PPE

It’s Bigger Than Scrubs – My Termination From United Hospital ER

May 11, 2020 Cliff Willmeng, RN, Popular Resistance. Organize! COVID-19, Nurses, PPE, Workers Rights and Jobs

For months, working conditions, patient safety, public health, and the rights of union members have been degraded and placed at risk by Allina hospital administration’s policies, behavior, and egregious lack of preparation for a global pandemic. This is not a matter of opinion or perspective but documented fact, evidenced by hundreds of OSHA complaints, failing infection protocols, communications of frontline healthcare workers, and hospital administration’s ongoing acts of intimidation, harassment, and threats to our professional standing. Hospital administrators placed profits and executive compensation over protection of employees, year after year. The resulting failure and disorganization have pushed workplace safety, nursing practice, public health, and our rights as workers to a breaking point.

Prison Labor Replaces Striking Garbage Workers In New Orleans

May 10, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! COVID-19, PPE, Strike, Worker Rights

On Wednesday, dozens of garbage workers, employed by the temp service People Ready, went on strike, demanding proper safety equipment. The workers, who make only $10.25 an hour are also demanding hazard pay and paid sick leave. “$10.25 to pick up trash – come on now. It’s contaminated now with coronavirus,” strike leader Gregory Woods told Payday Report this week. After striking, the workers were fired en-masse earlier this week However, many workers had hoped that the city would find a resolution to hire the back. Now, the city has found new workers to replace the striking workers, prison labor from nearby Livingston Parish.

Striking Bus Drivers Steer The Way To A Better World

May 9, 2020 Mindy Isser, In These Times. Resist! Bus Driver, COVID-19, PPE, Strike

All eyes are on essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, as individuals, companies and even the federal government make a point to thank them for their heroic action: working. Frontline workers have received plenty of symbolic accolades, but many are working without proper personal protective equipment (PPE) and hazard pay, and are scared for their health and safety. Public transit workers, who shuttle other essential workers to and from work, have been sounding the alarm about poor safety standards at their jobs since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which represents 200,000 workers in the United States and Canada, told In These Times that nearly 1,000 of its members have been infected with coronavirus, and almost 40 have died.

Prisoners Fight For Their Lives During COVID-19 Pandemic

May 4, 2020 Staff, Workers World. Resist! COVID-19, health, PPE, Prison abolition, Prisons

First and foremost, Take ‘Em Down NOLA was established about five years ago this summer, and our mission is basically the removal of all symbols of white supremacy in the city of New Orleans, as they reflect the systems of racial and economic injustice and oppression of a more than 60 percent Black city. And so, in the city of New Orleans, you’ve had at least 17 monuments to white supremacy. Now 13, thanks to some of our organizing, we were able to successfully get four of them removed back in 2017. But all of that was really just a wake-up call, a rally to the people in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement to highlight the fact that, you know, state-sanctioned violence has an entire system behind it, an entire apparatus behind it. A Black person is killed in this country every day, extrajudicially, like unarmed Black people being killed by police, and quite often there’s no justice for it.

Immigrants Making PPE Strike After Co-Worker Dies Of COVID

May 3, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. Resist! COVID-19, Immigrant Rights, PPE, Strike

Today, Mexican immigrants making personal protective equipment LSL Healthcare in the suburbs of Chicago walked off the job, shutting down production as the workers demand paid time off to go into quarantine. The walk-off came off after a co-worker died of COVID. “The bosses didn’t inform the workers that there are sick people. They figured it out on their own,” says Maritere Gomez, an organizer with the worker center Arise Chicago, which is helping the workers organize. “If it were up to the bosses, the workers still wouldn’t know. They would put anyone live at risk cuz of profits,” says Gomez. The workers delivered a letter to management demanding paid time off, safer conditions, and better testing. “The company should call us when the Covid-19 crisis is over according to the Illinois government, and/or when the company is ready to resume safe operations in compliance with Governor JB Pritzker’s Executive Order."

How Profit And Incompetence Delayed N95 Masks While People Died

May 3, 2020 By J. David McSwane, Pro Publica. Educate! COVID-19, Federal contract, PPE, Veterans Administration

Before embarking on a 36-hour tour through an underground of contractors and middlemen trying to make a buck on the nation’s desperate need for masks, entrepreneur Robert Stewart Jr. offered an unusual caveat. “I’m talking with you against the advice of my attorney,” the man in the shiny gray suit, an American Flag button with the word “VETERAN” pinned to his blazer, said as we boarded a private jet Saturday from the executive wing at Dulles International Airport. It remains a mystery why the CEO of Federal Government Experts LLC let me observe his frantic effort to find 6 million N95 respirators and the ultimate unraveling of his $34.5 million deal to supply them to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, where 20 VA staff have died of COVID-19 while the agency waits for masks.

Nursing Home Workers Authorize May 8 Strike At 40 Facilities

April 29, 2020 Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune. Resist! COVID-19, Nursing Homes, PPE, Strike, Workers

Workers at 40 nursing homes in Illinois, nearly all in the Chicago area, said Monday they have set a strike date for May 8, as contract negotiations come to a head while coronavirus cases are hitting a peak. SEIU Healthcare Illinois stated that it represents more than 10,000 workers at 100 nursing homes. The workers do not include doctors or nurses, but encompass certified nursing assistants and other support staff. They are negotiating with the Illinois Association of Healthcare Facilities on a new contract to succeed the current one, which expires April 30. The list of 40 homes targeted by workers could increase in the coming days, officials said. Many of the workers are making little more than Chicago’s minimum wage of $13 an hour for “backbreaking,” essential work taking care of society’s most vulnerable members, said Shaba Andrich, vice president for nursing homes.

Instead Of Providing Masks Or Allowing Unions, Whole Foods Unveils New ‘Hero’ Uniform

April 26, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Corporatism, COVID-19, Essential worker, PPE

Megan Murray, a Whole Foods store worker in Philadelphia, writes that many of the precautionary procedures put in place are laughably poor. For instance, while employees have their temperature checked each day, the contactless reader is hopelessly inaccurate, measuring greatly different temperatures every time she uses it. Even if workers are diagnosed in-store with a high fever, they do not receive paid time off and are merely sent home. Only if they have tested positive for the virus or have been instructed to quarantine by a doctor do they qualify. But getting tested for COVID-19is extremely difficult, and finding the money to pay for a doctor harder still. While those who study to work in a hospital or a nuclear power plant understand that there is an unwritten assumption that, during a crisis, they might need to risk their lives to prevent greater disaster, this is not the case for retail workers. “It feels like we’ve been drafted into war...

Largest Strike Yet, Amazon Workers Call In Sick

April 22, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Resist! Amazon, COVID-19, PPE, Worker Rights

Hundreds of Amazon workers from across the U.S. on Tuesday called in sick to demand better safety standards at the ecommerce giant's warehouses in the largest coordinated action at the company since the coronavirus pandemic began. The labor rights groups United for Respect, New York Communities for Change, and Make the Road New York organized the action. More than 300 employees joined the strike and refused to work. More than 75 Amazon employees have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in recent weeks as workers have sounded alarms about a lack of transparency and safety protocols at the company's 110 U.S. warehouses. Athena, a coalition of groups dedicated to fighting injustices at Amazon, called on Americans to demonstrate solidarity with the striking employees, who work in at least 50 of the company's facilities throughout the country.

Nurses Protest At White House For Mass Production Of PPE For Health Care Workers

April 22, 2020 National Nurses United. Resist! COVID-19, Nurses, OSHA, PPE, Trump

Registered Nurses held a protest in front of the White House on Tuesday, April 21 to call attention to the tens of thousands of health care workers nationwide who have become infected with COVID-19 due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). The nurses, members of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of RNs in the country, practiced social distancing and read aloud the names U.S. nurses who are known to have died of COVID-19. Nurses have been demanding that the Trump administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) promulgate an emergency temporary standard so that health care workers are provided with the optimal PPE. NNU petitioned OSHA on March 4, 2020 for such a standard and never received a response.

OSHA Leaves Out Millions Of Essential Workers In COVID-19 Workplace Safety Protections

April 21, 2020 By Michael Grabell, Bernice Yeung and Maryam Jameel, ProPublica. Educate! COVID-19, Essential worker, OSHA, PPE

As news emerged that the novel coronavirus was infecting hundreds of workers in meatpacking plants, Gregoria Rivas began worrying that her chicken processing facility in North Carolina wasn’t doing enough to protect workers like her from the virus. There was no social distancing, she said. Everywhere she went at the Case Farms plant, there were dozens of workers crowded into a small space. In the locker room, where everyone put on their uniforms. On the cutting line, where she spent eight hours slicing chicken breasts. In the cafeteria during lunch. Even at break time, when workers lined up to use the bathroom. “I tried to bring my own face mask that I had bought at the pharmacy, but they wouldn’t let me wear it,” said Rivas, 31. “When they wouldn’t let me wear my own mask, I went to the nurse’s station at the plant, and they said there were no masks available.”

Brooklyn ER Doctor: Life And Death On The Frontlines Of COVID-19

April 16, 2020 Rico Cleffy, Indypendent.org. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, New York City (NYC), PPE

As the number of those infected with COVID-19 continues to climb in New York — stressing the state’s already underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped hospital system — we spoke with Maurice Selby, an ER doctor at two hospitals, one in Brooklyn, the other in Long Island. In an average week, Dr. Selby is averaging three, 12-14 hour shifts at the Long Island facility, which is private, and at least one per-diem shift in Brooklyn at a public medical center. On the condition that we not publish the names of his employers, The Indypendent interviewed Dr. Selby at length, first at the end of March and again last week as he discussed daily life in the ER amid the pandemic, the innovative ways he and his colleagues are grappling with equipment shortages and how he and his family are coping.

A Nurse Buys Protective Supplies For Colleagues; The Hospital Suspends Her

April 9, 2020 Marshall Allen, ProPublica. Resist! COVID-19, Nurses, PPE, Worker Rights

Olga Matievskaya and her fellow intensive care nurses at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey were so desperate for gowns and masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus that they turned to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money. The donations flowed in — more than $12,000 — and Matievskaya used some of them to buy about 500 masks, 4,000 shoe covers and 150 jumpsuits. She and her colleagues at the hospital celebrated protecting themselves and their patients from the spread of the virus. But rather than thanking the staff, hospital administrators on Saturday suspended Matievskaya for distributing “unauthorized” protective gear. Across the country, front-line medical providers and hospital administrators are butting heads about precautions against the coronavirus pandemic.

Nurses Unions: ‘Our Members Are Dying. We Demand Protections Now!’

April 9, 2020 National Nurses United. Resist! COVID-19, Nurses, PPE, Worker Rights

As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in the United States, unions representing 230,000 nurses across the country have joined forces to demand hospitals and the government act now to give nurses optimal personal protective equipment (PPE)—including N95 respirators or higher—a demand made more dire due to the fact that nurses are beginning to die of COVID-19. National Nurses United (comprising the California Nurses Association, the D.C. Nurses Association, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and National Nurses Organizing Committee— including RNs in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, and Veterans Affairs facilities in a dozen other states,) along with the New York State Nurses Association, (NYSNA) the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) are calling on employers and the government to stop treating nurses as if their lives are expendable.

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