News of the Month — February 2021

NewsFebruary 24, 2021

Note: Some of these stories may require a subscription. 

Cal/OSHA continues to aggressively issue citations to employers for COVID-19–related violations, which may provide leverage to labor unions and their members, especially healthcare workers.

Providence St. Joseph is retaliating against Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach after the hospital’s trustees decided to break away from Providence. “The impact on patients has been immediate and painfully disruptive.” 

President Joe Biden will nominate Jennifer Abruzzo, an attorney with the Communications Workers of America, to replace Trump-appointed General Counsel Peter Robb at the National Labor Relations Board, who was ousted by Biden last month. Abruzzo is a former deputy general counsel at the NLRB.

Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year during the first half of 2020, a staggering decline that reflects the toll of the covid-19 pandemic as well as a rise in deaths from drug overdoses, heart attacks and diseases that accompanied the outbreak, according to government data released Thursday. The last time life expectancy at birth dropped more dramatically was during World War II.

According to an American Psychological Association poll of nearly 1,800 psychologists published in November, 74 percent said they were seeing more patients with anxiety disorders compared with before the pandemic, and 60 percent said they were seeing more patients with depressive disorders. Nearly 30 percent said they were seeing more patients overall, according to the New York Times.