Low wage workers organize to save themselves and all of us

 
Editor’s note: Compiled by People’s Tribune from on-line sources.
Workers from Amazon, Walmart, Whole Foods and other grocery stores, transit workers, delivery drivers and domestic workers considered essential employees are organizing walkouts or staying home because they aren’t being given proper PPE or hazard pay while endangering themselves, their families, and customers from possible exposure to Covid-19. Migrant farmworkers, some of the lowest paid workers with no protection, are speaking out and standing up for their rights. Below are quotes from some of these workers.
Chris Smalls, fired from an Amazon warehouse for organizing a walk out over lack of safety for workers, said: “The guidelines I was fired for [violating] did not exist in March. Instead of taking care of employees, they focus attention on me . . . I was the sacrificial lamb. I’d do it all over again to make sure awareness of front liners [workers] is out there.” Asked if coworkers are intimidated by his firing, he said, “This time it empowered us. Support is uplifting and motivated us more than anything. I may have started a revolution.”
John Samuelsen, Transit Workers Union: [Dozens of “essential” transit workers have died from Covid-19 across the country.] “We’re not getting what we need to protect ourselves. We’re calling on the federal government to intervene; to establish national standards in every municipality and every public agency that provides transit. Workers have only themselves to depend on right now . . . [corporate entities] don’t give a rat’s ass about worker safety.”
Bertha Morales, Oxnard, CA, who harvests cilantro: “We are afraid to get sick. If one family member is infected they quarantine everyone. Who’s going to go out and work?” [The 2 ½ million farmworkers in the U.S. are “essential” workers maintaining the food supply chain. They already have the lowest poverty wages and the Trump administration is working on a plan to slash the wages even further for the quarter million guest migrant workers. These workers are demanding better conditions in the fields.]

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida is circulating a petition which states: “Make no mistake; Immokalee is like dead tinder in the path of a wildfire.” They are asking Governor Desantis to build a field hospital and want resources allocated to their community in this crisis. The nearest hospital is 40 miles away and they have no transportation to get there. “Instead,” says Gerardo Rejes Chavez, “we are met with news of cutting our wages. Our jobs are considered essential but we aren’t treated that way.”
 

 
Dilcia de la Cruz, part-time cleaner at Philadelphia’s Aspira Charter School: [Hundreds of low-wage workers in Philadelphia attended a virtual town hall to request a coronavirus relief fund to help the tens of thousands of low wage workers left jobless with little hope of public aid. Dilcia de la Cruz doesn’t know if she has a job anymore now that schools have shut down. They were told the city doesn’t have any money]. She said, “They told us we don’t have to go to work, and now we don’t know if they’re going to pay us.”
Zach A. works at a Walmart pharmacy in the Midwest. He was forced to sign a liability waiver saying he wouldn’t sue the store if he got sick.
Jennifer Suggs, a Walmart cashier in South Carolina: “Walmart’s profit margins matter more than us. We’re not essential. We’re sacrificial. I will be replaced if I die from this. I don’t have a mask or gloves. The only thing I have is a stupid blue vest.”

Maya Smith, a worker at a Walmart in New Orleans: “My manager said customers saw our masks and kept asking if we were sick, so they banned us from wearing them in the store. All they care about is if we clock in and clock out.” [Maya has teamed up with Walmart workers around the country to demand that Walmart offer hazard pay, paid sick leave, healthcare and protective gear for all employees. She says, it’s unfair that the people who need the most protection are getting the least.]
On-line sources: Democracy, Now!; wwno.org, Facebook, billypenn.com, Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti.