Six different doctors came in': Suspended nurses share why they protested hospital conditions amid coronavirus

Adriana Belmonte Associate Editor, Yahoo Finance•May 6, 2020
With over 3 million cases worldwide and over one-third just in the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has put a heavy burden on health care workers across the country. Weeks after the outbreak emerged in the U.S., certain hospitals still grapple with a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) amid an overwhelming number of patients and no clear end in sight.

Jack Cline and Michael Gulick were part of a group of 10 nurses who were suspended with pay from Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. The nurses refused to work without being provided N95 masks like the physicians they were working with.

“All we were provided prior to this were the flimsy surgical masks which don’t provide respiratory protection,” Gulick, a registered nurse in the hospital’s medical surgical unit, told Yahoo Finance. “And there’s increasing evidence that shows airborne transmission is a part of how this virus can be spread. So airborne and contact protection is needed.”

Hospital personnel stand outside Providence St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez,File)

Unlike surgical masks, N95 masks are tight-fitting and filter out at least 95% of airborne particles, according to the CDC, which are how coronavirus is transmitted. Because of this, the masks are in short supply as people across the country scramble to obtain them to protect themselves against the virus.

“Six different doctors came in and told the nurses not to go into these rooms without having an N95 mask on,” Cline, who works in the same unit as Gulick, told Yahoo Finance. “So we were scared because they were telling us one thing, the hospital was telling us something different. And we noticed all the doctors that went in there had N95 masks on.”

A worker at a Honeywell International Inc. factory works on N95 masks May 5, 2020, in Phoenix, Arizona, during a visit by the US president. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)More

“I work at another hospital and they were doing that all along,” he added. “It seems like St. John’s were doing the minimum safety standards.”

Patricia Aidem, the public relations director for the hospital, confirmed that the nurses had been placed on suspension with pay. She referred to a statement from the hospital which said:

“During conversations with the nurses, we explained three times that refusing to care for their very sick patients could result in disciplinary action... We take this issue very seriously. This type of action, by any caregiver, requires investigation... Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our patients and caregivers. Nothing. ... Saint John’s – along with most hospitals across the United States – has been issuing PPE in accordance with CDC and other expert guidelines since the pandemic began.”

The U.S. has over 1.2 million cases of coronavirus. 

(Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

The walkout

After one of their fellow nurses tested positive for COVID-19, this gave them the motivation to confront hospital administrators with their requests for N95 masks.

“It was on Thursday, April 9, that we started our shift, and there were about eight of us working on the unit at the time,” Cline recalled. “We had all received news of one of our coworkers testing positive. The doctors that were coming onto our unit that day… they were giving us directives and were giving us their clinical judgment, in saying that we should not be taking care of these patients without being provided an N95 mask.”

He continued: “They told us to demand them from our nursing leadership and if they don’t provide them to us, to consult our union, because they’re there to protect us for issues like these. Because they said, ‘we’re not going into these rooms without an N95 mask. And if you guys are taking care of them for a 12-hour shift, there’s no reason why you guys shouldn’t be provided the same level of protection.”

Nurses at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., on April 9, raise their fists in solidarity after telling managers they can't care for COVID-19 patients without N95 respirator masks to protect themselves.(Lizabeth Baker Wade/AP)More

The group approached their nursing leaderships asking for the masks, and were denied, with the administration citing CDC guidelines at the time.

“We said, ‘Well, we can’t safely take care of these patient assignments without being provided an N95 respirator,’” Gulick said. “And so after that, they called hospital administration and we called our union representation … And then one by one, they called us into the office and they gave us basically a scripted order that said: ‘We’re giving you a direct order to take over these patient assignments. If you fail to comply, it’ll be considered patient abandonment and negligence, and a potential reporting to your State Board of Licensure.’”

Gulick and Cline both emphasized that they were not abandoning their patients, but rather felt like they could not properly treat them without proper masks.

The coronavirus has killed over 250,000 people around the world.

 (Graphic: David Foster/Yahoo Finance)

Although Providence St. John’s said their decisions were based on the PPE shortage, Gulick said that the nurses suspect the hospital has an adequate supply of N95 respirators.

“We don’t know for certain, because they’re not completely transparent with us,” he said. “But we see that other clinicians have them, that other people have access to them. So we know that they certainly have stock of them and from what we understand, that according to the CDC guidelines, hospitals should only be using a reprocessed or decontaminated mask if their own available supply of new N95 masks is completely exhausted, and that there’s completely none of them.”

The PPE shortage has posed a serious challenge for front line workers across the country. Health care workers at some hospitals were reportedly being asked to reuse disposable masks and gloves or make their own masks. There are severe shortages of N95 masks, which can properly protect these workers treating patients. The CDC said that these workers could use homemade masks, like bandannas or scarves, as a “last resort.”

Nurse Yvette Laugere adjusts her N95 mask while working at a newly opened free Covid-19 testing site in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

‘I didn’t want to take that home to him’

Aside from being worried about their own health and well-being, both nurses worried about bringing the virus back to their homes.

A CDC report found that more than 9,000 health care workers have tested positive for coronavirus.

Gulick, who is married and has a 2-year-old daughter, said that he took “very meticulous precautions” to decontaminate himself after each shift before even interacting with his family.

For Cline, there were several risk factors involved. Aside from being over 50 years old and being a brittle diabetic who has had multiple heart surgeries, his roommate is HIV positive, making him very immunocompromised.

“I didn’t want to take that home to him,” Cline said.

