“Workers here all have the same complaints—about low pay, the constant pressure, and how hard it is to report an issue to the automated HR system,” says Eaton. But having so much churn in the workforce “makes it difficult to build and maintain relationships with coworkers,” he explains.

A growing body of reporting and research suggests that Eaton is onto something. High worker turnover, present throughout Amazon’s workplaces, weakens the bargaining power of the company’s workers and thwarts union organizing.

A  2020 report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) found turnover rates of more than 100% among warehouse workers in California counties where Amazon fulfillment centers are located. “More workers leave their warehouse jobs each year than the total number of warehouse workers employed in those counties,” note the study authors. Tracking county-level worker turnover data between 2011, the year before the first Amazon fulfillment center opened in California, and 2017, NELP found that turnover rates more than doubled, from 38.1% to 100.9%—an increase of 62 percentage points.

More recent data paint an even more disturbing picture. The Seattle Times determined that, during the first months of the pandemic, turnover rate among front-line Amazon workers was at least twice the industry average. An extensive investigation by the New York Times into Amazon’s labor practices and the management philosophy behind those practices found that even prior to the pandemic, Amazon was losing roughly 3 percent of its hourly associates per week, a turnover rate of approximately 150% a year, roughly double the rate of the retail and logistics industries. Indeed, Amazon’s combination of rapid hiring and high turnover has some industry executives concerned about the possibility of “running out of workers.”

The recent reports on Amazon critique a corporate business model that treats workers as disposable. Jeff Bezos, who founded the company and ran it for 27 years, was legendary for disdaining long-term employment, proclaiming that it breeds “mediocrity,” a former Amazon executive recalls. But sky-high turnover at the retailing giant also serves another goal. It undercuts growing efforts by workers to unionize.

The National Labor Relations Board administers and enforces the federally protected right of working people in the private sector to join together in collective action, including forming a union. To hold an NLRB election, a union must demonstrate that at least 30% of workers in the expected bargaining unit (the group of workers that will be represented by the union) have signed union authorization cards. Constant churn among workers makes it much harder to reach that benchmark, as union supporters are replaced by new workers. In its post-mortem of last spring’s vote against unionizing by workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, union officials said excessive turnover rates made it difficult to determine whether union supporters still worked at the facility.

High turnover also makes it exceedingly difficult to build solidarity among workers. As journalist David Jamieson observed recently in his article for HuffPost, workers who view their position at Amazon as a short-term gig may be less invested in making the commitment—or taking the risks—that banding together with other employees requires. And the risks are high, with getting fired being just one of the most brutal of the many forms of retaliation unionizing workers face, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute.

Eaton and a group of coworkers were able to clear this hurdle to collective action temporarily in February of 2021, pushing back against Amazon’s treatment with a petition for pay and safety demands that gained 106 signatures in a month. While they made some progress on the demands, high turnover in the months following the effort hampered momentum. Today, by Eaton’s count, less than half of those workers remain employed at the warehouse. “The physical toll of the job just grinds people down, they’ll be fired or quit to try to find a better job somewhere else,” said Eaton. “Sometimes they’re not even sure why they were fired.”

Sources

Author’s interview with Cody Eaton, September 15, 2021.

David Jamieson, “Amazon’s Greatest Weapon Against Unions: Worker Turnover,” Huffington Post, June 17, 2021

Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “The Amazon That Customers Don’t See,” New York Times, June 15, 2021.

Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine,” New York Times, updated June 16, 2021.

Gordon Lafer and Lola Loustaunau, Fear at Work: An Inside Account of How Employers Threaten, Intimidate, and Harass Workers to Stop Them from Exercising Their Right to Collective Bargaining, Economic Policy Institute, July 202.

David Leonhardt, “The Amazon Customers Don’t See: The Times is Publishing a New Investigation of Life Inside an Amazon Warehouse,” New York Times Morning Newsletter, June 15, 2021.

Aaron Mak, “Why Union Organizers Think They Got Creamed by Amazon,” Slate, April 14, 2021.

Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, Julia Wolfe, Ben Zipperer, Gordon Lafer, and Lola Loustaunau, Unlawful: U.S. Employers are Charged with Violating Federal Law in 41.5% of All Union Election Campaigns, Economic Policy Institute, December 2019.

