Never again?

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COVID–19 is reshaping the world and some may even become permanent. The pandemic has revealed more starkly the way society is divided and how the poor invariably end up bearing the brunt of crises, deepening poverty and widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. COVID–19 may have brought forward the debate on future of how society is organised. Without exception, COVID 19 people a lot poorer and living standards a lot lower. People are losing their lives and their jobs and for some the mood is one of despondency and hopelessness as a major economic catastrophe looms ahead. People now face a prolonged period of uncertainty. The continuing despair and distrust with the existing political and economic arrangements has made many unlikely to accept a return to business-as-usual. They now question the wisdom of free–market capitalism and profiteering. The pandemic reveals another ugly aspect capitalism’s gross inequality where the mega rich harbour little or no empathy for the less fortunate at a time when working people are going without tests and treatments and when hospitals are struggling to find even the basic facilities like protective gears, ventilators etc. Their message overall has been how quickly normal service is resumed and return to normal where the opportunity now arises to plunder and pillage of the wealth of rival businesses. The insidious root of the problem is that the market simply does not work.



The American $2.2 trillion the CARES Act signed into law by Trump gave a lot away to the biggest corporations, banks and the wealthy — both through a gigantic bailout fund, and also numerous tax credits and deductions. Also the biggest companies got themselves exempted from the requirement in the second related bill from the requirement to provide workers with paid sick leave. The average Americans come out with the short end of the stick. $1,200 per adult won’t take anybody very far given that the typical American spends about $1,000 a week on food, rent, mortgage, et cetera. It’s become very clear that the super-rich have managed to escape to The Hamptons or yachts or wherever and still get concierge healthcare, including, apparently, tests for the virus when they wish. Everybody else is either in limbo or in danger. The pandemic vividly reveals the class structure in America as well as elsewhere. So-called essential workers are not college educated. They are being put into harm’s way, often without adequate equipment or protection. Twice as many Blacks and Latinos are dying in New York than whites. What is so apparent and so obvious is the gaping gap in privilege and wealth and power. We might see more awakening among particularly the working class. The best way to help is to show people what’s been happening.



In the United States, the sociopathic right-wing oligarchs have mobilised their base to protest against lockdowns and quarantines and to advocate the return to work, risking workers to exposure to the virus for the sake of Wall St and the share-holders. Capitalism cannot operate without the labour-power of workers, and with the pandemic, the profits of the capitalist class are in danger.



Fearing he would be blamed for the extent of the pandemic, Trump has sought to lay blame on China and the World Health Organization and those on the Right easily led to believe that the Chinese and U.N. are culpable and Trump is being successful with many Americans at laying blame on the UN and China. Meanwhile Trump awaits to become the saviour of humanity with his promotion of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19



The pandemic has been bring home to many thatthe promises of normalcy will never deliver security. Workers now sense their own power, aware that they can act without waiting for yesterday’s leaders. Let’s build an a society that inspires. Let’s offer people hope that they can believe in the future. There must not be a regression to former inequalities. Post–pandemic we will need to fight for a green and just world. We must be pushing forward alternatives to the status quo, because those are the ideas that will be the solutions to tomorrow’s deepening crises.



 “Rise like lions after slumber,” said Shelley. There is plenty to do, but we have to do it fast.



Can Covid-19 Change Society?

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COVID-19 is revealing and exacerbating pre–existing social and racial inequalities, and laying bare the inadequacies of capitalism’s welfare states safety nets.



It was not profitable for capitalists within the medical-industrial complexes of modern capitalism to produce or stockpile the medical supplies needed to properly manage a viral pandemic.



We are living through a failure of capitalism. It failed to prepare adequately for the coronavirus pandemic (delayed and insufficient production, stockpiling, and distribution of vital medical supplies and services). We live on a crisis-prone planet where we are struggling to survive.



The legitimacy of capitalism is in doubt. We cannot rely on capitalism and its profit motive to serve our most basic social needs. Capitalists prioritise profits as their bottom line.



Governments defer to the pursuit of profit in markets as if that guaranteed meeting basic social needs. It does not; it never did. Many social needs fail to be met when and because they get subordinated to the profit goals of capitalists. It was not profitable for capitalists within the medical-industrial complexes of capitalism to produce or stockpile the medical supplies needed to properly manage a viral pandemic. Because they depend heavily on the support and donations of capitalists, most governments are enthusiastically complicit with their leading capitalists.



