The New York Times, March 30, 2020: Is Your Grocery Delivery Worth a Worker’s Life?
Millions of white-collar workers are telecommuting from home to stay safe as the coronavirus extends its terrifying reach across America. But millions of other workers — supermarket cashiers, pharmacists, warehouse workers, bus drivers, meatpacking workers — still have to report to work each day, and many are furious that their employers are not doing enough to protect them against the pandemic.
Some companies are not providing their workers with gloves or hand sanitizer, and some are even prohibiting employees from wearing masks for fear of frightening customers. Many workers feel they’re putting their lives on the line each day by interacting with customers who might be infected and by working in places they’re convinced have not been adequately sanitized against the virus.
Fearing retaliation, American workers are generally far more reluctant to stick their necks out and protest working conditions than are workers in other industrial countries. But with greater fear of the disease than of their bosses, workers have set off a burst of walkouts, sickouts and wildcat strikes.
“We’re not getting nothing — no type of compensation, no nothing, not even no cleanliness, no extra pay,” said Kendaliyn Granville, who led a strike by 50 workers at a Perdue poultry processing plant in Kathleen, Ga. “We’re up here risking our life for chicken.”
“We are high-risk ticking time bombs for being exposed to someone with it,” Scott Ryan, a 41-year-old bus driver from Everett, Wash., told co-workers in a Feb. 28 Facebook post. On Friday, Mr. Ryan, a father of three, died of Covid-19.
