A NEW REPORT FOR AN UNPREDICTABLE ERA
For more than two decades, we’ve released The State of Working Wisconsin. This year, we’ve released a new digital report to meet the reality of the COVID-19 crisis. Explore below for profiles of workers, monthly updates of economic data indicators, analysis from experts, and more.
Key Takeaways:
- This Labor Day, we are reminded that there are still anti-labor policies on the books in Georgia that diminish worker power and economic opportunity for all.
- Unions play a significant role in shaping a better future for Georgia’s workers, their families and the economy overall.
Why it matters
At the expense of low-wage workers, those who wield more than their fair share of corporate and political power have facilitated and benefited from a historic rise in racial and economic inequality. Policymakers and business interests have collaborated long enough through state and local policies to make Georgia simultaneously the No. 1 place to do business and home of the No. 1 place for income inequality.
The weakening of labor protections in Georgia allowed for policies like Georgia’s Senate Bill (SB) 359 to ram through this legislative session. This bill shields businesses from liability by creating a near-impossible standard to prove gross negligence if a worker contracts COVID-19 on the job. In other words, state lawmakers bolstered protections for employers, but not for the people they employ who were forced to return to work prematurely during a deadly pandemic in a state with one of the highest infection rates, particularly among Black and Latinx Georgians.
Publication
Since the spread of COVID-19 accelerated in mid-March of this year, the sharp decline in U.S. economic growth has been faster than at any previous time in recorded economic history—even the Great Depression. The first part of this decline was, in large part, deliberate—stopping non-essential work so that people could social distance at home and stem rising infection rates. The length, and now the depth, of the crisis are increasingly self-inflicted wounds—the consequence of the lack of clear and effective national policies to contain the virus and now the failure to extend the economic relief families need to pay rent, put food on the table, and cover other essentials. A central message of this report is that it matters a great deal to working people in Pennsylvania that now, and over the next several years, the nation and state adopt policies that promote a strong and just economic recovery.
West Virginia’s immigrants come from all over the world and while a small share of the populations, they are broadly represented throughout the state’s workforce and economy. Read PDF of report.
But a fuller conversation about immigrants tends to be overshadowed by the controversy in the U.S. around immigration reform. This conversation all too often tends to paint immigrants as a homogenous group. The conversation ought to reflect an informed understanding of this dynamic population, its diverse contributions to the economy and the challenges immigrants face.
This report attempts to have that deeper conversation, reflecting on the history of immigrants in West Virginia, the challenges they have faced, how they’ve become enmeshed in the fabric of the state, and their role in the state today.