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Before the pandemic, restaurants accounted for nearly 10% of the state’s labor force. Since the pandemic began, restaurants and the workers who keep them running have been hit hard. An apprenticeship program is pairing young people looking to start a career in the food industry with restaurants looking for help.
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Grocery store workers in the Denver area went on strike Wednesday after their union rejected the latest contract offer from a chain of stores owned by Kroger Co., the nation’s largest traditional grocery store chain.
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The U.S. is in the midst of another COVID holiday season, and federal laws that offered COVID-related paid sick leave to workers have expired. Colorado, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are among a small number of places that have put in place their own COVID protections, but many sick workers across the country must wrestle with difficult financial and ethical questions when deciding whether to stay home.
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A new Brookings Institution analysis helps fill the data gap, finding that nearly 40% of Native Americans saw cuts in work hours or pay over the last year – higher than all other racial or ethnic groups.
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Educators are exhausted these days. Schools in the Mountain West are dealing with extreme staff shortages that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
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An annual report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the gender wage gap in the United States held steady during the pandemic, with women working full-time jobs only making, on average, 82.3% of what their male counterparts do. The disparity, which has hovered around 82% for the last decade, is even more pronounced in many Western states.
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Northern Colorado schools are seeing a noticeable absence of school bus drivers, and this industry is only the latest casualty of the ongoing worker shortage.
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The West is facing a growing shortage of home care workers as the senior population booms and more people stay away from nursing homes as the pandemic drags on.
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The Colorado Community College System has pledged to make secondary education more equitable and accessible to all students. But some faculty in the system feel excluded from that mission.
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Janitor Luis Gonzalez smiled a little on Friday when asked how it felt to go on strike. “It feels great,” he said, as his fellow janitors at Denver International Airport rallied around him.