From the USW International President Archive (Page 5)

When Dan Hoskins tried to organize colleagues at an Oregon plant last year, vindictive managers marched him past as many workers as possible enroute to a disciplinary meeting in the human resources office.

The company wanted to create a climate of fear, Hoskins recalled, not only by threatening his job but ensuring others saw “Mr. Leader Pants getting written up.”

From trumped-up disciplinary charges to threats of layoffs and other scare tactics, corporations wage ferocious wars of intimidation to sabotage organizing campaigns and torment union supporters.

“You’re in a war zone,” explained Hoskins, who willingly shouldered the mistreatment because he understands the benefits unions bring to a workplace. “The tension is thick, and you know it’s going to be that way for months.”

Sadly, abused workers can expect no help from the Trump administration, which is busy trying to exterminate labor unions.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the urgent need for stronger workplace protections, Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ramped up a scorched-earth campaign aimed at annihilating organized labor and subjugating American workers.

The string of NLRB rulings amounts to death by a thousand cuts, each one chipping away at the long-established rights and practices enabling working people to join together to build better lives.

For example, the NLRB—run by Trump’s hand-picked corporate cronies—imposed additional, unnecessary steps to the union election procedure solely to drag out the process and give employers more time to thwart organizing efforts.

And the agency went further, empowering employers to begin withholding email addresses and other information unions need merely to contact prospective voters.

The board also ruled that employers may discipline a worker just for mentioning a union drive to a colleague during work hours. In a decision rooted in spite, rather than logic, it concluded the mere reference to an organizing effort—even an offhand remark—constituted an illegal solicitation of a colleague’s vote.

The NLRB is ostensibly responsible for protecting workers’ rights. But under Trump, it’s stacking the deck in favor of greedy corporations desperate to silence workers’ voices and bust unions at any cost.

Thrown out of work by the COVID-19 recession, hundreds of thousands of unemployed North Carolina residents now risk losing their lights and air-conditioning as well.

Because their wages failed to both cover regular expenses and let them save for emergencies, these workers had no financial cushion to soften the blow of sudden unemployment.

They simply cannot pay mounting household bills. And if North Carolina’s moratorium on electricity shutoffs expires next month, enabling utilities to terminate service for overdue customers, their plight will get that much grimmer.

Although the pandemic pushed these workers to the financial brink, it was the nation’s unjust and dysfunctional economy that left them vulnerable to disaster in the first place.

Only a revitalized labor movement can fix this system, which now works solely for the rich.

Decades of soaring income inequality rendered tens of millions of Americans just one or two missed paychecks away from financial calamity.

While CEO and shareholder income skyrocketed over the past four decades, ordinary Americans’ wages stagnated. Even those juggling multiple jobs struggle to feed their families, leaving them unable to save for retirement or squirrel away money for emergencies.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Labor unions force corporations to provide workers with family-sustaining wages, affordable health insurance, viable retirement plans, safe working conditions and other benefits that help workers survive crises like the pandemic.

And only the growth of unions—along with a much-needed strengthening of U.S. labor rights—can restore fairness to the cruel economic system laid bare by COVID-19.

In addition to the more than 146,000 Americans killed by the coronavirus, the recession triggered by the pandemic pushed unemployment to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

Rich Cucarese and other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 4889 tend a vegetable garden, cook meals and operate a food pantry for their neighbors in Philadelphia’s struggling Nicetown community.

Nicetown went into decline decades ago as corporations shut a string of factories, eliminating thousands of family-sustaining jobs that anchored the neighborhood. Blight festered, poverty soared, and government officials looked the other way.

Now, as much as Cucarese and his colleagues want to revitalize the community, there’s just no way they can do it on their own.

Reversing decades of decline and neglect—in Nicetown and other decimated manufacturing communities across America—will require bold, sustained action like what Joe Biden proposed in his Build Back Better manufacturing blueprint.

The Democratic presidential candidate envisions major investments in manufacturing, technology, and research and development that will create millions of middle-class jobs and revitalize hard-hit communities across the country.

Just as important, he wants to equitably distribute these new opportunities while providing the educational access and labor protections essential to ensuring that all citizens have a shot at the American dream.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which cost millions of jobs and exposed America’s struggle to produce critical goods like face masks, clearly demonstrated what residents of Nicetown have known for decades: Band-Aids and half measures aren’t enough. The nation needs sweeping, coordinated action to rebuild manufacturing capacity.

For all the damage they suffered, Nicetown and other beleaguered manufacturing communities still have potential.

Biden’s plan would unleash it.

“There are definitely people in the community who are trying everything they can to make the area viable,” said Cucarese, Local 4889’s Rapid Response coordinator and an assistant operator on the galvanizing line at U.S. Steel’s plant in Fairless Hills, about 25 miles from Nicetown. “There’s despair, but there’s also hope.”

Over the past quarter-century, America lost millions of manufacturing jobs, many because failed trade policies incentivized corporations to shift operations to countries with low wages and lax environmental regulations.

Ken Merkel started cutting expenses as soon as Packaging Corp. of America (PCA) furloughed him along with hundreds of other workers at its Jackson, Ala., location amid the COVID-19 recession.

Although the Army veteran and community volunteer slashed his car insurance, quit his satellite TV service and canceled a life insurance policy, he still needs $600 in weekly federal unemployment payments to make ends meet.

But this lifeline for Merkel and more than 30 million other unemployed workers is in jeopardy because Senate Republicans refuse to extend the benefits period and pass other legislation critically needed to battle the pandemic.

Instead of safeguarding hard-working Americans who fell on hard times through no fault of their own, callous Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—the person who controls the Senate’s agenda—put them squarely in harm’s way.

