On The Front Line EXCLUSIVE
The Frontline Worker Pay Program has now closed. More than one million Frontline Worker Pay applicants were approved to receive a payment of $487.45 and payments have been distributed. Applicants chose whether to receive payment by ACH direct deposit or a prepaid debit card (ReliaCard).
On The Front Line
To thank those Minnesotans who worked on the frontlines during the COVID-19 peacetime emergency, Gov. Tim Walz signed Frontline Worker Payments into law April 29, 2022, enabling those workers to apply for Frontline Worker Pay.
Applicants whose application was denied, could appeal the decision during a 15-day appeal period, Aug. 16 through 31, 2022. Appeal forms were online forms that must have been successfully submitted to appeal a denial decision. The commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry's decision on an appeal is final.
As CVI workers, we put our lives on the line to save other people. We understand that people from disenfranchised communities of color are carrying multiple layers of trauma and for various reasons, can reach a point where violence seems like the only way to resolve conflict.
Even more alarmingly, these trends have continued in 2021. While homicide rates have declined from their peak in the summer of 2020, year-to-date counts of homicides in 2021 are higher than they were in the same period in 2020.7
UPI is member of the Los Angeles Violence Intervention Coalition (LAVIC), a group of 17 frontline community violence intervention agencies focused on ending the homicide epidemic in Los Angeles and across the country. The LAVIC has successfully advocated for over $33 million in funds to support community-based violence intervention efforts throughout the LA region.
Police chiefs and law enforcement organizations are deeply concerned about solutions to the crime problem facing this country. They come to this crisis with years of experience on the front line of doing whatever is in their power to reduce crime. They support those programs that will have a clear impact. Community policing, neighborhood crime programs, gun control, and a focused approach to certain kinds of crime, such as drug crime and youth crime, are among the approaches they recommend most strongly. They are equally clear that the problem of violence is not one which can be left to law enforcement to solve. Stronger families and neighborhoods, intervention on behalf of youth, and a sound economy with sufficient jobs are all necessary steps to a safer society.
Given their indispensable role in preserving the global biodiversity upon which human well-being and sustainable development gains will depend, one might rightly wonder at the near total absence of information pertaining to ranger work prior to the undertaking of this study. The limited materials that did exist rarely included any feedback from rangers themselves. Things are different in this report, where we hear directly from 7,110 public-sector patrol rangers, surveyed at hundreds of sites across 28 countries. Although a wide diversity of topics were addressed across the 197 questions contained in each survey, an analysis of results points towards certain themes that require urgent action from the governments that employ these rangers... This is an updated version of Life on the Frontline 2018 assessing ranger welfare perceptions across different countries. It is the largest of its kind ever conducted.
In this series, I will introduce you to some of these frontline workers: In their own words, they share the risks and challenges they face, the concerns they have, and how they are coping. They will highlight what policymakers, employers, and each of us can do to better protect and support them.
Millions of other health workers earn significantly lower wages while receiving less public recognition for their roles, despite their sacrifices. Nearly 7 million essential workers are employed in low-wage health jobs on the COVID-19 front lines, including:
We are enormously grateful to each of these workers for sharing their stories and to UFCW Local 400 for their collaboration. We thank Amber, Courtney, Jeffrey, Lisa, Matt and Michelle, and each and every worker on the frontline, for the sacrifices they are making on behalf of all of us.
We are enormously grateful to each of these workers for sharing their stories, Thanks to PHI, SEIU, SEIU Local 1199, Angelina Drake, Tatia Cooper, Yvonne Slosarski, Leslie Frane and LaNoral Thomas for their collaboration with the worker interviews. We thank Tony, Andrea, Yvette, David, Sabrina, Elizabeth, Pauline, Ditanya, and each and every worker on the front line for the sacrifices they are making on behalf of all of us.
A number of departments across Tulane University are actively responding to the 2019 - 2020 outbreak of COVID-19. Researchers in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, School of Medicine, National Primate Research Center, and Science and Engineering are addressing the disease on several fronts, from immediate response and containment, modeling to anticipate the disease spread, to development of a vaccine and treatments against the virus.