Benjamin Romano, “Amazon’s Turnover Rate Amid Pandemic is at Least Double the Average for Retail and Warehousing Industries,” Seattle Times, October 10, 202.

Irene Tung and Deborah Berkowitz, “Amazon’s Disposable Workers: High Injury and Turnover Rates at Fulfillment Centers in California,” National Employment Law Project, March 6, 202.

 Cody Eaton interview notes

Cody Eaton, 24, works for Amazon out of its warehouse in the Bronx, N.Y. where he sorts packages for drivers to deliver to the “final mile.” There are approximately 300 coworkers at the facility who are forced to put up with constant pressure, low wages, job insecurity, unsafe conditions and an opaque HR system

 Situation is largely the result of a conscious policy of the company that aims at high employee turnover and a “hire and fire” model of constant churn. This churn makes the growing efforts by Amazon workers across the country to collectively organizing to redress grievances extremely difficult. Eaton did not want to discuss existing organizing efforts. Location is an “academy” site used to train workers and supervisors.

 According to Eaton, who has worked at the warehouse for the past year he can barely get to know his coworkers because of the constant turnover. Having so much churn in who works there makes it difficult to build meaningful relationships with coworkers. Employees are fired for petty infractions, for calling in sick or they quit due to the physical toll or to find better jobs somewhere else. Sometimes they’re not sure why they were fired and might be terminated by a phone call.

After starting at $15.25 an hour Eaton now makes $16.50 an hour and the prospect of raises or promotions is remote. Most of the supervisors are college grads who constantly rotate in and out and that makes their understanding of the job or, the employees and their concerns, difficult at best.

Eaton and a group of coworkers were able to clear this hurdle temporarily in February of 2021, pushing back against Amazon’s treatment with a petition for pay and safety demands that gained 106 signatures in a month. Some progress on the demands, high turnover in the months following the effort hampered momentum. Today,less than half of those workers remain employed at the warehouse. The physical toll of the job just grinds people down, they’ll be fired or quit to try to find a better job somewhere else. Sometimes they’re not even sure why they were fired.

Human Resources department at Amazon is largely automated, making trying to address issues like an on-the-job injury or paycheck issues. Eaton says it’s like trying to get though to a call center. Although the company offers a generous benefit package in reality they make it cumbersome to use and the constant turnover means few take advantage of it. Sometimes employees just disappear.Company responds to complaints with vow to better communicate. hazard pay for COVID has been eliminated.

“My first job was at Dunkin Donuts when I was still in high school and I worked my way up from there,” she said.

After she moved from franchise restaurants to higher-end establishments, she made a decent living off of her tips. By the time she was 32 she was working at a popular Polynesian restaurant known for hosting big events that packed in hundreds of diners on the weekends. But then she had a child.

As a single mother, Fleming struggled to find child care for her son, a task made much more difficult by the fact that she would only get her work schedule a few days before she was expected to show up for shifts that often lasted as late as 2–3 a.m. When she came up short in her last-minute search for care, Fleming had to miss work, meaning that she didn’t make any money and risked losing the job for good. As her income fluctuated, she struggled to stay afloat.

“It was incredibly stressful,” says Fleming.

Fleming’s last-minute schedule is typical in the food-service industry and retail sectors, which together employ more than 25 million people. In recent decades, employers have increasingly shifted to what’s known as “just-in-time” scheduling, bringing in workers, sending them home earlier, or canceling shifts altogether in response to customer demand. According to some estimates, as many as one-third of workers in retail or food service receive less than one week notice on their schedules. For workers overall, nearly one in five learn their schedules less than one week in advance and for young workers and workers of color, that share is even higher.

For Fleming, already in an industry in which workers have little bargaining power, the sheer unpredictability of her schedule also left her feeling powerless as a worker. Forced to turn down lucrative shifts due to lack of child care, she was increasingly dependent on her employer for any shift. Nor was quitting an option.

“I was at a point where I was just struggling to pay bills,” says Fleming.

That sense of financial vulnerability is widely shared by workers with unpredictable schedules. According to a recent Brookings Institution report, just-in-time-scheduling destabilizes workers’ earnings, while income volatility often disrupts their ability to access safety net programs. Constantly shifting schedules also leave workers without the ability to improve their situations, either by going to school or by picking up a second job. 

