Tag: Grants

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Politics

Choose Grants Trump’s Request for Particular Grasp to Assessment Mar-a-Lago Paperwork

Judge Grants Trump’s Request for Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents

A federal judge on Monday intervened in an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of sensitive government records, ordering the appointment of an independent arbitrator to review a trove of materials released last month from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida were confiscated.

In a 24-page ruling, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida also barred the Justice Department from using the seized materials for “investigative purposes” related to Mr. Trump’s ongoing investigation pending the arbitrator’s work , known as the Special Master, was completed.

The order would effectively bar federal prosecutors from using a key piece of evidence while they continue to investigate whether the former president unlawfully kept national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate or impeded government efforts to get them back.

In her order, issued on the Labor Day holiday, Judge Cannon said she made her decisions “to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity in the exceptional circumstances.” However, their order would not affect a separate review of the documents by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Judge Cannon’s decision gave the Special Master sweeping powers to review materials extracted from Mar-a-Lago, some of which bore markings identifying them as top secret. It allowed anyone eventually appointed to the post to assess the documents not only for those protected by attorney-client privilege, a relatively common measure, but also for those potentially protected by executive privilege, the normally confidential internal Executive branch deliberations protects.

At a hearing on the issue last week, the Justice Department argued that since Mr Trump is a former President and the Department is itself, allowing a special master to conduct an executive privilege review of the seized material would be a radical and legally unfounded move Part of the current executive branch.

But Judge Cannon disagreed with the Justice Department, writing in the order that she was “unconvinced” by the government’s categorical claim that executive privilege did not apply in this context. She added that she felt the department’s position “arguably exaggerated the law” and that it made sense for her to set aside any documents that might be protected by executive privilege if the legal issues in the case are resolved.

“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff in this regard ultimately fails, that possibility, even if probable, does not negate a former president’s ability to assert the privilege as a matter of first concern,” she wrote. “Because the eligibility review team did not search for any material that may be subject to executive privileges, further review is required for this additional purpose.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not initially respond to a request for comment, but Department officials last week discussed the possibility of an appeal should the judge rule in Mr Trump’s favour.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

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Politics

Texas Choose Grants Restraining Order In opposition to Anti-Abortion Group

Texas Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Anti-Abortion Group

A Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order against the state’s largest anti-abortion group on Friday, blocking it from suing Planned Parenthood under the terms of the restrictive abortion law that went into effect this week.

Planned Parenthood will still have to comply with the law, which bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. But under the order, the anti-abortion group, Texas Right to Life, or its associates cannot enforce the law by filing suit against Planned Parenthood, as allowed under the measure.

The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of State District Court in Travis County, found that the law, Senate Bill 8, created “a probable, irreparable, and imminent injury,” at least temporarily, for Planned Parenthood, its staff and its patients, all of whom “would have no adequate remedy” if they were sued by Texas Right to Life or anyone affiliated with the group.

The order’s reach is narrow and does not preclude other anti-abortion groups or anyone not associated with Texas Right to Life from suing Planned Parenthood. It is set to expire on Sept. 17.

Still, while it is “not enough relief for Texas,” the order protects Planned Parenthood’s staff and its health care providers, who have “continued to offer care as best they can within the law while facing surveillance, harassment, and threats from vigilantes eager to stop them,” Helene Krasnoff, the vice president for public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.

“We are relieved that the Travis County district court has acted quickly to grant this restraining order against Texas Right to Life and anyone working with them as deputized enforcers of this draconian law,” Ms. Krasnoff said.

In a statement, Elizabeth Graham, the vice president of Texas Right to Life, said that the lawsuit and order would “not stop the work” of the organization.

“Planned Parenthood can keep suing us, but Texas Right to Life will never back down from protecting pregnant women and preborn children from abortion,” Ms. Graham said.

John Seago, the group’s legislative director, said the restraining order was not a serious impediment to the future of the law, which went into effect on Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block it. “This was the danger of the state case all along, that it would be used as a flag to wave as if the abortion industry is winning when they’re actually losing,” he said.

The new law, which was passed by Texas lawmakers this spring and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in May, amounts to a nearly complete ban on abortion, as most women do not know they are pregnant until after the sixth week of pregnancy. In Texas, 85 to 90 percent of abortions happen after the sixth week, according to lawyers for several clinics.

Understand the Texas Abortion Law

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Citizens, not the state, will enforce the law. The law effectively deputizes ordinary citizens — including those from outside Texas — allowing them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It awards them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.

