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RSN: Elizabeth Warren | Congress Needs a Plan to Confront the Coronavirus. I Have One.

10 April 20

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10 April 20

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Elizabeth Warren | Congress Needs a Plan to Confront the Coronavirus. I Have One.

Elizabeth Warren, The New York Times
Warren writes: "Congress has passed three coronavirus packages aimed at providing immediate relief to families, workers, hospitals and small businesses, but with more than 12,000 dead and 10 million out of work, the scale of this tragedy demands we do much more - much faster."

Government action is essential to save lives and to rescue our economy. Let’s get back to work.

ongress has passed three coronavirus packages aimed at providing immediate relief to families, workers, hospitals and small businesses, but with more than 12,000 dead and 10 million out of work, the scale of this tragedy demands we do much more — much faster.

Communities across the country are entering a critical stage. Illnesses are mounting and our health system is stretched to the brink. Early data shows people of color are infected and dying at disproportionately high rates. Unemployment is approaching Depression-era levels. No clear end is in sight for social distancing. The next round of policymaking must squarely address these hard realities — not with a few new nibbles, but with the kind of broad, direct action needed to save lives and save our economy.

Containing the health crisis must be our first priority. I have outlined immediate steps to accomplish a federal surge in testing capacity. In addition to using the powers under the recently invoked Defense Production Act, we must act now to have the government manufacture or contract for the manufacture of critical supplies when markets fail to do so — to produce tests, personal protective equipment, drugs in shortage and any future vaccines and treatments that our scientists develop — not in the thousands, but in the tens of millions. This will ensure swift production and build a stopgap against shortfalls moving forward. We must also use public programs to provide health care free for all who don’t otherwise have it.

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Bank of America office in New York City. (photo: AP)

Shame on Big Banks for Failing to Step Up at a Critical Moment: The Covid-19 Pandemic
Gene Marks, Guardian UK
Marks writes: "You would think - particularly as medical, police, firefighters, let alone grocery clerks - are literally risking their lives to do their part in these terrifying times, the bankers of this country would see this as an opportunity to step up and pay it forward themselves."
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The FDA told healthcare providers that certain ventilators may be able to support multiple patients at once using air tube splitters. (photo: Getty)

Colorado Democrat Believes Trump Awarded Ventilators as Political Favor to Vulnerable GOP Senator
Stephen A. Crockett Jr., The Root
Crockett writes: "On Wednesday evening, Rep. Diana DeGette claimed that President Trump was running a little quid-pro-ventilators as he tried to garner political favor during a global pandemic."
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Workers lined up last week to apply for unemployment benefits at the Hospitality Training Academy in Los Angeles. (photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)

16.8 Million Out of Work in US, 'Uncharted Territory' Economists Warn
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The United States Department of Labor announced Thursday that 6.6 million more people filed unemployment claims last week, bringing the three-week total to roughly 16.8 million, meaning about 10 percent of the nation's workforce has become jobless during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic."
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Government enforcement of quarantine has raised concerns over privacy. (photo: Ira L. Black/Corbis)

Government Enforcement of Quarantine Raises Concerns About Increased Surveillance
Kira Lerner, The Appeal
Excerpt: "Louisville, Kentucky judges are ordering people with COVID-19 who have allegedly defied quarantine to wear GPS ankle monitors, raising ethical questions about the government's role in a pandemic."
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A U.S. Border Patrol agent stands near a crossing to Mexico at the San Ysidro port of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. (photo: Frederic J. Brown/Getty)

Border Patrol Agents Are Being Investigated for Abuse Over Mistreatment of Pregnant Woman in Custody
Ema O'Connor, BuzzFeed
Excerpt: "The ACLU filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general on Wednesday, asking it to investigate the incident and other mistreatment of pregnant immigrants."
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The slopes of Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. (photo: Don Ryan/AP)

Trump to Open More Wildlife Refuge Land to Hunting, Fishing
Brady McCombs, Associated Press
McCombs writes: "The Trump administration plans to open 2.3 million acres of land for hunting and fishing at more than 100 national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries under a proposal unveiled Wednesday that is aimed at giving Americans more recreational access on public lands."
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Poultry Worker’s Death Highlights Spread of Coronavirus in Meat Plants

Some employees are coming in sick, and one woman died after being ordered back to work. “Our work conditions are out of control,” a longtime Tyson employee said.

