When we salute essential workers, we usually overlook the people who clean the bed sheets, patient gowns, scrubs and other protective equipment for our doctors and caregivers in hospitals and nursing homes.
It’s not a job many of us would choose, but it gets done by people making $11.50 an hour at places like Med-Apparel, a hospital laundry service in a block-long plant on the Arthur Kill in Perth Amboy.
These 120 workers struck last month just to get a 35- to 45-cent hourly increase and to demand compliance to state safety protocols at the massive shop, where 12 of them have fallen ill from COVID and one has died, according to their union.
The strike lasted only two days, and didn’t move the needle. They’re all back at work, risking their health for a poverty wage, for an employer they say flouts distancing rules at work stations. They have been classified as essential, but nobody calls them heroes. Something is amiss here
These are the workers we need to remember when Mitch McConnell revisits liability protections for employers in the next Congressional pie fight, as he seeks to slather owners of death traps in immunity against lawsuits.
Congressman Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) cites Med-Apparel as an example of why “you can’t exempt businesses from liability during COVID. If they follow state guidelines, fine – maybe they’re not liable for workers getting sick. But you’re going to have bad actors.”
The actors in this case won’t come to the phone to defend their work environment, which is curious. Med-Apparel is a division of Unitex, a fourth-generation family business that dominates this market in medical apparel cleaning. It is enormously profitable, highly-automated, and capably managed, which is why it is bewildering that an outfit with 13 plants (four in Jersey) and annual revenues of $150 million-plus is acting so minor league.
Pallone is also confounded, which is why he snapped off an angry letter two weeks ago — co-signed by the Middlesex County troika of Sen. Joe Vitale, Speaker Craig Coughlin, and Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez — to the father-and-sons executive team that owns and operates Unitex.
Their letter noted that Med-Apparel employees claim the company violates state COVID rules on worker safety, refuses to share virus case data at their Perth Amboy facility, and is “negotiating in bad faith,” as Pallone sees it. That last claim isn’t hard to make stick: The owners won’t agree to the measly pay hike unless workers agree to transition from a pension system to a 401(k) account, and the congressman is outraged.
“The response I got was totally inadequate and inappropriate,” Pallone said. “Their main objection is that the union won’t give up their ‘old world pension.’ People who work this long and this hard shouldn’t have to rely on the whims of the market in their retirement years. To use this as a bargaining chip for a modest raise is unacceptable.
“But the more pressing issue, for now, is they aren’t providing a safe work environment. This company is making money and has limited access to PPE, and they can’t protect their workers?”
Albert Arroyo, who leads negotiations for Workers United/SEIU, put it this way: “They won’t tell us who tests positive on the shop floor. They have no protocol for drivers. Ask them about ventilation system, they say, ‘We have lots of fans.’ And ask them about social distancing, they say they haven’t measured.”
This isn’t how Department of Labor commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo said it would go, when he warned that “if employers cannot follow the basic laws and take care of their workers’ health and safety, (the DOL) may need to get involved and see what other corners employers are cutting.” This would be a good time to start that process.
These people kept hospitals running during the darkest days of this pandemic, often working shoulder to shoulder, handling soiled and contaminated material seven days a week so that medical professionals and patients have a fighting chance.
Remove their link in this chain, and the heartbreaking calculus of death becomes even more unbearable. Most of us value and appreciate them. It’s vexing that their employers do not.
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The Link LonkDecember 29, 2020 at 12:17AM
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/12/laundry-workers-hung-out-to-dry-editorial.html
Laundry workers hung out to dry | Editorial - NJ.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=Laundry&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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