Day Of Action Planned For Essential Workers Across the Nation
by Alex Lloyd Gross
Your Amazon order will be delayed . You probably won’t get service from instacart and Target as well as Whole Foods could be closed or open with bare shelves tomorrow, May 1 2020. The people that work at these places are fed up with low wages and corporate greed. A company CEO can Zoom a meeting from his house, check the nice deposit into his massive bank account online and never leave the house.
The workers that brought him that huge deposit are going on strike tomorrow, They need protective equipment, masks, gloves, face shields and other items to keep them safe. They also want a raise. The people working in the stores are being hailed as heroes and essential. The problem is they are not treated as such. While the state senate in Pennsylvania passed a bill to raise the state minimum wage it has gone nowhere in the house.
It sits in the Labor and Industry Committee with no action. House republicans refuse to even discuss the matter. The US Congress, they passed a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr over time. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said “The minimum wage is not something we are going to be discussing.in the senate”. Many of these workers are making less than $9.00/hr., The term “essential workers” is lip service at best.
The CEO’s of these business are making record profits, organizers of the protests say. Opponents have repeatedly said that those workers are unskilled and there is no way they deserve more money. Now, with those people going into stores and finding empty shelves they realize that the unskilled workers are the driving force that keeps the country going.
As many workers go to their jobs, they do not know if a customer that asks them to get an item for them, or touches a door handle is infected. They are taking a risk every day. They are taking all of the risk for minimal pay. Critics say some companies like Amazon have workers in their order centers that are working in tight quarters. Fast food workers have to handle money, Food workers have to touch items. Customer service workers have to come in contact with people. This is the first time that multiple workers from different stores or companies have banded together to protest working conditions.
The low pay rate goes hand in hand with poor working conditions, workers have said. They want an improvement.