July 23 Labor News Roundup
Workers strike for Black Lives, win a raise after walking out of a meatpacking plant, and bring their own shower curtains to work to protect against coronavirus
This is the Written Up Labor News Roundup for July 23, 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.
Black workers
Workers in Milwaukee and many other cities around the country gathered for short protests this week, calling the actions a “Strike For Black Lives.”
The family of Breonna Taylor, an ER technician in Louisville, said her murder by police was tied to the city’s plan for redevelopment and gentrification. Justice for her murder, among other police murders, has been a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter uprising nationwide.
Logistics
In California, latinos are three times as likely to get sick from the coronavirus, in part because they are more likely to do essential work in the state. The largest outbreaks have been in places where industry relies on heavily latino workforces, like the agriculture industry in the Central Valley and the meatpacking industry near Los Angeles.
“These companies have so many resources and it feels like they’ve left us in the cold here during the pandemic,” [said Luis Chavarria, a truck driver] …
[Rafael] Saavedra handles shipping containers from overseas. After loading his truck, he drives 400 miles across California before returning home. But instead of immediately going to greet his wife and children as he used to, he changes out of his work clothes and showers to disinfect himself.
“My worst fear is infecting my daughters,” Saavedra said. “I’m given two masks every three to four weeks. They don’t care about the drivers, and we’re the ones doing all the dirty work.”
An Amazon worker who spoke out about the company’s failures to protect its workers from the coronavirus is being retaliated against by management at a facility in Shakopee, MN. After workers warned about the risk of infection, Amazon made no changes and nearly 100 workers became infected.
A worker at an Amazon construction site in Oregon filed a lawsuit claiming that she was instructed to manipulate or fake temperature checks for workers entering the construction site with a temperature above 100.4.
A new Amazon facility in Garner, NC, will employ 3,000 warehouse workers.
Healthcare
180 hospital workers at Loretto Hospital in Chicago, IL reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. One of the provisions would raise the minimum wage for all hospital workers there to $15/hr. Workers will now vote on whether to ratify the agreement.
Hundreds of healthcare workers are on strike for five days at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa, CA. The workers there have been without a contract for more than a year.
Taylor Davison, an emergency room staffer at Santa Rosa Memorial on the picket line Monday, said by telephone that the emergency room has been understaffed for months and workers at the hospital “are constantly putting ourselves at risk.”
15% of all coronavirus cases in North Dakota come from frontline healthcare workers.
Food processing & agriculture
Workers walked off the job at a JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, CO. The plant reopened in April without testing all of its workers for the coronavirus, leading to hundreds of workers getting sick and 6 dying. The walkout led to the workers receiving a raise: the top wage rate in the plant will now be $24.60.
The Iowa Public Health Department lied about the size of a coronavirus outbreak at a Tyson plant in Columbus Junction, IA, in May, saying there were 221 workers who tested positive despite having prior knowledge that 522 workers had tested positive. Written Up will have a more comprehensive story on Tyson in a future update.
Frontline devoted an hour-long episode to the experiences of farmworkers during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Wisconsin State Journal dove into challenges immigrant workers in the state face, focusing in part on workers in the food processing industry.
“In those workplaces where it’s mostly immigrants, their safety is being ignored,” said [Julio] Gumeta. Employers are “making money out of our labor, out of our bodies, and at the same time, they have complete disregard for our lives.”
Food service
12 McDonald’s locations in North Carolina were fined for violating child labor laws. 3 McDonald’s workers also filed a lawsuit over the racist work environment created by management at a Lakeland, FL location.
14 Whole Foods workers filed a class action lawsuit against the company after being disciplined and threatened for wearing Black Lives Matter masks at work. Management did not punish workers for masks with other messages and images. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon.
Augie’s Coffee in Riverside, CA, fired 54 workers and shut down its 5 stores just weeks after those workers demanded management negotiate with their union. Closing facilities and firing workers in retaliation for union activity is illegal, and workers have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the firings. Today, workers also filed more than $140,000 in wage theft claims against the company.
“We didn’t feel like we were appreciated. We want to be important to them,” [said Brianda Medina, a barista.]
Medina looked around and began to tear up. “It’s good to see,” she said, “that our customers care, at least.”
Dave’s Coffee in Providence, RI laid off workers in order to re-hire new workers at a lower pay rate.
“We got the explanation that essentially upper management wanted to ask us back, but they wanted to get rid of time and a half pay on Sundays and holidays, and then that we would all be re-hired at $11.50, which is about to be the new Rhode Island minimum wage,” [said Jane Argodale, a barista].
Taco Bell workers accused franchise managers of adjusting time clocks or making workers clock out but keep working in two class action lawsuits.
Many restaurant workers in Michigan make $3.67/hr before tips, not enough to qualify for unemployment benefits.
Garment workers
Black immigrant workers in Maine have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. The Washington Post profiled workers who make masks for a company called American Roots where there has been a recent outbreak.
