Andrea Hsu
Andrea Hsu is NPR's labor and workplace correspondent.
Hsu first joined NPR in 2002 and spent nearly two decades as a producer for All Things Considered. Through interviews and in-depth series, she's covered topics ranging from America's opioid epidemic to emerging research at the intersection of music and the brain. She led the award-winning NPR team that happened to be in Sichuan Province, China, when a massive earthquake struck in 2008. In the coronavirus pandemic, she reported a series of stories on the pandemic's uneven toll on women, capturing the angst that women and especially mothers were experiencing across the country, alone. Hsu came to NPR via National Geographic, the BBC, and the long-shuttered Jumping Cow Coffee House.
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A project in Alabama seeks to drastically grow the number of home-based child care options. It could help the state's workforce, especially during nontraditional hours. -
A hospital in New Jersey is among several that have moved nurse managers, who oversee scores of bedside nurses on a unit, to a four-day work week to address burnout and high turnover.
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Child care has long been seen as a problem for mothers to solve. Now employers see it's their issue too. In Alabama, a carmaker is working with a tech company to help employees find and pay for care. -
To attract workers, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, a joint venture in northern Alabama, decided to offer a child care benefit. The company pays 30% of its employees child care costs, up to $250 a month.
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A new initiative in Alabama seeks to address the shortage of child care by supporting the creation of family child care homes. These small businesses aim to better serve the needs of working families.
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More than 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers who build luxury SUVs in Alabama were eligible to vote on whether to join the UAW. Workers faced intense anti-union messaging from Mercedes in the run-up. -
Workers at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama start voting this week on whether to join the United Auto Workers union. Last month, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to unionize. -
With the federal ban on noncompetes set to take effect in 120 days, workers bound by such agreements are starting to wonder whether they are free to pursue work that they otherwise couldn't do.
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In recent years, Alabama workers have found themselves at the center of three high-profile labor campaigns in three industries. How those have unfolded tells us a lot about labor in America today. -
To understand labor in America, travel a short section of Interstate 20 through Alabama. Just off this highway, union hopes have been raised, crushed and dragged out for years.
