Covid-19 puts workers in danger. It's another reason we need unions

by Steven Greenhouse
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/24/covid-19-workers-dangers-unions

n May, workers at a McDonald’s in San Francisco said that when they asked their employer for masks, they were told to use coffee filters instead. In April, at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, a workers’ representative told me they only saw two hand sanitizers for the facility’s 5,000 employees. A Walmart worker in New Orleans said in April that several cashiers were sent home without pay for refusing managers’ orders to stop wearing masks, after some shoppers interpreted it as a sign they had Covid-19.

Some financially stretched retail workers say they were all but forced to go to work sick because their companies didn’t give paid sick leave for Covid-19 unless they first had a test showing they had contracted the virus, and in many places it was extremely hard to get tested.

Alarmed about the spread of Covid-19, health officials in Colorado criticized the JBS meatpacking company for having a “work while sick” culture. At a Mom’s Organic Market in Philadelphia, workers voiced alarm that their store was experiencing abnormally high sales volume, but little was being done to limit the crowding.

For many frontline workers, one of the most maddening aspects of the pandemic is that their employers have often ignored their concerns and suggestions about health and safety, even though workers arguably know best about what they need to stay safe on the job. This frequent failure of employers to listen to their workers – “a lack of worker voice” – is a deep-seated problem in the US, and it has become especially problematic during the current pandemic. If companies paid more attention to their workers’ concerns about safety, would a staggering 890 workers at the Tyson pork plant in Logansport, Indiana, have contracted Covid-19? Would more than 780 workers at the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Would eight workers have died at JBS’s beef-processing plant in Greeley, Colorado?

Tucked into the Covid-19 stimulus package? Protection for corporations

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/05/tucked-into-the-covid-19-stimulus-package-protection-for-corporations

The proposed legislation would shield corporations from liability if their workers die from Covid-19 in unsafe workplaces

In early October, Harvard researchers sounded an alarm: they released a report showing a pattern of coronavirus deaths surging soon after workers filed requests for workplace safety assistance from the US labor department. The takeaway was clear: workers are desperately begging the government to help protect them from a deadly pandemic, the government has been unresponsive, and lots of workers have subsequently died preventable deaths.

Today, a little more than a month after the study came out, the federal government is finally responding: a bipartisan group of Senate and House lawmakers have announced legislation to shield corporations from lawsuits when their lax safety standards kill more workers.

In practice, the legislation, which is being tucked into a larger Covid relief package, is a holiday-season gift for corporate donors: it would strip frontline workers of their last remaining legal tool to protect themselves in the workplace – at the same time the unemployment system is designed to financially punish those workers if they refuse to return to unsafe workplaces during the pandemic.

The legislation comes not only as workers continue to die, but also as roughly 7- 9% of the total Covid-19 death count are “take home” infections traced to employees unwittingly spreading the disease to their families and friends.

BREAKING: Donald Jizzbrain Trump is still the biggest LOSER in U.S. history!

Just a friendly reminder, plus I like taking note of the fact that every day that child-molesting, treasonous, uncouth, Nazi-sympathizing murderer is a loser.

"Ann" on Great Performances, PBS

A local PBS station is rebroadcasting the June 19th premier of "Ann". Holland Taylor did a pretty good job of portraying Ann Richards.

Proof that Texas wasn't always Shrub and Gohmert country.

Best I can provide -- 30 second 'official' preview:

Why Alabama Beachgoers Aren't Worried About COVID-19

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Just 3 states meet these basic criteria to reopen and stay safe

Just 3 states meet these basic criteria to reopen and stay safe

Most states still need to reduce coronavirus cases and build up their testing capacity.

By German Lopez

All 50 states are moving to reopen their economies, at least partially, after shutting down businesses and gatherings in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

But a Vox analysis suggests that most states haven’t made the preparations needed to contain future waves of the pandemic — putting themselves at risk for a rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths should they continue to reopen.

Experts told me states need three things to be ready to reopen. State leaders, from the governor to the legislature to health departments, need to ensure the SARS-CoV-2 virus is no longer spreading unabated. They need the testing capacity to track and isolate the sick and their contacts. And they need the hospital capacity to handle a potential surge in Covid-19 cases.

More specifically, states should meet at least five basic criteria. They should see a two-week drop in coronavirus cases, indicating that the virus is actually abating. They should have fewer than four daily new cases per 100,000 people per day — to show that cases aren’t just dropping, but also below dangerous levels. They need at least 150 new tests per 100,000 people per day, letting them quickly track and contain outbreaks. They need an overall positive rate for tests below 5 percent — another critical indicator for testing capacity. And states should have more than 40 percent of their ICU beds free to actually treat an influx of people stricken with Covid-19 should it be necessary.

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"Pissed Away" featuring Obama

In case you haven't heard it...

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They Are Giving You Death and Calling It Liberty

They Are Giving You Death and Calling It Liberty

The reckless Republicans opening America up to a deadly pandemic want us to risk sacrificing our lives for their power
By Jamil Smith
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The Republican rush to “reopen” is projecting a simulacrum of the American “normal” that existed before the pandemic. The genuine article needed improvement, seeing as the pandemic has revealed the fragility of our systems in health care, education, tech, criminal justice, and throughout our federal government supply infrastructure, just to name a few. And rather than noting how it has sought to unbalance and defund many of the very systems that have proven deficient during this crisis, the GOP has kept behaving as if the coronavirus’ calamities are part of some divine plan. As such, before they ever “reopened” a single state, Republicans were demanding that we willingly embrace a lesser life before we bow out early.

Many cultish movements have deadly culminations, so it only seems natural that some of Trump’s most avid fans might be willing not merely to use the fiction of what they understand as freedom, risking their health for Dear Leader. But whether or not that is true, Republicans offer this fraudulent version of liberty because their true goal, plutocracy, is the diametrical opposite of freedom. It is a life lived to spite other lives, and often take advantage of them. They have profited from the vulnerable, whose literal freedoms are limited in various ways that, at times, overlap: communities of color, incarcerated populations, service workers, the homeless, disabled people, and others for whom liberals regularly advocate.

The right has built a thin veneer that looks like independence and freedom, but the pandemic has stripped away that myth in a matter of weeks. We can love our country enough to want to build it stronger than it was before, not paint some shoddy lacquer over top of it and call it brand new again. Why should we lay our lives down for a system this fragile and rotten, and for people this desperate?

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Everybody sing! The Liar Tweets Tonight

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Obama: "Now is the time to fight for what we believe."

In case you missed it ...

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