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Detroit Fiat Chrysler Workers Halt Production For Second Day

June 28, 2020 Jessica Goldstein, WSWS. , , ,
Workers continued their courageous production stoppage at the Fiat Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant (JNAP) in Detroit on Friday. Workers on “B crew” entered the plant at 4:30 p.m. and refused to work under conditions where basic safety and health protocols, including social distancing measures and cleaning guidelines, are being flouted by the corporation and the United Auto Workers union (UAW) in order to maximize profits. Production at the plant remained at a standstill due to the workers’ action against the corporation and the UAW and a lack of labor due to the refusal of workers to report for work out of legitimate health concerns. The production halt at the plant, which employs 5,000 people, began Thursday at noon when workers on “A crew” stopped work after hearing that at least three coworkers had tested positive for COVID-19.

A Majority Of Workers Are Fearful Of Coronavirus Infections At Work

June 18, 2020 By Peter Dorman and Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
The majority of workers and roughly 70% of Black and Hispanic workers who are currently working onsite at their workplaces, and not at home, believe they face considerable risks from the coronavirus. These workers are not being provided with sufficient protection on the job. Moreover, new polling commissioned by EPI shows that vulnerable workers are not receiving extra compensation proportionate to the risks they are being exposed to. Workers require and deserve both safety protections and extra compensation in these circumstances, and they should not be forced to choose between their health and having an income. There is widespread fear of risks from the coronavirus among workers who are working onsite at their workplace, instead of working from home, and these perceived risks are greater for those with the least power in the labor market.

The Right To Refuse Unsafe Work Is More Important Than Ever

June 13, 2020 Kathy Wilkes, Portside. , , ,
The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a heavy toll on workers. Reports of job hazards grow increasingly dire as several governors and President Trump push past CDC guidelines to "reopen" the economy while forecasts predict soaring infections and deaths.  Some states at the direction of the Labor Department threaten termination of unemployment benefits for workers fearing return to dangerous jobs. A disturbing June 5 New York Times' report reveals how far those machinations have gone. The result: workers fired without pay or benefits or trapped in a deadly vice between poverty and disease.   In short, the news is terrifying – and rightly so. But it often misses essential information about rights workers have to save their own lives. First and foremost is the right to refuse unsafe work free of employer retaliation.  

Protesting Racism Versus Risking COVID-19

June 4, 2020 Bill Chappell, NPR. , , ,
Mass protests that have erupted over police brutality toward black people in America are raising concerns about the risk of spreading the coronavirus. But some health experts, even as they urge caution, said they support the demonstrations — because racism also poses a dire health threat. Tens of thousands of people, masked and unmasked, have thronged the streets of Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville, Ky., and other cities in the week since George Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck. They are the largest public gatherings in the U.S. since the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns, and many local officials warned of a possible spike in new cases in one or two weeks.

Why The Neoliberal Agenda Is A Failure At Fighting Coronavirus

June 3, 2020 Richard D. Wolff, Brave New Europe. , , ,
The utter failure of private capitalism to prepare for the coronavirus should have surprised no one. Private capitalism, as business school graduates repeat, focuses on profit. The “profit incentive,” they learn, makes private capitalism the superior, “most efficient” economic system available. That is its “bottom line” and “chief goal.” The problem is that to produce adequate numbers of testing components, masks, gloves, ventilators, hospital beds, etc., and then to store, secure, monitor, maintain and demographically stockpile them were not and are not privately profitable businesses. A private capitalist producer of those goods would have to wait, perhaps a long time, for them to become marketable. The risk is great, the future price unknowable, and profitability hard to count on.

Violence Escalating At Retail Stores Over Wearing Face Masks

May 23, 2020 By Kate Taylor and Áine Cain, Business Insider. , , ,
Retail workers at chains, including Kroger, Waffle House, and Costco, are increasingly caught in the crossfire when it comes to enforcing store or state policies on personal protective equipment. Some shoppers refuse to wear masks or face coverings for political reasons.  In some cases, confrontations between store workers and customers have resulted in deadly violence. Masks have become increasingly politicized during the coronavirus pandemic.

Workers Revolt: Workers Fight For Their Lives

May 23, 2020 By Michelle Chen, In These Times. , , ,
Medina is one of the millions of workers who are stuck with the impossible choice between protecting their health and getting a paycheck. More than 36 million others cannot work at all, laid off from their jobs since mid-March and left wrangling with their local unemployment office. Many are simply excluded from other benefits, all while the country hurtles toward a depression. Workers making poverty wages in precarious jobs were struggling to survive well before the pandemic. Now, besieged by economic devastation and a public health crisis, they are in a fight for their lives. Just as the virus has exposed the vicious inequities ingrained in the country’s economic hierarchy, so is it galvanizing workers to organize for safe workplaces, fair pay, decent medical leave and the right to challenge bosses who put them in harm’s way.

Bending PPE Rules Spells Death For Health Care Workers And Families

May 21, 2020 Roberta Wood, People's World. , , ,
Chicago - If he could have worn a fresh N95 mask for every procedure as mandated by the Centers for Disease Control, would surgical technologist Juan Martínez be alive today? It was a tough question for a reporter to ask a grieving daughter. “We can’t know, but they bent rules, and that’s not how healthcare should be,” Angela Martínez told People’s World. Angela held aloft a large portrait of her father at a demonstration on the lawn across from the entrance to University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago where he had worked for over 20 years. She was joined by her sister Rebecca, brother Juan, Jr., who had followed in his father’s footsteps as a surgical tech, sister-in-law Yaneth, and her mother Martha who had worked 13 years in the hospital’s nutritional services department.