Surveys indicate that workers with highly variable schedules are at greater risk of food insecurity and housing instability. Researchers at the Shift Project, which has surveyed nearly 100,000 workers at the country’s largest retail and food companies since 2016, have also found strong evidence that last-minute scheduling takes a psychological toll on employees. For the Shift Project, Daniel Schneider at the University of California Berkeley and Kristen Harknett at the University of California San Francisco studied workers with unpredictable schedules, including those given little notice before shifts were scheduled or canceled, and those subject to “clopening”—scheduled for a store’s opening and for its closing with hours off in between. Harknett and Schneider found that 70% of these workers reported experiencing psychological distress.

Harknett and Schneider warn that the fallout from work schedule instability extends beyond the workers themselves, disrupting the lives of their children as well: “Kids thrive in environments of security, consistency, and support. These environments are difficult to maintain in the face of on-call shifts, last-minute cancellations, changes to schedule timing, and clopening shifts.” Such disruptions may constrain children’s life opportunities from the very start, they argue.

A recent New York Times article contained even more dire warnings, noting the breadth of researching showing that “financial hardship, inconsistent routines, low-quality child care, and family stress affect children for years to come.”

Fortunately, a growing movement to demand more predictable schedules for workers is beginning to have an impact. In the last few years, a growing number of cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Seattle, have enacted legislation that requires large retail and food service companies to give workers more notice about their schedules, provide compensation in the event of sudden schedule changes, and provide a certain amount of time off between the end of the last shift and the beginning of the next one. And as workers use new leverage from post-pandemic labor shortages to push for higher pay and better working conditions, they’re also demanding more humane schedules. One recent study found that more predictable schedules increase productivity and sales.

As for Fleming, she now works as an organizer for Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, where she advocates for workers’ rights, including more predictable schedules for workers. Massachusetts is currently considering “fair workweek” legislation that would require employers to provide two weeks’ notice of scheduled shifts, allow employees to request specific hours without retaliation, and prohibit employers from scheduling less than 11 hours of rest time between shifts. Fleming says that looking back on her experience, she sees just how central the lack of control over her schedule was to her struggles as a worker and a single mother.

“If I’d had my schedule two weeks in advance, I would have been able to find help with child care or look for someone to fill a shift if I couldn’t work. But only having two or three days just made it impossible.”

Sources

Interview with Alicia Fleming, July 14, 2021.

Katherine Guyot and Richard V. Reeves, “Unpredictable Work Hours and Volatile Incomes are Long-term Risks for American Workers,” Up Front Blog, Brookings Institution, August 18, 2020.

Kristen Harknett and Daniel Schneider, “It’s About Time: How Work Schedule Instability Matters for Workers, Families, and Racial Inequality,” The Shift Project, October 2019.

Harknett and Schneider, “Consequences of Routine Work-Schedule Instability for Worker Health and Well-Being,” American Sociological Review, Vol 84, Issue 1, 2019.

Claire Cain Miller, “How Unpredictable Work Hours Turn Families Upside Down,” New York Times, October 16, 2019.

Stephanie Wykstra, “The Movement to Make Workers’ Schedules More Humane,” Vox, November 5, 2019.

With no union to protect them, the workers knew they were taking a risk by speaking up. But quitting wasn’t an option either. Low pay meant that Bellinger and her co-workers lived paycheck to paycheck. With no bargaining power to force their employer to enact safety precautions, the workers had no choice but to put their jobs and livelihoods on the line.

“Reopening the center on Monday is not in the best interest of the staff and does not take into account our collective voices,” the workers wrote, arguing that they didn’t feel safe going back to work until they’d tested negative and quarantined for two weeks—guidance they’d received from a local health clinic. Moreover, their request for hazard pay had been denied and they’d been forced to pay for virus testing out of their own pockets. Finally, the workers pointed to a workplace culture of “fear of retaliation and retribution in voicing concerns.”

Ten days later, five of the nine workers who signed the letter were fired. While managers cited cutbacks to the center’s programs as the official reason, Bellinger says that she doesn’t buy that explanation. “We spoke up and because of that we lost our jobs.”