Annie Grant, front row center, during a family reunion, in a photo provided by her family. Ms. Grant, a Tyson Foods worker, died on Thursday after spending more than a week on a ventilator.

By Miriam Jordan and Caitlin Dickerson

• Published April 9, 2020Updated April 10, 2020

Annie Grant, 55, had been feverish for two nights. Worried about the coronavirus outbreak, her adult children had begged her to stay home rather than return to the frigid poultry plant in Georgia where she had been on the packing line for nearly 15 years.

But on the third day she was ill, they got a text from their mother. “They told me I had to come back to work,” it said.

Ms. Grant ended up returning home, and died in a hospital on Thursday morning after fighting for her life on a ventilator for more than a week. Two other workers at the Tyson Foods poultry plant where she worked in Camilla, Ga., have also died in recent days.

“My mom said the guy at the plant said they had to work to feed America. But my mom was sick,” said one of Ms. Grant’s sons, Willie Martin, 34, a teacher in South Carolina. He said he watched on his phone as his mother took her last breath.

The coronavirus pandemic has reached the processing plants where workers typically stand elbow-to-elbow to do the low-wage work of cutting, deboning and packing the chicken and beef that Americans savor. Some plants have offered financial incentives to keep them on the job, but the virus’s swift spread is causing illness and forcing plants to close.

Smithfield Foods’ pork plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., announced Thursday that it would close temporarily, after more than 80 employees tested positive for the coronavirus. Workers have come down with Covid-19 in several poultry plants in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

JBS USA, the world’s largest meat processor, confirmed the death of one worker at a Colorado facility and shuttered a plant in Pennsylvania for two weeks. Cargill this week also closed a facility in Pennsylvania, where it produces steaks, ground beef and ground pork. Tyson halted operations at a pork plant in Iowa after more than two dozen workers tested positive.

Industry analysts said the plant closures were unlikely to result in serious disruptions to the food supply.

But if the pandemic keeps plants shuttered for an extended period, some products could become harder to find in stores, said Christine McCracken, a meat industry analyst at Rabobank in New York. “If workers don’t feel safe, they may not come back, and we don’t have a large pool of people that are lining up to work in these plants,” she said.

At some plants, workers have staged walkouts over concerns that they are not being properly protected. But an untold number remain on the job, most of them African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants.

The Trump administration has urged food-supply workers to step up to meet growing demand. “You are vital,” Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday. “You are giving a great service to the people of the United States of America and we need you to continue, as a part of what we call critical infrastructure, to show up and do your job.”

Mr. Pence said the administration would work “tirelessly” to ensure the workers’ safety.

There is no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through food, but public health experts have advised consumers to wipe down packaging because the virus could survive on those surfaces for days.

Several major meat-processing outfits are offering workers cash incentives to continue showing up for work.

At the Tyson plant in Camilla, the company offered its 2,100 workers a $500 bonus if they worked in April, May and June without missing a day.

Many of the employees live a 15-minute drive away in Albany, Ga., which has emerged as one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak.

“How many more have to fight for their life, how many more families got to suffer before they realize we are more important than their production,” said Tanisha Isom, 36, a deboner on line four at the Camilla plant. She recently learned that she had bronchitis and missed two weeks of work.

She has continued to cough, she said, with a low-grade fever and fatigue — and hopes to finally get tested for the coronavirus later this week.

“We are crying out for help but no one is listening,” said Ms. Isom, who has worked at Tyson for years and earns $12.95 an hour.

