Help a Broke Labor Reporter Recover from COVID

Payday is a George Bailey style community supported labor publication. We really need your help this holiday season.

By: Mike Elk December 23, 2021

Recurring Donation

One Time Donation



Rough news, I tested positive for COVID and am actually quite ill. Given previous pneumonia and lung issues, I am quite worried about this getting more serious. I am quite disoriented and cant really focus to watch a movie – let alone crowd fundraise during our crucial year-end fundraising period.

It couldn’t come at a worse time as we prepare for our holiday fundraising blitz, which we were hoping to use to pay off some medical bills. Right now, the doctors say I need to rest though and when I am recovered, we will get back to tracking strikes.

Since March of 2020, Payday Report’s Strike Tracker has documented more than 1,700 strikes. Our work covering these walkouts has had an enormous impact, with NPR to The Economist to The Washington Post citing us on a front-page cover story. In 2021, The New York Times even described Payday Report as a publication with “new energy”. 

Anyhow, hopefully, I get my energy back soon and can get back to strike tracking, but appreciate your support so I can rest and not fundraise for the next couple weeks.

Please donate so I can take some time off at the end of the year and rest. 

And if you can sign up as one of our 650 recurring donors today. 

Thanks for all the support. 

Love & Solidarity, 

Melk 

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement. Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]

Be the first to comment on "Help a Broke Labor Reporter Recover from COVID"

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.