US: 40.1M Cases - 657.9K Dead - 31M Recovered
Worldwide: 218.6M Cases - 4.5M Dead - 195.5M Recovered

Former Senior Loss Prevention Executive
Know of any fallen LP exec? Let's remember & recognize.

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 306   Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 366
*Red indicates change in total deaths

U.S. COVID Cases By Region

Labor Day Travel Warning for the Unvaccinated
CDC asks the unvaccinated not to travel this weekend and says even vaccinated need to weigh the risk
Due to the surge of Covid-19 cases, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking unvaccinated Americans not to travel during the Labor Day holiday weekend.

The US is surpassing an average of 160,000 new Covid-19 cases a day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. With the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant and many students returning to the classroom for a new academic year, the rise is concerning officials and health experts.

"First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a White House COVID-19 Response Team Briefing on Tuesday.

Walensky said that while people who are fully vaccinated can travel with precautions, current transmission rates mean they too need to take Covid-19 risk into consideration when deciding whether to travel. cnn.com

100,000 More COVID Deaths by December?
Fauci: 100,000 new Covid deaths in US 'predictable but preventable'
As many as 100,000 new Covid-19 deaths in the US by December is "predictable but preventable", the leading US infectious diseases expert said on Sunday, as dozens of states reported rapidly increasing fatalities.

Amid resistance in some states to public health measures and mandates, the Delta variant of the virus has pushed up deaths in 14 states by more than 50% in a week, and by at least 10% in 28 more, according to Johns Hopkins University. Those figures follow a dire warning from the University of Washington that tens of thousands more could die, with a daily peak of 1,400 by mid-September.

"What is going on now is both entirely predictable and entirely preventable," Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, told CNN's State of the Union.

"We know we have the wherewithal with vaccines to turn this around, and the reason the numbers are so alarming is that we have about 80 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not yet vaccinated." theguardian.com

Retail Vaccine Requirements & Return to Work Plans
Where Companies Stand on Vaccine Requirements and Return to Office

The Delta variant has upended office return plans. Here's when large companies expect to have employees back at their desks.

Amazon - Expected return date: January 2022
Amazon is encouraging employees to get vaccinated, but has not announced a mandate. The retail giant told its corporate employees that they did not need to return to their offices until Jan. 3, pushing back a deadline that had been set for early September.

Apple - Expected return date: January 2022
Apple is encouraging employees to get vaccinated, but has not announced a mandate. The company delayed its return-to-office date until January from October.

CVS - Expected return date: September 2021
CVS will require its pharmacists to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30, while others who interact with patients, and all corporate staff, have until Oct. 31. The company announced to employees that most of its office sites will reopen on Sept. 7.

TJX - Expected return date: November 2021
Employees at TJX, the owner of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, will begin returning to the company's Framingham, Mass., headquarters and regional offices starting Sept. 8, and the offices will have a "formal reopening" on Nov. 1. Office associates are required to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 1, while store and distribution center workers are not required to be vaccinated.

Starbucks - Expected return date: January 2022
Starbucks is "encouraging" employees to be vaccinated. The company pushed its back-to-office date to January 2022, from October. See the full list here.

Just 9% of Retail/Hospitality Employers Requiring Vaccination
Retail and hospitality, manufacturing employers slow to mandate vaccines
Employers in the manufacturing and retail/hospitality industries are the least likely to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for employees, according to an Aug. 23 report from law firm Littler.

While 21% of respondents - 1,630 in-house lawyers, C-suite executives and human resources professionals in the U.S. - said they require or plan to require vaccination, manufacturing and retail/hospitality came in at 8% and 9%, respectively. Healthcare employers were the most likely to implement a mandate, at 36%.

Respondents in manufacturing and retail/hospitality expressed a high level of concern about resistance from employees, the impact on culture and morale and loss of staff, according to Litter.

Major names like Tyson and Microsoft rolled out requirements for on-site employees, for example. Still, many only encouraged workers to get vaccinated, hoping incentives and time off for vaccination would increase uptake.

Concerns about morale and other issues remain, as Littler pointed out. But employers should rest assured that mandates remain legal, the firm said. hrdive.com

Vax Mandates Pushing Customers Away?
1 in 3 Americans says vax mandate would deter them from dining in
One in three Americans say they'd be less likely to dine in a restaurant if they were forced to prove they'd been vaccinated, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association.

