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| Eddington/A24 |
There's never been a movie quite like Eddington. This latest offering from the independent film studio A24 is ripped from the headlines of summer 2020, when the dual crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests slammed a very anxious America.
Eddington's first half adopts the disguise—a face mask, perhaps—of very recent historical fiction: Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is a small-town New Mexico sheriff in a standoff with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) over statewide coronavirus mandates. Cross is a right-wing guy living with his nutty mother-in-law and even nuttier wife, clearly influenced by their conspiracy theorizing.
The sheriff's initial acts of resistance against government health mandates are cast in a sympathetic light; Cross is not a caricature, and his well-founded dislike of mask mandates imbues the film's first act with a libertarian flavor. Eddington's skewering of performative wokeness is similarly effective: The anti-racism protesters are portrayed as misguided, clout-chasing buffoons. Halfway in, many viewers will wonder if they are watching the most right-wing major film since The Dark Knight Rises. --->READ MORE HERE
The National Grid gas company must pay a total of $3.1 million to two ex-workers with health issues for rejecting their requests to continue working from home after the pandemic, a Brooklyn jury has ruled.
The utility firm, which has millions of customers in New York, violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as state and city human-rights laws, by refusing to allow emergency-gas dispatchers Luciano Russo and George Messiha to continue their telework schedules to better manage their medical conditions, according to the Oct. 10 ruling in federal court.
The verdict is potentially precedent-setting by saying telework can be invoked as a fair and reasonably protected accommodation for workers under the disability law.
“Employers, mainly large ones, do view disabled workers as a group seeking privilege, just like [National Grid’s] lawyer said,” said Arthur Schwartz, the lawyer for the plaintiff and also general counsel for the Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York.
“They better look at this verdict and think twice,” he said.
National Grid allowed all of its dispatchers including Russo and Messiha to work from home during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak that hit in March 2020. The remote workers were equipped with laptops and mobile phones.
The workers’ federal suit, filed in 2023, claimed their productivity increased while assigning crews to emergencies such as gas leaks.
NG switched to a hybrid schedule in July 2021 after the pandemic subsided.
NG in June 2022 then informed Russo and Messina that their reasonable-accommodation requests to continue to stay home would no longer be granted. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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