Gazette Daily News Podcast, November 18

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This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, November 18.

Thursday looks like it may end up as the coldest day of this week. According to the National Weather Service it will be increasingly cloudy during the day in the Cedar Rapids area with a high near 37 degrees. It will be breezy, with a northwest wind of 10-20 mph gusting as high as 30 mph. On Thursday night it will be mostly clear, with a low around 23 degrees.

The strike against Deere and Co. is finally over.

The UAW union voted late Wednesday to ratify the most recent offer from Deere, ending the strike that has extended into five weeks. The six-year contract covers about 10,100 production and maintenance employees at 12 facilities in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas.

Other than minor changes to Deere’s incentive program, the agreement — the third one offered — provided the same benefits as the second agreement, which was turned away Nov. 2 by a 55-to-45 percent vote. This time, union members approved the deal 61 to 39 percent.

Arriving just in time for your holiday trip, more viral infections. The seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate reached 10.2 percent in Iowa this past week, the first time that marker has been in the double-digits in months.

The number of new COVID-19 cases also climbed for the fourth week in the row — to 9,132 — a worrying sign ahead of the upcoming holidays.

The state Department of Public Health reported 9,067 cases in the week before that, and 7,643 new cases the week before that.

Those rising positivity rates and number of new cases come at the same time as Iowa is reporting an all-time low in the number of available intensive care beds — 143 available statewide.

With legal and political challenges mounting to a Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large employers, federal regulators put the rule on hold just weeks before businesses would have to start complying with requirements.

On Nov. 4, President Joe Biden announced that private businesses with more than 100 employees must require their staff to get fully vaccinated against the virus by Jan. 4 or face weekly testing and mandatory masking. Employers would have to comply with parts of the rule by Dec. 6, including developing a compliance plan and offering paid time off for vaccinations.

But at least 27 states including Iowa have filed legal challenges in at least six federal appeals courts. After a federal appeals court in New Orleans last Friday ordered that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to “take no steps to implement or enforce" the regulation until a court order allowed, OSHA announced it would do just that.

On Wednesday, over 150 U.S. House Republicans including Eastern Iowa Reps. Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks filed legislation seeking to nullify the Democratic president’s mandate. That legislation likely would have failed to pass, but it did represent the strong Republican dissatisfaction with the mandate.

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