Worker Exploitation During the Pandemic.

The independent labor focused news organization PayDay Report has tracked more than 1,100 wildcat strikes since the beginning of the pandemic.

Last week at The Bull-Moose Note we covered the exploitation and mistreatment of incarcerated people in the United States and how their struggles have been compounded by the impacts of coronavirus. This week, we are going to highlight the exploitation and mistreatment of another group that is all to often overlooked by the mainstream media and the rest of the political establishment, the working class.

By now it should be abundantly clear that the political establishment regards the lives of working class Americans as disposable. The government hasn’t passed a stimulus since March, and the stimulus they did pass left millions of working class Americans without the assistance they needed while simultaniously bailing out corporate America to the tune of more than $4 Trillion.

The few positives aspects of the CARES Act that actually helped some struggling Americans expired more than four months ago at the end of July and every stimulus negotiation since then has fallen apart for various reasons that both parties are to blame for.

Democrats in the House have passed a $2.2 trillion bill, but Senate Republicans have refused to pass the House bill citing illegitimate concerns over increasing the deficit. For a period of time the Trump White House supported a $1.8 Trillion bill, but Democratic leadership refused to pass the White House bill largely because they didn’t want to give Trump a legislative victory right before election day. Senate Republicans also refused to support the White House bill, again citing illegitimate concerns over increasing the deficit.

This failure to pass another stimulus reveals the complete apathy the bipartisan ruling class has for poor and working class Americans. This apathy has been worsened by the fact the bipartisan ruling class knows their jobs are already complete sine they were able include a $4 Trillion bailout for their corporate donors as part of the CARES Act that passed at the end of March.

Politicians who support passing another stimulus gave up all their leverage towards passing another stimulus when they refused to fight against the $4 Trillion bailout that was attached to the CARES Act. The Bull-Moose Note explained this idea in a more in-depth fashion in an article written a few weeks after the passing of the CARES Act.

As a result of this failure more than 55 million people have filed for unemployment in the past eight months and more than 12 million have lost their private health insurance. More than eight million have slipped into poverty at a time when 78% of Americans were already living paycheck to paycheck; meanwhile, according to a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies the billionaire class has increased their collective wealth by more than $1 Trillion since the start of the pandemic while $6.5 Trillion in common household wealth has been wiped out.

The unfortunate reality of this crisis is that it has hit poor and working class people in the United States the hardest since they’re forced to work jobs where they don’t have the luxury to work from home. They also have jobs where social distancing is rarely possible and they’re more likely to be mistreated by their employers since many work in jobs without union protection.

The independent labor focused news organization PayDay Report has tracked more than 1,100 wildcat strikes since the beginning of the pandemic. A wildcat strike is an action organized by unionized workers without support from union leadership.

Over the summer PayDay Report interviewed workers of color on the ground at several actions, the constant response was that the predominately white union leaders were “failing to understand non-traditional organizing that has developed from viral social media movements.” On top of that, union leadership has been infiltrated by corporate apologists who’s job it is to undermine the collective bargaining power of the workers they’re supposed to be representing.

One of of the most egregious examples of how employers view their poor and working class employees as disposable can be seen when looking at the story regarding a Tyson Foods Pork Processing Plant in Iowa that recently suspended its managers at the plant after it was revealed that they placed bets on the number of workers who would die from coronavirus. An article in USA Today said:

“As a result, about 1,000 employees contracted covid-19, five of whom died. That includes Isidro Fernandez, who’s family failed the suit against the meat empire this year.”

The article goes on to say that the plant repeatedly downplayed the severity of coronavirus to both supervisors and processing workers. Supervisors were allegedly aware of the virus and made it a point to avoid coming into contact with workers on site at the plant even though they were denying the existence of “confirmed cases” at the plant to workers. One manager at the plant also reportedly compared the coronavirus to a “glorified flu”.

To make matters even worse, according to an article by In These Times a report published by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting revealed how corporate meatpacking plants, like the Tyson Plant mentioned above, have punitive attendance policies that have coereced workers to continue showing up to work during the pandemic even if they’re sick.

