Nevada workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 roll the dice on proposed ordinance to get them back



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Bartenders, nurses, airport, casino and convention workers who help fuel Nevada’s economy gathered in Las Vegas on Tuesday for a “right of return” order that would require companies to recruit employees made redundant or fired due to the coronavirus crisis.

“Each of these workers should have the right to return to their old job when the company takes over,” the Save Our Jobs union coalition said in a statement. “They lost their jobs through no fault of their own.”

Save Our Jobs represents around 87,000 workers across the state and the order they ask the Clark County Commission to put on the September 1 agenda would ensure employers don’t hire someone again before asking a former employee to come back.

While language is still being finalized, the coalition said it will cover both union and non-union workers.

“Workers have helped make Nevada the tourism and entertainment capital of the world,” the coalition statement read. “They take care of our sick, injured and elderly residents. All the workers make this city one of the best places to live and raise a family. “

The coalition includes Local 165 of the Bartenders Union, Local 226 of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 720 of IATSE, the National Union of United Nurses, Local 501 of Operating Engineers, SEIU 1107, Teamsters Local 986, Teamsters Local 631, United Auto Workers Local 3555 and others.

More than 20 million jobs have been lost across the country after the pandemic struck and the coalition’s decision comes as the recovery from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression appeared to be faltering.

Nevada was among the hardest-hit states in the country as two in five jobs in the state were in recreation, retail and hospitality, Business Insider reported.

The US economy added 1.76 million jobs in July. But that was a sharp drop from the 4.8 million jobs that were restored in June, according to the latest batch of statistics from the Federal Labor Office.

And while revelers returned to casinos in June two months after they were closed by COVID-19 and the neon lights of the famous Las Vegas Strip went out, many jobs have not returned. And experts said it could take years for the economies of Las Vegas and Nevada to recover.

In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that the pandemic is “hitting Nevada’s workforce harder than any other US state” and posing a possible “existential threat to Las Vegas’ business model based on bringing people together. for gaming, entertainment and conventions.

“We think that consumers will still be quite reluctant to travel very far, to stay in hotels [or] to participate in games, “until there is a vaccine, Troy Walters, senior economist at IHS Markit, told The Journal.

Nevada as of Tuesday afternoon had reported 61,967 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,077 deaths, according to the latest figures from NBC News.

But the 25 deaths reported in Nevada on Tuesday were a new record for the state. Although the number of new cases is down 26% in the past two weeks from the previous two weeks, it is still much higher than in early June, when the state averaged just over 100 new cases per day.

ProPublica, the independent investigative news operation, warned in an article published Tuesday that when it comes to the coronavirus, “what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.” The reopened casinos are “a probable hotbed for the spread of the new coronavirus”. And tourists returning home infected are hard to track down because “there is no national system in place for contact tracing.”

Nationally, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was around 5.5 million and the death toll as of Tuesday morning was close to 172,000, according to NBC News figures. The United States, which dominates the world in both categories, accounted for about a quarter of the 22 million cases and 776,000 deaths worldwide.

In the past seven days, India (6,540) and Brazil (6,784) have recorded more coronavirus deaths than the United States, which has reported 6,440, according to figures from NBC News.

Most of the new cases and deaths in the United States have been in the southern and Sun Belt states which have reopened at the urgent request of the Trump administration as the number of new COVID-19 cases began to rise .

Currently, however, the state with the highest infection rate is Louisiana, which has nearly 3,000 cases per 100,000 population, according to public records.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, won a legal battle on Monday when a federal judge refused to block the governor’s order to stop the spread of the virus by closing bars. Ten bar owners had sued the state to keep it open.

“The case revolves around a classic question of who decides: between democratically accountable state officials and a federal court, who decides what measures best protect Louisianans during a global pandemic? U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman wrote. “The answer is state officials.”

Florida has the second highest infection rate in the country, with more than 2,600 confirmed cases per 100,000 population. The Sunshine State was on track to join California as the only state with more than 600,000 confirmed cases. And as of Tuesday morning, Florida had reported 9,673 deaths.

  • Rebekah Jones, the former head of the Florida Public Information Portal who says she was ousted by Gov. Ron DeSantis for refusing censorship dismal data, has a new job of calculating the numbers. Jones announced that she is teaming up with the FinMango advocacy group to track coronavirus cases “in every K-12 school district” in the United States NBC News reported on Monday that the federal government was not tracking COVID-19 outbreaks in schools and that some states were not reporting them not publicly. This makes it more difficult for public health experts to find solutions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
  • While most of the victims of the early pandemic were elderly or infirm, the World Health Organization has warned that more and more young people are becoming infected. “The epidemic is changing,” Takeshi Kasai, WHO regional director, said in a recent briefing. “People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly at the root of the spread.” They, in turn, pose a great danger to the most vulnerable groups because “many are unaware that they are infected,” Kasai said. “This increases the risk of spillover to the most vulnerable.”
  • Notre-Dame became the second nationally recognized university in two days to remove its students from classrooms following a coronavirus outbreak on campus. President Reverend John Jenkins ordered all undergraduate courses to be online for the next two weeks after an off-campus party infected dozens of students. “If these steps fail, we’ll have to send the students home like we did last spring,” Jenkins warned. At least the Irish still have a chance to finish the semester on campus. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sent all of its students home Monday for the remainder of the fall semester after reporting 135 new cases of COVID-19 and four clusters within a week of starting in-person classes.
  • The world got a glimpse of shocking images of Wuhan, China, the city where the pandemic is said to have started – a huge pool party at a local water park. Thousands of bathers swinging in inflatable rubber objects and almost no mask wearing were squeezed into a pool where they groove to electronic music. Wuhan’s ultra-strict lockdown ended in April, but the majority of the 4,634 coronavirus deaths reported in the country were in Wuhan.
  • Da fans likely won’t be watching “Da Bears” play football this season from Soldier Field. Concerned about the current coronavirus crisis, the Chicago Bears have terminated spectator clearance after consulting with Chicago health officials. “The Bears and the City of Chicago have agreed that the health measures show that now is not the right time to welcome fans back to Soldier Field,” the teams said in a statement. The Bears aren’t the first NFL team to ban fans from some of their games. The Tennessee Titans do the same. And earlier, the New York Jets and Giants announced that no fans would be allowed “until circumstances change” at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where both teams play. Teams like Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons have said they will play in front of reduced-capacity crowds with social distancing measures in place. The NFL makes it mandatory for any fan attending a professional football game to wear a mask.



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