The 54-year-old Merkel, for example, got his first job pumping gas when he was 12 and never stopped pushing himself. Now, as infection rates soar across the U.S. and COVID-19 threatens still more damage to the nation’s economy, the former military policeman could lose almost everything he spent a lifetime building.

The Democratic-controlled House already passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act to combat the pandemic and help millions of average Americans avert financial calamity.

The common-sense legislation would extend emergency federal unemployment benefits, due to expire next week, through January. It would provide aid to local governments struggling to maintain essential public services because of COVID-19 budget crises, deliver another round of stimulus checks to hard-pressed families and ensure that those who lose their jobs continue to receive health insurance.

The HEROES Act would finally force the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to take steps to protect workers from COVID-19 on the job. And it would allocate billions of dollars for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, measures crucial for controlling the virus in hotspots like Alabama and McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.

But more than two months after the House passed the HEROES Act, it languishes in the Senate.

In refusing to bring the measure to a vote, McConnell flaunts both his disdain for average Americans and his indifference to the enormous damage that COVID-19 continues to inflict on the country each day.

He derided the HEROES Act as a “wish list” of giveaways—a windfall for people he considers freeloaders—when it’s really a responsible stopgap measure intended to save lives and sustain unemployed workers until they get back to the jobs they’re proud to do.

When thugs gunned down Oscar Ontiveros Martínez in May, they did more than silence a promising figure in Mexico’s beleaguered labor movement.

The 29-year-old’s killing sent a warning to anyone still thinking about organizing the mine where Ontiveros once helped to lead a strike.

And Ontiveros’ fate showed that labor activism remains a deadly undertaking in Mexico even though the new North American trade deal theoretically ushered in the first real legal protections for workers there.

Only strict enforcement of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which took effect July 1, will end violence against union activists and give the Mexican people true freedom to organize for better working conditions.

Until then, no matter how lofty the rights enshrined in the USMCA, corporations will continue to exploit workers on both sides of the border.

The United Steelworkers (USW) and other labor unions vehemently opposed the USMCA’s predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

NAFTA enabled U.S. manufacturers to shift about one million manufacturing jobs to Mexican plants paying workers just a few dollars an hour. When U.S. and Canadian corporations launched operations in Mexico, they did so intending to reap huge profits through the systematic oppression of poorly paid workers like Ontiveros and his colleagues at the Media Luna Mine, which is owned by Torex Gold Resources of Canada.

Mexican workers who tried to organize and improve their lives faced severe repercussions from corporations, their corrupt government cronies and employer-controlled protection unions.

Ontiveros was the fourth organizer of the Media Luna strike to be gunned down in three years. A fifth colleague, Oscar Hernández Romero, disappeared in October. The murders remain unsolved, and no trace of Hernández has been found.

The USW and other labor unions long fought for a new trade deal that ended the servitude of Mexican workers and created a more level playing field for their American counterparts. And in January, thanks to the hard work and support of labor unions and their Democratic allies, Congress passed the USMCA with the pivotal labor protections America’s unions demanded.

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Dallas skyrocketed this week, Lou Luckhardt worried about his colleagues and the public they serve.

Luckhardt, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9487, needs disposable coveralls, coronavirus testing and other aid to protect the hundreds of city and county workers who perform essential public services.

With local treasuries already stretched to the breaking point, he believes it’s now up to the federal government to step in and provide resources to help slow the virus’ spread.

But instead of lending the assistance that public servants across the country urgently need, Donald Trump offers a monumental failure of leadership. Burying his head in the sand, Trump’s big plan involves wishing the virus away while leaving Americans, including Dallas’ dedicated government workers, in ever mounting peril.

“For me personally, there’s a certain fear of what might happen to my family and myself,” said Luckhardt, a probation officer who has seen both co-workers and clients stricken by COVID-19.

“It’s on your mind all the time,” he explained. “You can’t escape it.”

Dallas workers first experienced shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) when the pandemic struck in late winter—and some items remain in short supply.

But in recent weeks, the state’s easing of lockdown restrictions and spiraling infection rates also created new challenges that Dallas and other communities will have difficulty addressing on their own because of budget shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 recession.

For example, Dallas workers want coronavirus tests to make sure they neither spread the virus to co-workers or the public nor bring it home to loved ones.

And government facilities—especially smaller and older buildings scattered throughout the metropolitan area—require renovations to ensure the social distancing crucial to controlling the virus.

With local budgets decimated by the crisis—the city of Dallas already furloughed hundreds of workers—only an infusion of federal money can pay for these and other measures that public servants need to protect themselves and the people they serve.

COVID-19 killed at least 115,000 Americans, infected more than two million others and sent the nation’s unemployment rate soaring to the highest level since the Great Depression.

But the pandemic hasn’t been hard on everyone. For some, it’s been an opportunity to fill their coffers.

The crisis made Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for example, already the world’s wealthiest person, a whole lot richer. His fortune increased a whopping $36.2 billion in a mere 11 weeks as shoppers flocked to the online retailer to buy supplies.

And Bezos wasn’t alone.

As his company fulfilled an avalanche of orders with warehouse workers who risked their lives in unsafe conditions, other 1-percenters and corporations siphoned off billions in stimulus funds—money that working Americans devastated by the COVID-19 recession need to survive.

Instead of sharing ordinary Americans’ pain, these pirates of the pandemic exploited it. Their plundering worsened the income inequality that already threatened America as much as any disease and leaves the nation even more vulnerable in the next storm.

In March, Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which provided cash payments of $1,200 to about 150 million households needing help with day-to-day expenses.

Yet that was peanuts compared to the “millionaires’ giveaway” that Senate Republicans snuck into the legislation. Buried in the bill was language giving 43,000 of the nation’s richest people an average tax break of $1.6 million each.

This corporate charity allows real estate developers, hedge fund owners and other financiers to use business losses from past years—losses that have nothing to do with COVID-19 and exist largely on paper—to reap huge refunds.

Millionaires and billionaires, some of whom rode out the pandemic in the comfort of yachts and secluded island retreats, need no relief. But they’ll gladly loot the public treasury at the expense of Americans who kept government offices open, worked in factories or did other essential work before losing their jobs in the economic downturn.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Steve Scarpa began fishing anti-bacterial wipes, socks and even T-shirts out of the sewers in Groton, Conn.

Scarpa, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9411 and a member of the city’s wastewater treatment crew, said residents went into “mad hysteria cleaning mode” and simply flushed potentially contaminated objects down the toilet.

And so Scarpa and his co-workers risked COVID-19 themselves to remove items that kept jamming the sewer pumps crucial to the wastewater system’s operation.

While millions of Americans did their jobs remotely during the pandemic, public servants turned out in force every day to repair roads, collect trash, operate water systems and keep communities functioning.

They had America’s back. Now, the nation must have theirs as well.

Public workers will face additional exposure to COVID-19 as the lockdown ends and Americans return to government buildings, streets, parks and beaches in growing numbers.

Cities and counties have an obligation to provide personal protective equipment (PPE), enforce social distancing in public offices and implement other measures to protect road crews, water department personnel and code enforcement officers.

But it isn’t only the government’s responsibility to help public workers navigate the health risks that constitute the new normal.

Everyone has a role to play.

Residents can do their part by wearing masks when water department workers show up at the door to repair broken meters and by staying out of government buildings when they’re sick.

They can safeguard the health of crews repairing sidewalks, mowing parks and cleaning storm drains just by staying at least six feet away from work areas.

When demonstrations erupted across the country after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers, Donald Trump portrayed the protesters as America’s enemies.

Trump called them “thugs,” “lowlifes” and “losers.” He threatened to unleash America’s military on them and fled to a White House bunker while demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Square.

But the protesters posed no threat.

They’re the nation’s true patriots.

For more than 200 years, ordinary Americans have taken to the streets to oppose injustice and improve their lives. That foundational right has been the basis for real change in the nation.

Americans marched for women’s right to vote. They boycotted buses for civil rights. And they walked picket lines for decent wages and safe working conditions.

These activists wanted a better America, one that actually realized its ideals of equal justice and ensured life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Some sacrificed their bodies for the cause, just like the protesters in Washington did when Trump’s flunky of an attorney general ordered heavily armed federal police in riot gear to attack the peaceful rally in Lafayette Square.

Without the right to protest, there can be no democracy.

Injustice does not cure itself, and protesting can be the only way of seizing the attention of a government that refuses to heed citizens’ pleas for action.

For far too long, America’s Black communities demanded relief from police brutality.

Rich Carmona spent decades upgrading his 1970s ranch home in Midland, Mich.

He lovingly installed new flooring and doors and remodeled the bathrooms. After finishing the kitchen 18 months ago, he finally had the house the way he liked it.

Then the 96-year-old Edenville Dam failed amid heavy rains May 19, unleashing a torrent of water that drowned roads, swept some houses off of their foundations and left others, including Carmona’s, in ruins.

If America maintained its infrastructure with the same care Carmona did his home, this never would have happened.

However, U.S. leaders long failed to invest in the nation’s roads, bridges and dams, turning them into crumbling hazards that put Americans’ lives and dreams at risk.

Four years ago, Donald Trump pledged a $1 trillion national infrastructure program. But he failed to deliver any rebuilding campaign at all. Americans still drive over decrepit bridges and raise their families in the shadows of aging dams.

Now, as the country struggles to rebound economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, an infrastructure campaign is more essential than ever.

Rebuilding the nation’s transportation and energy systems would provide work for millions of Americans who lost jobs—or risk losing them—because of the economic slump triggered by the coronavirus.

Upgraded roads, bridges and waterways would facilitate an expansion of commerce for years to come. And a major infrastructure push will protect the lives and investments of Americans who are tired of being placed in harm’s way.

“What is it going to take?” asked Carmona, a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 12075 and a logistics operator at Dow Chemical in Midland. “How much devastation? How much loss of life?”

Thousands of residents fled when the Edenville Dam burst, triggering a flood that overtopped a second dam and inundated Midland and other communities.

As Goodyear began phasing out a tire plant in Alabama and shifting operations to a cheaper facility in Mexico a few years ago, Jeremy Hughes worried about the loss of his livelihood and the impact on his hometown.

Hughes also worried about the future of America. Sooner or later, he realized, the decline of U.S. manufacturing would put the entire nation at risk.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, that day has come.

Failed U.S. trade policies incentivized corporations to offshore family-sustaining manufacturing jobs, like the one Hughes lost, and left America dangerously dependent on other countries for consumer goods, industrial products and even the medical supplies critically needed to fight COVID-19.

America imports much of the personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks, gowns and gloves, used by health care workers.

When the pandemic struck, America lacked the production capacity to meet the surging demand for PPE. It couldn’t import sufficient quantities from China, a major global supplier, either.

The loss of Goodyear jobs in Gadsden, Ala., and China’s control of PPE supplies are two symptoms of America’s other pandemic—manufacturing decay.

Right now, the U.S.—once the world’s most powerful manufacturer—cannot produce on its own soil the items it most needs.

It has no vision for the future of manufacturing, no plan for leveraging the nation’s industrial capacity in emergencies.

If America fails to rebuild its manufacturing base, it will be just as vulnerable in the next crisis, whether that is a disease, war or natural disaster.

“We have to start buying American-made products. I can’t stress that enough,” said Hughes, the treasurer of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 12L. “The union has been preaching this for years.”

Bill Boone was a fresh-faced 23-year-old in 1952 when he cast his first ballot for U.S. president, while proudly serving aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of Korea.