The law, which does not provide exceptions for rape or incest, bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs or “aids or abets” an abortion in violation of the law.

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, and even an Uber driver taking a patient to an abortion clinic are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs, who do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, are entitled to $10,000 and their legal fees recovered if they win. Prevailing defendants are not entitled to legal fees.

Texas Right to Life had already created a website, Prolifewhistleblower.com, to act as a tip line for the law’s violators. But activists on TikTok snarled the site with fabricated information.

Judge Gamble said the decision on Friday evening upheld Texas Supreme Court precedent, writing that “the primary consideration for temporary emergency relief is preserving the status quo while courts consider whether plaintiffs have demonstrated a probable right to the relief sought.”

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Health

F.D.A. Grants Full Approval to Pfizer-BioNTech Covid Vaccine

F.D.A. Grants Full Approval to Pfizer-BioNTech Covid Vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday gave Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine full approval for people aged 16 and over, making it the first to go beyond emergency status in the United States.

The decision will trigger a cascade of vaccine requests from hospitals, colleges, corporations, and other organizations. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will send vaccination guidelines to the country’s 1.4 million active military personnel, the Pentagon said on Monday.

United Airlines recently announced that its employees must provide proof of vaccination within five weeks of regulatory approval.

Oregon has introduced a similar requirement for all government employees, as have a variety of universities in the states of Louisiana through Minnesota.

Approval comes as the nation’s fight against the pandemic has re-intensified, with the highly contagious Delta variant dramatically slowing the country’s progress in the first half of the year. The Biden administration hopes the development will motivate at least some of the roughly 85 million unvaccinated Americans eligible for syringes.

President Biden plans to commemorate this in a speech urging vaccination, which is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Eastern time on Monday afternoon. “If you haven’t been vaccinated, now is the time,” the president said on Twitter.

“While millions of people have safely received Covid-19 vaccines, we recognize that FDA approval of a vaccine may now create additional confidence for some to get vaccinated,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting FDA commissioner, in a statement. “Today’s milestone brings us one step closer to changing the course of this pandemic in the US”

Pfizer said it provided the FDA with data from 44,000 participants in clinical trials in the United States, the European Union, Turkey, South Africa and South America. The company said the data showed the vaccine 91 percent prevented infection – a slight decrease from the 95 percent effectiveness rate the data showed when the FDA decided to approve the emergency vaccine in December. Pfizer said the decrease reflects the fact that researchers had more time to capture infected individuals.

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracked public attitudes during the pandemic, found that three in ten unvaccinated people said they were more likely to be vaccinated with a fully approved vaccination.

But pollsters and other experts warned that the percentage could be exaggerated. “I think that’s a tiny number of people in real life,” said Alison Buttenheim, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on vaccination hesitation.

More important, says Dr. Buttenheim, is the effect of requirements. “Mandates make things easier for people,” she said.

Government action gives doctors more leeway to prescribe patients a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine, but federal officials strongly advised people not to seek additional vaccinations until regulators decide they are safe and effective. Pending regulatory approval, the federal government plans to offer booster syringes for adults next month.

The vaccine continues to be approved for emergency use in children ages 12-15 as Pfizer collects the data necessary for full approval. A decision on whether to approve the vaccine for children under the age of 12 could be at least several months away, and Dr. Woodcock said no child this age should get a Covid-19 vaccine due to a lack of safety data from regulators.

To date, more than 92 million Americans – 54 percent of those fully vaccinated – have received Pfizer vaccinations. Most of the others got the vaccine from Moderna.

Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s lead vaccine regulator, said the approval of Pfizer vaccine followed a rigorous review of hundreds of thousands of pages of data and included inspections of the factories where the vaccine is made. “The public and the medical community can rest assured that while we were swiftly approved this vaccine, it met our existing high standards for vaccines in the United States,” he said.

He said federal health officials would continue to monitor the safety of the vaccine and that the FDA would require Pfizer to assess the risks of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, an inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart, including long-term results for the recipients. The FDA added warnings to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in June indicating a possible increased risk for these conditions after the second dose.

Although Pfizer can now market the drug under the Comiraty name, the company said only the federal government will be distributing doses in the United States.

