any kind of screen, just hand them out at random as a Kentucky Walgreens recently did. Finally, as former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb argues, hand out the shots as they come in, rather than reserving half for the second dose (as is currently being done in many states), because there should be an ever-greater supply as time passes. It is worth risking some people missing their second shot to get as many people partially protected as possible.

Now, I'm not saying that's the best idea, it's just an illustrative example of a rough-and-ready scheme to get shots into arms that can be scaled up indefinitely so no shots sit idle. Older states like Florida should use fine-grained age brackets so people aren't waiting in line for hours, which is what happened when they invited everyone over 65 at once.

All this speaks to the enormous scale of the task facing President-elect Biden. Frankly I do not believe he will get very close to the standard of other wealthy countries, but on the other hand he could not possibly do any worse than Trump. Let's hope when the void at the center of the American state is filled by something, the pace of vaccination can be drastically accelerated, and 2021 isn't the nightmare that 2020 was.

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.

© 2019 The Week

In 2021, Let's Ring a Global Alarm—on Inequality—That Everyone Can Hear

Our task ahead: preventing a deeply unequal world from recreating pre-pandemic business as usual.

by

Sam Pizzigati

 Published on Saturday, January 02, 2021 

by

Inequality.org

Food Bank for New York City hosts a food distribution pop-up in partnership 

with Alianza De Futbol during Hunger Action Month at New York Hall of

 Science on September 27, 2020 in Queens. 

(Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Food Bank For New York City)

Remember that old joke they used to tell — and maybe still do — in luxury retail circles? The customer, precious product in hand, walks over to a haughty sales clerk at a high-end emporium and timidly asks: “How much does this cost.”

“If you have to ask,” the sales clerk smiles back, “you can’t afford it.”

How much more unequal have we become in 2020? This question demands that we turn that old joke inside-out: We have to ask because we can’t afford not to know. And we can’t afford not to know because inequality is killing us. We have to know exactly what we’re facing.

And what we’re facing, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have just reminded us, doesn’t look good. Yes, they acknowledge, we most certainly will be getting the pandemic much more under control over the course of the year ahead. But that will just leave us with an intolerable status quo ante, with “deaths of despair” — suicides, drug overdoses, and liver disease — taking lives by the tens of thousands.

In 2019, the last full pre-pandemic year, “deaths of despair” felled 164,000 Americans, almost triple the annual total a generation earlier. These deaths may well increase significantly in 2021, Case and Deaton fear, “as the structure of the economy shifts.” Many more people will be working remotely post-pandemic than before Covid-19 first hit. Downtowns will be losing service jobs on a permanent basis. The resulting disruptions will likely seriously expand the ranks of the despairing.

But we will have more than deaths of despair to fear. Covid-19 will indeed eventually ebb, but inequality is slowing that ebbing. One reflection of inequality’s sobering impact: We’re now privileging the already privileged in the emerging chaotic rush to administer precious life-saving vials of vaccine.

“Rural areas and towns with smaller populations are being trampled in the stampede,” notes science writer Leigh Phillips. “The regions and hospitals able to bid the highest are not necessarily the ones most in need.”

Our corporate vaccine makers, meanwhile, are fighting all efforts to move vaccine patents into some sort of emergency public domain status, a step that would enable wider and faster vaccine manufacture and distribution, especially within poorer societies worldwide.

The prime argument Big Pharma is making against patent reform? Pharmaceutical firms, the argument goes, will have no incentive to develop vaccines if they can’t count on their patent-guaranteed market power, an incredibly cynical defense, observes science analyst Phillips, given that “almost every penny of the cost of research, development, and manufacture” of the Covid-19 vaccines has come from government grants and contracts.

Still another key reason inequality is slowing progress against the pandemic: The less equal societies become, the less they seem to trust science.

So suggests the University of Melbourne’s Tony Ward, based on his analysis of data published this past October in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Public Health. The journal surveyed over 25,000 scientists worldwide about their Covid-19 experiences, and one of the survey questions asked scientists whether lawmakers in their nations had used scientific advice to inform their pandemic strategy.

The results varied substantially. In some nations, large majorities of scientists felt that their governments were listening to what they had to say. In the ferociously unequal United States, only 18 percent of the scientists surveyed felt that government officials were taking what they were saying into account.

On average, notes the University of Melbourne’s Ward, trust in what scientists have to say appears to decrease as the level of inequality within a society increases, with an increase of one percentage point in inequality “associated with a decrease of 1.5 percentage points in listening to scientists.” Inequality, Ward concludes, makes for “a corrosive solvent.”