The U.S. Postal Service carried that vote untold miles to the election board in Boone’s hometown of Benton, Ark., and he’s considered “the mail” an essential part of life ever since.

Today, the 90-year-old retired Steelworker relies on the postal service to deliver his medicines, Social Security checks and letters from relatives. A dedicated letter carrier even walks the mail up the driveway—past the mailbox—to Boone’s front door.

“I told him, ‘You can’t retire until I die,’” Boone said.

The postal service delivers to every U.S. address, no matter how isolated, and charges consistent, reasonable rates to all customers. It’s a lifeline for military members and the elderly. It keeps commerce humming and the country connected.

Americans love the postal service. Yet Donald Trump wants to kill it.

The postal service lost billions of dollars as businesses scaled back operations or closed during the pandemic. The agency usually supports itself with sales of stamps and other products. But now, without as much as $75 billion in emergency federal aid, it will go bankrupt in months.

Americans under stay-at-home orders, with limited access to stores and restaurants, need the postal service more than ever. They overwhelmingly support saving it.

But Trump refuses to help unless the agency quadruples rates on packages it delivers for Amazon and other companies. Because Amazon, UPS and FedEx won’t deliver to some addresses, such as those in rural areas, they often rely on the postal service to carry packages the so-called “last mile”to a recipient’s door.

If the postal service raised rates, these companies would merely pass along the higher costs to their customers. And many Americans, like the 30 million or so who just lost their jobs because of the pandemic, can’t afford that.

The death of the postal service would deprive Americans of a way to vote, pay bills, apply for passports, get prescriptions, send letters, receive tax refunds, collect Social Security and ship items ranging from gold bars to cremated remains.

States that spent millions of dollars fighting the coronavirus asked the federal government for help plugging huge holes in their budgets.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave them the finger instead.

The Kentucky Republican said he’d rather let states go bankrupt than come to their aid. He claims they’d have funds to weather the crisis if they didn’t spend money on frivolous things like pensions for cops and road workers.

It’s just like McConnell to exploit the pandemic for his right-wing, small-government, anti-worker agenda.

Withholding money from cash-starved states or letting them declare bankruptcy would lead to draconian slashes in social welfare programs and layoffs of state troopers, corrections officers and other essential workers. And, as McConnell desires, states would face pressure to renege on pensions for workers and retirees.

The cuts would increase poverty, send income inequality soaring to even higher levels and break what’s left of the middle class.

In his long war on workers, this is McConnell’s most morally bankrupt ploy yet.

States stepped into the breach and spent millions on the pandemic only because Donald Trump botched the federal government’s response, putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk.

When the Trump administration failed to provide respirators and other personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers, states scrounged supplies on their own. The federal government failed to deliver ventilators needed to keep critically ill patients breathing, so governors scavenged those as well.

Shortages of these items even forced states into bidding wars, something that drove up the budget deficits that McConnell now refuses to help governors address.

If states hadn’t spent this money, more people would have died.

On top of the money spent fighting the coronavirus, states lost billions in tax revenue as businesses closed and workers lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Thousands of workers across America begged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate when their employers failed to take steps to protect them from COVID-19.

They reported a lack of face masks, gloves, soap and hand sanitizer. They warned of having to share desks and stand right next to one another on production lines, despite the need for social distancing to slow the spread of the disease.

They put their faith in OSHA and waited for the agency to come to their aid.

But help never came.

OSHA—the agency responsible for America’s workplace safety—left workers to fend for themselves during the biggest health crisis in recent history.

There’s a reason for the agency’s dereliction of duty.

The agency’s boss, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, is the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse. He’s a longtime corporate lawyer who’s never cared about workers’ welfare.

Scalia—the son of the late right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia— made a fortune at a Beltway law firm helping greedy corporations cheat workers out of decent pay and skimp on safety.

He criticized OSHA for overzealous inspections. He opposed rules to protect Americans from repetitive strain injuries. He opposed health care benefits for low-wage laborers and argued that workers, not employers, should pay for personal protective equipment (PPE) needed on the job.

Now, with Scalia in charge, it’s no wonder OSHA ignores demands for inspections and turns a blind eye when workers request respirators, gloves and other measures to save them from COVID-19.

Even during a pandemic, Scalia wants to make sure corporations don’t spend a penny more or go a step further than they deem strictly necessary. His disregard for working class people makes the virus all the more dangerous.

At the start of each shift, Eric Jarvis takes a handful of anti-bacterial wipes and sanitizes the equipment he uses at the Packaging Corp. of America mill in Valdosta, Ga.

He worries about getting the coronavirus every time he leaves for work, but knows the nation depends on paper workers like him to produce the linerboard that goes into the cardboard boxes used to ship millions of items to stores and homes each day.

Jarvis, president of USW Local 646, may not be on the front lines of the pandemic in the same way as nurses and first responders. But he and other manufacturing workers also fulfill a vital role on the nation’s production lines, ensuring that Americans still have the food, medicine, toiletries and other items crucial for everyday life.

“If we don’t make boxes, then the grocery stores don’t have groceries,” Jarvis said.

“We know our job is an essential job," he said of the local's 235 members. "You can see the pride in the workers doing their jobs out there.”

Truck drivers, bakers, transit operators, grocery store clerks, warehouse packers and manufacturing workers form the backbone of America’s economy.

They show up every day and get the job done, performing so reliably that the nation long took their work for granted. No one questioned, for example, whether stores would have toilet paper and cleaning products.

Then the pandemic struck, and surging demand for consumer goods exposed America’s dependence on the blue-collar workers who supply almost every need.

Life would grind to a halt without them.

