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Opinion | COVID-19 and Black Workers
"The structures that keep black people persistently at the bottom of every positive measure and at the top of every negative indicator are firmly in place."
www.commondreams.org
We see this dichotomy play out as a group of mostly black sanitation workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania carried out a one-day work stoppage. They demanded protective clothing and hazard pay for incurring risks of COVID-19 infection while on the job. Whole Food employees and workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York took similar actions, but the Staten Island strike leader was fired. Jeff Bezos didn’t get to be the richest man in the world by respecting workers’ rights.
As higher paid individuals work at home, people who don’t have that luxury risk their lives just getting to their jobs. In New York City subways are largely empty, but not in poorer neighborhoods. Subway travel has dropped 90% overall in recent weeks, but at subway stations in the Bronx, the poorest of the five boroughs, ridership levels are unchanged for people who work as home health aides, grocery store employees and construction workers. Their plight is exacerbated as subway trains now operate less frequently and passengers are crowded together in defiance of all “social distancing” rules required to prevent corona virus infection.