Hospital personnel stand outside Providence St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

‘They won’t listen to the nurses’
Although the hospital changed its guidelines shortly after their suspensions, Gulick and Cline both criticized the actions of the hospital administration for their role.

“They won’t listen to the nurses,” Cline said. “Whenever there are patient safety issues and we go to the hospital and we tell them that something’s not safe, they won’t listen to the nurses at all. They just continue to do what management thinks is best.”

Linda Silva, a nurse's assistant, poses for a portrait in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

“And it’s also frustrating because Providence Hospital is a multi-billion-dollar corporation that can definitely afford to buy N95 masks, and they should have had more available,” he added. “About six months ago, they took our central supply out of our hospital and they made it central for the whole region. There are four or five hospitals. So what we do when we need supplies and we don’t have them available, we have to order them and we will and a lot of times, we need them now and they won’t come until the next day.”

Gulick singled out the administration for a lack of transparency, but also said that the federal government needs to step up and fully enact the Defense Protection Act to ramp up production of PPE.

“Those things need to be stabilized first before all these people can even think about reopening the government and going back to their normal lives,” he said.

Adriana is a reporter and editor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @adrianambells.

Group of Senate Republicans Urges Trump to Suspend 

‘All Guest Worker Visas’ Until Unemployment Returns to ‘Normal Levels’

AT THE WAGE LEVELS THEY ARE PAID NO AMERICAN WILL DO THE JOB

Tobias Hoonhout,National Review•May 7, 2020

MILLIONAIRE PARASITES

A group of GOP Senators is asking President Trump to ramp up his recent “pause” on immigration to include a prohibition on guest-worker visas, citing rising levels of American unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), joined by Senators Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), Ted Cruz (R., Texas), and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) are requesting that the White House halt new guest-worker visas and all non-immigrant guest-worker visas, as well as a suspension of new non-immigrant guest-worker visas for 60 days or until American jobless numbers fall to “normal levels.”

“As we work toward recovery, we urge you to keep the American worker in mind and limit the number of unnecessary guest workers while American families and businesses get back on their feet,” the senators write in the letter.

While Trump announced a 60-day moratorium on immigration last month, the rule did not affect guest-worker programs, including EB-5 visas — which give immigrants green cards after a set amount of investment — H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers, H-1B visas for specialty occupation workers, and the country’s Optional Practical Training (OTP) program, which allows foreign students to work in the U.S. for 1-3 years after graduation.

The senators explain that EB-5 program “has long been plagued by scandal” and amounts to a “pay-for citizenship scheme in many cases.” They also argue that suspensions to OTP, H-1B, and H-2B will help those citizens who recently graduated high school or college and have entered a tough job market.

“Given the extreme lack of available jobs for American job-seekers as portions of our economy begin to reopen, it defies common sense to admit additional foreign guest workers to compete for such limited employment,” they explain.

Last week, the Department of Labor reported 3.8 million new jobless claims, bringing the total number of American seeing unemployment benefits to 30 million, or 18 percent of the total work force.

Opinion: How unemployed Americans can be put to work fighting the coronavirus pandemic

Army of volunteers can help with contact tracing in the battle to control COVID-19’s spread

Getty Images

Published: May 7, 2020 By Price V. Fishback and  Kris James Mitchener

It is natural to search for solutions to the coronavirus crisis by looking to the past — to the last time the U.S. witnessed a massive decline in output, income, and employment on an order of magnitude of what is expected for the second quarter of 2020.

The temptation might be to draw lessons from the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, and to call for a raft of expansive Federal public programs. But to paraphrase a famous saying, “history rhymes, more than it repeats.”

Borrowing from the spirit of the New Deal, we propose a temporary program: CoVid Contactors (CVC) to carry out a vital next step in controlling the pandemic while opening the economy.

In this nationwide effort, people who are currently receiving the additional $600 per week in federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance would volunteer to help public health officials in “contact tracing.” Once someone is diagnosed with COVID-19, public health experts agree that we need to quickly identify their “high risk” contacts and then follow up with additional testing.

Contact tracing is an old-school public health response that has been successfully used for decades to combat diseases that spread relatively easily, such as measles and AIDS. Contact tracing provides information to those in danger and does not call for digital companies to intrude on people’s privacy.

CVC workers could carry out interviews with the contacts of people who have tested positive for COVID-19, to help public health officials assess whether additional downstream testing or self-quarantining is needed. Using cheap and widely available headsets and database software that protects the privacy of those contacted, the CVC volunteers could be trained to work safely from home to reach out to contacts of those who tested positive.

Large numbers of people currently receive benefits in every county throughout the U.S. The CVC would be positioned to assist the roughly 8,000 contract tracers who currently work in county- and state health departments, and to cost-effectively fill a need for contract tracers that is estimated at between 100,000 and 300,000, based on the pandemic’s current dimensions.

The CVC proposal asks people to volunteer and work on an important public works project while receiving unemployment benefits. The CVC will be temporary and end when the unemployment crisis ends. The current federal subsidy of $600 per week for the unemployed ends on July 31. If we still need the CVC at that point, any new funds should be shifted to hiring people for the project part-time or full-time at market wages. That way people will have the appropriate incentives to return to their regular jobs.

Americans during the Great Depression saw work relief as a way to have the pride of work while receiving government benefits. We expect that Americans today who receive the federal boost along with normal unemployment will point with pride to their contribution to help solve the pandemic crisis.

