The Best of the Week’s News: 

• Chicago’s historic teachers’ strike ends with a deal for smaller classes, more support staff, and a raise. 
   
• Coal companies are shirking their legal duty to clean up after their mines. 
   
• Memories fade, but love endures as a legendary legal mind grapples with Alzheimer’s disease. 
   
• Medicare for All without a middle class tax hike? Elizabeth Warren presents a plan for that.

Sidney’s Picks: 

• When medical debt collectors decide who goes to jail. 
   
• The GM strike embodied the highs and lows of the U.S. labor movement
   
• How a San Diego startup scammed millions from baby boomers on Facebook. 
   
• Sidney-winner Charlie Pierce on Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds. 
   

The Sidney Hillman Foundation is launching a unique training program for reporters aimed at improving the country’s understanding of issues around work and labor. ‘Reporting the U.S. Workplace’ will be hosted at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Tom Robbins, the J-School’s Investigative Journalist in Residence, will serve as the program’s convener.

At a time when few news organizations have full-time reporters on the labor beat, this first-of-its kind initiative will bring print, broadcast and digital journalists to the school in New York City for two days of advanced workshops on how to cover these critical issues. The program is scheduled for Jan. 9-10, 2020. The program pays all expenses including transportation, hotel and food.

Among the confirmed faculty are: Steven Greenhouse, veteran New York Times labor reporter; Michael Grabell, who covers labor, economy and trade for ProPublica; Amy Julia Harris, reporter at the New York Times, Sharon Block, executive director of Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program; Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, DC; and Janice Fine, associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. Robbins, Greenhouse, Block, and Dorian Warren, executive director of the Center for Community Change, are on the program’s advisory board. 

Reporters who are interested in attending the program should apply here. The deadline for applications is Nov 25. 2019 but will be considered on a first-come basis.

Full announcement here

Sidney’s Picks: 

• The GrubHub Grind: How meal delivery apps affect workers 
   
• Cashing in on involuntary commitment 
   
• Court rules that American journalist has no right to know if the U.S. has been trying to kill him with drones
   
• Non-profit hospital frees thousands of patients from medical debt after ProPublica exposé