Monday, Sept. 7, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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Every Labor Day, we celebrate workers who banded together and organized to fight for fair pay and treatment for the good of all families. But this Labor Day will be unlike any other, shadowed by anxieties over a global pandemic that has put millions of Americans out of work and thrown families into crisis.
In Nevada and across the country, working families are fighting to make ends meet. Out-of-work parents are balancing their checkbooks and wondering how they will pay their rent or put food on the table. Caregivers are worrying about how they will keep their loved ones safe. As the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, I hear these stories every day. Nearly 15% of Nevada’s workforce is part of a union — one of the highest rates in the entire country. I’m proud to say that the Culinary Union represents 60,000 workers in the fight for fair wages, job security and good health care.
Here in Nevada, union workers keep the Silver State running. From cooking food and serving drinks to cleaning laundry and making beds, we serve as the backbone of Nevada’s economy.
But under President Donald Trump, working people have been overlooked and undervalued. Now, the economic fallout from Trump’s botched pandemic response has spiraled out of control. As the coronavirus spreads across our state, working people are bearing the brunt of both a public health disaster and an economic meltdown.
Trump’s failed leadership is putting workers in the crosshairs of the coronavirus. The Trump administration has treated essential workers as though they’re dispensable by weakening critical labor protections and ending the unemployment stimulus that workers and their families rely on.
As a Latina, I am deeply committed to the health and safety of our community in this time of crisis. But it’s clear that Trump is not. Trump’s failed pandemic response has been a disaster for workers and people of color, and particularly Latinas.
From February to May, the unemployment rate for Latinas shot up 14 percentage points. As some of the most underpaid workers in the country, Latinas are already especially vulnerable to an economic downturn, earning nearly $300 less on average than the national median. But the pandemic has thrown our world into chaos and put our lives, and livelihoods, at risk.
Trump has spent his career waging an all-out war on workers’ rights. Our vote is our voice — and Nevadans will make our voices heard when we reject Trump’s anti-worker agenda once and for all.
The Culinary Union is the largest political force in the Battle Born State. For 85 years, workers have fought shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure working families have strong union jobs with good benefits. Trump has done the opposite.
That’s why we’re fighting to defeat Trump this November.
We are going to fight and we are going to win — our families depend on it.
Geoconda Argüello-Kline is secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union.
