The Ripple Effect of Covid-19 is Far Reaching
The Ripple Effect of Covid-19 is Far Reaching
What’s being left unsaid is the number of workers who could be infected (at worst) or impacted (at best) because they have no choice.
What’s being left unsaid is the number of workers who could be infected (at worst) or impacted (at best) because they have no choice but to go to work because they don’t get any PTO or can’t work from home.
In what is now being called a pandemic, the coronavirus (Covid-19) is becoming increasingly disconcerting:
Pearl Jam has canceled the first leg of their North American tour.
Music and entertainment annual staple SXSW — canceled.
FOX News, A&E, and AMC have canceled their television advertising upfront presentations — expect more.
Corporate directives are encouraging people to work from home.
Now all of that may not seem like much if you don’t have money invested in stocks, aren’t a Pearl Jam fan or don’t give a shit about entertainment or television advertising. That’s fair.
But what if you can’t work from home? What about the impact on those workers who don’t have the freedom to work from home?
It’s all connected.
LET’S LOOK AT THE PEARL JAM TOUR
Rock and roll tours (any tour really) incorporate several union workers in driving their sets and crews from gig to gig as well as loading and unloading at each venue. That’s been significantly delayed.
The band stays at hotels. Whether they’re five stars or economy is of no significance because now that 75–100+ people group isn’t staying anywhere.
Most bands usually have meals catered at the venues they’re playing at for themselves and the crew before the show. No tour, no catering.
The band and crew may stop along the way to get gas or snacks or eat somewhere, really the way anyone might when traveling around the country. Now they won’t be.
Big deal, right? So wealthy rock stars had to push a few dates?
Well, it is a big deal. In each one of those situations, through no fault of the band or its management, the people who are impacted are the people at the lower rung of the economic tier.
The union members who were relying on the tour are out of a job for…well, anyone’s guess at this point.
The hotels aren’t filling as many rooms which could have implications for the front line workers like the maids, etc.
The gigs won’t be catered, impacting many local small businesses because I have to believe the band has a significant say, if not control, about who will cater their backstage meals…and I just can’t believe it would be the venue’s food (Ewww).
And on and on and on…
While justified, these cancellations are going to have an impact on those workers who live paycheck to paycheck. It’s simple, oftentimes, if they don’t work, they don’t make money.
This may just be the beginning of even more cancellations.
I know what I am talking about.
MY EXPERIENCE
One summer many years ago I had three jobs. I worked at a bookstore, overnight at a gas station and weekends I was the expeditor — the person who preps and organizes the food before the server delivers it —at an Italian restaurant. I touched every dish before it went out to the table.
One Friday after a particularly busy night at the restaurant, I went out for a few drinks after work. I drank a lot back in those days. A lot.
I woke up the next morning with a tremendous hangover and about 20 minutes late to work at the bookstore. I hopped in the shower and off I went.
I couldn’t call out sick, I didn’t get sick days…besides, I wasn’t sick, I was hungover.
As punishment for my tardiness, the managers had decided that I would wear the Curious George costume for the kids happening that was taking place that Saturday afternoon. Perhaps a little too punitive, I was in no position to protest.
Around 12:30 that afternoon, I donned the Curious George costume for my special kind of hell.
Being trapped in a Curious George outfit on a hot July afternoon is a wonderful way to sweat out the previous nights’ alcohol. As I peeled the outfit off, I had to hurry to get to the restaurant to prep.
I was tired. I was achy and my stomach itched.
As I was changing into a t-shirt at the restaurant, I noticed some little bumps on my stomach. All I could think was that I had gotten some kind of rash from the costume.
Didn’t give it too much thought and went about slinging pasta for five hours.
It being a Saturday night, we were busy, I handled about 250–300 dinners that night. After the dinner rush, I had to tap out. I told the chef I and went immediately home and crawled into bed.
I woke up the next morning and noticed the bumps had spread and I felt even shittier. Luckily, I had a rare day off. So I jumped in my car and went to my 24-hour clinic — my mother.
I showed her the bumps on my stomach and she let out one of those huge Mom sighs, “Oh, you have chickenpox. Finally.”
“WHAT?! Whadda ya mean ‘finally’? Didn’t I have these as a kid?”
“Well, I tried to give them to you as a child, but you wouldn’t get them.”
I guess there is a certain amount of sadism in being a parent.
When I asked if there was a vaccine (we were not anti-vaxxers), she said that it didn’t exist when I was a kid. So, she encouraged me to go to the real walk-in clinic.
In case you don’t know chickenpox is VERY contagious.
I walked into a room full of about 15 people, adults, and children. After telling the desk nurse that I thought I had chickenpox, I was immediately ushered into an examination room. I had my diagnosis (chickenpox) and was being hurried out the back way with a surgical mask. All in under ten minutes.
