The Biden administration’s efforts to protect undocumented workers aiding in labor probes is being hindered by a lack of a formalized blueprint to reconcile interactions between federal immigration and labor laws, Ben Penn reports.
- The Department of Labor on two occasions has asked the Department of Homeland Security to shield undocumented workers from deportation, ensuring they could serve as witnesses against their employers. While officials from both departments have discussed those cases, bureaucratic complications have kept the requests in limbo.
- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week directed his department to consider showing leniency to undocumented workers in these cases, and gave agency leaders until Dec. 11 to come up with a new policy approach to bolster federal labor investigations against businesses. For the time being, however, the two departments face a troubling reality when it comes to undocumented workers filing a labor complaint with the government.
Long Covid might have doubled the number of people living with a fatiguing condition that can leave them bedridden and with memory issues but has confounded doctors, Lydia Wheeler reports.
- Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome often follows a viral infection, but it has an unknown root cause, no cure, and lacks a diagnostic code for insurers to use to process claims. Patients often struggle to get insurance coverage for tests and treatments and have a hard time claiming disability benefits if they can’t work.
- Doctors say a silver lining of Covid-19 is that it’s bringing more awareness to ME/CFS. Lawmakers in April requested more money for the CDC to study ME/CFS and introduced the Covid-19 Long Haulers Act, which would authorize $30 million to educate doctors about it.
Workplace Covid-19 vaccination mandates have largely survived a first wave of legal challenges even as the number of lawsuits over them has soared with their expanded use, Robert Iafolla reports.
- Workers and advocacy groups have filed at least 39 federal cases this year, contesting vaccination requirements imposed by employers or governments, according to a Bloomberg Law review. Courts have denied requests for temporary orders against mandates in 12 of the suits, while seven have ended with dismissals.
- The initial results of mandate litigation provide employers with added confidence and support what many employment lawyers and legal scholars have been saying about the clear legality of workplace mandates since before Covid-19 vaccines became available.