Right now, these workers risk COVID-19 by laboring in groups at mills, factories, warehouses and stores while many other Americans do their jobs alone at home. It angers Jarvis to think that service workers put their lives on the line for the poverty-level wages common in their industry.

“I hope people never forget that,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis and his co-workers protect themselves as best they can.

Besides wiping down equipment, they stagger their starting times to reduce contact with one another. They wait in their cars and trucks before a shift instead of congregating at the time clock. Inside the mill, they remain at their work stations unless their presence elsewhere is a necessity.

At the start of each shift, Eric Jarvis takes a handful of anti-bacterial wipes and sanitizes the equipment he uses at the Packaging Corp. of America mill in Valdosta, Ga.

He worries about getting the coronavirus every time he leaves for work, but knows the nation depends on paper workers to produce the cardboard boxes used to ship millions of items to stores and homes each day.

Jarvis, president of USW Local 646, may not be on the front lines of the pandemic in the same way as nurses and first responders. But he and other manufacturing workers also fulfill a vital role on the nation’s production lines, ensuring that Americans still have the food, medicine, toiletries and other items crucial for everyday life.

“If we don’t make boxes, then the grocery stores don’t have groceries,” Jarvis said of the local’s 235 members. “We know our job is an essential job. You can see the pride in the workers doing their jobs out there.”

Truck drivers, bakers, transit operators, grocery store clerks, warehouse packers and manufacturing workers form the backbone of America’s economy.

They show up every day and get the job done, performing so reliably that the nation long took their work for granted. No one questioned, for example, whether stores would have toilet paper and cleaning products.

Then the pandemic struck, and surging demand for consumer goods exposed America’s dependence on the blue-collar workers who supply almost every need.

Life would grind to a halt without them.

Right now, these workers risk COVID-19 by laboring in groups at mills, factories, warehouses and stores while many other Americans do their jobs alone at home. It angers Jarvis to think that service workers put their lives on the line for the poverty-level wages common in their industry.

“I hope people never forget that,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis and his co-workers protect themselves as best they can.

Besides wiping down equipment, they stagger their starting times to reduce contact with one another. They wait in their cars and trucks before a shift instead of congregating at the time clock. Inside the mill, they remain at their work stations unless their presence elsewhere is a necessity.

Health care workers continue to put their lives on the line, caring for patients despite critical shortages of the safety gear they need to protect themselves from COVID-19.

To help, factories now churn out face shields, masks and gowns. And millions of workers stay home to slow the spread of the disease.

Americans from all walks of life stepped up to battle COVID-19.

With one glaring exception—Donald Trump.

Trump’s arrogance and failures compound a crisis that’s already damaged the economy and put thousands of Americans in early graves.

He’s a tweeter, not a leader.

Trump denied that the coronavirus was a risk until it overran the country, ignoring the warnings of intelligence agencies and public officials who tracked the threat from overseas.

Heeding those warnings would have given the nation time to get COVID-19 tests and safety gear to hospitals and doctors’ offices.

But Trump claimed he knew better than the experts. As late as Feb. 28, he called concerns about the virus a  “hoax”during a political rally in South Carolina.

News of the first American death from COVID-19 came just hours later. About 5,000 more Americans died since then. Before the virus runs its course, the toll could top 240,000.

But Trump’s rallies reveal where his priorities truly lie:  his own political skin and ratings in the polls. 

It’s one thing to adopt an optimistic tone and project an image of strength to assure the country—and the markets—that things will turn out all right.

Under normal circumstances, Jerry Porter would be spending his time helping the veterans he finds in tent camps and run-down housing.

But the escalating threat of COVID-19 forces the community activist and retired Steelworker to remain at home for now, even though vulnerable vets need him more than ever.

As the coronavirus spreads across America, the poor bear the brunt of a pandemic that’s exposed the deep class lines in U.S. society.

The rich have big savings accounts and quality health care. They’ll emerge from the crisis just fine.

But Americans at the margins, including homeless vets who rely on a frayed safety net stretched to the breaking point by COVID-19, now face an even greater struggle to survive.

“I don’t know where they end up,” rued Porter, 75, a Vietnam veteran and longtime member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 105 who worked more than 40 years at the aluminum plant in Davenport, Iowa, now owned by Arconic.

Porter and a group of friends work together to help veterans in the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.

But now, they’re heeding the request of public health officials. They stay home to help their community slow the spread of COVID-19.

That prevents them from helping veterans like the one Porter found sleeping on a squalid mattress in a “junky” house. He got the man into a clean apartment and—thanks to a friend who owned a bedding store—a new mattress and box spring for just $180.

Just as alarming, COVID-19 halted the fund-raising supporting that kind of intervention. Local veterans groups just canceled a taco dinner and a poppy sale that together raise about $6,000 each year.

For some veterans, that money is the difference between sleeping indoors or on the street.

The spread of COVID-19 put Americans’ lives at risk. But even as people across the country hunker down in their homes to protect themselves, they have more to fear.

Stock market swings, business closings and other COVID-19 disruptions threaten the nation’s economic well-being.

Some members of Congress want to address the fallout by lifting tariffs on imports from China and other countries, believing that giving Americans access to a flood of cheaper goods will stimulate the economy.

But what might seem like a quick cure would actually jeopardize America’s long-term health.

America’s steel and aluminum industries are still trying to bounce back from years of dumping and other illegal trade practices, from China and other nations, which caused widescale factory closures and job losses.

Removing tariffs on those products now just invites more of the cheating that led to the penalties in the first place.

Chinese goods, for example, would swamp U.S. markets at the worst possible time, as American industries—still trying to recover from the illegal trade of the past—also face the COVID-19 economic slowdown.  In the wake of increased dumping, U.S. factories would be forced to scale back or close, throwing more Americans out of work.

Members of Congress have to ask themselves: Whose side are they on?

