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As the remote school year comes to a close and with summer camp plans still in flux, many parents and caregivers will soon be struggling to find childcare solutions and wondering whether they can use paid leave to care for their children through the summer months, and whether they may continue to telework even if their workplace reopens.

Woven Bodies, an inclusive digital practice supporting queer folks + allies from family planning through parenthood hosted Associate Alex Berke to offer training on Paid Family Leave.

This week we’re looking at the opportunity coronavirus has provided to rethink care structures in the US, the disproportionate impact lockdowns have had on black communities, and ballooning unemployment numbers for women over 55.

This week, the New York Times reports that the temporary setbacks to gender parity in the workplace are in danger of being close to permanent, leaving a whole generation of women behind their male cohort in the workplace. There has been a decade of fragile progress since the Great Recession, and in February, women represented a majority of civilian, non-farm workers employed in the country.

This week, the Center for American Progress released a new report titled “Valuing Women’s Caregiving During and After the Coronavirus Crisis” which highlights the need to support caregivers during the crisis, but also to think about medium- and long-term strategies to ensure that this does not result in a long-term crisis within childcare.

Under new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) guidance, moving forward employers must now investigate how any Covid-19 positive employees may have contracted the virus. If the cause of the infection was likely work-related, the employer must record it as an “occupational illness.”

Our Firm is saddened and angered by the killings of and violence against Black people by government authorities, as well as efforts to limit peaceful protest. In our legal practice, we fight against race discrimination in the workplace using the law, but these tragic events invite the law to do better now than in the past to provide justice and healing to those affected personally, and to our society as a whole.

It’s important that we acknowledge that coronavirus has accentuated already deep and persistent issues in employment law in general, and our particular interests, such as pregnancy and parental leave. However, the crisis has only exacerbated them and we hope to call attention to them not simply so we can think about them, but so we can work together to develop tools and other means to make a post-coronavirus world one where workers’ concerns are heard.

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Watch Associate Alex Berke’s Q&A session delivered at the Tory Burch Foundation on May 27, 2020. Alex and Lenore Horton provided guidance for small businesses on reopening safely and communicating effectively with employees.

Americans, including a majority of Democrats and Republicans, believe that independent contractors, freelancers, and those working in the gig economy, such as ride-hail drivers and delivery people working for app-based services like Door Dash and Instacart deserve some of the same employment protections already given to salaried employees.