“The company is taking risks with the lives
of 5,000 workers”
As COVID-19 cases surge, Texas GM workers
demand closure of factory
2 July 2020
With COVID-19 infections and deaths surging across the United
States, workers in auto, meatpacking and other industries are demanding
protection from the deadly disease and the release of information about its
spread in factories and workplaces.
Last week, thousands of workers at two Detroit-area Fiat
Chrysler (FCA) assembly plants downed their tools and halted production after
several workers became ill and were forced to leave work. Anger erupted after
FCA management and the United Auto Workers union refused to release any
information about the potential COVID-19 cases.
Afterwards,
workers at the two assembly plants—Jefferson North and Sterling Heights—set up
rank-and-file safety committees,
independent of the UAW, whose demands included: “Workers must be immediately
notified of any cases of COVID-19 and what areas were affected. This
information cannot be kept secret from workers.”
With infections and deaths spiking this week in the Dallas-Ft.
Worth, Texas area, workers at the General Motors Arlington Assembly Plant
called for the shutting down of the sprawling plant, which employs nearly 5,000
workers on three shifts. The demands are so widespread that local union
officials felt compelled to call on GM to close the plant “until the curve is
flattened.”
Tarrant County, where the GM plant is located, has confirmed a
total of 12,344 COVID-19 cases and 228 deaths. On Tuesday, county officials
reported a single-day high of 605 new cases and three more deaths, including
two Arlington residents. The number of hospitalizations has reached all-time
highs and the county’s intensive care units—currently at 75 percent of
capacity—could reach their limit in less than three weeks, public health
experts warn.
Acknowledging that “No one wants to be here,” local union
officials nevertheless bowed to GM, saying lamely that “the decisions are made
above us, so we must all try to stay safe for our families inside and outside
of GM.”
GM rejected the appeal, making it clear there would be no
slowdown in the production of its highly profitable Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon
and Cadillac Escalade large sport-utility vehicles. “There’s no need to
interrupt production,” GM spokesman Jim Cain said, claiming that there were
“multiple layers of protection in the plant to prevent a spread of the virus.”
A spokesman for the national union leadership in Detroit said it
was up to corporate management to decide whether or not to close the plant.
“The virus is
spreading throughout Texas and there have been cases at our plant,” Jennifer, a
veteran worker at the plant, told the World Socialist Web Site. “Every day we are taking risks with the lives of 5,000 workers
and their families. We need to shut this plant down, but GM and the union say a
lot of these trucks have already been ordered so we have to keep up production,
no matter how many lives are lost. We’re already working six days a week and
they want to push it to seven.
“The corporation and the UAW are sharing the same bread
together, and we’re the ones who are getting hurt. I’d like to get my remaining
years in and retire, if I live that long.”
James, a worker with five years at the plant, added, “We know
there are cases, but we’re not getting any information about who, where and
when. Management and the union claim there are privacy laws that prevent them
from giving us details. This act like this is above Top Secret and God will
strike us down if we know anything.
“There are some precautions in the plant, like masks and
temperature checks, but nobody knows whether we are really safe. You can be
asymptomatic and still spread it. Everybody from the government on down is
lying to us.
“Right now, we’re only at half production. What is going to
happen when we ramp up to full production after the July 4 weekend? After the
holiday, you are going to have more cases of the virus with seven-day
production, and we are going to see a spike of cases and other people falling
out from lack of oxygen because they are wearing masks in the heat.
“Should we shut this plant down? Absolutely. All the big
corporations care about is how can they squeeze more out of us to pay their
shareholders and executives. As for the politicians, they come from big
business, go into government and look after big business, and then when they
leave office, they go back to big business. All the arguing between Trump and
the Democrats is nothing more than a family feud.
“We never hear about it, but it doesn’t surprise me that the
Chrysler workers in Detroit and the Mexican workers are striking to protect
themselves from the pandemic. We’re not slaves and we’re not going to put up
with this.”