Understand US vaccination and mask requirements

    • Vaccination rules. On August 23, the Food and Drug Administration fully approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people aged 16 and over, paving the way for increased mandates in both the public and private sectors. Private companies are increasingly demanding vaccines for employees. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
    • Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in public places indoors in areas with outbreaks, reversing the guidelines offered in May. See where the CDC guidelines would apply and where states have implemented their own mask guidelines. The battle over masks is controversial in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.
    • College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
    • schools. Both California and New York City have introduced vaccination mandates for educational staff. A survey published in August found that many American parents of school-age children are opposed to mandatory vaccines for students but are more likely to support masking requirements for students, teachers and staff who are not vaccinated.
    • Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and large health systems require their employees to have a Covid-19 vaccine, due to increasing case numbers due to the Delta variant and persistently low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their workforce.
    • New York City. Proof of vaccination is required by workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations, though enforcement doesn’t begin until September 13. Teachers and other educational workers in the city’s vast school system are required to have at least one vaccine dose by September 27, with no weekly testing option. City hospital staff must also be vaccinated or have weekly tests. Similar rules apply to employees in New York State.
    • At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would make coronavirus vaccinations compulsory for the country’s 1.3 million active soldiers “by mid-September at the latest. President Biden announced that all civil federal employees would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or undergo regular tests, social distancing, mask requirements and travel restrictions.

Health experts and state officials welcomed the development. With the delta variant driving up case numbers across the country, “full approval could not come at a more important time,” said Dr. Richard Besser, President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He urged schools and businesses to require a vaccination before people can gather indoors.

Less than two months after the spread of the virus appeared to be contained, the US is now recording an average of around 150,000 new cases per day and more than 90,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients. An average of around 1,000 per day die from Covid-19 – a toll that federal health experts recently dismissed as highly unlikely before the delta variant fully caught on. Many children under the age of 12 also become infected.

Vaccination rates have also risen in the past few weeks, in part because of the greater fear of the virus. Vendors were delivering approximately 837,000 shots a day, a significant increase from earlier this summer.

Some experts estimated that full consent could only convince five percent of the unvaccinated to get injected. Even if that is the case, “that is still a huge part of the people,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the Chief Health Officer of Mississippi, a state particularly hard hit by the Delta variant. He said the approval will help “get rid of this false claim that the vaccines are an ‘experimental’ thing”.

Dr. Marks, the vaccines agency, cited a number of other myths about the vaccines as a major stumbling block in fighting the pandemic, including false claims that the vaccinations cause infertility, promote Covid disease rather than prevent it, or have resulted in thousands of deaths. “Let me be clear. These claims are just not true,” he said.

The FDA is in the middle of a decision marathon related to coronavirus vaccines. The next important question emerging for regulators is whether or not to approve booster injections. The Biden government said last week it plans to offer third vaccinations starting September 20, for adults who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines eight months after their second injection. Third vaccinations are already approved for some people with immunodeficiency, but the risk-benefit ratio is different for the general population.

Federal health officials said that both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines, which are based on similar technology, lose effectiveness over time. That trend is converging with the advent of the particularly dangerous Delta variant, making those who completed their vaccinations earlier in the year increasingly more susceptible to infection.

Some health experts have challenged the decision to recommend booster vaccinations as premature, as the data showed the vaccines withstand serious illness and hospitalization, including the Delta variant. Boosters would only be justified if the vaccines didn’t prevent hospital stays with Covid-19, some of these experts said.

Regulators are still examining Moderna’s application for full approval of its vaccine. This decision can take several weeks. Johnson & Johnson is expected to file for full approval shortly.

Helene Cooper contributed to the reporting.

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Entertainment

Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities Publicizes New Grants

National Endowment for the Humanities Announces New Grants

The Morgan Library & Museum, the University of Chicago and the new Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., are among 239 beneficiaries of new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that were announced on Tuesday.

The grants, which total $28.4 million and are the second round awarded this year, will support projects at museums, libraries, universities and historic sites in 45 states, as well as in Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. They will enable the creation of a documentary about the Colfax Massacre — in which dozens of former slaves were killed in a Louisiana town during Reconstruction — by City Lore, a nonprofit New York art gallery; the development of Archaeorover, an autonomous robot that uses ground-penetrating radar to search for buried sites and artifacts, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania; and research for a biography of the neuroscientist and author Oliver Sacks by Laura J. Snyder, a New York-based writer and researcher.

Adam Wolfson, the endowment’s acting chairman, said in a statement that the projects, which include educational programming for high school and college students and multi-institutional research initiatives, “demonstrate the resilience and breadth of our nation’s humanities institutions and practitioners.”

