Worker Safety During a Pandemic

And how information is released to the public.

In March, I was contacted by several employees of the local hospital, who were worried that the reporting for Covid-19 cases among workers wasn’t thorough or public. One of the biggest immediate concerns then was that an employee who had a family member in her home with Covid-19 had returned to work at the emergency room. Her coworkers found out because she shared the information with friends, and the relative had posted about it on Facebook. They weren’t alerted by bosses, and they were uncertain about whether she had gone through a proper quarantine period. They had tried to call the state’s Department of Health, and hadn’t gotten through.

When I posted about these concerns on Facebook, people accused me of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. That is not what HIPAA covers. The person affected had disclosed her own status, and there are several reasons why someone posting on Facebook about public health concerns might be exempt anyway, especially since I didn’t say her name or any other identifying information. Regardless, it seemed early on that state and local officials were using HIPAA as an excuse to hide information about who was testing positive and where they had been, and discouraging people from talking about the pandemic’s increasing toll. Businesses and employees were also increasingly reluctant to say anything, for fear of reprisals.

This is important, because workplaces are, largely, where Covid-19 has been spreading. The journalist Sarah Jaffe tweeted some time ago that the the pandemic was becoming a workplace safety issue, and I keep coming back to that idea because it’s very true. In Arkansas, poultry workers have born the brunt of the pandemic. We have had the first major outbreak in my county, and it’s at a prepared food producer called Global Foods. As of Thursday, August 27, we have 34 active positive cases here, most of them related to that workplace, roughly doubling the previous total cases. I spoke to Justin Riddle last week, who had just been fired. “I believe they realized Covid was in the factory a couple days ago because the higher ups started wearing mask out of nowhere this week,” he said. He had warned coworkers on Facebook that there were positive cases in the factory. His supervisors told him he was fired because he’d left his post and shut down production for three minutes, which he says was to help a new guy. But he says he hadn’t been fired until he warned his coworkers about the Covid case.

I asked him if they’d taken any precautions against the pandemic earlier on. “They sold masks for a dollar and required you to have one but you didn't have to wear it,” he said. “They gave us gloves, but they didn’t like us changing gloves and washing hands except for after break because it pauses production.” He said they also had a sign on the front door with a list of symptoms. “But I called one morning to warn I had a sore throat and asked if they wanted to risk me coming in and they said, ‘You would know if you had it.’” (I contacted Global Foods, but haven’t heard back.)

It turns out this issue is common. After I did this interview with Justin, I read an article, published yesterday, but the great labor report Josh Eidelson, who found that many of the companies biggest employers were preventing their workers from talking about cases on work sites.

In many cases, workers say their bosses have cited employee privacy to justify the gags, including federal privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. But such laws don’t require companies to silence employees on safety matters. On the contrary, federal laws, including those that created OSHA and the NLRB, guarantee employees the right to communicate about and protest their job conditions. The federal bodies have failed to make companies obey the law. Many thousands of OSHA complaints about coronavirus safety issues have yielded citations against just two companies—a health-care company and a nursing home—totaling about $47,000. “The agency continues to field and respond to complaints, and will take the steps needed to address unsafe workplaces,” the U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA’s parent, said in a statement. The NLRB declined to comment.

Employer crackdowns on free speech threaten to mask another wave of Covid infections and make the end of the year far deadlier than it otherwise might be. “In many places, workplace exposures are driving the pandemic,” says epidemiologist David Michaels, who ran OSHA under President Obama and is now a professor at George Washington University. “To stop this pandemic, workers need to be listened to rather than silenced.”

This is my worry. School started in the state again on Monday. Desperate parents are sending their children to schools, and teachers have no choice but to return. If we thought of Covid as a workplace safety issue, we’d be better prepared. On top of that, my county is hosting a gigantic private event, the National Championship Chuckwagon Races, beginning this weekend. The argument for these moves has been, and continues to be, the economy. We would manage risks better if we concentrated more on the safety of everyone who has to work or study outside of the home.

Addendum:

I’m not going to comment on the events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, right now, except to say that the conservative effort to turn Kyle Rittenhouse, the shooter who killed two protesters and wounded a third, into a hero has been swift and complete on Facebook. Misinformation is spreading very rapidly, and it’s alarming. You have to live in an alternative reality several layers deep to even understand the memes going around. More than half of Americans say they get their news from Facebook, and it is dominated by conservative news sites and right-wing commenters who are not working in the real news at all, like Ben Shapiro. It’s a worrisome trend, and I think we should pay more attention to it than we are.

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What I’m Reading:

On the quiet heroism of Chadwick Boseman. On how Kenosha, Wisconsin, shows the true direction of the right. The civil war we’re already maybe in. New York City is not dead, but, if it were, the pandemic is not what killed it.

What I’m Recommending:

I will regret forever that I was 40 before I learned about chaat masala. I would like to put it on everything.

Cute Animal Pic of the Week:

My own personal tiny panther, Eek, is difficult to take pictures of, because she spends a lot of the day curled up sleeping on shelves and in closets. When she does come out, it’s to curl up on my lap. This month we celebrated black cat appreciation day, but the truth is, that’s every day.