How CVC would work and what it costs

• Who would work as tracers? Unemployed workers receiving the federal unemployment insurance benefit of $600 who choose to volunteer.

• Is this fair? First, it’s voluntary. Second, the Covid Contactors currently receive $600 per week in addition to the state’s regular unemployment benefit weekly payments. If they work 30 hours per week while receiving the payments, they will receive $20 per hour for their contact work and still receive the state’s normal unemployment benefits for being unemployed.

• Why should the unemployed do this work? “Seeking work” requirements have been waived until July 31, so presently, there is little incentive for many workers to look for jobs — especially since many jobs that have been lost in the past few months are not presently available. The battle against the pandemic requires an army of tracers. Public health officials are understaffed and have an immediate need for contact tracing.

• What is the “seeking work” requirement and why should it matter? To qualify for unemployment benefits, in normal times and recessions, workers must show that they are “ready and actively seeking employment.” It also states that “at a minimum, workers should be ready to accept work immediately if a job is offered to you.” CVC offers a way to help your country in a time of need.

• Won’t this crowd out private sector employment? No, the CVC program is temporary. This proposal aims to instill civic pride in people who want to work and are willing to work by employing them as temporary contact tracers. As the economy safely opens back up, workers will transition to looking for jobs in the private sector when the supplemental benefits end July 31. If tracing and testing is successful, the immediate demand for contact tracers will gradually decline and public health agencies can hire additional workers as needed and at private-sector wage rates. If they so choose, CVC volunteers would be trained and find themselves in a position to fill such vacancies.

• Do I have to work if I receive federal benefits? More than 30 million Americans have been added to unemployment insurance rolls in the last two months. If just 1% of them volunteer, we can meet the high-end of the estimated current demand for contact tracing.

• Are any additional funds needed? No. These benefits are already provisioned through the CARES Act. No additional funding is required until July 31.

Read:If post-coronavirus hiring practices don’t change, it will be devastating for many workers being laid off now

As states begin to open up their economies on a haphazard basis, the U.S. finds itself at a critical juncture in its fight against the coronavirus. Resources are needed to combat its spread and uncertainty over the future path of the pandemic is weighing down future economic activity. The CVC plan provides needed human resources to address an urgent public health priority in a sensible way and without adding to the economic burden states are bearing from the pandemic.

The virus is doing plenty of damage to the private sector now, and America needs to find ways to mitigate that damage. CVC is targeted and temporary, designed to aid in quarantining high-risk individuals while allowing the economy to operate more normally. Through contact tracing, CVC contributes to efforts to create a well-designed and concerted public health response to the next phase of combating the pandemic.

Price V. Fishback is Thomas R. Brown Professor of Economics at the Eller College of Business at the University of Georgia. Kris James Mitchener is Robert & Susan Finocchio Professor of Economics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.

Jobless claims: Another 3.169 million Americans file for unemployment benefits

Heidi Chung Reporter, Yahoo Finance•May 7, 2020

Market participants got another pulse check on the U.S. labor market Thursday, as the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and ahead of the highly-anticipated April jobs report.

Another 3.169 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 2, exceeding economists expectations for 3 million initial jobless claims. The prior week’s figure was revised higher to 3.846 million from the previously reported 3.839 million. So far over the past seven weeks, more than 33 million Americans have filed unemployment insurance claims.

Continuing claims, which lags initial jobless claims data by one week, totaled a record 22.65 million. The prior week’s 17.99 million continuing claims was revised higher to 18.01 million.

The weekly number of jobless claims has been steadily declining even as the cumulative number remains high.

“Initial jobless claims continued to moderate during the most recent week of data despite remaining at an extremely elevated level,” Nomura economist Lewis Alexander wrote in a note May 1. “Fiscal stimulus and the gradual re-opening of some industries and states should help the labor market stabilize further. That said, considerable strain remains, and we continue to expect the unemployment rate to reach almost 20% in Q2.”

Thursday’s weekly claims report comes ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s April jobs report and on the heels of the ADP employment report. Wednesday morning, the U.S. private sector lost 20.23 million jobs in April and was the worst loss in the report’s history, according to ADP.

“Job losses of this scale are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession,” ADP Research Institute Co-Head Ahu Yildirmaz said in a statement.

“Additionally, it is important to note that the report is based on the total number of payroll records for employees who were active on a company’s payroll through the 12th of the month. This is the same time period the Bureau of Labor and Statistics uses for their survey,” Yildirmaz added.

Though the ADP report is not always a reliable indicator of what the BLS report will illustrate, it does provide a bit of insight into the health of employment in the U.S.

“The report is a bit light on details of any potential methodological problems this month. The ADP counts anyone on the active payroll rather than just people who were paid during the month, which is the official non-farm payroll definition. Within many people put on temporary layoff, that could have created a discrepancy, with those people still on the active payroll, but not counted in the official non-farm payroll figures and also qualifying as unemployed in the other official household survey,” Capital Economics said in a note Wednesday.

Economists polled by Bloomberg expect 21.3 million jobs losses in April when the BLS releases its report Friday morning, down significantly from 701,000 job losses in March. The unemployment rate is estimated to have surged to 16% from 4.4% in the prior month.

“April jobs report should go down in infamy,” Bank of America economists said in a note Wednesday. “The April employment report will reveal unprecedented job losses as the economy has been shutdown to control the spread of COVID-19.” The firm projects 22 million job losses during the month amid the global pandemic.