Bellinger and her co-workers later sued Old Pine Center, claiming that the organization had violated Philadelphia’s COVID-19 anti-retaliation law. The measure, which went into effect in June 2020, prohibits Philadelphia employers from taking any “adverse employment action” against employees who’ve identified violations of COVID-19 public health orders from the city, state, or U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But it was management’s refusal to acknowledge the fear of many of the employees that rankled most, says Bellinger, who worked at Old Pine for two years. “No one ever asked if we were comfortable working with COVID,” says Bellinger. Nor did Old Pine management respond to the workers requests for safety equipment. Bellinger says that when she and her coworkers requested face shields for the children who’d be attending a summer camp, they were ignored.

That put Bellinger in an impossible situation, fearful of returning to work lest she endanger her own family, yet unable to stop working. “I have two small children, one with autism, and my mother lives with us. I was worried about them. [But] I’m the breadwinner. I live paycheck to paycheck, but at least I knew the paycheck was coming,” says Bellinger.

Philadelphia’s ordinance protecting workers is unusual—it was the first municipality in the country to enact such projections. While 14 states implemented expanded worker protections during the pandemic, workers who believed that their employers were endangering their health and safety during the pandemic had little recourse. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration received more than 9,000 pandemic-related complaints from workers but cited just 300 employers, fining them a total of $3.9 million. An investigation by journalists at Reuters found dozens of workplaces that were never investigated at all, or which inspectors took months to inspect. A subsequent Reuters investigation found that more than half of the employers cited by OSHA had yet to pay their fines.

The lawsuit filed by Bellinger and her co-workers is one of the first cases citing Philadelphia’s COVID-19 ordinance. While Bellinger is thankful to have some protection, she has paid a heavy price for speaking out at work. Nine months after losing her job Bellinger remains out of work.” She has since gone back to school to pursue a degree in human services in hopes of landing another job working with children. “I have a family to take care of and now I’m scared,” she said. “I’m just trying to make it.

Sources

Interview with Jeanette Bellinger, February 19, 2021.

Jeanette Bellinger et al. v. Old Pine Community Center.

Juliana Feliciano Reyes, “Philly workers fired after raising COVID-19 concerns are suing their former employer,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 2, 2021.

Chris Kirkham and Benjamin Lesser, “Special Report-U.S. regulators ignored workers’ COVID-19 safety complaints amid deadly outbreaks,” Reuters, January 6, 2021.

Kirkham, “Most U.S. firms hit with COVID-19 safety fines aren’t paying up,” Reuters, February 19, 2021.

Matthew Santoni, “Staff Say Pa. Community Center Axed Them For Virus Qualms,” Law360, January 29, 2021.

Deborah Berkowitz, “Which States and Cities have Adopted Comprehensive COVID-19 Worker Protections?” National Employment Law Project, December 21, 2020.

Photo of Jeanette Bellinger and son Kaden courtesy of Jeanette Bellinger

An extensive investigation by journalists Bernice Yeung and Michael Grabell at ProPublica found that meatpacking workers like Félicie Joseph put their lives on the line because they lacked the bargaining power enjoyed by meatpacking workers—indeed workers overall— in earlier decades:

Across the country, workers had been losing leverage against companies for decades. Workplace safety rules had been targeted by Reagan-era deregulation. Unionism was in a downward spiral. And in meatpacking, corporate power had grown with industry consolidation, forcing the once-mighty packinghouse workers union to merge with less fiery labor groups that also represented other industries.

Waterloo was once home to a powerful union and the largest packing house in the country paying workers in the 1960s wages that were the equivalent of $24–$32 per hour today.

But by the time Félicie Joseph arrived at the plant in 2017, those high wages were an historical relic. The old Rath Packing Company had long closed and the main employer was now Tyson. Skilled and semi-skilled meat cutting jobs had long been replaced with largely automated operations staffed by low-wage workers moving whole animal carcasses down an assembly line at dangerously high speeds.

Joseph joined a workforce that was vulnerable by design. Positions were filled by bringing in immigrants and refugees from all over the world. Their statuses, experiences, and language barriers made them less likely to complain of exploitation. Joseph, an immigrant from Haiti, made her way to northern Iowa after losing her job processing vegetables in Florida. Because she didn’t speak English, she was having trouble finding work there.

When COVID hit Waterloo, it was a perfect storm bringing peril to Joseph and her coworkers.

