August 6 Labor News Roundup
Workers fight school reopening plans with threats to strike, launch a union campaign in the Maryland public defender's office, and organize to demand changes in college athletics
This is the Written Up Labor News Roundup for August 6, 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 you know of a story I should include or write about in a separate post, send them to writtenupnewsletter@gmail.com.
Education
New York teacher Annie Tan wrote that reopening schools in fall is not safe.
What worries me most about schools reopening in the fall is that more people will die. Right now teachers are feeling like we’re rushing toward a reopening that isn’t well thought out. That’s why teachers across the country are talking about safety strikes and staging sick-outs. As I mentioned back in May, just among my students’ families and our paraprofessionals’ families in my small classroom, we had 14 deaths from Covid-19. I don’t want that happening again, and I know that my students are still dealing with that grief.
Chicago teachers threatened to go on strike over the mayor’s plan to reopen schools. Hours later, the district changed its plan and decided to go remote.
School food workers in New York City have been working in kitchens as hot as 135 degrees this summer as they make free grab and go meals for school families that need them. Workers have suffered from heat stroke, dehydration, and fainting.
Faculty at the University of Georgia say the university’s reopening plan is “life-threatening.” In a campus-wide survey, a majority of faculty described themselves as “very worried” about problems that could occur during reopening, and 92% of all workers and students surveyed said that no one should be compelled to work or learn face-to-face.
Custodians and housekeepers at universities across the country say that universities are disregarding their health and safety in their reopening plans.
“If you’re going to implement safety measures for the housekeepers to make the students safe, then you need to do the same for the students to make us safe,” [Penny] Elliott [a housekeeper at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill] said. “The university is concerned about the students, but what about the workers?”
250 workers at the University of Iowa signed a petition asking the university to switch to online-only instruction where possible. The university does not plan to test students for the coronavirus before they move in to campus housing and start attending classes. John Jepsen, a graduate instructor, called the university’s plan “unconscionable.”
Food processing
Bienvenue Chengangu, a meatpacking worker at the JBS plant in Greeley, CO and a Congolese refugee, spoke out about irresponsible management at the plant and intervention from the federal government that put workers at risk of contracting the coronavirus. After Chengangu contracted the virus at work, a relative of his got sick and passed away. Six workers at the Greeley JBS plant have died of the coronavirus so far, including three since the plant reopened. Written Up previously covered a walkout by workers at this plant that won them a raise.
“The decision to keep the company open was a bad decision, and it means the government is also contributing to the damage that’s been done,” Chengangu, who cut brisket for the plant until the outbreak, told The Washington Post through an interpreter. “They knew how hard it was for people to work safe, yet we continued.” [...]
Chengangu, inspired to seek a better life in the United States after being attacked by paramilitary groups in Congo, said he left the country and its ongoing civil strife to escape cruelty and greed.
Yet, he said, “It’s the same thing here. I’m realizing America isn’t the paradise we believed it to be.”
Tyson and other meat companies have asked judges to dismiss lawsuits alleging the companies are responsible for the deaths of their workers, citing President Trump’s executive order declaring meatpacking plants “critical infrastructure.”
Pacific Islanders are 12 times more likely to get the coronavirus in Oregon than white people, in part because they are more likely to do essential work in the food processing industry. Workers from Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau are also restricted from accessing parts of the healthcare safety net in the US.
Source: Kanani Cortez, Oregon Health Authority.
Sports
College athletes in the Pacific-12 conference demanded health and safety protections as colleges attempt to go ahead with fall athletics despite the coronavirus pandemic. They are also aiming to tackle racism and labor exploitation in college athletics.
For Cooper, this started years ago while he was in Pullman, Washington, where his time as an athlete and with the student-athlete advisory committee and his own independent research taught him two important lessons.
“I learned how this system will never change from within. Ever.” And the other? “The only way a labor movement can be started is with a work stoppage.”
The kicker at Eastern Kentucky University’s football program quit the team, saying coaches there “do not care about player safety” and that they continued practice and team activity even after players showed symptoms of the coronavirus.
Government
700 workers at the Maryland public defender’s office publicly launched a union campaign after being left out of decisions to reopen courthouses.
“The judicial system must be run as safely as possible for our clients and ourselves, and it must continue to function during the pandemic,” Public Defender Cynthia Christiani said in a statement provided by the union. “So far frontline workers have had no say in how to open courts safely while ensuring justice for our clients. We deserve to have a voice in how the work is done.”
County workers in Monmouth County, NJ won a temporary restraining order that will reverse the county’s mandate that workers exposed to the coronavirus still report to work in-person. The policy required exposed workers to “quarantine at work.”
Workers at the Illinois Secretary of State’s office walked off the job on Tuesday. The state only closed half of their facility after a worker there tested positive for the coronavirus.
“No one told us anything,” a Vehicle Services employee said. “We came in this morning, the whole other side of the building is shut down.”
“People are dying from this,” the employee said. “People are dying.”
“We have families to raise and to see through life, and you don’t want to get sick or possibly even lose your life because someone isn’t being as careful as they can be with your life,” the employee said.
Postal workers in Portland protested to draw attention to mail slowdowns in the US Postal Service caused by recent changes ordered by the Postmaster General that undermine their work.
Farmworkers
Michigan has started requiring coronavirus tests of farmworkers and food processing workers in the state. Operators of migrant housing camps must also test their residents.
Transportation
The California Labor Commissioner sued Uber and Lyft for wage theft. The lawsuit claims that misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” rather than employees allowed the companies to avoid paying minimum wage and overtime.
Airlines and airport shop operators in Seattle and Portland have issued layoff notices affecting thousands of workers. Alaska Airlines has sent layoff notices to nearly 2,000 workers in the Pacific Northwest.
Healthcare
Epic Systems is requiring more than 9,000 workers to return to work in-person at its Wisconsin campus in September. Workers say the move will cause “untold deaths that will occur both indirectly by spread through the broader community and directly from forcing workers into close quarters when they don’t need to be.”
Nurses in Las Vegas and other hospitals around the country who are members of National Nurses United protested for better PPE and more staff.
Nurses protest in Oakland, CA. Source: National Nurses United.
A healthcare worker at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami may lose her hands after complications from treatment of COVID-19.
Energy
The last oil and gas rig still operating in Wyoming shut down this week. If demand increases, rigs will begin operating again. This time last year, 37 rigs were operating in the state, each with roughly 100 workers.
The Buckskin coal mine in is also furloughing 187 workers, adding to 600 other Wyoming coal workers who have been laid off or furloughed since the beginning of the pandemic. Written Up previously covered the long-term decline of the coal industry and a study that showed coal mine cleanups across the West could provide work for laid off coal miners.
Workers at Memphis Light Gas and Water say their supervisor repeatedly called them the N-word at work, then the workers were retaliated against when they reported him. A union representative said this is the third such incident that the current MLGW president has done nothing about. The supervisor who used the racial slur was promoted.
Auto
A GM autoworker at the company’s Fairfax plant in Kansas City, KS, spoke out about the company’s failure to protect its workers from the spread of the coronavirus. About 2,400 workers work at the plant, which produces the Chevy Malibu and Cadillac XT4.
“I think they’re trying to hide as much as they can, and the true impact on the plant. I believe the UAW and GM are in cahoots with each other. There’s no doubt in my mind. Both sides are withholding the truth,” [said Sam, a GM autoworker whose name has been changed to prevent retaliation].
The cleaning and safety protocols that GM has outlined publicly have largely been ignored inside the plant. “The only thing I know of is that they’re cleaning the bathrooms more frequently. Cleaning ladies wiping down the rails. But that’s about all I see.” He added, “We’re given an additional five minutes to disinfect our work area before the line starts. They give us a spray bottle of something, we don’t know what it is. But now management is starting to complain that it’s damaging the equiptment and surfaces.”
“People are wearing masks, social distancing, but it’s getting worse because you really can’t distance, there’s a lot of jobs side-by-side where it’s impossible to control. People on the line are working two to three feet from each other, you’re right on top of each other sometimes.”
The UAW’s regional director for Ohio and Indiana, Rich Rankin, resigned amid accusations and an impending union trial over sexual harassment of two female union leaders.
Gaming
Workers at the video game company Blizzard are preparing a list of demands after sharing their salaries with each other and finding alarming disparities. They are also asking for increased sick leave and other items.
Machinists
The FAA wants to fine Boeing $1,250,000 because at least four managers at its South Carolina plant pressured its inspection and safety workers to inspect planes before they were ready, pressured them to speed up their work, and threatened to fire them.
The union for workers at Bath Iron Works, a Navy shipyard in Maine owned by General Dynamics, says negotiations to end the strike there are “breaking down.”
Logistics
A new Amazon fulfillment center in Hebron, KY outside Cincinnati will hire more than 1,250 warehouse workers.
Paper
Layoffs officially began for workers at the idled Verso paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids on Monday. They negotiated severance packages, extended medical and dental insurance coverage, and a slower shutdown process through their union.
Chadwick Stelmacher, a member of the USW union who works in pulp processing, said he and other employees made sacrifices to keep the mill running.
“We gave up so much to keep it going,” Stelmacher said. “We made concessions as workers to keep the mill running. It’s like we failed.”
Food service
Two restaurants in Milwaukee closed permanently after employees started agitating for better conditions. The laid off workers have continued their protests since the closure, as the company that owned both restaurants continues to expand in Milwaukee.
Waxy’s Irish Pub, a Massachusetts restaurant chain, must pay its workers $125,000 for failures to pay minimum wage, offer sick time, and writing paychecks that bounced.
A customer pepper sprayed three workers at a Missouri pizza arcade after they asked the woman to wear a mask.