One important thing to note with April’s jobs report is that there might be some discrepancies in the two surveys. A furloughed person, who is not working but has not been laid off, will be classified as unemployed or temporarily laid off in the household survey. However, if they were paid at any point during the establishment survey period, they will be classified as employed.

As of Thursday morning, there were 3.7 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 264,000 deaths globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data. In the U.S., there were 1.2 million cases and 73,000 deaths.

This post is developing. Please check back for updates.

—

 Basic Income Has Always Been a Women’s Cause

 

The vibrant debate around the question of basic income has all too often neglected a crucial aspect: gender dynamics. In a deeply gendered society, how might a basic income impact men and women differently? Could basic income be harnessed as a tool in the fight for women’s rights? Bringing a feminist perspective to the basic income discussion foregrounds a distinct set of concerns and virtues of the proposal. Natalie Bennett recalls the long 20^th-century history of women’s struggles in the UK to make the feminist case for a universal basic income.

It is telling that, in the United Kingdom at least, women were at the forefront of early campaigns for a universal basic income.[1] It has even been claimed, with some justification, that Virginia Woolf, in asserting a woman’s need for 500 pounds a year and a room of her own, was setting out at least the case for a universal basic income, if not yet a model for it.

The campaigner Lady Juliet Rhys-Williams, with a pre-Second World War background in maternity and child welfare, set universal basic income out as a less gender-discriminatory and labour-based alternative to the UK’s Beveridge welfare state model in her book Something To Look Forward To in 1943.[2] However, the Beveridge model (whereby incomes such as pensions are based on contributions rather than need – something that has trapped older women too often in desperate poverty) triumphed, geared as it was to the needs of the capitalist growth economy. The model’s architect, William Beveridge, came under significant attack from a range of women for these aspects of his plans, notably from Elizabeth Abbot and Katherine Bompas of the women’s suffrage organisation Women’s Freedom League, who said his was “a man’s plan for man”. But the Labour Party that would deliver the plans – and certainly the Conservatives who would acquiesce in them for decades – were unlikely to take up such a challenge and act on it.

It is important to keep highlighting that history today, when male tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and their ilk are creating a splash with their championing of universal basic income for a (possible) age of technological triumph. Many women were here first and must not be forgotten.

How the feminist vision of basic income took hold

It was often women who, in the UK, continued the push for universal income through the decades that followed. That most notably included the successful campaign for a universal child benefit, introduced in 1946, led by the strong-minded and determined Member of Parliament Eleanor Rathbone. That universal benefit was only recently (in 2013), and disgracefully, dropped with little fanfare, under the 2010-2015 coalition government of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Campaigning, however, never really achieved traction beyond support for children (and implicitly their mothers) with the public or the largest, massively male-dominated political parties, which in the British winner-takes-all first-past-the-post electoral system, are the only ones who have been able to introduce structural changes.

The feminist case for a universal basic income often starts, as Flanigan does, from the fact that women in the UK, as around the world, are more likely than men to be poor. 

Yet the push continued. In 1984, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in the UK proposed a universal basic income, saying that women would be the main beneficiaries, no longer dependent on their husband’s earnings (along with the unemployed, who wouldn’t be caught in what we now call ‘benefit traps’).[3]  In 2001, Philosopher Ingrid Robeyns again set out the case for a universal basic income, pointing out how the welfare states of Western Europe had developed in a very different age, one of stable, secure jobs and marriages, and a highly gendered division of labour, with men allocated to the bread-winning role.

In recent years, the feminist case, like the broader case, for universal basic income has been gaining traction. University of Richmond academic Jessica Flanigan wrote in a millennials’ journal of choice, Slate, that it is a “feminist cause”. The feminist case for a universal basic income often starts, as Flanigan does, from the fact that women in the UK, as around the world, are more likely than men to be poor. But at its heart is the fact that women are more likely to be responsible for the care of the young and the old, work that is very often entirely unremunerated, sometimes not chosen, and not respected. The phrase “I’m just a housewife” was often heard thirty to forty years ago. That might be less the case now, at least in ‘polite’ public discourse, but that does not mean these caring responsibilities have become properly respected or valued, either in the lives of individuals or at the national level (in the form of GDP).

That is not a new situation, but the pressures of a carer’s life, in a world in which people are being told increasingly to ‘sell themselves’, to be a ‘product’, to always be ready to seize opportunities, have become more acute than ever. A grinding life of poverty, caring for aged parents, an ailing husband or wife, or a disabled child, leaves little space for a sparkling Instagram account or Facebook feed, the development of a ‘look’ or a ‘brand’, or the upbeat manner and the kind of ‘people skills’ demanded now even for many minimum-wage jobs. Equally so with the nature of modern employment. It might look like the gig economy lends itself to fitting around the demands of caring responsibilities, but instead its workers are increasingly expected to fit their lives around its demands.

Fostering solidarity

There has also been a growing focus on the way in which a universal basic income could address the disempowerment of poverty and destitution (that results from a UK welfare system increasingly under threat).  With benefit sanctions affecting almost one in four Jobseekers’ allowance recipients between 2011 and 2015, and benefits of 132 million British pounds being withheld in 2015 alone, desperation is a condition all too familiar in many communities, with women often being the ones left to pick up the pieces.

And it is the most vulnerable who are likely to suffer the most. The deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Amelia Womack, wrote online in the British newspaper The Independent in 2018 about universal basic income’s value to some of the most vulnerable women in society: victims of domestic violence and abuse. By contrast, the universal credit system being implemented by the Conservative Party sees household payments all being aggregated into one (except by special request), making it even harder for vulnerable women to escape abusive situations.