A lawsuit filed by the family of a Tyson worker who died of COVID-19, alleged that as the virus tore through the plant, Tyson required its employees to work long hours in cramped conditions without implementing safety measures or providing workers with essential personal protective equipment.

According to ProPublica, county public safety and health officials visiting the plant found “workers were standing elbow-to-elbow and across from one another. Only about a third wore face coverings. Some had fashioned masks out of bandanas and old T-shirts. One wore a sleep mask designed to cover eyes.”

As safety threats multiplied, the system was no longer set up to handle them. The “system of swift reporting and next-day inspections” in meatpacking plants had long since broken, according to one report. And when federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors did show up at the Waterloo plant, they left without taking action, hamstrung by a lack of regulations directly addressing COVID-19 and messages from higher ups to give companies the benefit of the doubt.

At the same time, workers were afraid to call in sick. As a health official in another town with a Tyson’s plant told reporters Yeung and Grabell, workers in the meatpacking industry “are well groomed to the expectation of working when ill to avoid punitive retaliation.”

So it is not a surprise that when Félicie Joseph got a sore throat and her muscles started to ache, she ignored a co-worker’s advice to skip her next shift and see a doctor. Joseph feared that if she didn’t show up to her job cutting up hog parts, she could be fired—something that Joseph and her 10 relatives back in Haiti who depended upon her wages could ill afford. Besides, Joseph’s own boss had been coughing for days but kept working anyway, so she would do the same thing, she said.

When a COVID-19 diagnosis later forced her to quarantine at home, she spent her days fearing that Tyson would fire her. Finally, on day 14 of her quarantine and unable to breathe, Joseph allowed a friend to call an ambulance. She died on the way to the hospital.

In the ultimate sign of a disregard for life—and the inherent cruelty of a system where workers don’t have the power to protect their own health and safety—managers at the facility reportedly took bets on the number of workers who would contract the virus.

While the managers involved were ultimately fired, that gives company executives an opportunity to say what happened at the plant was just a result of a few bad apples, warns a local community organizer.

“It’s just a game that they play,” Alejandro Ortiz, a community organizer with American Friends Service Committee Iowa and Iowa Justice For Our Neighbors, told The Courier, a daily newspaper in Waterloo.

Unfortunately, a deadly game for workers.

Sources

Kyle Bagenstose, Sky Chadde, and Rachel Axon, “COVID-19 Deaths Go Uninvestigated as OSHA Takes a Hands-off Approach to Meatpacking Plants,” USA Today, January 11, 2021.

Sydney Czyzon, “Workers at the Tyson Plant in Waterloo Kept Getting COVID-19. Where Was Their Union?” Courier, January 2, 2021.

Clark Kauffman, “Lawsuit: Tyson Managers Bet Money on How Many Workers Would Contract COVID-19,” Iowa Capital Dispatch, November 18, 2020.

Jane Mayer, “How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic,” New Yorker, July 20, 2020.

Bernice Yeung and Michael Grabell, “The Battle for Waterloo,” ProPublica, December 21, 2020.

Bernice Yeung and Michael Grabell, “Meatpacking Companies Dismissed Years of Warnings but Now Say Nobody Could Have Prepared for COVID-19,” ProPublica, August 20, 2020.

Photo by Taylor Glascock for ProPublica

“The last thing we want to do is lose our job because we’ll go back to being homeless and having nothing.”

Brown says that while she is barely hanging on, quitting isn’t an option. “Me and my sister, the last thing we want to do is lose our job because we’ll go back to being homeless and having nothing,” Brown told a reporter. “We’re in a tough situation, and this is all we can find that’s stable. Amazon comes to places when people are desperate.”

Her situation is far from unique. A recent U.S. Government Accountability study found that more than 4,000 Amazon warehouse workers in nine states are on food stamps.

Countless more Amazon workers struggle to pay the bills. Nor is finding another warehouse job an option for workers like Brown. As Amazon’s breakneck expansion continues—it is opening new warehouses in the U.S. at the rate of one per day—the company is dragging down wages for warehouse workers across the entire industry.

According to a recent Bloomberg analysis, in the 68 communities where Amazon opened its largest facilities, warehouse industry wages fell by more than 6% in the first two years after Amazon opened its doors. “Wages often tick higher in subsequent years, but don’t reach their pre-Amazon level till five years after a new facility opens—meaning that industry workers, on average, find themselves no better off half a decade after Amazon’s arrival,” the article said.

