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Unionization efforts involving some of the most recognizable names in business have dominated headlines across the United States in recent months, the New York Times reported. Starbucks workers in Buffalo and Amazon employees in Bessemer, Ala., and on Staten Island have recently moved to unionize, as have workers at an REI store in Manhattan last week. Successful strikes at John Deere and Kellogg have drawn new attention to the state of the labor movement as well. The prominence of these organizing efforts, however, obscures the steady downward trend of union membership in the United States for more than four decades. In 1983, about 20 percent of employees belonged to a union; by 2021, that number had dropped to just over 10 percent, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly all that decline has been in the private sector. Union membership among government workers at the federal, state and local levels has stayed fairly consistent — about a third of workers, give or take a few percentage points — since the 1970s. Among workers at private companies, on the other hand, union membership has steadily declined for decades, falling to 6 percent last year from 17 percent in 1983. Ruth Milkman, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and School of Labor and Urban Studies, said that the pandemic, with its many challenges, has contributed to labor shortages. In some cases, school closures and lack of available child care have led parents — most of them women — to stop working for pay. Other workers have chosen to retire early, consider a career change or live for a period on savings. “It means that employers are having trouble finding workers; it means that any given worker can be picky about what job they take,” Dr. Milkman said. In November 2020, there were about 6.8 million job openings in the United States. A year later, there were almost 10.6 million, according to the same data.

Momentum is building on Capitol Hill for more coronavirus relief funding to support restaurants and other businesses struggling to stay afloat in the face of the latest wave of the pandemic fueled by the omicron variant, The Hill reported. Lawmakers involved in negotiations say that support has been building among members for legislation aimed at supporting businesses that have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and a leader in discussions on the matter, expressed optimism Thursday when discussing he and Sen. Roger Wicker’s (R-Miss.) efforts to gain more backing for the push among their colleagues. Cardin said the primary focus in talks has been to replenish relief funding for restaurants after a previous batch of funds allocated by Congress ran out months back. The funding would come at a crucial time, advocates say, as restaurants continue to grapple with the economic effects of the ongoing pandemic, particularly as staffing shortages persist in parts of the nation and inflation tacks onto food costs.

An omicron-driven surge of COVID-19 is hindering the economic recovery from the pandemic, The Hill reported. The swift, record-shattering spike in coronavirus cases has dampened consumer activity, spurred layoffs, and forced millions of Americans out of work to take care of themselves or a sick family member. Private sector data on dining and travel, rising weekly jobless claims, widespread staffing issues, and school closures is pointing to dismal January job gains and slower first-quarter growth. While economists say the omicron variant will not derail the economy as a whole, millions of front-line workers, working parents and service sector businesses are staring down another brutal pandemic winter. Fifty-nine percent of adults believe normal activities pose “moderate” or “large” health risks, according to a poll from Ipsos and Goldman Sachs Investment Research, the highest total since March 2021. Those fears are likely behind a sharp drop in Transportation Security Administration airport throughput and OpenTable’s dining tracker.

The U.S. food system is under renewed strain as COVID-19’s Omicron variant stretches workforces from processing plants to grocery stores, leaving gaps on supermarket shelves, the Wall Street Journal reported. In Arizona, one in 10 processing plant and distribution workers at a major produce company were recently out sick. In Massachusetts, employee illnesses have slowed the flow of fish to supermarkets and restaurants. A grocery chain in the U.S. Southeast had to hire temporary workers after roughly one-third of employees at its distribution centers fell ill. Food-industry executives and analysts warn that the situation could persist for weeks or months, even as the current wave of COVID-19 infections eases. Recent virus-related absences among workers have added to continuing supply and transportation disruptions, keeping some foods scarce. Nearly two years ago, COVID-19 lockdowns drove a surge in grocery buying that cleared store shelves of products such as meat, baking ingredients and paper goods. Now some executives say supply challenges are worse than ever. The lack of workers leaves a broader range of products in short supply, food-industry executives said, with availability sometimes changing daily.