The cracks in the capitalism system should present socialists opportunities to pose a threat to the status quo and demand no return to normal. Why should we try to resuscitate the capitalist system that constantly produces poverty. Only two or three paycheques separates us from becoming paupers. Capitalism is built upon inequities, contradictions and crises. Billions live under the most depressing and violent of systems, where the line between wage-slavery, and survival blurs. 



 Capitalism presents “more capitalism” as a solution. The ruling classes are simply unable to accommodate any change or offer political solutions that only deepen our misery. Under capitalism, and in the current pandemic most of us deprived of property, deprived of liberty and deprived of a livelihood, we are at the mercy of the very system responsible for our pain. Our wages are little reward for the denial of our humanity.



The pandemic has spread in more than 210 countries and disrupted social and economic life across the globe. It has changed the way we live and our working lives. Lockdown has been imposed on more than 3.5 billion people around the world.The human cost of Coronavirus pandemic immeasurable but it offers us an opportunity to completely destroy capitalism as a system. Let this pandemic be a catalyst for human emancipation from all forms of illness promoted by capitalism as a social, economic and political system. We should talk about solutions beyond wage labour, beyond more of the same.



Black Lung and COVID-19

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Scarring of the lungs caused by years of coal dust inhalation, more formally known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis or black lung, leaves miners at high risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19. Now the mining industry is trying to cut its payments to the fund that supports those affected.



While miners with black lung struggle during the pandemic, the coal industry is seeking to use the crisis to its advantage, cutting pay-outs to the federal black lung funds. 



 Last month the National Mining Association asked Congress to decrease the excise tax that coal companies pay toward the fund by 55%. The federal black lung program, which pays out benefits to former coal miners diagnosed with the condition , has already faced financial problems in recent years in part due to coal companies filing for bankruptcy and shifting millions of dollars in liabilities onto the government.



Some 25,000 former coal miners in the US currently rely on black lung benefits, and hundreds of former miners will die trying to obtain their benefits, leaving their widows with nothing.



At least one in 10 US coal miners who worked in mines for 25 years or more are diagnosed with black lung. In Appalachia, those rates climb to as many as one out of every five. Appalachia experienced a surge in black lung cases in recent years, as US cases hit a 25-year high in 2018.



Black lung clinics across Appalachia have shut down due to coronavirus, with doctors insisting patients stay at home and conduct check-ups by phone or internet. New claims for federal black lung benefits and state exams have been put on hold.



“This extra impairment would be enough to kill them which is why we’re trying to be so careful in not having them in the clinic and encouraging them to stay at home, stay away from people so they don’t get it because it would be much more difficult for someone like that to recuperate, if it’s even possible,” said Debbi Wills, a black lung clinic coordinator in West Virginia.



https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/19/ive-already-got-infected-lungs-for-sick-coal-miners-covid-19-is-a-death-sentence

We are all “us.”

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There is a danger emerging that the pandemic will make people nostalgic for normalcy instead of becoming radicalised. Socialists must do their utmost to ensure a return-to-normal and business-as-usual isn’t acceptable. The capitalist world is in turmoil and its fakery has been shown. The political sea change doesn’t mean a sudden conversion to  socialism but it has exposed the frailty and flaws of the capitalist system of production for profit and not to satisfy peoples needs. There will have to be many positive and substantial shifts in public attitudes but it is hard think of a return to the “old normal.” Our everyday lives have been impacted and we have acquired new definitions of who are the key workers and the “essential” industries. The coronavirus has exposed the racial and class disparities in society. The pandemic has in some countries resulted in a nationalist feeding frenzy, just at the time we require global cooperation.



We are experiencing the most profound social, economic and political change in the way we view the world. Some are now suggesting that we replace capitalism with a somewhat better brand of capitalism, reforms which would prove to short-lived, and certainly not target the real problem — capitalism itself. People are being presented with a choice. Reform the unreformable, or create a world based on human need and environmental stability instead of private profits and inequality? It is a question to be answered by all the world’s peoples. The global coronavirus crisis has now given further credence to the socialist alternative hitherto ridiculed and ignored.



