Working Class Corona
Working Class Corona
By Emmett Beech
In this short article, I look at working conditions in three areas particularly hard hit by the coronavirus: nursing homes, prisons and meat packing plants. I argue that working conditions are an important factor in the spread of the virus in those places.
I write this on Memorial Day weekend 2020, roughly 3 months into the impromptu crash course in science known as the Pandemic. Scientists are scrambling to develop vaccines and treatments, while elected officials balance public health with gaping holes in their budgets. Many white-collar professionals are discovering how good is the broadband they are paying for as they try to conduct business over video conferencing calls.
Every day data comes in. Millions of people, stuck inside, have little to do but pore over the numbers of new deaths and new infections. Like fortune tellers and tea leaves, they look for patterns, if not a little hope for an end to the crisis. Some patterns are, in fact, emerging. These patterns suggest what actions are needed to mitigate the pandemic. But are we drawing the right conclusions.
It was noted early in 2020 the disease affected older people and those with pre-existing conditions. This should surprise no one. Even though the virus is new, those who are already healthy would have a better chance to fight it off. Bodies already weakened by age or disease will have a harder time.
Now data points are emerging to refine the analysis. Three settings seem to account for a large proportion of infections:
1. Prisons
2. Nursing homes
3. Meat packing plants
As mentioned above, nursing homes are easily explained as due to many immune-impaired individuals living in proximity. Prisoners are not necessarily immune-impaired, but obviously they are forced to live, eat, and excrete in close proximity. But are not those prisons kept fairly clean? I am reminded when accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein reportedly killed himself in prison. The idea that such a high-profile prisoner could kill himself has become a running joke, but legal commenters such as Ken White of Twitter PopeHat fame have said these doubters do not understand the appalling brutality and incompetence in our nation’s prisons.
What about meat packing plants? That surely stands out. Of course, they have been kept open as vital to the nation’s food supply. But surely many businesses dealing with food have stayed open; why meat packing as opposed to vegetables or fruits?
Importantly, what do these 3 settings have in common?
I have some experience in one of those settings. For the past 10 years or so, my family had our own crash course as my aging parents needed increasing amounts of medical help. My father suffered from dementia as well as a series of strokes leading to his death in 2014. My mother, 89 year as I write this, is still with us. My family live in the greater Detroit area, which is one of worst hotspots in America.
For people familiar with video games but not elder care, here is how I explain caring for the aged. Your character in the game is down 1 or 2 health levels. If you take the slightest scratch, you need the healing potion right now. Then take a couple rounds to let yourself heal. In other words, there are a lot of trips to the emergency room, followed by time convalescing in various outpatient facilities. This allowed us to have discussions with the people who work in these places. The people who feed our aged parents, who change their bedpans and make sure they take their medications.
Many of the people we met were part timers (working less than 40 hours per week). So they piece together a living by working at multiple facilities, visiting several a week. The pay is low, and there is rarely paid time off. How is the health insurance? Often they have none. Yes, you read that correctly. People who must work with elderly, vulnerable populations do not always have health insurance themselves. We were told that even if they call in sick, and sacrifice money for health, they are guilted into coming to work anyway. Any particular day, the homes could be woefully understaffed. In addition, turnover in staff is extremely high.
A quick look for average hourly pay for nursing home workers show $8.49 per hour for Caregiver (or $17,659.20 a year if working 40 hours every week) and $12.83 for Nursing Assistant (or $26,686.40 a year for 40 hours per week). These numbers are from job site Indeed.com https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Nursing-Homes/salaries
With that sort of pay, no wonder turnover is so high in America’s nursing homes. The Mather Institute, a non-profit that studies elder care found a turnover rate of 47% of licensed nurses and 65% of CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) in 2014. https://www.matherinstitute.com/2014/03/05/why-turnover-in-nursing-home-staff-matters/
How well do prison guards do? Sticking with Indeed.com, Correctional Officer is listed as having an average salary of $30,541 per year. Click this link to see more: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Department-of-Corrections/salaries
This Pew Trust article from 2016 illustrates the high turnover rate with this profession, with a rate of 29.7 % turnover in Kansas in 2015. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/03/01/many-states-face-dire-shortage-of-prison-guards
Perhaps the real money is working in a meat packing plant? Job sites like Indeed.com do not seem to have statistics for this profession, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a median annual wage of $28,260. https://www.bls.gov/oes/2018/may/oes513023.htm
How is the turnover in the meat packing plants? ConAgra Red Meat reported 100% turnover in the 1990s. Most workers are extremely poor and are often immigrants living in substandard housing. I suspect their sick days are few and far between. I do not like using Wikipedia as a source, but the page on the American meat packing industry well documents the appalling conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_rights_in_American_meatpacking_industry
Very well, but how do these jobs measure on the national scale? According to the Federal Reserve, the median income in the United States as of January 1st, 2018 was $63,179. Enjoy the charmingly named FRED (or Federal Reserve Economic Data) here:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Let us put all those numbers together, shall we?
