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A worker demonstrates her skills last month at the Chicago Women in Trades facility. Illinois was one of the top 10 states for union representation last year, at 13.9% of workers, more than 2.5 times Arizona’s rate of 5.4%, despite slow gains in the state.

After bottoming out at 4% in 2017, labor union membership in Arizona has been slowly rising, but it is still well behind levels of previous years and only about half of the national average. Read more»

A team from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conduct site assessments of potential alternate care facilities in Apache County, Arizona, in response to COVID-19. State officials have refused to adopt OSHA’s new safety standards for health care workers, and federal regulators announced this week that they will begin the process of taking over Arizona’s workplace safety program.

In a rare move, federal labor officials have threatened to take over Arizona, South Carolina and Utah’s workplace safety programs because they failed to adopt emergency COVID-19 rules to protect health care workers. Read more»

OSHA has announced that in October it will begin exploring the possibility of creating a heat standard, but the process is expected to take years.

Federal safety regulators have issued no standards to protect workers from heat-related hazards - even as climate change increases the risk of deadly heat waves and extreme weather conditions - prompting some states to begin enacting regulations on their own. Read more»

Inside an Amazon warehouse.

Senate Republicans dropped their insistence that a liability shield be included in a bipartisan COVID-19 relief package, but union advocates worry that the measure could spring back to life next year, harming workers and undercut the Biden administration's plans to control the pandemic. Read more»

Arizona Election Services Director Bo Dul puts the official seal on the Arizona Presidential Electoral Ballot after members of Arizona’s Electoral College signed the certificate Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in Phoenix.

Eleven presidential electors in Arizona cast their votes on Monday morning for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. By Monday afternoon, as electors in other states did the same, Biden had won enough votes to clinch the presidency. Read more»

Across the country, at least 491 meatpacking plants have had confirmed cases of Covid, with at least 41,167 meatpacking workers testing positive, according to the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit news organization. At least 193 have died.

Workers complained early on in the pandemic about dangerous work conditions; the lack of response from OSHA is blamed in part for the spread of coronavirus and has now led to several lawsuits brought by workers. Read more»

An American Airlines jet taxis at Sky Harbor Airport, a hub for the airline, in this 2018 file photo. Executives at the airline have said they might have to furlough or lay off 19,000 workers on Oct. 1 without more federal aid, but they have not said where the cuts might come.

American Airlines’ announcement that it could let go up to 19,000 workers on Oct. 1 has left the airline’s roughly 10,000 employees in Arizona worried, but hopeful the state can avoid the worst of the cuts. Read more»

Tucson police in Downtown during protests Friday night.

The latest in the historically fraught relationship among police, labor and the civil rights movement. Read more»

More than 1,700 workers from a number of unions have been on strike against Asarco copper mining and refining operations in Arizona and Texas for four months now.

Striking Asarco workers passed four months on the picket line last week, but union officials insist they have strong community support and that workers are committed to staying out until they get a fair deal. Read more»

Today Labor Day is no longer about trade unionists marching down the street with banners and their tools of trade. Instead, it is a confused holiday with no associated rituals. Read more»

Experts agree the 'gig economy' is a rapidly growing part of the U.S. labor force, but solid numbers are hard to come by. One estimate said workers in the sector grew ten-fold in a four-year period. while customers grew 47 times.

Many workers will get holiday pay if they clock in on Labor Day, but for a rapidly growing sector of the labor force it could be just another day on the job. Uber drivers, TaskRabbit handymen, Rover dog-walkers, Airbnb hosts and countless others in the new “gig economy” are all considered independent contractors and not employees. Read more»

A new report says the steady decline of labor unions has affected nonunion workers, who have not seen wages rise as high as they would have if unions were at peak numbers. But an Arizona economist and business official said many other factors could be at play.

The steady decline in union membership has had a ripple effect on wages of nonunion workers, costing them a potential $14 to $52 a week in pay, according to a report released this week. Read more»

More Americans died on the job last year, with the increase concentrated among older employees as well as self-employed and contract workers. Read more»

Striking Sun Tran workers walking the picket line on Aug. 21.

From the start, the city has thrown in with management by not throwing a few more bucks into the kitty. Standing with Sun Tran's strategy means standing with their tactics. Now, that means "scab" labor, which has union leaders calling this a "pivotal point." Read more» 3

The secretive, humongous treaty won’t stop labor abuses in poor countries, critics warn. Read more»

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