“Our work conditions are out of control. We literally work shoulder to shoulder daily,” she said. She said that two people she works closely with are currently fighting for their lives.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods, said the company was taking the temperature of workers before they entered and had implemented social-distancing measures. These included dividers between work stations and slower production lines to widen the space between workers.

If there is a confirmed case at one site, “we notify anyone who has been in close contact with the person and instruct them to go home and self-quarantine,” he said. He noted that workers who are sick continue to be paid while off the job.

He also said that Tyson was coordinating with federal agencies to secure “an adequate supply of protective face coverings for production workers” and other protective coverings.

But workers and union leaders said the response by Tyson and other chicken companies, which produce the bulk of the nation’s meat supply, has been inadequate.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents thousands of poultry processing workers in the South, said that it had been “imploring” producers to take steps to protect workers’ safety while securing the nation’s food supply chain.

“Day after day we hear reports of our members contracting the Covid-19 virus and even succumbing to it,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president. “The poultry industry can and must do better to swiftly protect workers.”

“Saying you are still scrambling for protective supplies when much of the supply chain has been protecting workers for weeks is a pathetic excuse for companies that make billions in profits annually,” he said.

Fatalities among workers have lent urgency to the demands for protection.

Cameron Bruett, a spokesman for JBS, confirmed that an older man who had worked for 30 years at its beef plant in Greeley, Colo., recently died from complications of Covid-19.

Operations have been halted at a plant the company operates in Souderton, Pa., until April 16, after several managers displayed “flulike symptoms,” he said.

In at least seven states, workers at Cargill, the nation’s third-largest meat producer, have tested positive for the virus, according to Dan Sullivan, a company spokesman.

Mr. Sullivan confirmed that Cargill had closed a plant in Hazleton, Pa., after several employees tested positive.

The federal government has deemed food-industry workers essential, and Cargill has encouraged employees to stay on the job through the pandemic with extra pay and bonus offers. Workers are eligible for up to 80 hours of paid leave for any virus-related absence.

But some employees say they, like Ms. Grant in Georgia, feel pressure to come to work, and others say they cannot afford to remain at home past any paid sick leave.

Jose Aguilar, a representative of the union in Alabama, said many immigrant workers might not be eligible for unemployment benefits or payments from the federal stimulus package.

“For the immigrant population, it’s really sad because right now, there are a lot of people who don’t have a choice,” he said. “Almost everybody is going to work because they need money.”

A woman who has worked for 20 years at Pilgrim’s Pride in Guntersville, Ala., said that the virus was spreading in the meat packing area, where employees work side by side and social distancing is nearly impossible. Recently, the company took measures to bolster safety, she said.

“There are people cleaning the plant; they are checking our temperatures every time we come in the morning; they’re doing all that. They’re starting to give us masks,” said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from her employer.

“But of course we’re worried because the truth is we don’t know if more people are going to get sick,” she said.

Pilgrim’s Pride did not respond to a request for comment. The company’s Facebook page said that workers who show symptoms were being told to stay home.

On Facebook, several employees of the Tyson plant in Camilla questioned why those who had been working alongside people who tested positive had not been told to stay away. Others expressed frustration that the facility remained open at all.

Shynekia Emanuel, who works nights on the deboning line in Camilla, said that his shift supervisors — the same people who had been checking workers’ temperatures — had tested positive for the virus.

A company spokesman said Tyson would not discuss specific employees.

Mr. Emanuel, who said that he was particularly vulnerable to the virus because he has Crohn’s disease, will not report to work again until the pandemic has passed.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “Nobody wants to risk their lives over some chicken. Sorry. My life and my son’s life is way more important.”

Before checking herself into a hospital, Ms. Grant had told her children that several co-workers on her line had been absent.

“If they had taken proper precautions, they would have prevented people from getting it,” her son said. “This just isn’t right. It’s about saving multiple lives.”