Saturday, July 4, 2020
As pandemic accelerates in US, young people made the scapegoat of ruling elite’s malicious return to work policy
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/03/pand-j03.html
By Benjamin Mateus
3 July 2020
On June 27, the number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 10 million cases. It has taken less than six days for another 1 million cases to be tallied with over 521,000 fatalities globally. Yet, international health organizations continue to warn that it is still not too late to employ an all government approach to public health in containing the devastation being wrought primarily on the working class. However, the “worst is yet to come” if the world continues to dismiss these admonitions.
Yesterday, more than 200,000 new cases were reported among more than 200 nations with the United States, by itself, contributing an unprecedented 57,236, a one-day high that will undoubtedly be surpassed as the pandemic becomes more deeply entrenched in the country, with almost every state reporting a rise in new cases. By comparison, Europe had only 13,507 new cases and 413 fatalities. Concerningly, the number of new cases is beginning to rise again throughout the continent and may very well see another surge of cases.
With Independence Day weekend coming up, the likelihood of lighting off of fireworks and further fueling the raging pandemic seems a sure matter. Even the New York Times writes in disbelief that 30 days of new cases show the US outbreak spiraling out of control, citing that the US has set a single-day record five times in little over a week. Officials have been warning their communities to celebrate at home as the health systems in the hardest-hit states are reaching capacity.
Florida has had a single-day high of over 10,100 cases. Texas recorded 8,240 new cases yesterday. California, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and the Carolinas have registered more than 1,000 new daily cases. Additionally, Ohio and Kansas had seen single-day highs recently when, by all accounts, things were “going well.”
Since reaching its ebb on June 7 after the initial peak on April 10, the number of new cases has returned to its previous accelerating trajectory. There is a clear correlation between the poorly conceived reopening of the economy—the lifting of restrictions and the mandatory return to work, policies agreed to and supported by the entire political establishment—and lack of any well-organized concrete public health initiative such as contact tracing, testing, isolation of contacts, and care of those infected. The situation is brazenly careless as the country is flying blind through this second surge, ignoring all the lessons of the last few months.
By all accounts, Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been instrumental in signing off on this deadly policy on the behest of the ruling classes. Furthermore, they have used their position to enrich the companies tasked with producing therapeutics, vaccines and non-pharmacologic interventions. They have wholly refused to listen to the alarms being sounded by healthcare facilities and workers who are overwhelmed by the massive surge of new patients as personnel, equipment and stamina run short again.
Repeatedly, governors and state officials have thrown the blame for these surges on the backs of young people citing irresponsible behavior, admonishing them for their reckless actions and endangering the lives of others and their own. At the Coronavirus task force brief last week, Vice President Mike Pence said, “Younger Americans have a particular responsibility to make sure that they’re not carrying the coronavirus into settings where they would expose the most vulnerable.”
Texas governor Greg Abbott noted, “At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars.”
Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, said, “I don’t think we reopened too soon, our numbers were very good. The problem is that people are not wearing masks. You go out, and everywhere you look, they’re not wearing masks.”
Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told NPR, “I totally agree with Joe Biden. As long as we’re faced with this crisis, masks should be mandatory. In fact, the reason the CDC hasn’t made it mandatory is because they don’t want to embarrass the president.” Such is the content of these statements where the division between the Democrats and Republicans centers on mandating vs. suggesting the wearing of a mask as they both celebrate the unprecedented rise in the stock markets.
There is no call to return into lockdown, save lives, or bring the pandemic under control. An opinion piece in Bloomberg by Justin Fox, using military jargon, encapsulates the ruling elite’s intention: “The choice now isn’t between opening the economy and letting Covid-19 rage. It’s between implementing a few targeted policies (indoor mask-wearing; restrictions on bars and other indoor settings most conducive to transmission; investments in contact tracing and other public-health efforts) that could probably bring the disease under control, and just letting it continue to spread like this—dragging down the economy the entire way until we have vaccines and better treatments.”
Behind these sentiments is the weight of the recent job report that is couched in nervous exuberance. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that US employers added “a much larger than expected 4.8 million workers” to the payroll, bringing the unemployment rate down to 11.1 percent. They also noted that the jobless claims for the week of June 27 fell for 13 straight weeks in a row to 1.43 million.