Amazon’s explosive growth, and the growth of other companies providing nonunion jobs, is also undermining the ability of workers to band together to demand higher wages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in the logistics sector declined more than in any other industry, dropping from 21.3% in 2009 to 16.1% a decade later.

For Courtenay Brown, a promotion during the holiday season provided a much-needed boost in pay. Amazon assigned her to train new workers and assist in opening new facilities, for which she was paid an additional $2 per hour. But the promotion was just temporary. Unless Amazon promoted her permanently, Brown would be back to handling packages and earning $17 an hour. The odds were not in her favor. According to Bloomberg, just 3.5% of Amazon’s more than 1 million employees in the company’s logistics group received promotions last year.

Brown also faces another obstacle. She recently joined with community groups in New Jersey to demand better treatment and higher pay for Amazon workers. Her colleagues warned her that her advocacy could get her fired. But it was a risk Brown was willing to take.

Sources

Matt Day and Spencer Soper, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career into a McJob,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2020.

Patrice Taddonio, “‘You’re Just Disposable’: New Accounts from Former Amazon Employees Raise Questions About Working Conditions,” Frontline, February 14, 2020.

Michael Corkery and Karen Weise, “Amazon Workers Near Vote on Joining Union at Alabama Warehouse,” New York Times, December 22, 2020.

Miller went to work at Sears because of its reputation for taking good care of its employees. Now that compact was being shredded before his eyes. Still, he was reluctant to leave. While there were other auto repair shops in coastal New Jersey, none paid the sort of middle-class wages and benefits that Sears was known for. Bruce had spent half his life working for the company and had planned on staying until he retired—with a pension. Leaving now would mean losing the benefits his years of service entitled him to, and a reduced standard of living when he couldn’t work anymore. And so he stayed on, hoping that things would improve.

Miller was able to hold onto his job until Sears declared bankruptcy in 2018, and his store closed its doors for good. But his ability to bargain with his employer all but evaporated after Sears’ takeover. As power shifted away from a retailer known for treating employees well, and towards a hedge fund focused on returning value to shareholders, the pay, benefits and working conditions of Miller and his coworkers drastically deteriorated.

The takeover of Sears by ESL Investments, a hedge fund controlled by Eddie Lampert, was one part of a massive retail merger. Lampert used the retail giant KMart to purchase Sears, arguing that the deal would help the companies compete against Walmart, which had eclipsed both retailers and was eroding their market share. But while the story of Sears’ fall from one-time retail giant is uniquely complicated—Eddie Lampert, the head of ESL Investment, the company’s chief lender, was also the CEO of Sears and as its chairman—the phenomenon of retailers going bankrupt after being saddled with debt by private equity firms is an increasingly common one.

Toys ‘R’ Us, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, was backed by a trio of private equity and investment firms. Also on the list: Payless ShoeSource, Radio Shack, and popular mall-based retailers, the Limited, Wet Seal, Claire’s and Aeropostale. For these retailers, already reeling from the rise of online shopping, their financial woes were greatly exacerbated by hedge funds and private equity firms that loaded them up with debt.

The financial strategy of the investment firms—slashing expenses, bloating balance sheets and increasing shareholder returns—also puts them on a collision course with the interests of retail workers. According to one report, more than one third of retail layoffs in 2016 and 2017 alone were thanks to private-equity ownership. “Hedge funds are systematically destroying jobs across the nation,” says Carrie Gleason, campaign manager for the worker advocacy group Rise Up Retail. “From Toys ‘R’ Us to Sears, these financial predators are extracting the value out of these retail establishments, forcing the closure of thousands of stores, and throwing tens of thousands of workers into the streets.”

“I lost my American dream—my income, my house, and my medical insurance—while Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund walked away with millions.”

Lampert and his hedge fund emerged from Sears’ bankruptcy largely unscathed, at least financially. The failure of Sears and other high-profile companies has raised harsh questions about the role played by investment firms in their demise. But more than bad headlines will be needed to redress imbalance between heavy-handed investors focused on short-term profits and the interests of workers. Rise Up Retail has called for such measures as giving workers seats on corporate boards in order to reign in executives, and mandating protections for retail workers whose companies get taken over by outside investment firms. New Jersey recently became the first state in the country to guarantee severance pay in the wake of mass layoffs.

