October 5 Labor News Roundup
Workers announced a Bay Area hospital strike, fought management interference in their journalism, and were injured at an unprecedented rate in Amazon facilities
Logistics
14,000 Amazon workers were seriously injured last year, more than twice the rate in the rest of the industry. Injury rates have been significantly higher in warehouses that use more robotics and spike during the holiday rush and “Prime Day” rush. An investigation from Reveal also showed that the company has engaged in a public relations campaign to lie about and cover up the company’s safety problems. An interactive allows you to check the injury rate at the facility that delivers your orders.
(The Amazon facilities with the highest rate of serious injury in 2019. From Reveal.)
“It’s just that it’s hurting me and they’re not listening to what my body’s telling me,” [Cecilia] Hoyos said. Since the warehouse opened in 2014, Hoyos has seen the production quotas go higher and higher. Managers would closely monitor a computer system that tracks how many items an employee scans every hour and write up workers who weren’t hitting targets. Workers who fell too far behind could be fired.
Those quotas changed dramatically when the robots arrived at Amazon. Company officials promised they’d save workers such as Hoyos from the fatigue of walking miles a day to find customer orders. All they would have to do is stand in place and grab things.
“We thought it was so cool,” she said. But she soon wished she were back to walking all day. Instead of greeting colleagues as she moved through the facility, she was isolated at a workstation, and standing 10 hours a day doing repetitive motions proved to be much harder on her body, Hoyos said.
A new class action lawsuit filed by a worker in Illinois accuses Shipt, Target’s on-demand delivery company, of intentionally misclassifying its workers in order to pay them less.
Healthcare
Nurses at Alameda Health system in the East Bay Area of California will begin a five-day strike on Wednesday at three East Bay hospitals.
“Our patients are some of the most marginalized people in our communities and we have an obligation to stand up for them and demand that the county provide us the tools we need to keep ourselves safe, our patients safe, and our communities safe,” said Mawata Kamara, a nurse who works at San Leandro Hospital and is on the union’s board of directors. “We do not take lightly the decision to strike during a pandemic.”
Employees who have tried to advocate for better safety have faced disciplinary action for doing so, and the association has filed charges with the Public Employment Relations Board over the matter, the release also said. That board governs the relationship between public employees and their employer.
“We are putting our lives on the line coming to work,” said Karen Rothblatt, a registered nurse who works at Alameda Hospital. “As advocates for our patients, we are obligated to speak out.”
EMTs and paramedics for Falck, a private ambulance company that Alameda County pays to respond to 911 calls, are fighting for a pay increase. They will join the Alameda Health System nurses on the picket line during their strike.
Bosses at a nursing home for military veterans in Massachusetts were criminally charged for spreading coronavirus among residents and workers through their negligent actions.
Social worker Carrie Forrant said it felt like the veterans were being moved to a concentration camp.
“We [were] moving those unknowing veterans off to die,” she told Pearlstein and his investigators in the June report. Other social workers interviewed in both investigations expressed concern over short staffing and not having enough people to help elderly people in all units.
Good Shepherd Hospital in Oregon stopped internal contract tracing and stopped reporting coronavirus exposures to its staff after two outbreaks in the facility. The change in reporting practices came after guidance from the Oregon Health Authority, who said internal contact tracing imposed a financial burden on hospitals.
Healthcare workers conducting a survey on the impacts of coronavirus in rural Minnesota were followed, videotaped, and threatened by community members who used racial slurs and at least one who was armed, leading to the CDC ending the survey.
Black workers
A Louisville grand jury was not given the option to charge the officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a Louisville ER technician whose murder by police has been a national rallying point for the Black Lives Matter movement. Taylor’s mother said she had no faith in the legal system.
Women workers
A new study found that four times more women left the labor force in September than men due in part to the caregiving burdens imposed by the coronavirus pandemic falling disproportionately on women workers.
All workers
58% of workers in the US are reporting burnout, with essential workers reporting even higher levels of stress.
Elizabeth Rung works in the front end as a grocery store cashier in Seattle, Washington. “More and more people are calling out [sick], we’re short staffed all the time,” Rung said. “Customers are becoming crazy, sometimes violent when asked to wear a mask and we aren’t allowed to give out free masks due to the drama and hostility. I haven’t slept well in months.” [...]
At Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, a worker for a contractor in the food service halls on the military base said many of the marines on base have not taken the coronavirus seriously, including not wearing masks or social distancing, and management has increased pressure for staff to keep up with workloads among staff shortages. They requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“The workload is so high that for the past three weeks alone we have lost seven employees who have just up and quit after working a day or two. Most of my coworkers have at one point in time broken down crying at work, myself included. It’s gotten so bad that I usually cry before work, or in the bathroom after a particularly grueling shift.” [...]
Stacey Guth works at a certified nursing assistant at an assisted living facility in Shreveport, Louisiana making $10 an hour. She explained the personal protective equipment provided to workers was non-existent and she has had to buy her own N95 mask. A single mother with two children who takes care of her 70-year-old father who is diabetic and suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an arthritis disease, she has struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic.
“Because the prices on everything we need to survive went up a lot I have had to choose between feeding my kids a decent meal or shorting them on food to make enough for me to keep my stomach from hurting because I’m so hungry,” said Guth. “I eat one meal every other day. My place of employment throws the leftover food away and refuses to let staff eat unless we sign a piece of paper for $3 to be taken out of our check.” [...]
Tracey Tobin works as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens outside of Boston, Massachusetts. “I’ve worked 10- to 13-hour shifts without breaks while being called names no person should be called because drug manufacturers cut down on making medicine. I’m tired and burned out but still making it to my job every day and then I come home to be a mom and a teacher. It’s stressful and exhausting,” said Tobin.
Only one out of every 200 calls to Wisconsin’s unemployment agency from laid off workers were answered between March and June. 93% of calls did not even ring once, instead receiving a busy signal or dead air.
Food processing
A CDC safety report on a Smithfield plant in South Dakota was withdrawn and watered down after a “pre-clearance draft” was given to the company and state health officials. After 4 workers died at the plant due to a coronavirus outbreak, the company was fined less than $14,000.
A 9th worker at a Foster Farms plant in Livingston, CA died in September. The county health department has closed the plant due to its coronavirus outbreak.
Media
Workers at Minnesota Public Radio wrote a letter in protest of the organization’s hostile environment toward women and workers of color, including a list of demands. One journalist quit MPR after management suppressed her investigation of a DJ at the radio station who sexually manipulated and psychologically abused at least eight women at the station.
This is not the first time in the past year that our newsroom has gathered, and then neglected, women’s stories of abuse. For many of these women it took more than a decade to find the courage to speak up; when they eventually did, they put their trust in MPR News and me. (12/19)Many MPR employees have lost trust in the company’s senior leaders. We believe this lack of faith hasn’t developed in a vacuum. For decades, the company has mismanaged racial and gender concerns, and we are seeing the results of that today. [...]
Here’s what we have to say: Our company culture and our news coverage routinely prioritizes white audiences and their stories, neglecting communities of color. The company, over its 53-year history, has also fostered a harmful working environment for women and journalists of color. [...]
We are tired of company leadership paying lip service to these issues without taking concrete action to do better. We are tired of yet more listening sessions, tired of repeating ourselves. We are tired of communities hurt by systemic racism continuing to be alienated by our coverage, tired of seeing trust from sources broken again and again. We are tired of our talented colleagues leaving frustrated and disappointed.
The President of the Pittsburgh NewsGuild resigned after evidence of his sexual misconduct was reported by Payday Report.
Political appointees that oversee the Voice of America compiled a report claiming anti-Trump bias from one of VOA’s workers, possibly breaking the law that prevents political interference in the organization’s news coverage. The report included investigating which tweets the reporter in question “liked” on Twitter.
Government
Michigan will require state employees to reauthorize their payment of union dues every year, which labor unions say is a violation of the US Constitution’s contract clause and the First Amendment’s right to the freedom of association.
In Illinois, a union that represents state workers is challenging an Illinois state law that requires unions to represent workers even if they refuse to pay dues and have withdrawn membership.
Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity is forcing its workers to return to in-person work at the agency’s office on October 19.
Sports
The San Diego Loyal, a soccer team in the US’s second division, walked off in the middle of their game to protest anti-gay comments made by their opponent after referees refused to punish the comments.
Machinists
Boeing will move all production of the 787 to its Charleston, South Carolina plant, closing an assembly line in Everett, Washington where 900 machinists work. Boeing has already eliminated 10,000 jobs in Washington in response to the coronavirus dramatically reducing demand for air travel.
Retail
Workers at Stop & Shop negotiated retroactive hazard pay for working at the grocery chain in July and August during the coronavirus pandemic. The lump-sum bonus will equal 10% of their hours worked during that time period.
Doormen
Doormen and other service workers at luxury residential buildings in Jersey City walked off the job seeking a $2/hr raise and 14 days of paid sick leave if they need to quarantine due to exposure to the coronavirus.
Census workers
A judge ordered the US Census to text every census worker telling them that the census will continue through the end of the month, not end this week. She said the Commerce Department and Census Bureau had violated her injunction preventing the federal agencies from ending the count early.
A report from US News & World Report details the hostility and harassment census workers faced in some communities, causing some to quit.
The Wisconsin State Journal profiled census workers who had a more positive experience in northern Wisconsin.
Service workers
Disney plans to lay off 28,000 workers at its parks in Orlando.
“As soon as I saw the news I was like ‘Oh God,’ and my phone hasn’t stopped for the last hour,” Sally Nieves, [a Disney worker] said. “Stress levels are up, it is difficult to even sleep.”
16 workers at Yellowstone National Park tested positive for the coronavirus in September.
Casinos
Caesars Southern Indiana, a casino, has laid off 200 already-furloughed workers without giving clarity about whether the layoffs were permanent or how benefits would be affected.
One worker, who has been furloughed since March, said there has been confusion about whether her benefits will be terminated. Her job was eliminated effective Oct. 1, she said. She was told during the Tuesday Zoom meeting that an “uncertain business climate” amid the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the reasons given for the decision.
“It’s sad and disheartening,” she said. “I understand if these are business decisions, but their delivery of terminating us was pretty matter of fact. It wasn’t a thank you for all the time you put in this place, it was this is how it is, you guys should appreciate what the company’s done for you.”
Another worker who was laid off this week and furloughed since March said the whole situation has been “wishy-washy,” and the severance package he received was far less than he expected. He was a longtime worker at the casino, but the severance package is only eight weeks of pay, he said, and after the severance, he would have to pay full price for COBRA.
Transportation
The airline industry is laying off tens of thousands more workers, and there are now 100,000 fewer jobs in the industry than before the coronavirus pandemic began.
Three MTA workers in New York City created a “man cave” in an abandoned room underneath Grand Central Terminal, complete with a television and fridge stocked with beer.
Postal service
A US Postal Service processing center in Southern Nevada is experiencing a coronavirus outbreak.