The same proportion - 32% - said they'd be deterred from restaurant dining if they had to a wear masks, the survey, published Tuesday, showed.

However, 33% said that a vaccine mandate would actually make them more likely to dine in a restaurant. Meanwhile, 25% said a mask mandate would make them more likely to eat indoors.

New York City, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are among the cities that have already introduced or are considering introducing vaccine mandates for activities like indoor dining. businessinsider.com

Work Will Never Be the Same - Even After COVID
The return to the office can't include a return to exclusionary practices
For many, working from home unveiled a world that prioritized adaptability, choice and accountability. It put people first. With office reopenings, there is justified concern that these people-centric values will be eroded in the rush to "normal." Many questions remain with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion and employee social and emotional wellness.

Return-to-office discussions give us permission to reimagine how we work today and tomorrow. Effective re-entry planning must include substantive consideration of physical reintegration and social impact to ensure the return is not a return to outdated, exclusionary workplace practices. In this way, DEI is central to the return to the office. There is much to consider and our role as DEI leaders and advocates will be critical in championing inclusive and equitable re-entry plans.

Not being in the office can reduce visibility - but that's not always a bad thing

People of color have not had equitable access to senior leadership even while in the office and have worked in office settings that prevented them from showing up as their authentic selves, especially in workplaces where they are the only employee of their background, or one of very few. This may be why 97% of Black knowledge workers (loosely defined as workers who generate value through their knowledge) want the future of work to be remote or hybrid.

In addition, remote work has allowed employers to imagine a workplace where individuals' time is not micromanaged, thereby empowering people to do their jobs without being judged - often very harshly - or having to prove themselves. hrdive.com

3 times as many people died of COVID in August than in July

Covid vaccines remain 'stunningly effective,' even as Delta concerns grow

Google delays its return to office until January - Three More Months

Surging Covid-19 Cases Hammer Asian Factories
 

The Strongest Press Piece Published By a Major News Outlet Detailing
the ORC Epidemic

And in support of Senate Bill S.936 - The INFORM Consumers Act
Every member of Congress should read the article
Send a copy to your elected official today!

Ben Dugan Works for CVS. His Job Is Battling a $45 Billion Crime Spree.

Retailers are spending millions to combat organized rings that steal from their stores in bulk and peddle goods online, often on Amazon

Ben Dugan sat in an unmarked sedan in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood one day last September waiting for the CVS to be robbed.

He tracked a man entering the store and watched as the thief stuffed more than $1,000 of allergy medicine into a trash bag, walked out and did the same at two other nearby stores, before loading them into a waiting van, Mr. Dugan recalled.

The target was no ordinary shoplifter. He was part of a network of organized professionals, known as boosters, whom CVS had been monitoring for weeks. The company believed the group responsible for stealing almost $50 million in products over five years from dozens of stores in northern California. The job for Mr. Dugan, CVS Health Corp.'s top investigator, was to stop them.

Retailers are spending millions a year to battle organized crime rings that steal from their stores in bulk and then peddle the goods online, often on Amazon retail platform, according to retail investigators, law-enforcement officers and court documents. It is a menace that has been supercharged by the pandemic and the rapid growth of online commerce that has accompanied it.

"We're trying to control it the best we can, but it's growing every day," said Mr. Dugan.

The Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, a trade association, which Mr. Dugan heads, estimates that organized retail theft accounts for around $45 billion in annual losses for retailers these days, up from $30 billion a decade ago. At CVS, reported thefts have ballooned 30% since the pandemic began.

Mr. Dugan's team, working with law enforcement, expects to close 73 e-commerce cases this year involving $104 million of goods stolen from multiple retailers and sold on Amazon. That compares with 27 cases in 2020, involving half the total. CVS has doubled its crime team to 17 over the past two years and purchased its own surveillance van with 360-degree cameras and a high-powered telescope.

Home Depot Inc. says the number of its investigations into these kinds of criminal networks has grown 86% since 2016 and exceeded 400 cases last year. The majority involved e-commerce. The company has doubled the size of its investigative unit over the past four years, a spokeswoman said, and the unit works alongside thousands of "asset protection specialists" stationed in stores to spot suspected thieves.