Amid this pandemic, we see signs of distrust and fear leading to increased authoritarianism,  xenophobia, and injustice. But there are also good grounds for optimism. Better get to work. Our time is running out. This planet-wide virus, tragic as it is, has the potential to galvanize attitudes of multitudes. Our visions and actions are the building blocks of the world we deeply wish for. Without the belief in the possibilities of progress of social evolution, working people will continue to endure the suffering and stagnation that surely lies ahead.



The peril and the promise of the pandemic

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 COVID-19 has fed the right-wing and nationalism espousing the politics of paranoia, stoking fear against foreigners. There has been well documented outbreaks of xenophobia. It may be a symptom of the pandemic which may well endure as the virus dissipates.



Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán declared “There is a logical connection between the two [migration and coronavirus] as both spread with movement.” While Trump  plays the same blame game calling the disease the “Chinese virus” 


But Trump’s been here before. On the campaign trail in 2015, he was asserting that “ tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border” because of migrants crossing the Mexican border.


 Right-wing protesters, including militia members brandishing firearms, have begun taking to the streets to urge the end of the stay-at-home restrictions.


In Brazil, right populist Jair Bolsonaro has painted himself as a protector of the poor. “We cannot harm the neediest – they have no way of staying at home for very long without going out to seek their sustenance.” In India, Hindu nationalists have been touting cow urine as a cure for Covid-19 and accusing Muslims of spreading COVID-19 through their mosques.


Indian author and political commentator, Arundhati Roy, is one of many who recognises both the peril and the promise of the moment. 


“I think what has happened is COVID-19 has exposed things about India that all of us knew,” Roy said. “We are suffering, not just from COVID, but from a crisis of hatred, from a crisis of hunger.” She accused the Indian government of exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims. She said that this alleged strategy on the part of the Hindu nationalist government would “dovetail with this illness to create something which the world should really keep its eyes on.” 


She went as far to say that: “The situation is approaching genocidal” explaining that “The whole of the organization, the RSS to which Modi belongs, which is the mother ship of the BJP, has long said that India should be a Hindu nation. Its ideologues have likened the Muslims of India to the Jews of Germany. And if you look at the way in which they are using COVID, it was very much like typhus was used against the Jews to get ghettoize them, to stigmatize them.”


She further explained, “…coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”


It is now necessary to use best practice and to wisely apply science and technology to survive. It is time to  contemplate a social change. It is time for socialism.







The Hostile Environment Still Deters Migrants

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Undocumented migrants are dying from Covid-19 because they are too afraid to seek help, charities have warned amid renewed calls for the Home Office to suspend NHS immigration checks. 



 In one case, a Filipino man died from suspected coronavirus last week after not accessing healthcare for fears of being reported to the Home Office. The man is said to have died in his home on 8 April after suffering from a fever and a cough for two weeks.  He was too afraid to go to the hospital for fear that he would be charged for his treatment, which he could not afford, and that he would be reported to immigration authorities. His wife, also an undocumented Filipino national, is currently suffering with similar symptoms but is also too afraid to access healthcare. Before he fell ill, the man who had been in the UK for about 10 years, was working as a cleaner and sending money back to his family in the Philippines. His wife, a domestic worker, was reportedly in their home with her husband’s body for 24 hours before an undertaker arrived to take his body away. 



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-undocumented-migrants-deaths-cases-nhs-matt-hancock-a9470581.html

An Imminent Food Crisis?

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British farmers are warning they have been forced to throw millions of gallons of milk down the drain because it no longer has a buyer, cheesemakers are binning artisan cheese and meat processors have an overabundance of sirloin, rib-eye steaks and prime roasting joints. 



Britain’s food supplies are set to come under increasing strain as lockdown is extended for at least another three weeks and could go on for much longer.



The problem is not that there is not enough food but that the well-established routes that supply it have been upended so abruptly.



the primary cause of empty supermarket was not inconsiderate stockpile hoarders, as some government ministers claimed, but the fact that a massive part of the food industry had been shut down overnight without a plan in place for how hundreds of millions of meals would be redirected. 



In normal times, 35 per cent of the food we eat – around 70 million meals every day – is prepared outside our homes, by restaurants and caterers, in cafes and school canteens. Because restaurants’ needs are very different to those of people cooking at home, billions of pounds of produce was suddenly left without a buyer. 



 Redistributing a third of Britain’s food is an impossible task without full national co-ordination. For farmers, who cannot quickly change the crops they grow or the animals they rear to suit the new reality, the problems are building up.



 Tim Lang, professor of food policy, at London’s City University, argues that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of our food system; a system which stretches out over thousands of miles, dozens of countries, and is reliant on migrant labour and air freight. That system has been reshaped, according to Professor Lang’s analysis, largely to suit the interests of nine companies which sell 90 per cent of the food we buy. Supermarkets have been happy to rely on sprawling supply chains that are left exposed during a crisis, as long as the price is right and the product sells.



As a nation, we import half of our food from abroad and, according to some analysts, the true figure could be as high as 80 per cent. Known as “the Hungry Gap” which stretches from the end of the winter season and the start of the summer in late May or sometimes even early June. Historically, it is the leanest part of the year for Britons, when the carrots, onions, potatoes and swede stored through the winter have run out but asparagus – the first sign of summer, in vegetable terms at least – has not yet fully grown. For several decades now, it is the period when we are most reliant on imported food. This year the countries we source much of our food from, notably Spain and Italy, experience their own problems getting enough labour onto farms and seeds in the ground.



 “Coronavirus has really highlighted the vulnerability of our current food system and that’s only going to get worse,” says Ashley Wheeler, a small-holder, who points to delays planting crops in Southern Europe that could lead to problems in a few months.



 The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation forecasts that the Covid-19 pandemic will cause shortages of some crops this year. In that scenario, producer countries are likely to prioritise their home markets over exports, increasing the onus on British producers to supply this country’s needs.



 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coronavirus-lockdown-uk-food-supplies-strain-supermarkets-a9469476.html

A cure for Covid-19: a profit-making strategy

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As the pandemic continues, there is an increasingly desperate need for a drug that will be effective against Covid-19 and not too unsafe in other respects. 



On March 19, at one of his daily self-display sessions for TV and the press, ‘Dr.’ Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine – a drug used to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis – as a remedy for the coronavirus. He did not permit his medical adviser, Dr. Fauci, to say a word. New French and Chinese studies have confirmed that hydroxychloroquine is indeed quite ineffective against Covid-19. It also causes heart complications. Nevertheless, the demand for hydroxychloroquine shot up, jeopardizing supply to the lupus sufferers whose lives really do depend on the drug. See here.



Why did Trump do it? Some suggested that his motive was to push up the value of stock he owns in companies that manufacture hydroxychloroquine. However, Philip Bump in The Washington Post argues that although Trump and his family do own some shares in one such company, the French firm Sanofi, they are worth $1,500 at most – mere ‘loose change’ for a billionaire.[2] Moreover, Trump has been equally willing to promote other drugs. The hype is best viewed as part of Trump’s effort to reassure the public and prepare the ground for an early end to the lockdown. 



The most promising drug



It is generally agreed that the most promising drug is remdesivir, the patent for which is owned by Gilead Sciences, an American company specializing in antiviral drugs. Originally developed to treat Ebola during the West African epidemic of 2014–16, it was no longer being manufactured when the current pandemic broke out, though the company still had a small inventory. Production has now resumed and is undergoing rapid expansion.[1]



A preliminary study was based on data for 53 patients with severe Covid-19 who received at least one dose of remdesivir over the period from January 25 to March 7. At follow-up 2—3 weeks later, two-thirds of the patients (36) showed improvement; almost half (25) had improved enough to be discharged; and only 7 had died – an impressively low death rate given the severity of these cases. Admittedly, this was not a properly organized clinical trial: it was very small and had no control group.[2] 



An interim report of an ongoing clinical trial at a Chicago hospital, published on April 16, revealed even more encouraging results. At this hospital 125 people with Covid-19, including 113 with a severe form of the disease, received daily infusions of remdesivir. Nearly all made rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms and were discharged within a week. Equally encouraging results have been obtained in the UK. Results like these suggest that it may not be premature to speak of a ‘cure’ for Covid-19.



Six large clinical trials are now underway. In March Gilead Sciences started two transnational trials – one for severe and one for moderate cases. In addition, it is supplying remdesivir without charge for the other four trials: one in the US, one in Europe, and two in China’s Hubei Province. 



‘Compassionate use’



Prior to completion of clinical trials and approval by the US Food & Drug Administration (or by the corresponding regulatory agency in another country), an ‘investigational drug’ – which may be a new drug or, as in this instance, an old drug being put to new use – is not usually made available to treat patients, apart from those enrolled in the clinical trials. An exception is made for so-called ‘compassionate use’ – also known as ‘early access,’ ‘expanded access,’ ‘managed access,’ or ‘emergency access.’ The approval of the FDA must be sought in each individual case. The application is submitted either by the patient’s physician after obtaining the consent of the manufacturer or by the manufacturer at the physician’s request. Approval is subject to the following conditions:



There is an immediate threat to the patient’s life. No comparable or satisfactory alternative treatment is available. The patient cannot be enrolled in a clinical trial of the drug. The potential benefit to the patient justifies the risks of treatment with the drug. Providing the drug will not interfere with clinical trials that could support development of the drug or marketing approval for it.

It is true that this system was not designed with pandemics in mind. Under normal circumstances applications for compassionate use are few and far between. Nevertheless, it provides a legal device that could be used to get timely help to a much larger number of people when an epidemic does occur.  



Gilead Sciences began accepting physicians’ requests for compassionate use of remdesivir on January 25. As the existence of the drug was not widely known, the number of requests was initially manageable. However, on March 20 Trump talked on his show about remdesivir and drew attention to the option of compassionate use. The result was a sudden flood of new requests. On March 23, the company complained that it had been ‘overwhelmed’ by this flood and suspended intake of new requests except in cases where the patient was a pregnant woman or a child under the age of 18. The number of patients who had received the drug for ‘compassionate use’ by the end of March was ‘over 1,000.’  



In an open letter published on March 28, Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day announced that the company was switching to a new program for receiving and processing requests for ‘compassionate use.’ It was going to build up a network of ‘active sites’ (or ‘study locations’) – hospitals, medical centers, and research centers participating in the program.[3] Requests could now be submitted in batches, but they had to come from one of these hospitals or centers. ‘While it will take some time to build a network of active sites,’ wrote O’Day, ‘this approach will ultimately accelerate emergency access for more people.’ 



Ultimately. One of those who did not get emergency access was Dr. Frank Gabrin, who on March 31 became America’s first Emergency Room physician to die of Covid-19. He worked at East Orange General Hospital in New Jersey. Although New Jersey is the state with the largest number of ‘active sites,’ this hospital is not one of them. 



Profit-making strategy



There is no need to accept the company’s public explanations at face value. Gilead Sciences is clearly very good at projecting a ‘caring’ image. However, had it really wanted to bring timely help to as many patients as possible, it could surely have hired and trained the additional staff needed to handle the increased flow of requests. The switch to the new program had the initial effect of halting the flow almost completely. The flow would then increase again, but only gradually, as the network of active sites expanded. This gives the company time. Ultimately – in fact, fairly soon – clinical trials will be completed, the company will obtain FDA approval to start marketing the drug, and there will be no further need for any ‘compassionate use’ programs. What we have here is actually a cleverly designed profit-making strategy.  



It is not because the drug is in short supply that Gilead Sciences is slowing down the flow of requests for ‘compassionate use.’ In January 2020 the company had an inventory of 5,000 courses of remdesivir – that is, enough to administer a ten-day course of treatment to 5,000 patients. But by late March over 30,000 courses were on hand. The company aims to produce over 140,000 courses by the end of May, over 500,000 by October, over a million by December, and (if required) several million in 2021 (see here).



The size of the inventory was 30,000 courses in late March and must have reached about 50,000 by mid-April. The number needed for the clinical trials does not exceed 10,000.[4] Even allowing a couple of thousand courses for the expanded-access program, most of the inventory is being held back for later on.



Results from the clinical trials being conducted by Gilead Sciences are expected in late April (for patients with severe Covid-19) and May (for patients with moderate Covid-19). In view of the urgency of the situation, perhaps the FDA will give approval for marketing before the end of May. By then the inventory will contain some 140,000 courses, with production continuing at a rate of 50–100,000 courses per month. 



Why is Gilead Sciences holding back most of its accumulating inventory when so many people are in desperate need of the drug? The drug courses assigned for clinical trials and for ‘compassionate use’ at the present stage have to be provided free of charge, as the FDA has not yet given its approval to market remdesivir. Once it does, however, Gideon Sciences can be counted upon to sell its accumulated stock as fast as it can, while continuing to expand its productive capacity. The company will set a high price and make a lot of money. 