Knowing how contagious it was, all I could think about was how many dishes I handled the night before.
But if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid (and I didn’t work for ten days after being diagnosed with chickenpox).
A couple of years later, I was down to just one job — bartending.
I had gotten a cold that was accompanied by a rather beefy cough. I just figured it was nothing and mu cough was the Marlboro reds I smoked back then. However, by the end of the week and having worked several shifts handling food, pouring beer and scooping ice to make drinks, I noticed my cough had gotten worse and I was run down.
After my Friday lunch shift, my girlfriend popped round, took one look at me and said, “You’re sick. You need to go to the doctor.”
I argued that I didn’t have insurance (I didn’t), couldn’t afford it (I couldn’t), I had to work (I did)…and if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid.
After four years together she had accepted much of my obstinance, but we both knew when I had to get in line. She folded her arms and said again, “You’re sick. You need to go to the doctor.”
The next day she drove me to the chickenpox clinic. The doctor looked me over, listened to my lungs and my cough and stated flatly, “You have pneumonia.” When I asked if I also had the boogie-woogie flu, he was in no mood — he looked at me and sternly: “Young man, this is nothing to joke about. You’re sick. People die from this. You also should not be around anyone for at least five days. You’re contagious.”
All I heard was FIVE DAYS?!
Immediately, I thought of a few things.
The doctor was right — there was no way I could work.
How was I gonna get my shifts covered (if you’ve never worked in a restaurant you have no idea the anxiety this causes)?
Not working for a few days was going to have a profound impact on my income.
I’m not proud of either of these two moments in my working life. If I had known I was as sick as I was and as contagious as I was, I’d like to think I would’ve been responsible and not gone to work. But I don’t know…what I do know is that in many part-time jobs and food service — if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. And forget about insurance benefits.
So when I hear about all these cancellations as a result of this pandemic, yes, I think about how deadly it is…but I also think about all the shift workers who rely on this kind of work to support themselves.
THE DATA
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, “less than one-quarter of workers employed in the ‘accommodation and food services’ industry receives paid sick days.”
A study of Chicago-area restaurants found that 96.2 percent of workers reported having no paid sick days — 75.9 percent reported having worked while sick.
A study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases investigated foodborne outbreaks of norovirus disease and concluded: “Infected food handlers were the source of 53 percent of outbreaks and may have contributed to 82 percent of outbreaks.”
A few years ago, a Seattle poll found that 69 percent of city voters supported a measure to require businesses in the city to give workers paid sick time. Under this plan, a business between 4–49 workers would have to offer one hour of sick time for every 50 hours worked, eligible after six months of employment.
These types of initiatives were gaining traction until…the NRA stepped in to begin a preemptive campaign against such efforts.
No, not the National Rifle Association, the other NRA — the National Restaurant Association.
The NRA has been principal backers of this preemptive movement — pumping no less than $100,000 into opposing a sick-leave proposal in Denver.
According to records with the Sunlight Foundation’s OpenStates.org, “Preemption laws backed by the restaurant industry have been passed in at least six other states — Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kansas, and Wisconsin — where the bills were all signed by Republican governors. Other preemption bills have been proposed in states like Michigan, Indiana, and Alabama.”
Here again, we see politicians genuflecting for corporate interests.
The fact is that instituting a PTO (Paid Time Off) policy is somewhat of a non-issue. Foodservice is a transient and stopgap industry for many.
So if, for example, you have a PTO policy where you gain one hour of PTO for every fifty hours worked after six months…well, given the nature of the business, the likelihood of that applying to 100% of your employees, 100% of the time is slim because people move on.
It would be impossible to gauge the number of food service workers carrying a virus at any one time. Having hygiene policies and government certifications is great but as we are seeing so clearly with Covid-19, these policies are neutered the minute a virus enters any area.
It would be of much greater benefit to everyone if the minute someone felt sick, they could call in sick and not have the anxiety of losing both their income and their job. But that just doesn’t exist for many workers today.
And here we sit at the cusp of a worldwide pandemic that is far more damaging than I feel people are realizing. Of course, the Covid-19 virus is bad, but the ripple effect of all this goes beyond the virus.
And look, it’s right that these things are being canceled. It’s an intelligent and prudent move. And I’m not saying you should avoid your favorite restaurant or watering hole. I’m suggesting just the opposite. Those people working there need you to go.
This battle for benefits for front line workers is nothing new. Unfortunately, politicians, lobbyists and corporations see no benefit in providing PTO and insurance benefits to many of these workers and that’s just greed.
Maybe after this, they’ll reconsider such things…but historically, corporations and politics don’t always seem to place the best interest of people at the top of their “to do” list.