"The digital world has become a pretty easy way to move this product," Home Depot Chairman and CEO Craig Menear told investors in December 2019, becoming one of the first executives to highlight organized retail crime. "It is literally millions and millions of dollars of multiple retailers' goods."

Target Corp. , Ulta Beauty Inc. and TJX Cos., which includes TJ Maxx and Marshalls, have also bulked up their resources.

Continue Reading - Full Article and A Call to Action
 

Worker Burnout is Soaring
Nike closed its corporate offices for a week in move to stave off burnout

Several companies have taken similar measures recently in an attempt to help workers combat burnout.

Nike has given its corporate office workers a week off in an effort to help combat burnout. The company shut down its headquarters last week to give staff some unexpected time off, according to a LinkedIn post from Nike's senior manager of global marketing science Matt Marrazzo.

"Our senior leaders are all sending a clear message: Take the time to unwind, destress and spend time with your loved ones. Do not work," Marrazzo wrote in the post.

Nike confirmed to Insider that the company's corporate offices were closed from August 23-30 to "enable employees to enjoy additional time off to rest and recover." Marrazzo also noted in his post that Nike also follows summer Friday hours, which typically entails letting staff leave early or take off the entire day on Fridays from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

"It's an acknowledgment that we can prioritize mental health and still get work done," he wrote. "Support your people. It's good business but it's also the right thing to do." businessinsider.com

#AppleToo starts publishing employees' toxic workplace stories

Most of the stories involve discrimination, retaliation and sexual harassment.

A group of current and former Apple workers recently banded together and called for colleagues to share stories of discrimination, harassment and retaliation they'd experienced within the company. As of August 27th, the group called #AppleToo said it has collected 500 such stories - now, it has started publishing them on its official Medium page. Cher Scarlett, an Apple security engineer and the face of the movement, wrote on Medium that she will share five stories at a time "as the emotional toll in reading these is heavy."

Two of the first five are about sexual harassment, one of which involved a male boss using his position of power over a female employee. Later, that employee was kicked out of an interview after the hiring team realized who she was. Another story was from a Black retail worker in the UK who tried to get their bosses to do something about racism and micro aggressions in the workplace to no avail. A female employee talked about how she was targeted by a person in her team and how management didn't do anything about it. And the last one is about an employee who was assaulted in her store by a customer and didn't get support from management.

The #AppleToo movement said on Twitter, however, that 75 percent share a common theme: They involve some form of discrimination. Nearly half of them involve sexism, retaliation and HR reports that were ultimately dismissed. A fourth of them involved racism and ableism, and most of the harassment and assault stories were sexual in nature. engadget.com

20K New Hires for the Holidays
Walmart is set to hire 20,000 permanent supply chain workers to ramp up for the holiday season
Walmart is hiring 20,000 new workers to bolster its supply chain going into the 2021 holiday season. Those thousands of new hires will fill full-time and part-time roles and are meant to be permanent jobs, not only seasonal gigs.

In a statement from Walmart US Executive Vice President of Supply Chain Operations Joe Metzger and Senior Vice President for Supply Chain and People Karisa Sprague, the executives announced the hiring push. The retail giant is looking to fill positions in a variety of supply chain roles, including "order fillers, freight handlers, lift drivers, technicians and management positions."

These new roles will be spread "across more than 250 Walmart and Sam's Club distribution centers (DCs), fulfillment centers (FCs) and transportation offices." Walmart estimated that its average hourly wage for supply chain workers is $20.37. businessinsider.com

Starbucks responds to unionization effort at Buffalo-area cafes

Starbucks does not have any unions at its more than 8,000 company-owned stores in the United States

Starbucks is promising to "directly" address employee concerns after workers at three Buffalo area shops filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a vote on union representation.

In a statement to FOX Business, a Starbucks spokesperson said the company creates the "space and forums for open and honest conversation as it relates to establishing and maintaining a great work environment." foxbusiness.com

Walgreens to raise wages for hourly workers to $15 by November 2022

Allbirds plans "ramp towards hundreds of potential locations"

Walmart teaming up with Instacart for NYC grocery delivery