In New York, 35 projects at the state’s cultural organizations will receive $3.6 million in grants. Funding will support the creation of a new exhibition on the portraiture of the Northern Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger at the Morgan Library & Museum, set to open next Spring; an exhibition at the Queens Museum that will reinterpret its “Panorama of the City of New York” from the World’s Fair in context of its ties to city planning, including how urban expansion reinforced racism and classism, upon the panorama’s 60th anniversary in 2024; and a reinterpretation of the American art galleries at the Brooklyn Museum to focus on underrepresented voices. Those galleries are expected to reopen before 2025.

Funding will also support the storage of 117 Chinese opera costumes and 330 traditional Chinese garments called qipaos that were damaged in a January 2020 fire at the Museum of Chinese in America, as well as the preservation of 70,000 photographs, political cartoons and other materials documenting the 123-year history of the Jewish publication The Forward.

Elsewhere, the grants will assist with the reinterpretation of the colonial Old North Church in Boston and its congregation’s ties to slavery from the American Revolution to the Civil War, support the creation of a digital catalog of the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, and enable publication of a comprehensive, freely available print and online edition of all surviving Greek- and Latin-inscribed legislation from classical Rome by the University of Chicago.

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Politics

U.S. Grants Momentary Protections to Hundreds of Haitians

U.S. Grants Temporary Protections to Thousands of Haitians

The Biden government on Saturday granted special protection to Haitians temporarily residing in the US after being displaced by a devastating 2010 earthquake and reversed efforts by the previous government to force them to leave the country.

The decision, announced by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, keeps President Biden’s election promise to restore a program that will protect thousands of Haitian migrants from the threat of deportation under the restrictive policies established under the President Donald J. Trump.

Mr Mayorkas said the new 18-month term known as Temporary Protection Status would apply to Haitians living in the United States as of Friday.

“Haiti is currently suffering from serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty and a lack of basic resources exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Mayorkas said in a statement on Saturday.

The protection created in a 1990 law enables foreigners who have been forced to flee their homes due to natural disasters and conflict to work and live in the United States. Haiti is one of eleven countries to benefit from the program, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Obama administration granted temporary protection status to Haitians who lived illegally in the US after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the new designation could protect up to 150,000 Haitians from returning to the political and security crisis in their home country.

“The last thing our country should do is force an entire community in the US to choose between packing up their lives and tearing up their families through self-deportation, or being undocumented and forced into the shadows of our society,” she said Menendez said in a statement on Saturday.

As part of its tough efforts to curb legal and illegal immigration, the Trump administration sought to end protection for approximately 400,000 immigrants living in the United States, including Haitians. At the time, officials said the emergency conditions that forced immigrants to flee their countries – earthquakes, hurricanes, civil war – had occurred long ago and that most immigrants no longer needed the port provided by the United States.

Lawsuits blocked the cancellations, but in September a federal appeals court joined the Trump administration, alerting hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the need to leave the country or be deported. Many of those affected had lived in the United States for years. The Trump administration agreed to keep protection in place until at least early 2021, which means a new administration could decide to continue the policy.

Immigration advocates have urged the Biden government to restore the temporary designation to Haitians and other immigrants living in the country and welcomed the decision announced on Saturday.

“Better late than never,” wrote the National TPS Alliance, a grassroots organization, on Twitter.

In March, the Biden government issued special protection for up to 320,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, citing the country’s extraordinary humanitarian crisis led by President Nicolás Maduro.

However, some said more needed to be done to allow many of these immigrants to live in the United States permanently.

“Haitians have been living in uncertainty for several months,” said Erika Andiola, chief advocacy officer of the nonprofit Raices, in a statement. “In the future, this could uncertainly be resolved through a permanent solution through laws that put TPS holders on the path to citizenship,” she added, using the acronym for the program.

This month the House passed law to pave the way for citizenship for an estimated four million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including those granted temporary protection status on humanitarian grounds. The law was passed largely on a partisan basis and getting it through the more even Senate will be a challenge.

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Entertainment

Emergency Grants for New York Metropolis Artists With Disabilities

Emergency Grants for New York City Artists With Disabilities

The tulips are in bloom, Broadway is coming back and the pandemic slowdown in America seems to be in sight.

But for many artists who are still trying to recover from a year of lost or reduced income, normal is still a long way off.