The new law was inspired, in part, by the stories of workers like Miller. After 35 years as a Sears employee, he received just eight weeks of severance pay. As Miller wrote in a recent op-ed, “I lost my American dream—my income, my house, and my medical insurance—while Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund walked away with millions.”

Sources

Bruce Miller, “Legislators Must Choose New Jersey Workers over Billionaire Bullies,” New Jersey Star Ledger, January 10, 2020.

Bryce Covert, “Hedge-Fund Ownership Cost Sears Workers Their Jobs. Now They’re Fighting Back,” Economic Hardship Reporting Project, April 24, 2019.

Bryce Covert, “Retail Workers are More Vulnerable than Ever. A New Campaign Wants to Protect Their Jobs,” Vox, September 27, 2018.

Paul R. La Monica, “Hedge Funds Have Killed Sears and Many Other Retailers,” CNN Business, October 16, 2018.

Julie Creswell and Michael Corkery, “How the Hedge Fund Manager Running Sears Cut His Losses,” New York Times, October 18, 2018.

“Pirate Equity: How Wall Street Firms are Pillaging American Retail,” Center for Popular Democracy, July, 2019.

Rodriguez later tested positive for COVID-19, along with nearly three dozen of her coworkers and their extended family members, including a 10-month-old child.

In a lawsuit filed in June, and an array of complaints filed with state and local health authorities, Rodriguez and her coworkers described a workplace that posed an imminent danger to employees and the surrounding community. As the virus roared through the franchise, Rodriguez and the other workers kept coming into work, because they couldn’t afford not to. With no sick time, missing work meant not getting paid—not an option for workers getting by on minimum wage. And with unemployment spiking amid the pandemic, quitting wasn’t an option either. Rodriguez feared that if she left her McDonald’s job she wouldn’t be able to find another one. While the company’s denial of paid sick time was illegal under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act enacted in March, the McDonald’s workers knew nothing about it.

“Imagine living here without any money,” Rodriguez told a reporter at the time. “I can’t stay in my home if I don’t pay the rent, and I need to eat and send money to my family.”

The dilemma faced by the Bay Area fast-food workers has been playing out in workplaces across the country: stay on the job in conditions that are potentially dangerous, even life-threatening, or quit to join an army of job seekers at a time of record unemployment. Workers who make the agonizing choice to continue working have little if any recourse when it comes to demanding stricter safety standards on the job. By the start of the pandemic, just 10% of American workers were represented by unions, which do provide workers with ways to demand protections at work. As a Harvard report on worker power in the age of COVID-19 concluded, the vast majority of workers have “no voice in the life-and-death decisions being made about how their work is carried out and the protections that they have in the workplace.”

“Imagine living here without any money. I can’t stay in my home if I don’t pay the rent.”

The absence of unions, coupled with the lack of enforcement of federal health and safety directives, has meant that companies have responded to the threat posed by COVID-19 to workers haphazardly, if at all. While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued guidance for preparing workplaces for the coronavirus, it is nonbinding. OSHA has also proven unwilling to punish employers for COVID-related health and safety abuses. While nearly 6,000 workers filed complaints in the first months of the pandemic, OSHA issued just a single citation—to a nursing home in Georgia that was slow to report hospitalizations from its facility. When Democrats pressed OSHA to issue an emergency rule that would force companies to comply with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance for COVID-19, the agency refused.

The COVID crisis has revealed just how little bargaining power workers have, even in life and death situations. The cumulative impact of decades of legislation and court decisions aimed at eroding labor rights has profoundly shifted the balance of power away from workers and towards their employers. Even the range of occupations afforded basic labor protections has shrunk dramatically as employers have steadily replaced the ranks of full-time employees with contract laborers and gig employees who are not covered under many workplace-related laws.

But the pandemic has also emboldened workers to demand more say over their working conditions, including workplace safety. Rodriguez and her McDonald’s co-workers went on strike, forcing the business to shut down for weeks. The right to strike under the National Labor Relations Act covers nonunion employees—although workers still face significant risks of retaliation. Five employees then filed a public nuisance lawsuit, requesting a temporary restraining order that would keep the restaurant closed until the franchise owner complied with minimum health and safety standards, as well as paid sick leave laws.