The Chinese government subsidizes steel, aluminum and other manufacturing with cash, loans that producers don’t have to repay, and other kinds of aid. Then China dumps products in foreign markets at artificially low prices, undercutting domestic producers and costing workers their jobs.

From 2001 to 2018, America lost 3.7 million jobs—2.8 million of them in manufacturing—because of the trade imbalance with China. That imbalance was driven largely by unfair competition. The uneven playing field also dragged down wages and benefits for Americans who managed to continue to work.

Unleashing a flood of Chinese goods on U.S. markets now would put America in the same position again, only worse because American factories and workers are still grappling with the unprecedented effects of COVID-19.

Kimberly Delbrune-Mitter, a cardiac nurse, cares deeply about her patients and remains steadfast in her desire to help them, even as COVID-19 spreads across America.

What plagues her about the new disease isn’t that she might encounter it. It’s the lack of guidance, vital information that would help her balance quality care and her own health.

Medical professionals looking to the Trump administration for leadership will hear nothing but a resounding silence.

Instead, people on the front lines have to fight for their own health and safety even while they care for their patients.

A group of labor unions, including the United Steelworkers (USW), last week sent Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia a petition demanding that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implement an emergency safety standard to protect health care workers, first responders and others at risk of contracting the virus on the job.

The unions and the workers they represent want OSHA to specify the types of equipment employers must provide and the procedures they must follow to keep workers safe.

For hospitals, this could mean providing doctors, nurses and others with the most advanced facemasks on the market. It could mean minimizing the number of people who enter a patient’s room, screening workers for sickness at the start of their shifts or providing staff members with a vaccine when one becomes available.

So far, they’ve received no response.

While the Trump administration fiddles, hundreds of health care workers already are quarantined because of possible exposure to COVID-19, and many others have questions about how to do their jobs without contracting the disease.

“Do we need to wear eye shields? Do we need hair caps? Do we need gowns?” asked Delbrune-Mitter, president of USW Local 9620, which represents about 500 nurses in New Jersey.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,200 points in a single day this week because of the coronavirus’ impact on global trade, leaving many Americans sick with worry.

It’s not just a rapidly spreading, mysterious disease that made Americans feel vulnerable. The Dow’s freefall erased millions of dollars from retirement accounts and exposed another kind of epidemic—retirement insecurity.

There once was a time when the combination of company pension plans, Social Security and personal savings could carry retirees through their golden years.

No longer. Most companies eliminated defined-benefit plans providing a reliable income stream and implemented 401(k) plans that leave workers at the mercy of stock market volatility, like the kind that rattled investors this week and crushed workers in 2008.

Today, Americans have so much angst about the future that about 29 percent of baby boomers, 36 percent of Gen Xers and 77 percent of millennials fear they’ll never be able to retire or will have to work past normal retirement age.

Americans work hard so they can provide for their families and enjoy retirement. But no matter how carefully they plan, their retirements depend on factors beyond their control.

Patricia Cotton, a home health aide in Maryland, lost half of her $150,000 investment nest egg in the 2008 recession and retired 12 years later than planned.

In all, Americans lost about $2.4 trillion in retirement earnings during the second half of 2008, and the average household lost a thirdof its net worth.

Cotton was one of many who experienced losses so severe that they had to work longer than intended. The memory of the 2008 recession still gives Americans retirement jitters, and stock market drops like the ones this week compound the fear.

Before 401(k) plans dominated the retirement landscape, companies provided defined-benefit pensions. Workers earned specific—defined—amounts based on their wages and years of service. When workers retired, the employer provided those amounts no matter how the stock market fared.

Pipe fitter Jody Gooch and welders Sedrick Stallworth and William Rolls Jr. stood just feet away when a tank exploded at the Packaging Corp. of America pulp and paper mill in DeRidder, La. The blast killed the contract workers, injured seven others and hurtled the 80-foot tank six stories into the air.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) concluded that welding sparks likely ignited turpentine vapors that built up inside the tank, and the agency released a comprehensive incident report and safety video to protect workers at other mills.

The CSB regularly issues guidance like this so companies that use dangerous chemicals in the production process learn from their mistakes. But Donald Trump, who refuses to admit his own failures, can’t grasp the importance of learning from anyone else’s, either. Instead of supporting the safety watchdog, Trump wants to kill it.

He allocated no funding for the CSB four years in a row.  As board members’ terms expired, Trump failed to replace them. The five-person board is down to just one member, whose term expires in August.

Trump likes to call himself a champion for workers.

But more workers will die if he abolishes the CSB. The people who live near these plants will be at increased risk as well because explosions, leaks and toxic emissions often inflict widespread damage on nearby communities.

Many Americans probably never heard of the CSB. But they’re safer because of it.

Congress created the 22-year-old agency to conduct independent investigations of industrial chemical disasters. Congress considered the work so important that it shielded the agency from outside interference.

The CSB doesn’t answer to any agency or official in the executive branch. This autonomy enables it to scrutinize not only the companies involved in disasters but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other federal entities regulating these industries.

The CSB issues no fines or citations. It makes no regulations. Its mission is safety education.

Fortune-seekers feed the slots and wager on horses at a Chester, Pa., casino where thousands of shipbuilders once forged the commercial cargo vessels that transported America’s goods to the world. The old Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. closed in 1989, unable to compete with foreign producers highly subsidized by their governments.

Other shipbuilders suffered a similar fate, and today, America produces virtually no oceangoing commercial vessels at all. The industry’s demise puts American exports at the mercy of foreign shipping and deprives the armed forces of ships they sometimes need to transport troops and supplies into combat.

Without U.S. shipbuilding, America is not safe.

America once led the world in commercial shipbuilding, but the federal government quit supporting the industry in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan decided to let the industry sink or swim.