Now a New York Foundation for the Arts program is accepting applications for $ 1,000 in cash for New York-based creators with disabilities who have struggled as a result of the pandemic. The Barbara and Carl Zydney Scholarship for Artists with Disabilities is open to literary, media, music, performing and visual artists aged 21 and over in each of the five boroughs.

The new program is named in memory of Barbara Zydney, who was born and raised in New York and teaches visually impaired children in the city’s public school system, and her husband Carl, a fellow patron of the arts.

“It brings together three things that were important to the Zydneys: their love for New York, their passion for the arts and Barbara’s commitment to working with people with disabilities,” said the announcement on the foundation’s website.

About one in five adults in New York is disabled, according to the New York State Health Department.

While there are no readily available statistics specifically tracking the impact of the pandemic on disabled artists, visual, performing and other artists had a disastrous year. Employment in the city’s arts, entertainment and recreation sectors fell 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a February report by the New York State Comptroller’s Office. It was the biggest decline in the city’s economy.

Applications are accepted until Tuesday, June 15, 5 p.m. Qualified applicants will be selected by lottery and informed of the status of their application on July 24th.

A full list of guidelines can be found on the foundation’s website.

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Business

U.S. Readies Small Enterprise Grants as P.P.P. Nears Finish

U.S. Readies Small Business Grants as P.P.P. Nears End

The federal government is preparing to open two new industry-specific aid programs for small businesses, one of which has been in the works for months as the signing of the pandemic aid, the Paycheck Protection Program, is nearing its end.

The Small Business Administration hopes to apply for a $ 16 billion grant fund by the end of this week for live event businesses such as theaters and music clubs. The program, called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, was slated to begin nearly two weeks ago, but its application system failed and collapsed, hampering thousands of desperate companies that had waited months for the promised help.

On Saturday, the agency released more details on its upcoming Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a $ 28.6 billion support program for bars, restaurants and food trucks whose sales have been devastated by the forced shutdowns states imposed in response to the pandemic . The fund was created last month as part of the $ 1.9 trillion economic support package. A seven-day trial will begin within the next two weeks to help the agency avoid the technical fiasco that plagued the event program.

The agency has not announced a specific start date for either of the two funding programs.

“Help is here,” said Isabella Casillas Guzman, the agency’s administrator, of the restaurant program. “We’re rolling out this program to ensure these companies meet payroll, buy supplies, and get what they need to transition to today’s Covid-restricted market.”

Both programs offer recipients up to $ 10 million in grants to compensate for a portion of their lost sales. However, it is expected that both programs, where the money is distributed based on prioritization rules based on availability, will run out of money quickly. In particular, the money in the restaurant fund is lagging far behind its needs, agency officials have recognized.

“Everyone should apply on day one,” Patrick Kelley, director of the agency’s Office of Capital Access, told attendees in a webinar organized last week by the Independent Restaurant Coalition. Lawmakers predicted demand of at least $ 120 billion for the restaurant fund, Kelley said, but provided less than a quarter of that amount.

The Restaurant Fund Law provided an exclusive 21-day period for businesses that are majority-owned by women, veterans, or socially disadvantaged people. The SBA said the group includes those who are black and Hispanic, as well as Native Americans, Americans from the Asia-Pacific region, and Americans from South Asia.

That time alone will almost certainly run out of restaurant funds. Applicants are asked to self-certify their eligibility for the priority period, according to the Small Business Administration.

Participants in the fund’s seven-day pilot phase will be randomly selected from among current paycheck protection program borrowers who meet the criteria for the priority period, the agency said. You will help test the system, but will not receive grants until the application system is opened to the public.

The SBA has released few details about the technical breakdown that destroyed its application system for the Live Events Grant program. On the day it was supposed to open, frustrated applicants spent more than four hours reloading a broken site before the agency closed it. No applications were accepted.

“After our vendors had fixed the main cause of the initial technical problems, more in-depth risk analysis and stress tests identified other problems that affect application performance,” said Andrea Roebker, spokeswoman for the agency, on Friday. “The providers address and mitigate them quickly and work tirelessly with our team so that the application portal can be reopened as quickly as possible and we can provide this important help.”

A spokeswoman for Salesforce.com, whose technology supports the system, said the company “worked with SBA to resolve initial technical issues and we are continuing to work together to improve website performance.”