A German study found that incapacity to meet employment demands, and particularly lack of opportunities due to discrimination by employers, was preventing older women and men from remaining in the labour market when they wished to do so, frequently forcing them to take pensions at a lower rate earlier than they would have wished, condemning them to an old age of poverty and insecurity.[4] This is the situation of a group of women known as the WASPI in the UK (Women Against State Pension Inequality). Born broadly in the 1950s, they have been adversely affected by rapid increases in their state pension age, bringing them to equality with men (with which few argue as a principle) but with little time to plan and prepare, and in many cases no official notice (and often personal knowledge) of the change in their circumstances. A universal basic income would ensure they were not forced into humiliating, often health-damaging, requirements for the receipt of the very low unemployment benefit, with little chance of gaining employment.

That a universal basic income might smooth the way to more gradual retirement, through a phased process of gradual disengagement from waged work, is not a particularly feminist point, but it is a significant one for many women.

There are some further groups of women who might particularly benefit: those working in low-paid jobs with low rates of unionisation and relatively toothless unions representing them, such as shopworkers and cleaners. This applies particularly, but not exclusively, in the case of the UK, with its highly repressive anti-union legislation.

No miracle cure for all society’s ills

There is, it has to be acknowledged, a genuine and progressive case made in some quarters against universal basic income from a feminist perspective. The chief claim is that it could, by guaranteeing women basic subsistence, render them even more exposed than they are now to social pressures to take up unpaid care and even community responsibilities, condemning them to lives of low incomes, limited opportunities, and lower status. The case was made two decades ago that one of the early forms of extended parental leave in Belgium, a payment for up to three years during career interruption, was – as might have been expected around the turn of the century – chiefly taken up by women.[5]

a struggle for universal basic income needs to be combined with the struggle for an equitable sharing of care responsibilities

This, however, brings up a very broad and important point about universal basic income. It is not a panacea, a solution to all of society’s ills, including misogyny, discrimination, and a failure to respect caring and community roles. Few of its proponents have suggested that it is. So, in some respects, this is a ‘straw woman’ argument, although it does highlight the point that a struggle for universal basic income needs to be combined with the struggle for an equitable sharing of these responsibilities – for shared parental leave, for respect for the role and difficulties of caring, and adequate recognition of it by employers, families, and society in general.

As argued elsewhere against those who suggest that universal basic income could pose a threat to universal basic services, universal basic income would only threaten to impose an ideology of women being forced into home and caring duties in a society with politics whereby this could be conceivable or acceptable. In an equitable society, or one working towards gender equality, such a claim would not stand up to scrutiny.

It can be argued, then, that the struggle for a universal basic income is a struggle for all women’s groups and feminists. Recognising that all members of society deserve a fair basic share of its resources, enough to meet their basic needs, because they all in some way or another contribute to it by their existence, strengthens the position of women, and all of their other struggles: as workers, as family members, as people in need of respect as well as material resources. When women fully secured the vote in 1928 in the UK, many thought they were well on the way to respect for women’s contributions to society. It is obvious that progress has been glacial since then, and a universal basic income for everyone could be an important step further along that road.

---

[1] Sloman, P. (2015). “Beveridge’s rival: Juliet Rhys-Williams and the campaign for basic income, 1942–55,” Contemporary British History, pp. 203-223.
[2] Sloman, op cit, p. 203.                                                                                                
[3] Hencke, D. ”Basic income ‘should replace benefits’ The Guardian (1959-2003); Jul 31, 1984; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer, p. 4
[4] Wübbeke, C.J. (2013). “Older unemployed at the crossroads between working life and retirement: reasons for their withdrawal from the labor market,“ Labor Market Res. 46: 61.
[5] Robeyns, op cit, p.85.

 
WELFARE AND SOCIAL ISSUES





Quality of Life Before Sustainability:Contemporary Green Discourse

A Green New Deal is good, but an ecofeminist one is even better.

 University of Manchester environmental politics expert Sherilyn MacGregor has explored the writings, theories, and critiques of ecofeminism to develop the concept of ecological citizenship on how citizens are key to social and ecological transformation. 

She spoke to Tine Hens about what we can learn from justice-centred ecofeminist theories and why climate action must look beyond technological innovation to embrace quality of life for all.

Tine Hens: So tell me, what is ecofeminism?

Sherilyn MacGregor: Ecofeminism is often deliberately mis­interpreted as concern for the planet that almost essentially belongs to women, as if they were pre-programmed simply because they have children and can be mothers. These are precooked, unscientific assumptions. In the course of its own history, ecofeminism has evolved into a critical, political movement that not only focuses on women’s rights, but also connects different forms of oppression.

Ecofeminism was born in the 1970s out of a feminist critique of the environmental movement and an ecological critique of the feminist movement. The analysis is fundamentally simple: the oppression of people and the subjugation of nature start from the same logic that we find in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal thinking. In this sense, you cannot tackle one injustice if you are silent about the others. As a feminist, you can’t simply argue for higher wages for women if you remain blind to planetary boundaries and the fable of eternal growth. In the same way, it’s pretty perverse for an ecologist to work towards alternative ways of living and consuming without pointing out gender role patterns or the over-representation of male standard-bearers.

In this sense, ecofeminism is essentially intersectional in that it links different forms of exclusion and injustice – from racism to environmental pollution – and challenges privilege and the existing order. It is therefore not surprising that the existing order reacts to it in a poisonous and dismissive manner. Or that they deride ecofeminism as a product of oversensitive, panicky women. Or that they attack women as such. And yes, they even react by casting suspicion on climate science.

