‘The Great Reshuffle.’ BuzzFeed News spotlights dramatic changes across the American workplace as the pandemic has shifted the balance of power between employer and employee toward the employee.
■ More than 100,000 workers nationwide are considering striking for better wages and hours.
■ Trevor Noah on The Daily Show: Jobs are “how Americans prove that they deserve health care.”
■ A ransomware attack at Chicago’s Ferrara Candy Co. casts a shadow over the supply of Halloween treats.
■ Facing rising coronavirus casualties, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is ordering the country’s workers to stay off the job for a week. (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
‘I am rooting for his nomination … and not just because that would plant him about as far from Chicago as he can get.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg weighs Rahm Emanuel’s bid to become U.S. ambassador to Japan.
■ Ahead of his confirmation hearing this morning, no Senator had opposed Emanuel for the job, despite (updating coverage) several U.S. representatives’ concerns about Emanuel’s handling of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald as he fled police.
■ See the proceedings here.
‘He has set a baseline expectation for rude conduct that he must exceed to keep his fans entertained and to keep his critics appalled.’ Politico’s Jack Shafer assesses Donald Trump’s postmortem roast of Colin Powell.
■ Vanity Fair: “Trump sounds pretty panicked about Congress finding out exactly what he was up to on Jan. 6.”
■ The Daily Beast: “Former Trump administration body-hider” Steve Bannon “just might be accidentally saving America.”
■ Critic Richard Roeper gives 3 1/2 stars to a new HBO documentary about the Jan. 6 insurrection, Four Hours at the Capitol, which he calls “powerful … shocking and infuriating.”
■ Popular Information reports that cable providers are rejecting ads critical of their donations to anti-abortion legislators: “Corporations are able to spend unlimited sums on TV and online to burnish their image. But critics of corporate power are not given access to the same platforms.”
Shots for kids. The White House is rolling out plans to get children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated against COVID-19.
■ At least 21 Chicago cops have been dropped into no-pay status for refusing to say whether they’ve been vaccinated.
■ A Tribune editorial says police union chief John Catanzara “should just shut up and listen. Then he should open his mouth and try speaking some actual sense.”
■ New York’s mayor is requiring all municipal workers, including cops and firefighters, to get at least one vaccine dose by Oct. 29—no test-only option.
‘We need help.’ The president of Dixmoor is pleading for solutions to the village’s persistent water pressure problems.
■ Meanwhile, you can donate water to help meet residents’ needs.
■ The Conversation: The climate is changing faster than cities are adapting (but Chicago gets a nod for trying).
■ A city in Spain has begun naming heat waves.
Want a Chicago Sky T-shirt? Good luck.
‘I hope all you people lose your jobs.’ Signing off as a Sun-Times columnist, Phil Kadner remembers people like the bagel store owner who celebrated newspaper business layoffs.
■ Veteran journalist Dan Rather and his team at Steady want to hear from you: “Where Do You Get Your (Local) News?”
■ Media beat writer Simon Owens* encourages publishers to stop whining about so-called subscription fatigue: “If you put out an addictive product and your readership has disposable income, then it will subscribe.”
■ Speaking of which: Have you supported Chicago Public Square lately?
Chris Koenig made this edition of Square much better.
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