A California state court recently sided with Lambert and her co-workers, ordering the Oakland McDonald’s to remain closed until it could demonstrate that it had enacted safety measures to protect its employees and the public. The conditions included tracing the contacts of anyone who was suspected of contracting COVID-19 at the restaurant.

Sources

Annie Lowrey, “The Workplace Powers That Employees Need,” Atlantic, June 24, 2020.

Alexia Fernández Campbell, “McDonald’s, Marriott Franchises Didn’t Pay COVID-19 Sick Leave. That Was illegal,” Center for Public Integrity, August 3, 2020.

Sharon Block and Ben Sachs, Worker Power and Voice in the Pandemic Response, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School, 2020.

Scott Horsely, “U.S. Workplace Safety Rules Missing In The Pandemic,” NPR’s All Things Considered, May 1, 2020.

Josh Eidleson, “How the American Worker Got Fleeced,” Bloomberg Businessweek, July 2, 2020.

According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, an estimated 37.7 million American workers are at high risk of becoming seriously ill as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, totaling nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce. Yet, like Hanks, these same workers also feel the most pressure to return to work in order to hold onto their health benefits. Without insurance coverage, they would be unable to treat the underlying health conditions—asthma, heart conditions, diabetes, and compromised immune systems—that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns place them at the greatest risk.

In the United States, more than 60% of workers receive their health insurance through their job, the relic of tax policies implemented during World War II. As the unemployment rate surged in the wake of the pandemic, reaching its highest level since the Great Depression, workers who lost their jobs also lost employer-provided health insurance. According to the Economic Policy Institute, since the onset of the pandemic economic shock, an estimated 6.2 million workers have lost access to health insurance that they previously got through their employer (though not every worker who loses coverage that they received through their employer loses health insurance coverage overall).

While the Affordable Care Act has helped Americans get insurance outside of work by enabling them to purchase subsidized coverage from new private insurance marketplaces, the cheapest plans available on the insurance marketplaces tend to be of lesser quality than what employers provide, while patients are expected to pay more of their treatment costs via copays and deductibles. And in the 12 states that have refused to expand Medicaid, workers who’ve lost health coverage through their employer may find affordable options hard to come by.

“In other countries you don’t hear about people losing health insurance when they lose their jobs.”

While the pandemic’s economic impact has been felt around the globe, the U.S. is unique among wealthy industrialized countries in that workers losing their jobs are also losing their health insurance. “In other countries you don’t hear about people losing health insurance when they lose their jobs,” says Larry Levitt, vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “It is one of the many ways the U.S. health system has made us so much more vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic than other countries.”

Patti Hanks ultimately decided that the risk of going without coverage was a greater threat to her health than possible exposure to coronavirus at work. Had she declined to return to work, her health insurance was not the only benefit Hanks would have lost. Employers in Virginia, where Hanks works, can report workers who refuse to return, putting their unemployment benefits in jeopardy. In states where such return-to-work policies are being aggressively enforced, including Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee, jobless workers who have opted not to return to their workplaces when offered the chance must be directly affected by COVID-19 to continue receiving unemployment benefits. Fear of getting sick—even for workers whose health places them at high risk of becoming seriously ill—is not considered a valid excuse for refusing to return to work.

Sources

Josh Bivens and Ben Zipperer, Health Insurance and the COVID-19 Shock: What We Know So Far About Health Insurance Losses and What It Means for Policy, Economic Policy Institute, August, 2020.

Aaron E. Carroll, “The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance,” New York Times, September 5, 2017.

Gary Claxton, et al, “Almost One in Four Adult Workers Is Vulnerable to Severe Illness from COVID-19,” Kaiser Family Foundation, June 15, 2020.

Jack Healy, “Workers Fearful of the Coronavirus Are Getting Fired and Losing Their Benefits,” New York Times, June 4, 2020.

Kaiser Family Foundation, “Status of State Action on the Medicaid Expansion Decision,” updated November 2, 2020.

Sarah Kliff, “Why the Sickest Workers May Be Among the First Back on the Job,” New York Times, June 19, 2020.

Ally Schweitzer, “More Than 12,000 Virginians Have Lost Unemployment Benefits Because They Refuse to Return to Work,” WAMU, June 19, 2020.