We’re put in ‘our place,’ again
In a few short months, black workers have gone from being called heroes for doing essential jobs while exposing ourselves to coronavirus to being arrested for doing those same jobs during curfew, or joining peaceful protests. There’s nothing like a pandemic and police billy clubs to remind a black man where he stands in America.
I grew up in the Red Hook projects in the 1980s. Police harassment felt normal. At 19, I got a job as a sanitation worker, which was my ticket to the middle class and a lifetime in the labor movement.
I know what it’s like to be unarmed, shoveling snow in my driveway, and be charged by six officers with their guns drawn. I know what it’s like to shout “I can’t breathe” as an officer stands on my face.
I also know what it’s like to be caught “working while black.” Once my partner and I were picking up garbage in a neighborhood we worked in every night when we were attacked by a white business owner who was mad we wouldn’t take his trash, even though he wasn’t a customer. We defended ourselves, and when the police arrived, we were the ones who were arrested. My partner was on parole and had to go back to prison.
It’s not a coincidence that the same group of people who are targeted by police violence also work in low-wage, dangerous jobs; live in overcrowded, polluted communities, and are dying fastest from the coronavirus. Systemic racism continues to stand in the way of black people’s hopes of living safe, healthy and prosperous lives.
As New York City’s economy begins to reopen, we cannot forget about the people who never stopped working. The sanitation workers, the delivery drivers, the health-care, funeral and domestic workers. Over the past three months, these once invisible people have received widespread praise. What we haven’t received are the protections we need to do our jobs safely.
The federal government has completely abandoned essential workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received 5,000 coronavirus-related safety complaints, but has only issued one enforcement action in the entire country.
At a moment when uprisings against racist policing have pushed even a oncein-a-century pandemic off the front page, we must remember that the coronavirus has killed black and Latino New Yorkers, those most likely to work essential jobs, at twice the rate of whites. As the president of New
York’s commercial sanitation union, I speak to my members every day about the fear not just of getting the virus, but bringing it home to their families.
New York City’s curfews, which ended on Sunday, put black essential workers in an even more impossible situation.
Assurances that essential workers were exempt from curfew proved cold comfort to people used to being on the wrong end of a police officer’s discretion. Tell it to the Caviar delivery worker in a recent viral video, being arrested alongside his delivery bike and bag. Or the Human Resources Administration janitor who said he was “bum-rushed” and arrested by cops as he left his job.
It’s clear where our government’s priorities are when there appears to be unlimited equipment to outfit riot cops, but nurses were wearing garbage bags.
Black workers need an end to racist policing, and we need more protections on the job. Every worker should be provided with masks and other safety equipment. Employers should also be required to allow for social distancing. When an employee tests positive, workers should be notified and the workplace should be temporarily shut down for deep cleaning.
Gov. Cuomo can start by issuing the New York Health and Essential Rights Order, recently proposed by unions and community organizations. Mayor de Blasio can end the arrests of protesters and essential workers.
Start today.
Campbell is president of Teamsters Local 813, which represents workers in New York City’s private sanitation, funeral and corrugated industries.