Unemployed workers
Half of black workers in Minnesota have lost work during the pandemic, compared to a quarter of white workers. Right now, a quarter of black workers are still out of work, compared to only 9% of white workers.
Undocumented workers
Undocumented workers camped out in front of the New Jersey statehouse demanding $600/week payments to help them pay bills during the coronavirus pandemic. These workers are not eligible for unemployment payments when they lose work.
“We’ve paid taxes here for 18 years,” said [Rolando] Rojano, who said he came to America 21 years ago from Mexico. “We participate in this economy too, so it’s an injustice that they take money out of our checks every week that we can’t access when we need it.”
Machinists
Workers at Bath Iron Works, a Navy shipyard owned by General Dynamics, continued their strike. About 2/3 of the shipyard’s 6,700 workers have been on strike there for the last month. Companies often believe they have the most leverage to break a strike after six or seven weeks—when “the second rent check is due.” The last strike at BIW lasted 55 days.
Union workers in Bath, ME, picket in front of their local union offices. A Bath Iron Works manager looks on with disapproval. (Credit: Robert Bukaty, AP)
700 union workers will be laid off at the Alcoa aluminum plant in Ferndale, MS, the last remaining aluminum smelter west of the Mississippi.
Construction
Two Massachusetts construction companies who shorted workers more than $2,000,000 in pay have been held in contempt of court after executives failed to pay the workers their back wages and instead bought more than $1,000,000 in real estate and went on a resort vacation.
Government
California state workers have already agreed to a 10% pay cut through furloughs. Now, thanks to changes made by the California Public Employee Retirement System, they will also see the cost of their healthcare spike by, on average, 4.5 to 8.5% starting in January. Written Up will be releasing a project on state worker pay cuts in the near future.
More than 39,000 federal workers, including military members, have caught coronavirus. That’s about 1% of everyone who works for the federal government, including thousands of cases among Postal Service and Veterans Affairs workers.
A hotline in Massachusetts lets workers snitch on their boss if they don’t comply with coronavirus safety regulations.
In Prince George’s County, MD, public health department bosses denied Chantee Mack’s request to work from home in mid-March—she then contracted coronavirus at a department meeting that did not observe social distancing and died 6 weeks later.
The National Right to Work Foundation won a settlement in Ohio forcing the state worker union to remove limits on when workers can opt out of paying dues. State workers may now opt out of dues at any point. The lawsuit was part of a national strategy to undermine the finances of labor unions that included a recent Supreme Court case called Janus v. AFSCME. Public sector unions are legally required to represent non-members in workplace conflicts, but Janus prevents the unions from charging “fair share” fees for defending non-members if they opt out of membership and dues. Anti-union groups have followed up the Supreme Court decision with lawsuits and door-to-door canvassing campaigns to convince workers to resign their union membership and stop paying dues.
Berkeley is planning to create a new city Department of Transportation to enforce traffic laws. Unarmed city workers would perform traffic stops and enforcement rather than police.
Casinos
Casino workers in Las Vegas are demanding better protection from the coronavirus from the state and their bosses. 352 members of the casino workers’ union and close family members have been hospitalized with the coronavirus so far and 22 have died. There has been a spike in cases since casinos reopened in early June.
Layoffs have hit many casino workers hard. Potawatomi Casino in Milwaukee, WI announced it would permanently lay off 1,600 workers. Circus Circus Las Vegas also announced 262 permanent layoffs this week.
Auto
Tesla will build a new auto assembly plant in the Austin, TX area that will employ up to 5,000 autoworkers. Tesla will receive $60 million in tax breaks from the county and a local school district for doing so.
Education
57% of Concord, NH teachers say they are uncomfortable returning to school in fall. Written Up will be featuring more teachers’ thoughts on returning to school in an upcoming project.
The University of Massachusetts is planning to cut $171 million from its budget, a plan the Massachusetts Teachers Association calls “utterly nonsensical” and “destructive.” The UMass system has already laid off more than 500 full time employees, 1,125 student or temporary workers, and plans to leave another 800 positions unfilled.
Cleaning
Housekeepers at the University of Maryland have filed a complaint about being made to work in extreme heat and not having equipment to protect them from the coronavirus.
“It makes me feel like they don’t care about us. They just care about this job [that has] to be done,” [Rhonda Laneksi, a housekeeper] said.
Janitors in many different industries, including those that clean planes between flights, report that they are not given either the time or supplies to clean surfaces properly to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Transportation
Bus drivers in Louisville have resorted to bringing their own shower curtains to separate themselves from passengers on overcrowded buses. They say TARC, the public agency that employs them, has not done enough to protect drivers from the coronavirus.
“Couriers of the dead” have been working overtime in Texas transporting bodies to funeral homes as coronavirus deaths skyrocket.
4 DHL workers were struck by lightning at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport.
American Airlines may lay off as many as 25,000 workers.
Sports
Players in the NBA’s developmental league, called the G-League, formed a union with 80% of players signing cards in support. The league voluntarily recognized and agreed to bargain with the union, avoiding the need for an official vote.