THE OTHER ESSENTIALS BY NIKOLAI MATHER

Pg. 9 APR 22 - MAY 5, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM NEWS & OPINION FEATURE THE OTHER ESSENTIALS Sanitation workers feel neglected and endangered in crisis BY NIKOLAI MATHER

As an employee at the City of Charlotte Solid Waste Services Department (SWS), which collects garbage, recycling and other waste from Charlotte’s residents, Joshua has seen his workplace change dramatically to combat the spread of COVID-19. But he and many of his coworkers are worried that it hasn’t changed enough.

“You on edge,” explained Joshua, whose name has been changed so that he could speak freely. “It’s like, man, I have to pray before I get in my truck every day. When you’re dealing with trash, you really don’t know what you’re dealing with. You could be picking up someone’s trash and not knowing that someone is sick.”

After Mayor Vi Lyles declared a state of emergency in response to COVID-19 on March 15, the Charlotte City Workers Union (CCWU), a chapter of the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, issued a letter to Lyles and City Manager Marcus Jones calling for “commonsense measures” to protect public service workers and other community members. Those measures included providing adequate personal protective equipment, free COVID-19 testing, free childcare for local government employees, granting double time hazard pay and staggered shifts so as to observe social distancing.

Over 200 city workers signed a petition supporting these measures, which CCWU delivered along with the letter.

Initially, the city granted a staggered schedule to all employees. But by April 6, SWS had scrapped the staggered schedule and ordered automatic truck drivers to return to work. The union condemned the change, stating in another letter that the return to normal schedules “will certainly increase the number of infections of employees.”

In a press release issued on April 7, the CCWU alleges that the change was made in response to complaints from residents who did not like that the staggered schedules led to later pick-ups.

“Does this mean that the city is more concerned about rich people having their trash picked up at 7 p.m., rather than the lives of sanitation workers?” the release asks.

CCWU also detailed the workplace conditions under COVID-19, stating that workers were not supplied with any masks or hand sanitizer and only given one pair of latex gloves per day. The union decried rumors of a 3% salary increase for hazard pay.

“The City is sitting on 16% reserves totaling over $116 million for a ‘rainy day,’ and meanwhile the City Council has not even convened a meeting since March 16,” stated Dominic Harris, president of the CCWU, in the press release. ”They need to immediately call a meeting and release these funds to defend essential city workers.”

In an email, SWS spokesperson Brandi Williams defended the current personal protective equipment policy: “[C]rews are provided with personal protective equipment to include masks, hand sanitizers, wipes and gloves for everyone. We also conducted respirator training for those who want to use respirators.”

When asked about access to N95 masks, Joshua said the training only showed how to use the masks, and didn’t actually provide them.

“They didn’t have those masks for us. They told us that it was on order,” he said.

Joshua also alleged that workers at the waste treatment facilities only get one pair of latex gloves per day, and have trouble accessing adequate hand sanitizer and disinfectant.

“They gave us disinfectant wipes, but they would only give you one [per day],” he said. “You’re getting in and out of your truck, you’re working through the day, but you’ve only got one pair of gloves and one wipe. It’s not affecting anything.”

Employees have also noted concerns about SWS accelerating its training program for automated garbage truck drivers. The training process typically takes four weeks, enough time to give new drivers ample time to get used to driving a bulkier vehicle from the right-hand side.

CCWU alleges that the department is unsafely expediting the process by attempting to train new drivers in only a week.

Joshua confirmed that SWS has offered a $100 bonus to drivers who complete the automation training in a week. CCWU worries that this could lead to even more accidents and injuries.

“One week is not long enough for automation training,” said Joshua, who has experience with driving automatic trucks. “Drivers can get relaxed, they can get in accidents, they can tear up mailboxes … Are you saying that my life and my health is only worth $100?”

In an email, Williams stated that SWS hoped to “make a full transition to automated-only collection using all available drivers.”

CCWU also cited the recent death of Adrian Grubbs, an employee at Raleigh’s Solid Waste Department, as cause for concern. A father of three, Grubbs tested positive for COVID-19 and died shortly thereafter. In the April 7 press release, CCWU expressed concerns “about their own health and safety … especially as the number of positive test results and deaths continue to climb.”

Grubbs’ death is all the more reason for a staggered schedule, Harris said: “We should not have to risk our lives because rich people want trash collected before dark.”

With all this in mind, CCWU launched another petition to secure double hazard pay, increased personal protective equipment, a complete return to the staggered work schedule and daily screenings for COVID-19 symptoms. With 265 signatures and counting, there is hope that the city government will give their demands more consideration.

The city manager recently recommended that the city give a 5% “premium pay” increase to first responders and other city workers who have frequent, direct contact with the public — a suggestion that Harris said “is not enough.”

Joshua agreed.

“They need to pay sanitation workers a lot more attention,” he said. “Definitely think about hazard pay, and not just give us pennies, because it may just be the cost of our lives.”

With the next city council meeting set for April 27, workers hope to gain more ground. Above all, Joshua hopes to see more unity from the city.