Maybe corrosive for science, but not for grand fortune. Those who sit at the top of the world’s most unequal societies have seen their fortunes explode, not corrode, over the past pandemic year. U.S. billionaire net worth has soared by over $1 trillion, Institute for Policy Studies research shows, since the pandemic first hit at full blast. The nation’s top 10 billionaires alone now hold a combined fortune worth over $1 trillion.

Researchers at Forbes, meanwhile, have found 50 new billionaires in the global health care sector. Vaccines have generated some of these fortunes, but, Forbes adds, “companies developing antibody treatments and drugs to help doctors fight the virus have also benefited from the market frenzy.”

The bottom line: We may have just experienced the greatest ever single-year redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy. In some corners of the world, even mainstream voices are taking notice. In a year-end editorial, for instance, the Korea Times — the English-language version of one of South Korea’s top daily papers — is decrying how the pandemic is making “the poor poorer, the rich richer.”

Covid has wrought “devastating havoc,” the editorial continues, and “deepened the growth imbalance between rich and poor countries.” Societies everywhere need to “take the coronavirus-triggered divide seriously” — and with more than the “empty slogan of inclusive growth.” That will require, the Korea Times concludes, real moves “to expand the social safety net and promote income redistribution.”

“Influencers” worldwide need to be sounding that same alarm. Our task for 2021 could hardly be clearer. We have to prevent our societies from returning to — our deeply unequal — business as usual.

Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His recent books include: "The Case for a Maximum Wage" (2018) and "The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970" (2012).

ISRAEL THE 51st STATE

The US Money Tree: The Untold Story of American Aid to Israel

Expecting the US to play a constructive role in achieving a just peace in Palestine does not only reflect indefensible naivety but willful ignorance as well. 

by

Ramzy Baroud

Thursday, December 31, 2020 

by

Common Dreams

WHEN THE US TALKS ABOUT CUTTING FOREIGN AID,

IT NEVER INCLUDES ISRAEL

American generosity has long been attributed to the unmatched influence of

 pro-Israeli groups, lead among them American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). 

(Photo: AIPAC/PRE-COVID)

On December 21, the United States Congress passed the COVID-19 Relief Package, as part of a larger $2.3 trillion bill meant to cover spending for the rest of the fiscal year. As usual, US representatives allocated a massive sum of money for Israel. 

While unemployment, thus poverty, in the US is skyrocketing as a result of repeated lockdowns, the US found it essential to provide Israel with $3.3 billion in ‘security assistance’ and $500 million for US-Israel missile defense cooperation.

Although a meager $600 dollar payment to help struggling American families was the subject of several months of intense debate, there was little discussion among American politicians over the large funds handed out to Israel, for which there are no returns.

Support for Israel is considered a bipartisan priority and has, for decades, been perceived as the most stable item in the US foreign policy agenda.  The mere questioning of how Israel uses the funds - whether the military aid is being actively used to sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, finance Jewish settlements, fund annexation of Palestinian land or violate Palestinian human rights - is a major taboo. 

One of the few members of Congress to demand that aid to Israel be conditioned on the latter’s respect for human rights is Democratic Senator, Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, who was also a leading presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. “We cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government … We have the right to demand respect for human rights and democracy”, Sanders had said in October 2019. 

Israel has received  $146 billion of US taxpayers' money as of November 2020. 

His Democratic rival, now President-elect, Joe Biden, soon countered: “The idea that I’d withdraw military aid, as others have suggested, from Israel, is bizarre,” he said. 

It is no secret that Israel is the world’s leading recipient of US aid since World War II.  According to data provided by the US Congressional Research Service, Israel has received  $146 billion of US taxpayers' money as of November 2020. 

From 1971 up to 2007, a bulk of these funds proved fundamental in helping Israel establish a strong economic base. Since then, most of the money has been allotted for military purposes, including the security of Israel’s illegal Jewish settlement enterprise.  

Despite the US financial crisis of 2008, American money continued to be channeled to Israel, whose economy survived the global recession, largely unscathed. 

In 2016, the US promised even more money. The Democratic Barack Obama Administration, which is often - although mistakenly - seen as hostile to Israel, increased US funding to Israel by a significant margin. In a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding, Washington and Tel Aviv reached a deal whereby the US agreed to give Israel $38 billion in military aid covering the financial years 2019-2028. This is a whopping increase of $8 billion compared with the previous 10-year agreement, which concluded at the end of 2018.