It sank.

As the U.S. curtailed assistance, intended to ensure an adequate supply of commercial vessels to back up the military, other countries—especially China, Japan and South Korea—pumped even more money into their shipbuilding industries. Companies like Sun went out of business or scaled back operations as foreign competitors undercut U.S. shipbuilders’ prices and captured the world market.

In 1975, U.S. shipbuilders sold 77 big commercial vessels. Between 1987 and 1992, they sold eight.

As dozens of yards closed, America’s shipbuilding capacity ebbed away. Facilities rotted.

Sun’s site remained a sprawling ghost town until Harrah’s opened there about 15 years ago. It put slot machines in the gutted fabricating shop and built a bridge over a wet dock.

Glen Heck spent 28 years sweating in a Campti, La., paper mill that he likes to say was “hotter than nine kinds of hell.”

But now, Heck’s sacrifice may have been for nothing because his multiemployer pension plan is one of about 150 nationwide set to go broke. If that happens, the 78-year-old Heck will have to find a cheaper, lower-quality health plan and keep the beef herd he’s itching to sell.

The Democratic-controlled House passed—with bipartisan support—a commonsense plan to save Heck’s pension and those of another 1.3 million workers, retirees and widows. But Republican leaders in the Senate refuse to consider it.

In the meantime, the futures of workers and retirees like Heck hang in the balance. Many face retirement with fear instead of anticipation.

Multiemployer pension plans like Heck’s include workers from two or more companies in industries such as transportation, entertainment, construction and paper. Employers make contributions for workers as part of their compensation. Heck and others often give up wage increases or other benefits to fund those plans.

Many of the 1,400 plans nationwide are still healthy. But through no fault of workers or retirees, about 150 are struggling.

Recessions in 2001 and 2008 cut the plans’ investment earnings, and some corporations used bankruptcies to evade pension obligations. Deregulation forced less-competitive companies out of business, straining the plans’ resources.

Now, they owe more money to beneficiaries than they have coming in, and they’re at risk of collapsing. The PACE Industry Union-Management Pension Fund (PIUMPF)—Heck’s plan—is one of them. According to recent projections, the fund will be insolvent in as few as 10 years.

Under the bill passed by the House, the Butch Lewis Act, the Treasury Department would loan money to troubled plans. The plans would use the money to meet their obligations to retirees, and they would repay the loans over 30 years.

John Tate felt betrayed when Materion unilaterally cut retirement and vacation benefits at its Elmore, Ohio, plant. He’d devoted 10 years to the company and believed that it owed him and his co-workers a modicum of respect.

So Tate turned to the protections that unions provide and helped lead an organizing campaign with the United Steelworkers (USW). Despite widespread enthusiasm at the outset, the effort ultimately failed after Materion forced workers into mandatory company meetings where union-busting consultants bullied and threatened them.

A bill due for a vote next week in the U.S. House—the Protecting the Right to Organize Act—would outlaw mandatory anti-union meetings and other abusive tactics that corporations regularly use to thwart union drives. Making it easier for grassroots activists like Tate to organize will help rebuild a middle class decimated by corporate greed and curb the runaway income equality that imperils American democracy.

Labor organizers emphasize solidarity—strength through collective action—while union-busters deliberately sow discord and prey on workers’ fears for their individual livelihoods.

Tate noticed that difference when Materion, a producer of beryllium-based metals, brought in the hired-gun “union-avoidance” consultants and forced about 440 workers to attend multiple anti-union meetings. The consultants belittled workers—even questioned their intelligence for wanting to join a union—during meetings that lasted two to four hours.

“It was rough to watch,” Tate said.

The consultants told their hostage audiences that companies struggle once workers organize. They warned that Materion might never agree to a contract and that the company had the option of hiring permanent replacements for workers who strike. When workers made positive comments about unions, the consultants bullied them into silence.

 “You could just feel the entire room deflate,” said Tate, who works in research and development at the plant. “They presented a worst-case scenario and then tried to pass it off as ‘this is what’s going to happen to you.’”

The union-busting efforts included a rare visit to the plant by Materion CEO Jugal K. Vijayvargiya. “‘It’s going to get better,’” Tate recalled him telling the workers. “‘We know we have problems. We’re going to fix them.’”

Organizers launched the campaign with strong support and worked hard to educate co-workers about the benefits of unions. Tate said the first few months were “beyond successful.”

Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “great negotiator” and author of “The Art of the Deal,” promised to use his bargaining skills to help the American worker.

Trump vowed to rewrite trade deals, stanch the offshoring of U.S. jobs and reinvigorate American manufacturing.

His behavior tells a different story. Both of the trade deals he produced so far—the original United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the “phase one” agreement with China—failed American workers.

Bad trade cost millions of American jobs. Trump’s brand of deal-making won’t bring them back.

Make no mistake, Trump inherited real trade problems. For more than 20 years, politicians of both parties failed to fix a broken system.

Corporations exploited trade agreements to shift family-sustaining manufacturing jobs to Mexico, China and other countries that pay workers low wages and deny them the protection of labor unions. They made boatloads of money offshoring jobs, but in the process, they robbed U.S. workers of their livelihoods and hollowed out countless American communities, decimating their tax bases and exposing them to epidemics of crime and opioids.

Cheating compounded the job losses. China subsidizes its industries, manipulates its currency and then floods global marketswith cheaply priced goods, severely damaging U.S. manufacturing in steel, aluminum, paper, furniture, glass and other products. 

“Work just started to dwindle,” recalled Bill Curtis,who eventually lost his cloth-cutting job at a Lenoir, N.C., furniture factory swept under by cheap Chinese imports.

Trump made fair trade—and standing up to cheaters—a centerpiece of his 2016 campaign.

He railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which empowered corporations to shift more than one million manufacturing jobs to Mexico. He excoriated China for illegal trading practices that siphoned off more than three million American jobs, and he vowed to stop the bleeding.

Maria Fernandes was a good-hearted American with a family, ambitions and a rock-solid work ethic.

She also juggled three part-time jobs to make ends meet and grabbed much-needed sleep in her SUV between shifts. She left the engine running during one of those naps, and when a gas container she kept in the SUV somehow overturned, the fumes and carbon monoxide killed her.

While her death might appear to be an accident, the poverty-level wages that kept Fernandes working all hours of the day and night are the deliberate choice of corporations that make billions of dollars exploiting the labor of average Americans. Corporate greed turned America into a nation of haves and have-nots.

And more and more often, economic despair kills the have-nots.

U.S. life expectancy dropped three years in a row, America’s suicide rate is at a record high, millions struggle with opioid addictions, and workers with multiple part-time jobs battle hopelessness. None of this occurred by chance. Diseases of despair soared as corporations sold out the American worker for higher profits.

CEO pay soared 940 percent over the past 40 years as middle-class workers’ pay stagnated. Corporations shifted family-sustaining manufacturing jobs to low-wage Mexico, hollowing out entire communities. They gutted retiree health care and shifted more health care costs to workers.

CEOs and business groups schemed with their Republican cronies in government to crush the labor unions that fight to get workers decent pay, fair benefits and safe working conditions. As union membership declined from more than 30 percent of American workers to about 11 percent, the bottom fell out of the middle class. Income inequality skyrocketed.

Fernandes held down minimum-wage jobs at three different Dunkin’ Donuts shops in New Jersey. She napped in her car because she had no time to go home to sleep and traveled with a filled gas can so she’d never be late because of an empty tank.

Within two months of starting work at an Amazon warehouse in Eastvale, Calif., Candice Dixon ruined her back.

Dixon had to bend, lift and strain at a feverish pace to meet Amazon’s demand that she scan and stow one item every 11 seconds. If she didn’t keep up, she’d be fired. But the grueling quotas left her with bulging discs and other problems so severe that she now struggles to walk.

Injury rates at Amazon warehouses across the country are so high that 13 members of Congress last summer called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to investigate the retailer’s working conditions. But OSHA—the agency responsible for ensuring that Americans have safe workplaces—has abandoned the workers it’s charged with protecting.

Under President Donald Trump, OSHA’s enforcement activities plummeted to new lows even as worker deaths soared to the highest level in more than a decade. This didn’t happen by accident. Corporations like Amazon want a neutered OSHA. Cutting corners on safety and working people to the bone means CEOs and shareholders make more money.

They have a willing partner in the Trump administration. OSHA’s inertia is the deliberate decision of appointees who serve corporations, not people, and put healthy profits before healthy workers.

Since 2017, Trump’s OSHA averaged only 32,610 worksite inspections a year, thousands fewer than during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. The agency has the fewest inspectors in 40 years, even though it’s responsible for ensuring the safety of more workers.

OSHA hasn’t even had a top director since Trump took office. But the lower-level political appointees there dragged their feet in hiring new inspectors to compensate for retirements and other vacancies. They didn’t hire a single inspector in 2017. These departures depleted the agency of critical expertise and hamstrung remaining inspectors who want to do their jobs.

Patients have punched Marketa Anderson. They’ve kicked and head-butted her. They’ve slammed her into walls. 

One threw a shoe, hitting her. Then he threw a chair at her—and missed.

Health care workers like Anderson, president of United Steelworkers Local 9349 in Chisholm, Minn., are assaulted by patients all of the time. The Democratic-controlled House recognized the need for action and passed a bill requiring employers in the health care and social service fields to implement violence-prevention plans.

But the Republican-controlled Senate has ignored this bill, along with about 400 others the House passed this year. When these legislators refuse to legislate, they’re telling the American people that they couldn’t care less about urgent issues like workplace safety, failing pension plans or fair wages. They’ll gladly imperil workers and retirees.

That’s because Senate Republicans have sold their souls to corporations and the one percent. Working Americans aren’t their concern.

When the House passes bills, Senate Republicans—with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky at the helm—simply ignore them. They can’t be bothered to debate the legislation. They fail to hold hearings or votes.

They refuse to pick up the phone and try to work out a compromise with House leaders. They just let the bills languish. Doing nothing is their strategy for stymying House Democrats’ efforts to help working Americans.

House Democrats tried to shame Senate Republicans. They called the Senate a “legislative graveyard” and displayed fake tombstones representing important bills the Senate ignored to death.

Pride wells up in Erica M. Brinson when she thinks about her work helping to build aircraft carriers and submarines at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

Those ships and subs defend America’s shores and much of the free world. The men and women serving on them trust that every screw, every weld, will hold up under the most punishing conditions that weather or war can unleash.

“We have a lot of people’s lives in our hands,” Brinson, a member of United Steelworkers Local 8888 who works in the shipyard’s tool rooms, explained.

Brinson and more than 9,700 other USW members at the sprawling shipyard do patriotic work. The same is true of members of USW Locals 1165 and 9462, who work at ArcelorMittal plants in Coatesville and Conshohocken, Pa., that make armor plate for Navy ships and other products for the military.

And it’s true of USW members at other plants across the country that supply materials and parts to the military.

Every day, these workers contribute their skills, knowledge and strong-as-steel work ethic to the nation’s defense. The Navy is only as formidable as the fleet it operates, and USW members at Newport News deliver the highest-performing carriers and subs on the planet.

“It’s up to us to provide the Navy with what it needs to keep us safe,” said Brinson, who has worked at the shipyard for 12 years. “They’re fighting for us.”

On Saturday, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, USW members joined military leaders, elected officials and thousands of guests in christening the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy.