September 7 Labor News Roundup
Workers voted in the largest private-sector union election this year, threatened widespread strikes over racial injustice, and said Lockheed Martin and Goodyear created a "creeping Chernobyl" in Ohio.
NOTE: Written Up’s weekly news roundup will now run on Mondays.
This is the Written Up Labor News Roundup for September 7, 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.
Healthcare
Ballots from 1,600 nurses at HCA Healthcare in western North Carolina will be counted next week to determine the results of a union election there. The workers are deciding whether to join National Nurses United. A yes vote would create the largest new private-sector union in 2020 in the state with the second lowest union membership rate in the country at 3.4%. Hospital management has posted anti-union signs throughout the workplace, changed computer screensavers to display anti-union messages, and held “captive audience” meetings with workers to dissuade them from voting for the union.
200 workers at two Minnesota hospitals run by Alina Health plan to go on a two-day strike beginning September 14. Workers are demanding protections when they are made to quarantine more than once.
“I had to quarantine for possible COVID exposure, and now management has said I would need to use my sick time if I’m exposed again at work. Our work has become even more challenging during COVID, yet here we are fighting for safe working conditions and fair pay and benefits. We deserve better,” said Judy Grack, who has worked for over seven years at Abbott Northwestern as a CT tech. “All frontline healthcare workers should get the pay and protection we need to keep ourselves and our patients safe.”
Connecticut will no longer distribute PPE to its home health care workers.
“What I had to do yesterday was actually count out a supply so that I had a mask for every day and a set of gloves, at least one pair for that day for my mother, and that’s not going to get me too far. And when I say that, I will run out no sooner than November,” Danielle Delmonaco said.
Delmonaco knows how important PPE has been in keeping her and her mother safe.
“If I have to help assist bathing, dressing like I do for my mother. That’s putting us more close contact. And then me worrying more keeping her safe and keeping myself safe for her,” Delmonaco said.
At a nursing home in Kansas City, workers who tested positive for the coronavirus were made to go back to work the next day, one of many violations found in a federal inspection of Riverbend Post-Acute Rehabilitation after dozens of residents died from the virus.
Farmworkers
A United Farmworkers survey of their membership found that 84% of the 350 workers surveyed in California’s Central Valley did not receive a mask while they battled wildfire smoke and the coronavirus pandemic to continue working.
In Sonoma County, California, farmworkers are required to continue working even in areas that are being evacuated due to the threat of wildfires.
Food processing
A Foster Farms plant in Livingston, California failed to report 8 worker deaths to Cal/OSHA. The workplace safety agency has been understaffed and overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the LA Times, and failed to inspect the plant until months after its coronavirus outbreak began. Plants in other cities where workers have died are now also being investigated. Several other meatpacking plants with known outbreaks have failed to report them to Cal/OSHA without consequences.
Previous reporting shows that Cal/OSHA has largely abandoned in-person inspections during the pandemic and internal emails showed a previous blitz of inspections was largely aimed at creating positive media coverage for Governor Gavin Newsom. The agency has fewer than 50 employees actively inspecting workplaces in the entire state of California, and has left about 20% of its budgeted inspector positions vacant during the pandemic.
“What does this company really want?” [Martha Vera, a Foster Farms worker who lost her husband, who also works for Foster Farms, to COVID-19] said through tears. “How many more people do they think should die for them to do something … for the company to protect its workers? How many more? Can someone tell me?” […]
“Foster Farms has sought to obscure the number of deaths and the sanctity of each person’s life throughout this crisis,” wrote organizer Elizabeth Strater.
Cal/OSHA enforced workplace safety rules around the coronavirus for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic this week, issuing small fines to 11 companies.
A worker at the loading dock of a Tyson plant in Georgia was killed in an industrial accident. Tyson has had one of the worst worker safety records in the country this year, as dozens of its workers have died from the coronavirus.
Logistics
Amazon put out a job posting seeking intelligence analysts to spy on union organizers.
Multiple industries
Several large labor unions issued a statement raising the possibility of strikes to force change around issues of police brutality and racism.
“The status quo — of police killing Black people, of armed white nationalists killing demonstrators, of millions sick and increasingly desperate — is clearly unjust, and it cannot continue,” the statement says. It was signed by several branches of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and affiliates of the National Education Association.
“Are we striking tomorrow? No,” said Racine Educator United president Angelina Cruz, who represents teachers in a community that abuts Kenosha. “Are we in conversation with our members and the national labor movement about how we escalate our tactics to stop fascism and win justice? Yes.”
New research shows that unionized workplaces are 30% more likely to face an inspection after a health or safety violation.
Education
The wave of worker activism at universities over reopening plans continued this week.
“It is scary,” says a science professor at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, who asked to remain anonymous to preserve his relationship with the institution’s administration. “It’s all about the enrolment money. It has made me feel like we are cogs in a wheel, responsible for keeping the enrolment wheel going.” […]
“We are backed into a corner because of the business model of the universities,” said Melanie DeVore [a palaeobotanist at Georgia College].
Teachers in Nebraska will be required to teach in-person classes even after being exposed to the coronavirus as long as they show no symptoms. Infected people who don’t show any symptoms can still spread the coronavirus.
Teachers’ unions in Washington state have been aggressively negotiating over reopening plans in districts across the state rather than waiting for administrators to take the lead.
"The administrators aren't out to get us, but they don't understand some of the things that happen in classrooms," said Shannon Ergun, president of the Tacoma Education Association. "They think of classrooms like you see on television—25 children sitting at their desks. But there is no standard classroom."
Sports
Former workers for the Washington Football Team wrote an open letter asking more coworkers to come forward about the toxic, misogynistic, and abusive environment for women workers in the organization. In particular, they called for workers who took part in creating exploitative videos of cheerleaders without the cheerleaders’ knowledge to name the bosses who ordered the videos’ creation.
Workers at Major League Soccer club Real Salt Lake spoke out about the toxic work environment at the club, saying it was created by chief business officer Andy Carroll.
Heavy industry
Workers alleged that Lockheed Martin and Goodyear Tire poisoned their workers by recklessly and negligently operating a nuclear site in Ohio, then conspired to cover it up, according to a new lawsuit that called the situation a “creeping Chernobyl.”
The National Labor Relations Board will hear arguments next week from Boeing workers who say the company illegally fired workers at its South Carolina plant for being union supporters and activists. Federal labor law prohibits firing workers based on support for the union.
A mineworker in Kentucky who had been fired for reporting safety violations related to the coronavirus was reinstated by a federal judge.
Food service
Surly Brewing Company in Minnesota closed their beer hall two days after workers announced their campaign to organize a union, laying off the company’s entire “hospitality” staff. It is illegal to close operations in retaliation for union activity under federal labor law.
Media
Workers at the Maui News are fighting to keep positions at the paper based on Maui rather than moved to the mainland US.
Workers at the Voice of America sent a letter protesting their new CEO, saying his public statements “endanger the personal security of VOA reporters at home and abroad.”
Casinos
Workers at Caesar’s Casino in Southern Indiana rallied for improved health insurance and asked the community to support their demands.
Nonprofits
Workers at two Minnesota nonprofits have organized unions this summer in an industry where wages lag behind the private sector and a third of workers had filed for unemployment as of July.