The new American funds are divided into two categories: $33 billion in foreign military grants and an additional $5 billion in missile defense. 

American generosity has long been attributed to the unmatched influence of pro-Israeli groups, lead among them American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The last four years, however, required little lobbying by these groups, as powerful agents within the administration itself became Israel’s top advocates. 

Aside from the seemingly endless ‘political freebies’ that the Donald Trump Administration has given Israel in recent years, it is now considering ways to accelerate the timetable of delivering the remainder of US funds as determined by the last MOU, an amount that currently stands at $26.4 billion. According to official congressional documents, the US “also may approve additional sales of the F-35 to Israel and accelerate the delivery of KC-46A refueling and transport aircraft to Israel.” 

These are not all the funds and perks that Israel receives. Much more goes unreported, as it is channeled either indirectly or simply promoted under the flexible title of ‘cooperation’. 

For example, between 1973 and 1991, a massive sum of $460 million of US funds was allocated to resettling Jews in Israel. Many of these new immigrants are now the very Israeli militants that occupy the West Bank illegal settlements. In this particular case, the money is paid to a private charity known as the United Israel Appeal which, in turn, gives the money to the Jewish Agency. The latter has played a central role in the founding of Israel on top of the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948.

As of February 2019, the US has withheld all funds to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in addition to cutting aid to the UN Palestinian Refugees agency (UNRWA).

Under the guise of charitable donations, tens of millions of dollars are regularly sent to Israel in the form of “tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” the New York Times reported. Much of the money, falsely promoted as donations for educational and religious purposes, often finds its way to funding and purchasing housing for illegal settlers, “as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes and vehicles to secure (illegal Jewish) outposts deep in occupied (Palestinian) areas.”

Quite often, US money ends up in the Israeli government’s coffers under deceptive pretenses. For example, the latest Stimulus Package includes $50 million to fund the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Funds, supposedly to provide investments in “people-to-people exchanges and economic cooperation ... between Israelis and Palestinians with the goal of supporting a negotiated and sustainable two-state solution.” 

Actually, such money serves no particular purpose, since Washington and Tel Aviv endeavor to ensure the demise of a negotiated peace agreement and work hand-in-hand to kill the now defunct two-state solution. 

The list is endless, though most of this money is not included in the official US aid packages to Israel, therefore receives little scrutiny, let alone media coverage. 

As of February 2019, the US has withheld all funds to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in addition to cutting aid to the UN Palestinian Refugees agency (UNRWA), the last lifeline of support needed to provide basic education and health services to millions of Palestinian refugees. 

Judging by its legacy of continued support of the Israeli military machine and the ongoing colonial expansion in the West Bank, Washington insists on serving as Israel’s main benefactor - if not direct partner - while shunning Palestinians altogether. Expecting the US to play a constructive role in achieving a just peace in Palestine does not only reflect indefensible naivety but willful ignorance as well.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books including: "These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons" (2019), "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (2010) and "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (2006). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

 

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UNIONIZE NYC

Want Bargaining Rights With That?

“We can now say that New York City is the first place in the country where fast-food workers will no longer be at-will employees."

by

Luis Feliz Leon

Published on Sunday, January 03, 2021

by

The Progressive

Fast-food workers, cashiers, cooks, delivery people, and their supporters hold 

a rally outside New York City Hall on May 24, 2017. 

(Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

"Leave. You are fired. No one is essential. Everyone is replaceable here. You are no more than anyone else,” Teodora Flores recounts her manager at Chipotle telling her.

Flores, fed up with the daily taunts from her tormenting supervisors, told the latest manager upbraiding her to go ahead and do it.

“Sure, fire me then,” she retorted.

Now Flores, fifty-two, who has worked at Chipotle for more than two years, will have “just cause” protection from the capricious managers “who think they are better than crew members” and believe they can fire workers at will.

On December 17, the New York City Council passed two bills enacting a “just cause” law prohibiting fast-food employers from arbitrarily terminating workers. The bills cover fast-food restaurants with multiple locations nationwide, such as Chipotle, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC.

The first bill, known as Introduction 1396, requires that employers lay off their newest workers first on the basis of seniority when layoffs are an economic necessity.

“Getting fired without just cause should not be something any New Yorker has to be afraid of, let alone those who have been deemed essential workers during the pandemic,” the bill’s sponsor, Queens Councilmember Adrienne Adams, said in a press release after the law passed with forty votes. “The majority Black, brown, and immigrant fast-food workers have been forgotten for far too long.”