In the past companies in India and China have manufactured generic forms of expensive Western drugs for sale at lower prices, leading to conflicts over intellectual property rights between these countries and the United States. The same thing is set to happen with this drug. In February it was reported that BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology Company, based in Suzhou in China’s Jiangsu Province, had succeeded in producing a copy of remdesivir (here). The Wuhan Institute of Virology has also applied for a Chinese patent on the drug (here).   



Notes



[1] Information is provided on the company’s website.



  [2] Twenty-two patients were in the United States, 22 in Europe or Canada, and 9 in Japan. Jonathan Grein et al., ‘Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19,’ The New England Journal of Medicine, April 10. 



[3] At the time of writing (April 16), 46 sites are active in the following countries: the United States (31), France (4), Germany (2), Italy (3), Spain (2), Switzerland (2), and the UK (2). In the US the states with the largest numbers of sites are New Jersey (8), California (7), New York (5), Florida (3), and Louisiana (3). See here.  



  [4] I am not in a position to calculate this figure exactly. The total number of participants in the six trials is 8,301. Some subgroups receive only a placebo; others receive courses of 5, 10, 15, or 20 days. Sizes are not given for all the subgroups. 

Stephen Shenfield

General secretary of the World Socialist Party of the United States



TV Streaming Steaming Ahead

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Netflix has become a more valuable company than the US oil giant ExxonMobil , as the streaming service benefits from increased viewing of television and films during coronavirus lockdowns.



Shares in Netflix moved 5% higher in early trading on Wall Street on Thursday to a new record high of $448 (£360), taking its market value to $196bn. 
At the same time ExxonMobil’s share price fell 3% to $39.30, giving it a market capitalisation of $166bn as the price of oil slumped. As recently as 2013 the company was the most valuable in the world, but is now worth about 13% as much as tech titans Apple and Microsoft.
Netflix was boosted by lockdown measures were imposed around the world. Rivals, such as Amazon’s Prime Video, with an estimated 118 million users, and Disney’s new streaming service, also benefited from new users.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/16/netflix-now-worth-more-than-exxonmobil-as-value-reaches-187bn

“They only care about their money.”

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Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory – a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River – is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city. 



 On 15 April, Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor’s office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state.



The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed “essential” and must remain on the front lines. 



The workforce at Smithfield is made up largely of immigrants and refugees from places like Burma, Ethiopia, Nepal, Congo and El Salvador. There are 80 different languages spoken in the plant. Estimates of the mean hourly wage range from $14-16 an hour. Those hours are long, the work is gruelling, and standing on a production line often means being less than a foot away from your co-workers on either side.



If employees were to quit, they would be ineligible for unemployment. Advocates are hearing from visa-holders who fret that even if they were to apply for unemployment, they might be considered “public charges” which could render them ineligible for permanent residency under a new rule enacted by the Trump administration last year. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act excludes anyone living in a mixed-status household with an undocumented family member. 



“They do not qualify for anything,” said Taneeza Islam, the executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace and an immigration lawyer. “Their choice is between putting food on the table, and going to work and getting exposed.”



The BBC spoke to half a dozen current and former Smithfield employees who say that while they were afraid to continue going to work, deciding between employment and their health has been an impossible choice. 



“I have a lot of bills. My baby’s coming soon – I have to work,” said one 25-year-old employee whose wife is eight months pregnant. “If I get a positive, I’m really worried I can’t save my wife.” 



“Smithfield – they don’t care about employees,” said Neela. “They only care about their money.”



According to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.



According to Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, union officials approached management at Smithfield in early March to request multiple measures to increase worker safety, including staggering shifts and lunch schedules, which can pack 500 workers into the factory cafeteria at once. He said they also requested personal protective gear like masks and overcoats, temperature-checking at the doors and sanitation stations.



“This was before anyone at the plant tested positive,” said Caraway. “Management dragged their feet, didn’t take worker demands seriously.”



“If the federal government wants the company to stay open, then whose responsibility is it to make sure these companies are doing what they have to do to keep them safe?” said Nancy Reynoza, founder of Que Pasa Sioux Falls, a Spanish-language news source who said she’s been hearing from distraught Smithfield workers for weeks.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52311877





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