In the US, a Feminist Green New Deal has been put forward by a coalition of women’s rights and climate justice organisations.¹ Is a Green New Deal not transformative enough?

This Feminist Green New Deal was launched in October 2019 and at first glimpse it makes certain points that aren’t put forward enough in mainstream green politics. Reproductive rights, for example, especially in the face of climate change.

The best-known environmentalists like Jane Goodall and David Attenborough are neo-Malthusian: “Stop population growth to stop climate change.” That cannot be allowed to carry on without criticism. We have to call it what it is: a form of racism and neocolonialism. Feminists in particular should speak up about this issue, because it will be an attack on women’s bodies.

The oppression of people and the subjugation of nature start from the same logic that we find in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal thinking.

 

Another principle in the Feminist Green New Deal is a different approach to work and labour. We have to understand work as being much more diverse. It’s not just about paid jobs – all caring work has to be seen as an integral part of a green jobs agenda. We can’t rebuild or transition to a new kind of economy if people just keep on making things. We need to employ people and pay them well in caring jobs: educators, nurses, community workers, home helpers.

So these are all good and necessary points of this Feminist Green New Deal. At the same time, it’s still very human-centred and mentions nothing about moving to ways of respecting and giving agency to the more than human. If it was an ecofeminist Green New Deal, that would be in there – the idea that humankind is just one species among others on this wonderful planet.

How can you move these more profound understandings of the climate crisis from the side rooms to the centre stage of the debate? How do you start redefining work when the focus is on the deployment of big, green infrastructure through a “world war-like mobilisation”?

The dominant perspective within green economics is that of green growth, a kind of ecomodernist idea that is all about investing in the right technology and triggering fantastic innovation. The strategy is not to say that’s wrong, but to show that it’s not going to bring the masses along. We’re all worried about right-wing populism, and how this has an attraction for people who are feeling left out, not listened to, and neglected.

You can’t answer rising populism with more elite solutions. Technofixes are exactly that. They’re not going to create jobs for the masses and put money in everyone’s pockets. So how can you turn your green agenda into a popular agenda? Every Green New Deal must appeal to the working class, the cleaners, the hotel workers, the restaurant cooks. What’s in it for them? Why is it good for them? If we change the economy, it has to change in a way that improves quality of life for all. In terms of money, economic justice, healthier air, cleaner neighbourhoods, better food, and time. It’s about these intersections of low-carbon and high-welfare policies.

Ecofeminism criticises the traditional environmental movement. Is it too privileged, too white, and blind to its own exclusion mechanisms?

Two examples from the past year. For every Greta there exists a young person of colour. Yet Greta draws all the attention. That’s not her fault, but it’s important for the media to make sure diverse voices can be heard. Second: Extinction Rebellion (XR). Their strategy is civil disobedience and getting arrested. However legitimate that may be, it ignores the simple reality that someone with a dark complexion would rather not end up in a cell. There are plenty of reports about police violence and racism. You can’t sweep that under the carpet because the end would justify the means.

Right now, like the rest of the environmental movement, XR is pretty white. The debate about the importance of representation, diversity, and inherent justice is starting to unfold. Inequality and climate policy are two sides of the same coin. Not everyone likes it, but it is a necessary debate. You cannot talk about climate policy and remain silent about structural injustice or other forms of exclusion. And it is not only about injustice at a global level, but also in our own backyards. In my research, I have experienced how and why green themes are regarded as elitist when they do not have to be. But this is the result if you talk more about electric cars than about the importance of public transport.

You did research in different neighbourhoods in the UK city of Manchester where you found out that people weren’t interested in the green agenda. How do you make this agenda popular?

Stop talking about sustainability and start talking about and investing in quality of life. Under the conditions of austerity in the UK, this is crucial. Working-class people are harmed by all the cuts in social welfare and are concerned about their daily comfort. You can’t go to them and speak about buying less or changing behaviour. Some people simply need to consume more because their basic needs aren’t fulfilled. That’s why justice is the right word, rather than equality. The minute you start to talk about justice, about a fair distribution of means, it resonates with people.

The most recent research I did in Manchester was in a community called Moss Side, which is well known as a very deprived and diverse area. We reached out to the inhabitants on subjects like quality of environment and quality of everyday life, and one of their biggest concerns was rubbish on the streets. We also worked with migrant residents from Somalia, who are treated by policymakers as hard to reach – a community they don’t understand. We discovered that there’s a great need for the non-Western engagement of immigrants with nature and the environment to be acknowledged. They see the world through Islamic principles about not wasting and caring for the natural world. Being open to that brings hope for a more inclusive understanding of sustainability. We have to stop making it seem like environmentalism is a white, middle-class concern. It’s time to start decolonising environmentalism and climate change policies. The more we question the narrow frame of Western environmentalism, the more will change.

I would rather have democracy in a poor environment than repression in a perfect environment. We don’t need less democracy, we need much, much more.

It doesn’t help that a lot of the communication about climate change is quite abstract about “reducing emissions”, “parts per million”, or “going climate neutral”. As if this existential crisis is the excel sheet of the accountant of the planet.

The science is clear. There is no longer any discussion about that. So what do we do? That question turns it into more interesting discussions in which more people can participate. What does a post-carbon, fair and just society look like? We need to translate the knowledge and the science into a palpable imaginary. How do we employ people? What kind of society do we want to live in? What are its basic principles? That’s where caring for people and the planet becomes a more accessible vision than solar panels, energy-efficient housing, and precision agriculture. In Moss Side, people live in houses so outworn you cannot even begin to make them carbon neutral. So where do you start? By leaping over the scientific jargon and putting quality of life at the centre.

Elections prove over and over again that people are willing to vote against their own interests. Some voices in the environmental community even hint at the straightforward choices a non-democratic government can make. It seems like we’re not only living a climate crisis, but also a democratic crisis.

I would rather have democracy in a poor environment than repression in a perfect environment. We don’t need less democracy, we need much, much more. All over the world, and certainly in the UK, party politics is becoming extremely polarised and toxic. There’s a loss of vision, and hatred is being nurtured by strategy and negative campaigning. It’s a sad and troubling evolution. But maybe it is also is a chance for alternatives to blossom.

There have been some interesting and successful experiments with citizens’ assemblies in Ireland and in British Columbia over a carbon tax. In the UK, smaller and more specific citizens’ juries led to the banning of GMOs.

Finding common ground, speaking, and listening are so desperately needed. I can imagine citizens’ assemblies starting to take shape in cities, or even on a community level. Cities are way ahead of national governments on climate – they’re the right size for doing this. But they also struggle to reach out to the non-converted. The mayor of Manchester tries every year to organise a green summit. It’s really nice to go there, but you look around and only see white faces. “We don’t know how to reach out,” is an often-heard complaint – to which I say, “Get out there and instigate kitchen table discussions around a few common questions. Record people’s ideas. Decentralise and remove thresholds.” Decentralising is a very ecofeminist point of view. Not just the process of decision-making, but also the dominant knowledge.

Some would argue we don’t have time for the slow process of citizens’ assemblies. They argue we need big solutions that we can upscale at an unprecedented tempo.

I don’t deny that climate is an emergency but sometimes this has been used to force a certain direction, which is why this “climate emergency” language worries me. It may be rhetorically useful, but there’s a negative side. What happens in emergencies? You’re allowed to take exceptional measures. This could mean taking people’s rights away, which is something we can never allow to happen.

In response to the “we need to upscale” argument, I like to point out that we have to value every kind of meaningful action. It’s a very masculine thing to focus on big solutions, on a politics of resisting and fighting. This must be called out because it’s a way to plant doubts in the minds of those who are willing to act. It’s saying that caring for your community garden has no value.

Let me give you an example from my neighbourhood, where there is a lot of poverty, alienation, and social isolation. People have decided to come together and start cleaning up forgotten green spaces and alleys, to plant flowers and to create nice places for children to play and elderly people to sit. It’s no big deal, you could say, it’s just about people coming together, caring together, and keeping those plants alive. But what you really make happen is restored contact and connection. It starts with someone from Malaysia talking to an elderly Jamaican woman and realising they have so much in common. There is such hope in that.

FOOTNOTES

1. See the Feminist New Deal.

This interview is part of our latest edition, “A World Alive: Green Politics in Europe and Beyond”.

Ahmaud Arbery and the racist history of loitering laws

Racism.Illustrated | AP Images, Screenshot/Twitter, iStock

Bonnie Kristian May 7, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery went for a jog in a neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia, a coastal town south of Savannah, in late February. He paused to look around a construction site of a new house. Then, in the middle of his run, a newly public video reveals, he was confronted by Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father-son duo — the father, Gregory, a retired police officer — who'd seen Arbery and decided he looked like a local burglary suspect.


Arming themselves with a .357 magnum and a shotgun, the McMichaels, who are white, chased Arbery, who was black, with a pick-up truck. The video doesn't always keep the three men in frame, but we see Arbery attempt to go around the pick-up only to be intercepted by Travis McMichael with the shotgun. There's a shot, then the two men tussle for the weapon, then another shot at point-blank range, after which Arbery stumbles away, attempting to run before collapsing dead on the pavement. The McMichaels claimed they were attempting a citizen's arrest and shot Arbery, an unarmed runner they'd chased and cut off, in self-defense. No charges have been filed.

The video's release prompted protests, plans for a grand jury, and a statement from Georgia's attorney general calling for swift justice. It's a welcome call, but swift justice wouldn't have required a viral video. And this case is all too familiar: It calls to mind the spate of nationally reported killings of unarmed black men and boys, often by white police officers, over the last six years. But it's also reminiscent of a longer American history of doing violence to black men for the "crime" of being out in public. Arbery's death resembles nothing so much as lynchings conducted in the name of vagrancy laws, Jim Crow-era legislation crafted to create an endless supply of excuses to harass African Americans and even arrest them, jail them, and profit from their labor.

"We have the power to pass stringent laws to govern Negroes — this is a blessing — for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them," said one Alabama planter in the post-Civil War era. The Jim Crow "black codes" were indeed stringent. "Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws," writes Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow, "which selectively made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks."

The black codes also worked hand-in-hand with convict leasing laws, Alexander notes, which "allow[ed] for the hiring out of county prisoners to plantation owners and private companies. Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay," supplying the plantations with cheap labor and the county governments with an income stream. It wasn't antebellum slavery, but neither was it an entirely different creature — and indeed court decisions of the time, like 1871's Ruffin vs. Commonwealth, decided by the Virginia Supreme Court, held that a prisoner is a "slave of the state" who has forfeited "all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords him."