These sentiments are shared by autoworkers and other workers
across the country and around the world. A Fiat Chrysler worker at the
company’s Tipton Transmission plant just outside of Kokomo, Indiana told the
WSWS, “Greed means more than human life. Positive cases are blowing up
everywhere. Somebody needs to get this information out there because nobody
should be going back now. They think they can treat workers like farm animals.”
It is the official policy of many corporations and local
officials to conceal information about cases of infection in order to prevent
disruptions to the reckless back-to-work campaign spearheaded by President
Trump and supported by state and local Democrats and Republicans.
The giant online
retailer and logistics company Amazon is one of those companies, with its top
officials claiming that the collection of such information, let alone its
release, is “not particularly helpful.” Based on her review of reported cases,
former Amazon worker Jana Jumpp estimates that
at least 1,600 workers have been infected and 10 have died.
Bloomberg News recently wrote that Amazon “has a sophisticated
tracking regime that occurs out of public view,” contradicting the company’s
public claims that it does not collect data on infections and deaths. The
tracking system, according to Bloomberg, includes where sick employees live,
whether they’re apartment-dwellers or live in a freestanding house, what shifts
they typically work and what tasks they perform inside the warehouses.
According to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, a recent
outbreak of COVID-19 cases at Amazon’s warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota, near
Minneapolis, exceeded by at least four times the infection rate of surrounding
communities. This directly contradicted statements on CBS News’ “60 Minutes”
program by Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president for worldwide operations,
that cases were “popping up at roughly a rate generally just under what the
actual community infection rates are.”
As of mid-May, Amazon was aware of 45 cases at its MSP1 facility
in Shakopee, enough for an infection rate of 1.7 percent, according to the
memo. That was higher than the rate for the rural county that surrounds the
warehouse, and roughly four times higher than any county in the nearby
Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.
According to Bloomberg, the internal memo “acknowledges workers’
appetite for more transparency, saying that two-thirds of safety-related
comments on white boards set up inside the facility called for more information
about infections.” Amazon addressed the comments with notices posted to the
same boards and verbal communications with workers, the authors wrote. At other
warehouses, such communications have primarily consisted of reassurances about
the adequacy of Amazon’s cleaning protocols.
Concealing the spread of infections is also the modus operandi
of the meatpacking industry and many state and local governments in areas where
the giant corporations dominate. More than 36,000 meat processing and farm
workers have tested positive and at least 116 have died, according to the Food
and Environment Reporting Network, which acknowledges that the real figure is
likely higher.
Citing the
outbreak of cases at a Case Farms poultry processing plant in North Carolina,
the Guardian newspaper reported that on June 8, Burke County health
officials reported 136 new COVID-19 cases, a 25 percent increase in its total
caseload, “yet neither the company, county officials nor the North Carolina
department of health and human services would confirm whether those cases were connected
to Case Farms.”
As of last week, there were 2,772 confirmed cases of infections
in 28 meat processing plant “clusters” around the state, the North Carolina
Department of Health acknowledged, without specifying further. As for Burke
County, local spokeswoman Lisa Moore told the newspaper, “We know where [the
cases] are, but we are not a county that can divulge every place where they
are.”
In Iowa, Dickson Industries, a company that has long made
garments for meatpacking workers, has donated 500 body bags to the state
government as the state prepares for a spike that will likely overwhelm local
hospitals. The Iowa Department of Public Health has not released data on the
number of meatpacking workers who have died from COVID-19.
Republicans and Democrats Agree: GM Should Pay Back the Taxpayers of Ohio
“Ohio welcomes its long and continuing relationship with GM, but we want our money back. It’s just business,” wrote Attorney General David Yost.
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This article was produced in partnership with The Business Journal, based in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
In a rare display of bipartisanship in an era of political division, Republicans and Democrats across Ohio are pressuring General Motors to repay millions of dollars in public subsidies after the company reneged on a promise to keep its sprawling Lordstown plant open.