Industry |Job|Wage|Percent of Median Wage of $63,179
Nursing home | Nursing Assistant | $26,686.40 | 42.24%
Prison | Correctional Officer | $30,541.00 | 48.34%
Meat Packing | Worker | $28,260.00 | 44.73%
These are all very rough numbers. Averages can vary widely from area to area, and they are not all from the same time. But I think the main point still holds. These jobs often pay less than half the median wage. What we have in common are poorly paid and poorly treated workers that have now been classified as ‘essential’. Note these numbers are all from before the pandemic.
Why is this relevant to the pandemic? Ask yourself exactly how people are getting infected. Yes, the virus can survive on surfaces, but the CDC has said it does not ‘easily’ spread this way: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/health/cdc-coronavirus-touching-surfaces.html It seems likely people are contracting it by breathing in droplets from infected individuals in large gatherings. Jon Kay’s Quillette article discusses this in depth: https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/
Nursing home patients sometimes go out for a meal, a walk in the park or enjoy a visit from their family. Its possible many cases started this way, then the infection was brought back to the facility by a resident. But what about prisons? I suppose some prisoners get released during the day, but I believe some high security prisons have been severely affected. What about meat packers? Wouldn’t any plant dealing with food processing be kept clean?
Perhaps the infections are not being starting at work. They are starting at home and being brought to work. Joel Salatin, farmer and advocate of small scale farming, was interviewed on Joe Rogan’s YouTube channel, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-7O3fOXXKo . Salatin states workers in the plants live in extremely dense conditions as they send much of their meager wages to their family overseas. There is really no way to avoid the sneezes and coughs of the others, and they probably dare not take even an hour of sick time.
It is a simple and grim process. Workers become infected at home, and simply cannot take time off to get healthy. They spread the disease at work to the captive population of elderly, the imprisoned or fellow workers.
Anyone who has been following trends in American labor is already familiar with everything I say. You might even wonder why I bothered to write this. I wonder why I had to. There have been numerous stories, particularly in liberal outlets like the LA Times and NPR on who is worst effected by Covid19. This CNN story is one of many showing it disproportionately harms African Americans and people of color: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/health/coronavirus-african-americans-study/index.html
I have even seen stories that racism is the real culprit behind these figures (paywall): https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/institutional-racism-inequity-high-minority-death-toll-coronavirus . The numbers are very true — people of color are a stunning 65% of fatalities, according to the LA Times. But I fear we will go down an affirmative action rabbit hole counting how many people of color are in various positions instead of digging further. Surely the virus does not know the race of the person being infected.
Affirmative Action is not the subject of this article. I am not here arguing for or against it. But it seems the media will discuss the racial makeup of virus victims, but I do not see much digging into why this is the case. But since people of color make up a disproportionate number of low income jobs, improving those jobs will help people of color.
Depending on how it is measured, wages have not kept with inflation, except in the last few years (https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/). We must realize the racial composition of the victims reflects the role of poverty in America. African Americans have long lagged in wage growth, even as the economy grew in the last few years:
The plight of workers and the plight of African Americans are simply two parts of the same story. Even worse, the massive unemployment created by the lockdown has surely destroyed whatever wage growth we were enjoying.
In conclusion, I advocate several critically needed reforms to alleviate the destruction caused by the pandemic. Chiefly we must not just look at the conditions in the institutions where the most cases are. We must look at the conditions of the people working there. Sick Time is not some perk for an employer to dangle for people who are probably going to quit after a few months. It is vital for public health. We must also look at pay and career advancement for people in these professions.
