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00:00Covid Strikes 5.dfxp Walking out on Amazon because they lying to us, not caring about our health or safety. We want better equipment, protective gear. We have no masks. We want hazard pay. If I lose my job, I lose my job. I shouldn't be speaking like this, but I don't care. I don't care, I don't give a anymore cause I'm scared too. In the middle of this coronavirus crisis, I am obviously one of the lucky ones. I can just get my work done at home on a laptop with my tiny coworker, Liam, here, who's four months old. But obviously there are many, many people in this country who aren't in that position who still have to go to jobs at grocery stores, warehouses, factories, etc. It's a little hard to tell exactly how many people are still going to those kinds of jobs, but the Brookings Institution estimates that before the COVID crisis, there were as many as 62 million people in those jobs, and no doubt many of them are still going to work. And what started to happen in recent days is since those jobs have become a lot more risky, some of those workers are starting to strike for better working conditions. In the past couple weeks, we've seen walk-outs at Purdue, at McDonald's, at InstaCart, at Whole Foods, at Amazon. There is this national and global crisis, which is being experienced in a particularly acute way in a number of work places that many people in America have not thought of those places where workers have much leverage. And some of the calculation that workers make about whether it's worth confronting the boss, whether it's worth acting collectively, that calculation is shifted when people have real fears about it being dangerous to come into work if they don't have changes made. Workers at an Amazon warehouse facility on Staten Island are staging a walkout today. They're complaining about the fact that their facility has not been cleaned out since a worker there tested positive. They think up to six other workers may have tested positive as well, and they want Amazon to close down that distribution center for a period of time, have it entirely sanitized. Tell me a little bit more about the Amazon situation. We've heard about a lot about this Staten Island warehouse, but I guess there's a couple other locations as well. There've now been walkouts at Amazon warehouses in Staten Island, in Chicago, and in Michigan. In each of these cases, you have workers saying the company is not doing enough to keep them safe. I'm doing this because of my health and my fellow workers as well. It should be closed down. It should be cleaned properly. The key complaint they had was around what the workers thought was a lack of transparency around just how they were being told about positive COVID cases within their workforce. They say sometimes it took too long, so they walked out over it, and pressed management with some demands about sick pay should they get the virus and that kind of thing. If you have sick employees at your job, and they pass the coronavirus down to your customers, what are you gonna say then? We need that protection as well. We need to know that, we want to feel safe while working. And that's it. Amazon released a statement on the day of the walkout saying that the protestors accusations were unfounded, and saying we have taken extreme measures to keep people safe, tripling down on deep cleaning, procuring safety supplies that are available, and changing processes to ensure that those in our buildings are keeping safe distances. Amazon also offers an example of one of the challenges for this worker pushback. A leader of the strike in Staten Island, the same day that the strike happened was terminated by Amazon. We had a successful walkout. We got the message out. We got people aware, that's what we here for. Amazon says they weren't retaliating for raising safety concerns. They were actually enforcing safety rules, but that strike leader says he was being punished for standing up for his coworkers. The question of what happens to workers who stand up and whether those protests become inspirations or cautionary tales about how you can get yourself in an even worse situation is crucial. And people are going to take mixed messages from some of these examples. Let's talk about the situation with Whole Foods. Tell me about what's been going on there. To add to the strike parade, I guess, at Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, their workers or a subset of them started holding a sick-out on Tuesday where folks called in sick. They were asking for better protections on sales floors. Some folks had wanted to wear masks in recent weeks, and they cited some fuzzy guidance from management on that, and just again, the general feeling that if something were to happen to them, they want guarantees from management that they'd have their costs covered or be able to care for family members. Myself and all the Whole Foods employees need to keep putting as much pressure on them as possible to make these changes for the employees, the customers, and the public health, and the good of the company, frankly. Paid sick leave, reimbursement for testing, hazard pay, and a firm policy for shutting down stores when an employee tests positive for COVID-19. All these things have big implications for safety, not just for the employees, but for the customers and the public health at large. Have you heard about any changes that the company is going to make in response to this action? I have not, no. We don't know exactly how many people called out sick, but we talked to workers in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas who said that they did that on Tuesday. The company says its operations weren't affected. Stores remained open. Those Whole Foods and Amazon strikes are really just the tip of the iceberg. In the past week and a half or so, we've seen demonstrations by employees at a Purdue chicken plant in Georgie, sanitation workers in Pittsburgh, and GE factory workers in Massachusetts, all basically advocating for similar things, safer, more sanitary work conditions. Although in the case of GE, those workers are also trying to get their company to switch over to more manufacturing of ventilators for hospitals. Workers at McDonald's are also getting in on the action in several states led by the advocacy organization, Fight for $15. We was told, we're not to wear masks or gloves by the GM here at McDonald's. She was told by McDonald's we're not supposed to use masks. And the reason we're out here today is because we wondering what they're gonna do about our safety. Right now, they're doing nothing. So, is any of this having an effect? Well, in some cases it seems like the answer is a cautious yes. Just in the past couple days, we've seen McDonald's announce that they're going to introduce better safety practices, and that they're even considering hazard pay for some workers. And Amazon has announced that starting early next week, it's going to be handing out masks to all its employees and doing temperature checks at all of its warehouse locations. So it seems like some of these workers at least are starting to get some of what they want. The question now for many labor organizers is can these short-term concessions be parlayed into more permanent change for American labor? What's going on now creates an opening for various kinds of organizing that might not've been there before. We will know more in the weeks and months ahead about how much these protests change things, and to what extent they lead to changes that outlast the coronavirus, and to what extent they can lead to organization and leverage for workers that outlast this current, very unusual moment.

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Covid-19 Is Pushing 'Essential Workers' To Fight Back

As the new coronavirus places so-called essential workers increasingly at risk, protests and strikes are becoming more common across America. Bloomberg reporters Josh Eidelson and Matt Day have been investigating what’s behind this wave of worker actions, and what it could mean for labor rights in America after the pandemic recedes. (Source: Bloomberg)

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