While the classic vagrancy law required proof of employment, some of these measures also included "loitering" as an offense. An 1866 Georgia law banned "wandering or strolling about in idleness." Kentucky enacted "laws which allowed persons guilty of 'keeping a disorderly house, loitering, or rambling without a job' to be arrested and bound out to the highest bidder for a year's service."

And like most vagrancy laws more broadly, anti-loitering laws were race-neutral on paper. In practice, they gave police a reason to arrest black people, especially black men, simply for their public presence as opposed to any specific criminal act. The concept of vagrancy, including loitering, as a criminal offense was also used by racist vigilantes to justify lynching.

By 1949, vagrancy was criminalized in every state, but most of the laws have been withered under court scrutiny in the years since. A Jacksonville, Florida, law was struck down by a landmark 7-0 Supreme Court decision in 1972. It permitted arrest of "[r]ogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging, common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, ... persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers," and many more. (The court deemed the Jacksonville law unconstitutionally vague; absurdly, a defendant in a related case was charged with loitering "because he was standing in the driveway, an act which the officers admitted was done only at their command.")

Many anti-loitering laws have been rewritten for greater specificity in the last 50 years, ostensibly to address issues like gang violence and prostitution, but they remain on the books and subject to tremendous abuse. More importantly for Arbery's case, the idea of loitering as a threatening act by African-American men remains embedded in our culture.

Thus do black parents teach their children to take extra precautions and black children worry about their parents. "My wife often cautions me against going out at night," tweeted black Michigan pastor Mika Edmondson in response to Arbery's killing, "because she knows that when some people see me out at night, they don't see a Presbyterian pastor or a PhD in systematic theology. All they can see is a threat."

That seems to be all the McMichaels saw, too, when they killed Ahmaud Arbery after hunting him in the street.

How the virus could weigh down America's economy for the long haul
James Pethokoukis

Illustrated | iStock
May 7, 2020

President Trump frequently called the pre-pandemic American economy the best in the country's history. And in some ways it was pretty impressive. The stock market was way up and unemployment way down — as the president's social media accounts constantly reminded us.

But all that good stuff only came after a long, so-so recovery from the Great Recession. In the decade before that devastating downturn — one many of us probably thought would be the worst we would ever experience — economic growth averaged 3.3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation. In the decade after the 2007-2009 recession, however, growth averaged 2.3 percent, a percentage point lower. And that slower pace was a big reason wage growth was steady but unspectacular.

Now, of course, the quarantined economy is suffering its worst contraction since the Great Depression, if not ever. It might shrink as much as 40 or 50 percent, on an annualized basis, from April through June. But as states gradually reopen, the economy should start growing again, maybe quite quickly at first. After that, it might oscillate between slower and faster growth, depending on the future path of the coronavirus outbreak.

For his part, Trump is tweet-promising to "build the greatest economy in the world AGAIN!" But we have to do better. Much better. Before the COVID-19 collapse, economists from Wall Street to Washington were forecasting the long-term U.S. growth rate at a bit below 2 percent. One reason is the demographic-driven decline in labor-force growth. America is getting older and having fewer kids. With fewer new workers, the ones we have will need to be more productive, at least if future growth is going to be anywhere near as strong as past growth. Unfortunately, rich nations entered into the pandemic in the midst of a 15-year-long productivity growth slowdown.

Now there are also all sorts of virus-related reasons to think even those reduced growth and productivity rates will be tough to achieve going forward. Maybe the Two Percent Economy downshifts to a One Percent Economy. In the new analysis "The COVID crisis and productivity growth," economists Filippo di Mauro of the National University of Singapore and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago highlight several reasons for concern. Among them: disruption to schooling, the loss of operational know-how at failed firms, and the creation of "zombie" companies that survive long after the pandemic only due to government support. About that last point, Di Mauro and Syverson write, "While there are arguments for limiting business closures at least in the short run, zombie firms might further limit the ability of new, higher-productivity businesses to enter."

But some of the wounds might be self-inflicted if a more risk-averse, pandemic-shocked society and government pursue populist, "drawbridge up" responses to the pandemic. Case in point: Trump suspending immigration to protect jobs. While the measure is supposedly temporary, it gives aid and comfort to the notion that immigrants are bad for the economy. That simply isn't true. The latest piece of evidence is a new NBER working paper, "Immigration, Innovation, and Growth," which demonstrates the positive impact immigrants continue to have on American economic dynamism and innovation. From the paper: "The significant increase in local wages suggests immigration not only affects innovation and creative destruction, but also the overall level of economic growth."

Or as legendary investor Warren Buffett said the other day at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting (live-streamed, of course) while marveling at the "miracle" and "magic" of the American economy: "Can you imagine that? For 231 years, there's always been people that have wanted to come here." And it would be a very bad thing if they stopped coming. Immigrants account for nearly half of the U.S. workforce with a science or engineering doctorate. In Silicon Valley, 64 percent of engineers are foreign-born. Indeed, more than half of U.S. startup "unicorns" have at least one immigrant co-founder.

Perhaps even more likely than more anti-immigration policies are more anti-trade actions. Trump has already mused about slapping China with $1 trillion in tariffs as punishment for the pandemic, while Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, just wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for the World Trade Organization to be abolished. Across the conservative world there are calls for "industrial policy," a wonky term for a range of actions including trade protectionism and subsidies for favored industries — especially those whose owners or workers lean toward the party dispensing the favors. Sounds like a recipe for even more zombie companies.

The coronavirus has created myriad obstacles to faster economic growth and the opportunities it generates. Don't think populism can't make things worse.