Of course, there is an important role for fiscal policy to shield the most vulnerable in the economy from the energy price shock. There is not only a moral but also an economic imperative to that. But we are also emphatic that fiscal support measures to shield the economy from the impact of high energy prices should be temporary, targeted, and tailored to preserving incentives to consume less energy. In particular, as the energy crisis becomes less acute, it is important to now start rolling these measures back promptly in line with the fall in energy prices and in a concerted manner.
Instead, companies should put frontline workers on top with corporate staffers, executives, and CEOs beneath them to reflect their proper roles of coaching and supporting the front line rather than controlling its members. The simple, symbolic, visual change will help everyone in an organization remember where value comes from: customers and the employees closest to them.
Second, the practical: CEOs should spend more of their time with frontline workers. I recommend aiming for 30%, as I did at Medtronic. Although it was difficult to maintain that balance, I came close by scheduling customer visits and frontline visits first and then filling in my schedule with internal and external meetings.
Starting as an 18-year-old co-op student, Barra has worked for GM for 41 years, including in frontline jobs as manufacturing engineer, factory inspector, and design engineer before she rose into management.
As these examples show, a mindset shift is occurring in corporate leadership, and the stakes are high for everyone involved. Most important, recentering corporate leadership on the front lines could help combat the rise of income inequality. In the 40 years from 1979 to 2019, compensation for frontline workers rose only 16%, while productivity increased 60%. In the same time frame, the top 1% of employees saw 160% growth in compensation. Thus the gap is widening between CEOs and frontline workers: In 2020 it was 351:1 compared with only 21:1 back in 1965.
This report shines a light on the experiences of frontline workers of color, the pathways from the front line to the middle class, and the skills workers need to advance. It also offers steps companies could take to improve job quality and better support frontline workers of color to develop and progress in their careers.
With 112 million workers, the frontline workforce is massive but not a monolith. Frontline professionals (for example, school teachers and registered nurses) number 17 million workers who earn an average annual salary of $54,000.2 McKinsey analysis based on Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019 data. Frontline hourly and salaried roles (such as retail salespeople, cooks, and store managers) are filled by 95 million workers who earn an average annual income of $33,000. Our research focused on this second category.
The front line is a vital part of nearly all sectors of the economy. They are the public face of many organizations, working in industries from healthcare to transportation and logistics to foodservice. They make tremendous contributions to the US economy, including carrying the nation through the pandemic. Yet despite these contributions, frontline workers experience the greatest hardship from economic disruption.
Frontline hourly employees report the lowest overall feelings of inclusion5 Inclusion consists of behaviors such as allyship, mutual respect, and advocacy as well as conditions such as shared prosperity and fair participation. of all employees in the workforce, and differences in inclusion emerge as they climb the corporate ladder (Exhibit 2). While all groups feel more connected at higher levels of their organization, Black employees experience lower inclusion than their peers at most levels. This pattern essentially sets up a no-win situation for Black frontline workers: shared stressors in the front line or feelings of isolation as they move up the ladder.
The lack of trust manifests itself in numerous ways. Black workers are less likely to feel supported, encouraged, and treated as professional equals by their peers. Fifty-one percent of Black employees have at least one mentor, but just 38 percent said they have at least one sponsor, meaning many Black workers lack valuable direction and support on career paths and development opportunities. In addition, Black frontline employees report feeling included in the workplace less than any other racial group.
Our research explored the perceptions of frontline hourly employees regarding fairness and transparency in promotions. They are more likely than their salaried peers to feel their organization is inconsistent when it comes to promoting employees on merit and performance (Exhibit 3). Just 39 percent of hourly respondents believe their employer takes an objective, empirical view of performance and promotion. In addition, our analysis highlighted frontline workers of color want to advance but lack access to opportunities by a sizable margin compared with White workers. 041b061a72