“It’s not just about me picking up trash; it’s making sure that we feel that we are loved and that we’re all in this together. Don’t just think about one side or one group of people.” INFO@QCNERVE.COM A LOCAL UNION LODGE SHOWED THEIR SUPPORT FOR SANITATION WORKERS. PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN

Pg. 10 APR 22 - MAY 5, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM NEWS & OPINION OPINION COLUMN WORLD-CLASS STATE In a global pandemic, North Carolina finds a way to stand out BY MARY C. CURTIS

North Carolina is never content playing second fiddle to any other state, for good or ill. Of course, that would be the case during a pandemic and its aftermath. A partial list: Any politicians out there being accused of taking advantage for personal gain? Check. Questions on how states will accommodate voters skittish about choosing between their health and their right to cast a ballot? Check. Fights over expanding Medicaid after a health crisis forces a hard look at who can and cannot count on insurance coverage? Check.

Oh, and a touch of Franklin Graham as a hero with reservations. Our state never disappoints.

Because one particular piece of news has been overshadowed by the increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the state and the nation, you might have imagined it’s disappeared altogether.

But not only is there an ongoing ethics investigation into stock purchases by North Carolina’s senior U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, reports have revealed that other stock market dealings by the Republican and the 2017 sale of his Washington, D.C., home to a donor and lobbyist are also getting second looks.

To be fair, Burr himself has asked for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation of the stock transactions. (The Department of Justice in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reported CNN, has started its own probe.) But this was only after ProPublica reported he sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million of stock holdings while receiving classified briefings as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his defense, Burr said the sales were based not on any insider information, but on public reports at the time.

The senator’s own public message about the dangers of coronavirus was mixed. There was a Feb. 7 Fox News column written with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) that said, “The United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.”

Yet, in a Feb, 27 speech to “a small group of wellconnected constituents,” according to NPR, which obtained the audio of his luncheon remarks, Burr told members of the Tar Heel Circle: “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history.”

He continued, “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.” Recently, ProPublica reported the 2018 sale of interests in a small Dutch fertilizer company before a stock collapse.

Interestingly, Burr was one of only three senators who voted against the Stock (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act of 2012, signed by President Barack Obama, which “prohibits the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees.”

Burr is not the only senator under scrutiny for stock trades, and at least the topic of the propriety of members of Congress owning and trading stocks is again a part of the conversation. Still, it would be nice if North Carolina could sit out this particular COVID controversy. Burr previously had said he will retire from politics in 2022 — probably a good idea.

The recent Wisconsin primary, held while other states postponed their own elections, was characterized by long lines, particularly in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, where only five polling places remained open, instead of the usual 180. Not coincidentally, that city is where a larger percentage of the state’s minority voters live.

The Republican majority in the Wisconsin legislature had resisted calls from the state’s Democratic governor to stop in-person voting, taking the matter to the courts. The Supreme Court eventually ruled absentee ballots had to be postmarked by election day, even though many voters had not received requested ballots by then. The legislature had tried to strip the powers of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as soon as he was elected. (North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could relate.)

Expect more calls by Democrats across the country to make accommodations in a health crisis for mail-in and absentee ballots, and calls by Republicans with a few exceptions, to restrict them.

Georgia House Speaker, Republican David Ralston, said increased mail-in balloting would be “devastating” to Republicans in his state, agreeing with the president, who mailed in his own ballot, though both also cited opportunities for fraud in their reasoning.

Several red and blue states, including Oregon, Washington and Utah, already vote by mail with few problems. And the highest profile case of absentee voter fraud actually took place in a Republican race here in North Carolina, where the 9th District U.S. House contest had to have a do-over in 2019.

Yet state Senate leader Phil Berger, North Carolina’s top Republican lawmaker, has already dismissed suggestions from state elections officials to make voting more accessible in the shadow of the pandemic, citing the GOP 9th District scandal but somehow finding a way to excoriate “progressive, liberal Democratic groups” to WFAE in the process.

That takes more than a little nerve, though it’s not surprising, considering the voting rights battle has been going on in North Carolina since the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling.

The latest voting law is still mired in the courts, which blocked its implementation in this year’s primary.

You would think state Republicans would have given up after a federal court declared an earlier version of the bill targeted African-American voters with “almost surgical precision.” You would be wrong.

Another continuing fight that the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare has been over the expansion of Medicaid. So many of the states now feeling the strain of an overloaded health-care system, with many of the uninsured or underinsured reluctant to seek care, have been in the South. The resistance of Republican leadership has stalled the move and the state budget even as Kansas — yes, Kansas — has moved toward a compromise on the issue.

At least North Carolina’s Franklin Graham has reached across state lines to offer assistance in the epicenter of the virus, in the form of a Central Park field hospital associated with his Samaritan’s Purse.

But there is a catch: protests and pushback over a statement of faith many of its contractors and some full-time volunteers must sign stating, “We believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.” On his Facebook page, Graham called critics, which included members of Congress, “tone deaf.”

Another North Carolina-based minister, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, in a wide-ranging interview I conducted for a TIME Magazine profile, did not mention Graham in particular. But during our conversation, Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, criticized “religious nationalism” and the narrative “that says the only moral issue today is not poverty and dealing with racism but being against gay people, being against women’s right to choose, being for guns being for tax cuts and being for prayers in the schools.”

Yes, North Carolina, and its people, can also surprise you.

Mary C. Curtis, a columnist at Roll Call and a contributor to WCCB-TV and WFAE, has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. Follow Mary on Twitter at @mcurtisnc3. INFO@QCNERVE.COM we are open for shipping orders, curbside pickup, & select delivery call or email us info@lunchboxrecords.com with your needs stay safe voted creating loafing

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