Business leaders who were scrambling to survey employees on their vaccination status and line up scarce testing resources breathed a sigh of relief after the Supreme Court overturned the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large private employers, the Wall Street Journal reported. The relief was short-lived. The surging Omicron variant has renewed the debate over how long the coronavirus pandemic will adversely affect companies in a range of industries. As news of the Jan. 13 Supreme Court ruling receded, businesses turned to grapple with a new set of challenges around how to keep their employees safe and productive. The Supreme Court ruling has given way to a new reality: Without a consistent set of rules on COVID-19, businesses will now have to fend for themselves, navigating an increasingly complex and often contradictory patchwork of federal, state and local regulations and guidelines on vaccines, testing and other safety measures. U.S. companies have reacted in disparate ways to the Supreme Court ruling. Some companies and business associations have expressed disappointment over the ruling, while others say they prefer having flexibility to tailor their approach to their workforces.

The U.S. hospital-staffing shortage exacerbated by the latest COVID-19 wave is showing signs of easing, but many West Coast and rural states are still seeing the worst of it, Bloomberg News reported. Over the past seven days, about 16.7% of U.S. hospitals have reported critical staffing shortages, down from a recent peak of 18.7% on Jan. 9, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Fewer facilities are reporting shortages in populous New York, Florida and Illinois. The numbers are still concerning to state leaders, but are at least returning to the levels seen in October and November, before the omicron spike. The omicron variant hit the U.S. in December with a surge in infections that dwarfed all previous waves. Now, the recent decline in cases in many areas has helped ease strain at a time when pandemic burnout, the winter holidays and even conflicts over vaccine mandates have made it hard to staff U.S. hospitals. The average omicron infection has proved to be less severe and deadly than previous variants, thanks to inoculations and the variant itself, but it has produced so many cases that hospitalizations jumped anyway. Many health-care workers caught COVID-19 in their communities and had to miss work.

American Airlines said yesterday that it lost $931 million in the final three months of last year, as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has pushed back the industry’s rebound, the New York Times reported. After a year of recovery punctuated by setbacks, airlines are now focused on returning to profitability in 2022. Industry executives are hoping for a robust spring and summer driven by rebounds in corporate and international travel. “Over the past year, we have experienced periods of high travel demand countered by periods of decreased demand due to new COVID-19 variants,” American’s chief executive, Doug Parker, said in a statement on Thursday. “This volatility has created the most challenging planning environment in the history of commercial aviation.” Omicron forced airline workers to call in sick at record rates over the holidays, compounding problems caused by winter storms and contributing to tens of thousands of cancellations during one of the year’s busiest travel periods. But American notably performed better over that period than its peers. Over the two weeks starting on Dec. 25, American canceled just under 1,500 flights, compared with more than 4,300 at Southwest Airlines, more than 2,500 for United Airlines and more than 2,000 for Delta Air Lines. The cancellations represented 4 percent of American’s schedule, versus 9 percent for Southwest, 8 percent for United and 5 percent for Delta. Omicron will continue to weigh on demand in January and February, American said. The airline expects capacity, as measured by seats sold and distance flown, to be about 8 to 10 percent less in the first three months of this year than in the same period in 2019. Revenue is expected to be down 20 to 22 percent.

A record of 9 million Americans are out sick due to the current surge of novel coronavirus cases in the country, representing about 6 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to data collected by the Census Bureau, The Hill reported. Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 10, 8.8 million people told the Bureau they were not working due to COVID-19 diagnosis or were taking care of someone with an illness. Another 3.2 million people told the Bureau they weren’t working due to concerns of the virus spreading and getting infected from it, up 25 percent from December. The new figures are the highest since Census began doing the survey around the start of the pandemic, topping last January's peak of 6.6 million workers out, according to the Washington Post. The U.S. is currently dealing with a winter surge of COVID-19 infections as the omicron variant has taken hold across the nation.