Among the latest to join the chorus is Ohio Attorney General David Yost, a Republican, who in an unusual move Tuesday filed a blistering 63-page brief before state tax regulators demanding they seek full restitution of more than $60 million in tax credits the automaker received between 2009 and 2016.
“Profit, it has long been said, is not a dirty word in Ohio,” the filing reads. “But a broken promise is.”
GM contends it shouldn’t be held responsible for repaying the tax credits. The automaker has urged that the state consider market conditions as a major factor in closing the plant, which produced the fuel-efficient Chevrolet Cruze.
“GM complains that consumer preferences changed, and that the small cars manufactured at the plant were less popular — that gutting the manufacturing base of the Mahoning Valley by closing Lordstown was just business,” the attorney general’s brief stated. “Ohio welcomes its long and continuing relationship with GM, but we want our money back. It’s just business.”
Last month, The Business Journal and ProPublica first reported that the state notified GM it was in violation of two tax credit agreements the automaker signed in 2009. A notification sent to the company in March from the Ohio Development Services Agency informed GM that it would recommend to the Ohio Tax Credit Authority that it terminate the agreements and pursue a 100% refund.
GM responded that the state should forgive all, or a substantial amount of, the tax credits.
“We respectfully request your assistance to help us drive towards a full recovery by choosing not to require repayment of all, or a significant portion of, the tax credits,” GM’s U.S. property manager, Troy D. Kennedy, stated in a letter to Development Services in April.
The fate of the plant captured national attention when it closed last year and again last week when Vice President Mike Pence visited Lordstown to unveil a prototype electric pickup truck built by Lordstown Motors Corp., which took over the GM site.
Though Republican and Democratic officeholders in Ohio don’t often see eye to eye, they agreed that GM should pay the incentives back.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, demanded that the state claw back all of the incentives, especially since GM opted to build its new Chevrolet Blazer in Mexico. “After its workers drove the success of the company for years and made the Lordstown plant one of the most efficient in the world, GM turned its back on Lordstown workers and walked away from the [Mahoning] Valley,” he said in a statement.
Brown’s Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, also said he supports Ohio’s efforts to collect from GM. “They should be paid back when people pull up stakes and leave and don’t make their commitment.”
U.S. Rep Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents the Mahoning Valley, also called for GM to make restitution. State Sen. Sean O’Brien, a Democrat from nearby Bazetta, noted that GM should pay the state back some, but not necessarily all, of the subsidies.
The one Republican who isn’t fully on board is the one with perhaps the most power: Gov. Mike DeWine. Last week, after touring Lordstown Motors, DeWine said his office wasn’t “actively pursuing” a clawback from GM. Instead, the governor said the state was engaged in “constructive conversations” with the automaker on how to create jobs throughout the state.
In 2009, GM inked a job creation tax credit agreement worth $14.2 million with the condition that its Lordstown plant would remain operational until 2040. A second job retention agreement worth $46.1 million signed that same year required the automaker to ensure Lordstown was open until 2028.
GM said it would stop making Cruzes at the plant beginning in March 2019 and officially closed Lordstown that October, eliminating the remaining 1,600 jobs there.
According to Yost’s filing, GM initiated a pattern of breaking its promise to the state in January 2017 when it eliminated an entire production shift at Lordstown, cutting 1,200 jobs. A second shift was slashed in July 2018, eliminating an additional 1,500 jobs. The remaining 1,600 hourly and salaried employees were cut when the last Cruze rolled off the line in March 2019.
The attorney general urged the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to demand nothing short of a 100% refund from GM. Anything else constitutes a “moral hazard of saddling Ohio taxpayers with GM’s business risk,” according to the brief.
Todd Walker, spokesman for the Ohio Development Services Agency, said the tax authority would consider the matter at a future meeting.
Dan O’Brien is a reporter and associate editor of The Business Journal, based in Youngstown, Ohio. He has covered business in the Mahoning Valley for more than 20 years.
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