The restaurant fund is managed by a different part of the agency and uses a different technology system than the closed events program. After waiting nearly four months for this program to start, industrial companies can’t hold out much longer, said Audrey Fix Schaefer, a spokeswoman for the National Independent Venue Association, a trade group.

“Landlords can’t last forever. Eviction notices come. People say, “We can’t do this anymore,” she said.

The Paycheck Protection Program, launched just weeks after the pandemic broke out, extended $ 762 billion in unsuccessful loans to millions of businesses last year.

It is slated to end by May 31, but it seems likely that its funding will run out before then. According to an SBA spokesman, the program had $ 44 billion left by mid-week.

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World News

Uber grants U.Ok. drivers employee standing after dropping main labor battle

Uber grants U.K. drivers worker status after losing major labor battle

A smartphone displaying the Uber app in London.

Oli Scarff | Getty Images

Shortly after losing a major labor dispute in the UK, Uber will classify all UK based drivers as workers.

Under the new designation, more than 70,000 drivers will receive some benefits, including minimum wage, vacation time and pension contributions, but will not receive full employee benefits.

Uber announced the change to an SEC filing, adding that UK ridesharing accounted for 6.4% of all gross bookings for mobility in the fourth quarter of 2020.

While the move will increase Uber’s costs in the UK, the company continues to aim for adjusted EBITDA profitability through the year-end.

Earlier this year, Uber lost a major legal battle in the UK over the issue. The country’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a group of drivers were workers and not independent contractors. While the decision was made with a small group of drivers, thousands more have taken action against the company.

In a comment in The Evening Standard, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, wrote that following the Supreme Court ruling, “we could continue to challenge drivers’ rights to any of these protections in court. Instead, we decided to turn the page.” “”

Khosrowshahi admits, “I know many observers will not pat us on the back if we take this step, which comes after a five-year legal battle. They are right, although I hope the path we have chosen will change our willingness to change shows. “”

Meanwhile, Uber and the gig economy as a whole are facing regulatory challenges around the world. Uber has spent millions addressing these challenges in other regions.

In California, Uber pushed back against Assembly Bill 5, a gig economy bill passed by law in 2019 that tightened the rules for classifying workers as independent contractors.

After a widespread campaign that cost over $ 200 million – the most expensive election campaign in the state’s history – Uber and a handful of other gig economy companies used Uber to convince voters to support an election campaign called Proposition 22 and other gig economy platforms have been exempted from state labor law.

In return, gig workers received some benefits without full employment status. Some of the additional cost of providing benefits has been passed on to carpooling.

Categories
Business

New York Metropolis Cultural Teams Awarded Extra Than $47 Million in Grants

New York City Cultural Groups Awarded More Than $47 Million in Grants

In a year of layoffs and budget cuts, New York’s cultural institutions got some good news on Tuesday: The Department of Culture announced that it will award $ 47.1 million in its latest round of scholarships, which will go to more than 1,000 this year of the city’s non-profit organizations.

The grants include $ 12.6 million in new investments, of which nearly $ 10 million will go towards coronavirus pandemic and arts education initiatives. Funding for fellows will increase year over year, including larger funding for smaller organizations, the department said.

The award includes a $ 3 million increase for 621 organizations in low-income and pandemic-hit neighborhoods, and $ 2 million for five local arts councils that distribute the funds to individual artists and smaller nonprofits. Twenty-five organizations that offer arts education programs will receive a $ 750,000 portion that will be allocated for this purpose.

The Apollo Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the Museum of Chinese in America will be among the 93 organizations to receive some of the largest grants, each over $ 100,000. Both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, which recently hit the headlines for negotiations with their unions, are receiving grants of over $ 100,000. A total of 1,032 non-profit organizations are funded.

The department also made changes to its process that make it easier for organizations to receive multi-year grants that were previously only available to groups with an annual budget greater than $ 250,000. Almost all groups that received funding for the fiscal year ending in June 2021 will receive support at a comparable level for the year ending in 2022 until the city budget is approved, the ministry said.

A Covid-19 impact survey the department commissioned this spring found that smaller organizations were among those hardest hit by the pandemic, and that a total of 11 percent of arts organizations did not believe they would survive the pandemic in early May . Smaller organizations generally lack the foundations and wealthy donors that provide some safety net for larger institutions.

“We cannot tackle the huge challenges that lie ahead of us on our own, but we have focused on providing long-term stability to the smaller organizations most vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19,” said Gonzalo Casals, Commissioner for cultural matters. said in a statement.