These attendance policies, or “point systems” vary from plant to plant. For example, the article states that at one meatpacking plant where around 300 workers contracted coronavirus, employees are allowed to accumulate six points before they’re fired, while at a Tyson poultry plant in Arkansas workers are allowed to accumulate up to 14 points before they’re fired.

Jose Olivia, co-founder of the HEAL Food Alliance told In These Times:

“It’s probably one of the better propagators for the coronavirus that we’ve seen…it’s absolutely disastrous to have a point system in the midst of a pandemic.”

Spokespeople for these meatpacking plants insist that these point systems aren’t being applied during the pandemic, but this claim has been harshly disputed by their workforce. The report states that workers at these meatpacking plants were only able to miss work without penalty if they tested positive for coronavirus. It even stated that employees are required to work while they’re awaiting test results, regardless if they’re experiencing symptoms or not.

According to a machine operator at the Tyson Poultry Plant in Arkansas quoted in the article by In These Times:

“People are afraid to lose points, and they start to go to work even when they’re sick…If they see that you can walk, they’ll tell you to keep working. If you can’t stand on your own they’ll send you home.”

The unfortunate reality is that wile more than 11,000 Tyson workers have contracted coronavirus as a result of being forced to work in unsafe condition during a pandemic, the CEO of Tyson became $600 million richer.

The $600 million Tyson was able to extract form its workers in the midst of a pandemic was dwarfed by the staggering $63 Billion the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, were able to increase their wealth by since the start of the pandemic.

According to a study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) titled “Millions of Full-Time Workers Rely on Federal Health Care and Food Assistance Programs”, it found that around 10 million Americans that worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 still relied upon receiving Medicaid or SNAP Benefits in order to get by. This essentially means that the American taxpayer is subsidizing large corporations for refusing to pay their workers a living wage.

In a statement following the release of the GAO report Senator Bernie Sanders said:

“At a time when huge corporations like Walmart and McDonalds are making billions in profits and giving CEO’s tens of millions of millions of dollars a year, they’re relying on corporate welfare from the federal government by paying their workers starvation wages. That is morally obscene…No one in this country should live in poverty. No one should go hungry. No one should be unable to get the medical care they need. It is long past time to increase the federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15, and guarantee health care to all Americans as a human right.”

A report in The Guardian also highlights how workers have been denied hazard pay or adequate paid time-off during the pandemic while their workloads have increased and investors in the companies are seeing record profits.

According to the report in The Guardian, demand for pet supplies has dramatically increased since the start of the pandemic due to the fact that there has been a surge in pet adoptions as more Americans are working from home in quarantine. As a result, workloads have increased but workers have not been adequately compensated. PetCo retail worker TJ Daniels told The Guardian:

“The lack of employees made it really hard and stressful to work, because you have to do the workload of extra workers while dealing with the extra people in the store because everybody was stockpiling dog food and coming in to buy animals…We didn’t receive any hazard pay. They tired giving us small bonuses here and there, one of mine was $24. Managers get 200 bucks, and regular store employees received $75. That doesn’t help at all.”

Neidi Dominquez, the former Deputy Director for Community Engagement at the AFL-CIO told PayDay Report that this massive strike movement should be an opportunity for unions to grow and build power, but unfortunately that hasn’t been the case. Predominately white union leaders who’ve been corrupted by their employers have continued to downplay or just flat out ignore this massive strike wave, but now even non-unionized workers have begun to organize online and just walk-out of the workplace, either citing concerns over coronavirus or in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement.

These are just a few examples of the ways in which corporations have exploited their workers throughout this pandemic. Poor and working class Americans, predominately people of color, are forced to the front lines as essential workers in order to keep our society functioning in every state of the nation as coronavirus continues to ravage the country. Unfortunately rather than compensate them adequately, give them healthcare and paid leave, many corporations have continued to see their workforce as disposable and force them to keep working without benefits as the pandemic rages on and their CEO’s and shareholders rake in record profits.