Survey Of Nurses Proves Widespread Disregard For Nurse And Patient Safety

May 21, 2020 National Nurses United. , , ,
National Nurses United (NNU) released data from its new nationwide survey of nearly 23,000 nurses, revealing that dangerous health care workplace conditions have become the norm since COVID-19 struck the United States, which nurses say shows a complete disregard for worker and public health on the part of health care employers and the government. The main way nurses and patients are put at risk is through lack of optimal personal protective equipment (PPE). “Months into the pandemic, the virus continues to threaten communities across the country, and more than 100 nurses have died of COVID-19. This new survey shows that nurses are still fighting today for optimal personal protective equipment (PPE), fighting to get tested, and fighting for their own lives, and their patients’ lives,” said NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN.

Imperialism And COVID-19

May 17, 2020 David Bush, Spring Mag. , , , , ,
We are not in this together. The divisions that run through our society going into the COVID-19 crisis have only been heightened. Racialized workers are seeing higher rates of infections and deaths because they disproportionately work in low-paying frontline jobs. Women, racialized, migrant and low-wage workers have disproportionately been impacted by the closure of the economy through job losses and the loss of public services such as schools.  Just as the COVID-19 crisis exposes and deepens inequality at the national level, so too does the crisis play out on the international level. The virus, first confronted in China, has seen its deadliest form in Europe and the United States. The epicentre of the virus seems to be the richest nations on the planet.

Essential Sanitary Workers Strike For Hazard Pay And PPE

May 17, 2020 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. , , ,
The severe outbreak of COVID-19 in southern Louisiana was the last straw for a group of sanitation workers who pick up trash in eastern New Orleans. Last week, they walked off the job and went on strike, demanding hazard pay and a $15 living wage. Without “hoppers,” as the workers are known, garbage would pile up on the streets and contribute to the spread of disease and other public health problems. However, the group of hoppers in New Orleans say their employers did not provide them with hazard pay or sufficient personal protection equipment as COVID-19 shut down the city. Technically employed by a subcontractor and working for a private disposal firm, the hoppers say were paid as little as $10.25 an hour, with no benefits such as paid sick leave, for lifting 250,000 pounds of waste per week — an essential public service.

Farmworkers Are Walking Out To Protest Conditions During COVID-19 Pandemic

May 16, 2020 Mai Hoang and Le Talamo, Seattle Times. , , ,
Yakima, Washington - Workers at Columbia Reach Pack and Hansen Fruit and Cold Storage Co. in Yakima walked out Thursday morning to protest their working conditions. They held signs asking employers for better COVID-19 safety measures, 6 feet of social distancing in the workplace, and protection from retaliation for protesting. They also want Columbia Reach to provide a hazard pay increase of $2 an hour. Thursday’s strikes are the sixth and seventh in Yakima County since Monday, with workers calling for paid sick leave, hazard pay, safer working conditions and protection from retaliation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Since May 7, workers also have walked out of Frosty Packing and Roche Fruit in Yakima, Matson Fruit Co. and Monson Fruit Co. in Selah, and Allan Bros. in Naches

Trump Administration Tells States To Yank Benefits From Those Who Won’t Return To Work

May 15, 2020 Arthur Delaney, Portside. , , ,
Congress created special unemployment benefits so that laid-off workers could stay home while the coronavirus pandemic rages outside, but the Trump administration wants states to make sure that nobody’s getting benefits if they could be at work.  The U.S. Department of Labor has told states, which implement unemployment insurance programs according to federal rules, that they should ask employers to notify the state if someone turns down an offer to come back to work.  In a guidance memo on Monday evening, the Labor Department said “states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits.”  The guidance comes as President Donald Trump is calling on states to lift restrictions on commerce so that the economy might get back on track ahead of the November election, even though the national death toll from COVID-19 is still rising at a brisk pace.

Children Protest For Their Parents At The Smithfield Foods Meat Factory

May 12, 2020 Taylor Trujillo, KLKN TV. , , ,
Saturday in Crete was the second round of drive–by protests against the lack of COVID–19 safety conditions at Smithfield Foods. Protestors were seen donning signs down main street with sayings like “essential not disposable.” The workers, experiencing a quick turnaround on Tuesday that didn’t give them the initial 2 week closure they were hoping to get. “When are we going to stop? When 300 people are sick? Is that where the COVID is going to stop,” said Sheila Balbuena, whose parents are working at the plant. “We would rather not eat meat for weeks or even months as long as everyone’s safe and the prices decrease,” said Yesenia Regalado, whose parents are working at the plant. “I haven’t been able to hug my mom in the past two weeks because she’s worried she’s going to affect any of us if she has it, you know,” said Emmanuel Sanchez-Mora, whose parents are working at the plant.

Row Upon Row Of Empty Shoes Outside White House

May 11, 2020 Eoin Higgins, Comomndreams. , , ,
National Nurses United held a vigil in front of President Donald Trump's White House on Thursday, a remembrance for 88 nurses—represented by solemn rows of empty whites shoes—who have died so far from the coronavirus as the pandemic continues to rage across the U.S. amid the president's continued mismanagement. "Who will care for our patients when we get sick?" tweeted NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo. As Common Dreams has reported, pleas from healthcare workers for personal protective equipment (PPE) and aid have largely gone unanswered as the outbreak continues to spread around the nation. In a press release issued Thursday, NNU demanded that Congress and the White House prioritize frontline workers in the next stage of coronavirus legislation. "The next Covid-19 relief package is being discussed and finalized, and we are demanding that senators include critical protections to keep nurses safe in the bill," the group said.
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