Robert Frick, the chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said, “Another surprisingly strong job report released today showed Americans were hired back by the millions last month, but as with last month’s report, it came with major caveats. The biggest is the surge in COVID-19 cases in many states across the country that may slow hiring significantly this summer.”
In a new ABC News poll, the majority of Americans feel the economy has opened far too quickly. Though the population, after adhering to the necessary restrictions imposed for several weeks, were more engaged in public activities, they have grown more concerned with the rising surges. Going to church has declined from 57 percent to 49 percent. Those willing to fly has decreased from 44 percent to 36 percent. Even the Wall Street Journal took note that restaurant seating in several large cities was down, and credit-card spending had slackened.
According to a labor economist at the University of Tennessee, Marianne Wanamaker, “We’re at the beginning of a slow recovery. I think the recovery will stall out if we don’t get control of the virus.”
The passing holiday will be used as another excuse to decry American irresponsibility as the surge will continue unabated. “Let it rip,” they said, and the state and local officials have dutifully acknowledged their orders and “let it rip.” Yet, the catastrophic rise in the number of cases is bound up with the drive to push workers back into the factories, assembly buildings, and plants where the virus has begun to infect people in astronomical numbers. At the same time, the US stock market posted a phenomenal first quarter mounting a triple-digit gain on Wednesday.
“We are at our breaking point”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/03/tole-j03.html
FCA Toledo Jeep workers support call for rank-and-file safety committees
By Marcus Day
3 July 2020
Join the fight to defend workers’ health and safety! For help starting a rank-and-file safety committee at your factory, send an email to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter at autoworkers@wsws.org to learn more.
Support for rank-and-file safety committees continues to grow among autoworkers, following the initiation of committees last week by workers at Fiat Chrysler’s Jefferson North (JNAP) and Sterling Heights (SHAP) assembly plants.
Autoworkers around the US have widely shared reports from the World Socialist Web Site about the courageous stand taken at the two Detroit-area plants, where workers stopped work to protest unsafe conditions and demand information about the spread of COVID-19 in their plants.
Anger is reaching a boiling point as workers continue to fall ill and management and the United Auto Workers union refuse to release information about the extent of COVID-19 cases. “It is ridiculous,” Johnny, a worker at Fiat Chrysler’s Toledo North Assembly Plant, said. “Threats and intimidation. People popping up positive left and right. I’ve been hearing we’ve had about 11 positive this week alone. All different parts of the plants. Plus, there are several other potential cases.”
Another worker at the FCA Toledo plant said that workers needed a rank-and-file safety committee at their factory, adding that they had read and shared the statement by the committee at Jefferson North. “Management and the union are two peas in a pod down in Toledo. Management has threatened the workers about any line stoppage. The union is still in hiding.
“The company and union have been hiding most confirmed cases and we are getting pissed at both the company and the union. We can’t get real answers and are very frustrated about this.”
Another worker described the rising tensions in the plant and the impossible situation workers are being forced into. “Things are about to get wild in Toledo. They are forcing every single one of the 1,600-plus SEs [temporary supplemental employees] to report every day.
“Last week they told full-timers they could not use PAA [paid allowed absence] on weekends anymore. Today they told full-timers no more pick days [select days off during the week].
“COVID is running rampant through the plant with no contact tracing. People are being fired for not wearing masks properly when there’s no airflow. AC pretty much nonexistent in some places. We are at our breaking point.”
Both FCA and the UAW are increasingly nervous over the growing unrest in the auto plants and are seeking to subdue opposition among workers.
On Monday, management personnel around the country read a letter from FCA’s head of manufacturing, Mike Resha, which threatened workers with termination if they stop production. “FCA will investigate any unauthorized work stoppage and will appropriately, immediately and decisively act on the employee that was found to have unnecessarily instigated such activities,” the letter stated. The company said it would take disciplinary action against workers accused of misreporting information on COVID screening questionnaires, in an attempt to shift blame for the spread of the virus onto the backs of workers.
The letter is “completely subjective and literally holding people hostage to the job,” an FCA worker in Kokomo, Indiana said. “If you get sick at work: can be fired. If everyone falls over cause of COVID and you walk off job: fired. We were told that anyone getting sick at work would be investigated and FCA would determine if the sick individual violated the questionnaire we are made to fill out daily. If they can prove you were exposed to COVID and didn’t answer the questionnaire correctly: fired. Even if you have no idea you were exposed to someone with COVID and they determined you were…fired.”
A nearly 40-year veteran at Toledo FCA pointed to the Catch-22 workers are being placed in. “If you fill that form out and say you have it you have to go on quarantine for 14 days. A lot of guys can’t do that with all the bills to pay!”
The worker said there should be regular and widespread testing for the coronavirus at the plants. “I think it’d be a good idea a couple times a day to go down the line and take their temp and swab in the morning. Why not? That would help out a hundred percent!”
“With all these temps, they’re paying them half price compared to the old timers. And they’re making a killing. The company can do more, but they don’t want to spend a nickel. They won’t fix anything until somebody dies from a safety error, then they fix it.
The UAW, far from opposing FCA’s threats against workers, issued a joint letter with the company Wednesday which sought to evade responsibility for the spread of COVID in the plants and offload the blame onto workers.
Signed by both UAW President Rory Gamble—who is under investigation in the UAW bribery scandal—and FCA CEO Michael Manley, the statement admonishes workers to follow safety precautions, such as handwashing, social distancing and avoiding contact with those who are sick, which they well know are difficult to impossible inside the plants. Cynically, the letter states, “Coming to work when you’re not feeling well or falsifying health information puts others at risk and compromises the safe work environment we are trying to create.”
“You are literally between a rock and a hard place,” Johnny said. “Every day and every week it keeps getting worse.
“The PPE that we’re given has written on it that it does not protect against COVID-19. The masks break very easily. I went through six in one day. They are a joke, they’re garbage.
“Our plant has always been a gutter, nasty conditions. The only reason we even got running water or soap in the bathrooms is because we shut the plant down. They’re not doing a thing.
“According to local union representatives, no one has contracted COVID-19 from anyone else in the plant,” he continued. “I don’t know how the hell they know that, and I don’t believe that.
“The union and the company are trying to condition us so that we fall in line. The UAW want to keep getting their union dues. They’re trying to keep the line running. ‘Be happy you got a job.’ The UAW bylaws have been violated on the international and local level repeatedly in a manner that says, ‘We’re better than you guys.’”
Johnny said that the corruption and bribery revealed in the UAW so far is “just the tip of the iceberg. [Former UAW Presidents] Dennis Williams, Gary Jones, how are we to think the people they appointed have even an ounce of respect for us? No way they have our interests at heart. There is no way the people they put into office are going to do anything for us.
“Now we have to figure out how we can fight them. We’re seeing the civil unrest all over the country, we need to have that within FCA, Ford, GM. The company, the union, they’re all just lying to us.”
Rank-and-file committees “need to happen everywhere,” he said. “The company needs to be held responsible for our safety. That’s what these rank-and-file safety committees need to do.
“This is my livelihood, this is my life, this is my family, these are my friends. And to have the company and the union stick it to us together is infuriating.”
Meat processing plants spread the coronavirus in North Carolina
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/03/ncar-j03.html
By Rosa Shahnazarian
3 July 2020
Health officials reported 1,629 new cases of COVID-19 in North Carolina on Wednesday, after a record 1,843 new cases reported the day before. A total of at least 1,391 have died from the virus, and 912 people are currently in the hospital fighting for their lives.
The situation in the state has worsened following the relaxation of restrictions on social gatherings and business operations in late May, but there are two reasons why the state has not seen the dramatic increases observed in other states that have reopened. First, many of the state’s meat and poultry processing plants never closed in the first place. Second, in the rural counties where meat and poultry facilities are located, under-testing has concealed the magnitude of the crisis.
While Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has so far resisted the pressure of the Republican-led legislature to allow bars and gyms to reopen, both the Democratic and Republican parties are complicit in permitting the meat and poultry industries in the state to endanger the lives of millions of workers with impunity.
The dangers presented by meatpacking plants are well documented. The online edition of Science, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, spoke with several experts, including Gwenan Knight from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who discussed some possible reasons behind the so-called “superspreading events” in the past few months, in which large numbers of people have been infected with COVID-19 at an alarmingly rapid rate.
Such superspreading events tend to involve enclosed indoor spaces where people are packed closely together. Meatpacking facilities fall into this category. Moreover, low temperatures in the plants also likely help keep the virus active for a longer period of time.
According to Knight, the fact that meatpacking plants are very loud places where workers have to shout to communicate may also play a role. Since the coronavirus can be spread by speaking, more virus is most likely expelled, and at a faster rate of speed, when people speak loudly.
However, private profit, not science, has driven the response of the ruling class to the immense dangers presented by the continued operation of such facilities.
President Trump himself intervened on April 28 to prevent the closure of meatpacking plants, signing an executive order classifying the plants as “critical infrastructure” under the Defense Production Act.
As the World Socialist Web Site insisted at the time, this order was “squarely aimed not at securing the food supply chain or defending workers’ safety, but rather at shielding the profits of the giant food processing conglomerates and protecting them from the impact of lawsuits from sickened workers.”
There are 35,000 workers employed in the meat and poultry industry in North Carolina, which has continuously ranked among the top five US producers of chickens and hogs in the country. According to the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN), there have been more outbreaks at North Carolina processing plants than in any other state.
Some individual meat and poultry plants employ more than 4,000 workers, and whenever a single worker in one of these facilities unknowingly becomes infected it places the health and lives of thousands of other workers in immediate danger.
However, the impact of the reckless operation of these facilities extends well beyond the workplace itself. According to an investigative report published by the Raleigh News & Observer, the infection rates are highest in the zip codes of counties with significant plant outbreaks.
According to the report, “virus cases rose by nearly 600% on average” from May 1 to June 11 in the 13 ZIP codes closest to processing plants in seven North Carolina counties where outbreaks had occurred. “In contrast,” the article points out, “the number of cases statewide in the same time frame rose by 262%.”
Moreover, further highlighting the potential for the spread of the virus, not all meat and poultry workers reside in the same ZIP codes where the outbreaks have occurred.
As the report points out, meat and poultry processing facilities are not the only source of outbreaks in the state. Outbreaks in urban areas have been linked with nursing homes, prisons, jails and construction sites. However, in spite of the fact that these areas—including Wake, Durham and Mecklenburg counties—tend to be more densely populated, the infection rate there is lower than it is in rural areas where most of the meat and poultry facilities are located.
Although only 2,000 processing plant workers have reportedly tested positive for the virus, this number doubtless represents a vast undercounting of the number of cases at the facilities themselves.
The inadequacy of coronavirus testing in rural outbreak areas was highlighted in a report by ProPublica, which documented how at least one Tyson Foods facility in Wilkesboro, North Carolina attempted to wrest control of coronavirus testing from the county health department.
According to the report, Rachel Willard, the county health director in Wilkesboro, “watched with alarm as COVID-19 cases rolled in from the Tyson Foods chicken plant in the center of town.” For very different reasons, Tyson too was alarmed and “hired a private company to take over testing.”
At that point, the report recounts, “the information suddenly slowed to a trickle.” Tyson stopped testing in May, but, “nearly a week” later, “the county health agency had received less than 20% of the results.” The agency was prevented from carrying out comprehensive contact tracing because the information that the company did provide “was missing phone numbers and other data,” making it impossible to track down and speak with workers who tested positive for the virus.
As meat and poultry facilities have done their best to conceal the extent of the crisis in the industry in North Carolina, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which knows exactly which plants have led to outbreaks, has refused to release this information to the public. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is complicit in this effort.
In response, a coalition of media outlets is now suing both DHHS and Governor Cooper in response to their failure to provide public records relating to the outbreaks as required by law. On June 17, a judge ordered the parties to enter mediation in mid-July.
It is time to take the decisions about how to fight the coronavirus pandemic out of the hands of the ruling elite. Meat and poultry workers in North Carolina and around the country must join their class brothers and sisters in the auto industry and build rank-and-file committees to fight for safe and sanitary working conditions in their own workplaces and to fight for a socialist alternative, guided by science, to the criminal mishandling of the pandemic by the capitalist class. We urge all workers who want to fight for such an alternative to contact the World Socialist Web Site.
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