August 28 Labor News Roundup
Workers refused to play in the NBA playoffs, protested racial injustice and police brutality, and said companies are covering up coronavirus outbreaks.
This is the Written Up Labor News Roundup for August 28, 2020. You can skim for stories from the industries, locations, and topics that you care about, read the direct quotes from workers throughout, or go ahead and read the whole thing if you really want to. If there’s a story I should include, send it to writtenupnewsletter@gmail.com.
Sports
The Milwaukee Bucks refused to play Game 5 of the NBA playoffs in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a short drive from the Bucks stadium. In 2018, a Bucks player named Sterling Brown was assaulted by Milwaukee police outside a Walgreens. The city offered Brown a $400,000 settlement that would have prevented him from speaking publicly about what happened. Brown wrote an essay called “Your Money Can’t Silence Me” instead:
One of the officers had a knee on my neck. Another stood on my ankle. The cop who tased me had initially pulled his gun.
The whole time I was on the ground, I was just wondering how we had gotten to that point. All I was focused on was getting back to my family and my job. I thought about fighting back, but it was just an unnecessary attempt for them to show power. I could have gotten them off of me, but it was six guns to none. I had no protection and they had the protection of the badge.
Eventually they put me in the back of the cop car and took me to the police station, where I was thrown in a cell for a few hours. For what? Because I was a Black man with a nice car in the hood. But while I was in there I had time to think and reflect. I had time to turn my anger into fuel.[....]
That was why I rejected the settlement offer from the city of Milwaukee last year. I want more than just money. I want cops to show respect and to be held accountable when they step out of line, especially in the neighborhoods they are supposed to serve and protect every day. If they kill a man, I want them to receive the same punishment that another guy on the street would.
The four other NBA teams scheduled to play joined the strike, and the players union called a meeting where players from every team discussed their demands and plan for action. The WNBA joined the strike as well. Players came onto the court wearing shirts spelling out Jacob Blake’s name on the front and seven bullet holes drawn on the back, a reference the number of times Kenosha police shot Blake in the back.
WNBA players began their season by dedicating it to Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police in her own home, and walking off the court to demand justice for her killing. Washington Mystics guard Ariel Atkins said WNBA players joined the strike because
We’re not just basketball players.[…]
I really appreciate my team for not only having my back, but saying what they feel. It’s hard to say that type of stuff in these moments, it’s hard to be vulnerable in these moments. But I think...if we do this unified as a league, it looks different. Because this league is close to if not over 80% black women.”
The Milwaukee Brewers baseball team also joined the strike, refusing to play their game against the Cincinnati Reds. The team’s two former National League Most Valuable Players, Ryan Braun and Christian Yelich, both spoke and answered questions about their decision.
Later, the Seattle Mariners also refused to play, as did several other teams on the west coast, leading to several more MLB games being canceled. The Mariners have the most black players of any team in baseball. In Major League Soccer, Atlanta United refused to play their game against Inter Miami, and several other west coast teams joined in refusing to play, leading to more cancellations.
Some NFL players also made public statements supportive of the strike. Nine teams also cancelled practice.
On Friday, roughly 100 NBA workers walked out in solidarity with the NBA and WNBA players on strike.
College football players at Ole Miss walked out of practice Friday to protest police brutality and racial injustice in Oxford, Mississippi.
Workers for the Washington Football Team continued to speak out about a mysogynistic and abusive work environment for women at the organization, created by top executives and team owner Dan Snyder.
Multiple industries
Large corporations around the country have been covering up coronavirus outbreaks among their workers according to an investigation from Bloomberg Businessweek:
Workers at Amazon.com, Cargill, McDonald’s, and Target say they were told to keep Covid cases quiet. The same sort of gagging has been alleged in OSHA complaints against Smithfield Foods, Urban Outfitters, and General Electric. In an email viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, Delta Air Lines told its 25,000 flight attendants to “please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own” about any Covid symptoms or diagnoses. At Recreational Equipment Inc., an employee texted colleagues to say he’d tested positive and that “I was told not to tell anybody” and “to not post or say anything on social media.”
According to another complaint, plastics company Jeans Extrusions Inc. told workers not to discuss infections, because “they cannot afford to quarantine us all.” According to another, beverage store LiqGo told employees anyone who revealed they had Covid-19 would be fired.
Teachers say they’re getting gag orders, too. At the end of July, as Florida prepared to resume in-person classroom teaching, the school district in Jacksonville’s home county of Duval emailed a warning to employees. Any social media posting that would “reflect badly” on the district’s reputation “may lead to disciplinary actions,” according to the email, later viewed by Businessweek.[…]
“While we are considered essential, we are also considered expendable,” says Milo Wright, [a Target worker].
In a separate report from Business Insider, CVS workers also said that the company has been ignoring reports of coronavirus outbreaks and forcing workers to work while sick.
"I was instructed by our local health department to start my 14-day quarantine. However, my district manager and the corporate COVID hotline told me I still had to work," the Missouri [CVS] technician said, adding that she was told she did not qualify for paid leave without first showing COVID-19 symptoms.
"The hotline [operator] specifically told me to ignore the health department, and that if I didn't have symptoms I don't have to listen to the isolation order," the technician said.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a company did not violate its workers’ privacy when it sent people into the bathroom with workers to watch them give a urine sample for a drug test.
Education
University reopenings are already killing workers. Ana Cabrera Lopez, a 32-year-old janitor at the University of Georgia who expressed fear about being forced to work on campus, died from the coronavirus.
[Lili] Orozco said UGA didn’t do enough to protect her cousin.
“That’s why she’s not here with us anymore,” she said. “They definitely should have done more.”
An IT worker at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln who got sick earlier this summer also passed away last week.
Multiple universities in South Dakota already have coronavirus outbreaks among workers and students immediately after reopening.
Campus workers at Georgia College planned a die-in to protest their college’s “willful negligence” in creating the highest rate of coronavirus infections of any college in the country.
University of Tennessee workers also made demands of their administration for more transparency and protection from the coronavirus.
[Tom] Anderson [a facilities worker] said the university and state leadership "knew they were being reckless when they made the decision to go back to in-person."
University of Virginia workers, who recently formed a union, have started a campaign to get the university to move to online-only education.
“We don’t want the university to make the call to move online after hundreds of people have already gotten sick,” Crystal Luo [a university worker] said. “We just don’t feel like that’s a price worth paying for an on-grounds experience.”
Postal Service
Postal workers in two facilities, one in the Seattle area and one in Dallas, defied orders from their bosses to keep disabled mail sorting machines out of service and reconnected them.
Postal workers protested the recent changes in the postal service that have slowed down mail delivery in many cities around the country, including in Lincoln, Nebraska. Written Up previously shared thoughts from workers around the country on the postal service slowdown.
Healthcare
Nurses at the University of Illinois Hospital voted 995-12 in favor of authorizing a strike if management does not agree to their demands in a new collective bargaining agreement. Nurses say they want fewer patients assigned to each nurse in order to provide higher quality care.
The National Labor Relations Board stopped a union election for Michigan nurses at their employer’s request without providing an explanation.
Two nursing homes in Connecticut were fined after not testing workers for coronavirus.
Municipal
Sanitation workers in Lawrence, Kansas voted 65-1 to form a union, the first group of workers to join the union in an ongoing campaign to organize workers for the City of Lawrence.
Transportation
21 bus drivers in Columbus, Mississippi walked off the job after their hours were reduced from 30 per week to 18 per week. Bus drivers in the district make less than $10,000 per year.
“A lot of us are also providing snacks for the children out of our own pocket. We are essential workers. We're not asking for anything extra, just what we were told we were going to get,” [said Diana Price, a bus driver.]
The Gig Workers Collective demanded Instacart provide assistance for their workers displaced by the California wildfires.