The other bill, Introduction 1415, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilmember Brad Lander, prohibits fast-food employers from firing or cutting back the hours of their workers without just cause—for example, in the event of economic woes suffered by the employer.

Both bills, which were originally introduced in 2019, build upon 32BJ SEIU’s campaign to raise the state’s minimum wage for fast-food and airport workers as part of the national Fight for $15 movement.

“We can now say that New York City is the first place in the country where fast-food workers will no longer be at-will employees,” said Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ (SEIU 32BJ) President Kyle Bragg in a press release. The union represents 175,0000 workers across eleven states.

Eighteen-year-old Jeremy Espinal is one of those workers. The son of a SEIU 32BJ porter in the local’s commercial division, Espinal has been organizing fast-food workers on the evidence of what having a union card has done for his father: job security, economic stability, and retirement benefits.

Like many people his age, Espinal’s first job was in food service. He soon noticed that these were not positions filled solely by high schoolers or college students.

“The majority of workers could be my parents,” he says. “They’ve been working here for ten to fifteen years.”

More than 67,000 fast-food workers in New York City will benefit from the new labor laws, affecting 3,000 fast-food restaurants, staffed by a workforce that is nearly 90 percent people of color and two-thirds women, according to the Center for Popular Democracy.

Labor unions have long fought for what is known as sectoral bargaining, which enables unions to set standards for whole industries through multi-employer contracts instead of bargaining with individual employers. Traditionally, unions have boosted their leverage through multi-employer contracts for workers in steel, auto, trucking, construction, and mining. But the 1980s neoliberal onslaught reversed many of these gains. Remnants of sectoral bargaining can still be found in a few sectors like hospitality, but the dominant trend is for unions to be forced to negotiate contracts one worksite at a time.

Under the Trump Administration, the National Labor Relations Board has successfully rolled back Obama-era decisions that expanded protections to workers in “fissured workplaces” who are employed by third-parties, including franchise holders. Many fast-food outlets are owned by franchises, and considered individual worksites.

The City Council legislation overcomes that hurdle by targeting outlets with thirty or more locations in keeping with a Fair Workweek law passed in 2017.

New York City’s new “just cause” law comes on the heels of successful efforts in Philadelphia, as Steven Greenhouse points out in The American Prospect. Seattle and Illinois are looking to enact similar legislative changes to add themselves to the list of jurisdictions with these provisions. Besides Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin islands, only Montana has just-cause laws on the books.

Critics argue that the bills adversely alter the employer-employee relationship. Eli Freedberg, a restaurant industry labor lawyer, told The New York Times the bills “were a prime example of government overreach” and that they “change the entire psyche and underpinning of the American employer-employee relationship.”

“It’s telling that the restaurant industry believes [its] employer-employee relationship requires workers to have a ‘psyche’ based on constant terror of arbitrary dismissal,” says economist Brian Callaci, an expert on franchising and the fast-food industry and a postdoctoral scholar at the Data & Society Research Institute.

“The new law does not say employers cannot fire workers, it only requires employers to give a valid reason,” Callaci continues. “This law is merely the extension of due process rights we all enjoy as citizens [in] the workplace. Employers can motivate employees with carrots—making the workplace a nice place to be, paying decent wages—or the stick of summary termination. The restaurant lobby is saying it refuses the carrot, and only wants the stick.”

Workers have also faced a lack of inadequate personal protective equipment and have been bitten by rats at Chipotle outlets in Manhattan and the Bronx.

“They haven’t been transparent with who’s sick and sick with what,” Albert Morales, a worker at a Chipotle in the Bronx, told Jacobin. The conditions got so bad that Morales and his coworkers went on strike when one staff member became infected with COVID-19 and management kept the store open, disregarding the health and safety of workers and customers.

The stark realities fast-food workers face on the job are a reminder that “just-cause” protections are only the beginning of the necessary changes union organizing must fight for to free workers from the stranglehold of economic insecurity.

“I’d like for the pandemic to be over, for things to go back to normal,” says Teodora Flores. “Life has been very different this year. We live with anxiety and fear to leave our house.”

Thanks to these new laws, New York City’s much-anticipated return to normalcy will include greater protections at work. 

Luis Feliz Leon is an organizer, journalist, and independent scholar making good trouble in New York City.

© 2020 The Progressive