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DESCRIPTION:4/28/21  On Workers Memorial Day-Remember The Dead & Fight For The Living - 
 Stop Injuring & Killing Workers On The Job\n\nTuesday April 28, 2021 7PM 
 PST/9PM CST/10PM EST\n\nOn 2021 Workers Memorial Day, injured workers and 
 whistleblowers are under attack. The Covid-19 pandemic has escalated the 
 health dangers on workers on the at work and companies like Amazon and 
 Tesla  owned by Jeff Bezos &  Elon Musk have contaminated their workers and 
 ignored proper health ands safety standards and the companies and 
 billionaires have captured the agencies that are supposed to protect health 
 and safety on the job.\nWorkers are treated as expendable and disposable by 
 the bosses and corporations. Workers who have spoken out about health and 
 safety have also been illegally retaliated against.\n\nTeachers are also 
 being coerced to go to work without proper protection and have died and 
 contaminated their families.\nBlack, Latino and Asian frontline workers 
 have also faced systemic racism on the job during the pandemic crisis 
 alongside the growing racist attack on workers on the job and the 
 community.\n\nThe capture of the workers comp system by the insurance 
 companies and the destruction of Cal-OSHA and other OSHA programs has meant 
 that injured workers are not protected and also not able to get proper 
 healthcare due to the cost shifting workers comp system.\n\nGovernor Newsom 
 has also starved Cal-OSHA which has less than 200 inspectors for 
 California's 18 million workers. Workers at Tesla, Foster Farms, LA docks 
 are getting contaminated and dying because health and safety regulations 
 are not being enforced by this agency.\n\nGovernor Gavin Newsom has also 
 allowed the former corrupt Division of Industrial Relations Director 
 Christine Baker to sit on\nthe California Fraud Assessment Commission FAC 
 which distributed over $30 million to DA’s to prosecute workers comp 
 fruad yet the insurance companies and large employers who engage in workers 
 comp fraud and cost shifting to the state and federal government are let 
 off scott free.\n\nInjured workers and their families will speak out about  
 their fight for health and safety, timely healthcare treatment and 
 justice.\n\nSpeakers:\nBrenda Barros, SEIU 1021 SF General Hospital Chapter 
 President\nVincent Ward ILWU Local 10 Injured Longshoreman At  
 SSA\nReginald Fegan, San Louis Obispo Health and Safety Whistleblower & 
 Injured Worker\nCharles Rachlis, Cal-OSHA Worker & Whistleblower\nDina 
 Padilla, SEIU 250 Chief Steward, Whistleblower & Injured Worker\nW.D. 
 Flient, SEIU 1021 CCSF Chief Steward Adult Residential Facility  ARF 
 Nurse\nDarrell Whitman, Fired Federal OSHA investigator & Lawyer & AFGE 
 AFGE  2391 Steward & Delegate to SF Labor Council\n\nSponsored 
 by\nCalifornia Workers Memorial Day\nwww.workersmemorialday.org\nUnited 
 Public Workers For Action UPWA.info\nWorkWeek\n\nFor more 
 information\nlabormedia1@gmail.com\n\nTo join Workers Memorial Day 
 Event\n\nJoin Zoom 
 Meeting\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/3290219617?pwd=OTFGZUVKcDd4bzVkVjl5ZS94QmdoQT09\n\nFresno 
 health inspectors tipped off Foster Farms about state inspection amid 
 outbreak\nBut extensive reporting on Cal/OSHA has shown the state 
 regulatory agency is floundering. Understaffed, the majority of its 
 inspections have been reduced to letters, CalMatters reported. A Sacramento 
 Bee investigation showed that Cal/OSHA has also failed to track workplace 
 inspections and deaths during the 
 pandemic.\nhttps://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/03/fresno-health-inspectors-tipped-off-foster-farms-about-state-inspection-amid-outbreak/?fbclid=IwAR02OewmYVRS2siCgdo5niYU_68PATbspV71hYF20XX1OFtwlBr1XhJD8qc\n\nBY 
 MANUELA TOBIAS\nMARCH 18, 2021\n\nVehicles including Foster Farms trucks 
 enter and exit the Foster Farms facility located at 1000 Davis Street in 
 Livingston, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo by Andrew Kuhn, Merced 
 Sun-Star\nVehicles including Foster Farms trucks enter and exit the Foster 
 Farms facility located at 1000 Davis Street in Livingston, on Thursday, 
 Aug. 27, 2020. Photo by Andrew Kuhn, Merced Sun-Star\nIN SUMMARY\nEmails 
 reveal Fresno County public health officials tipped off Foster Farms 
 executives during the county’s largest-known COVID-19 workplace outbreak. 
 \nLast December, during the biggest-known COVID-19 workplace outbreak in 
 Fresno County, public health officials said they were investigating Foster 
 Farms’ chicken processing plant in southeast Fresno.\nBut dozens of 
 emails obtained by The Fresno Bee through a Public Records Act request show 
 that during the outbreak at the South Cherry Avenue plant that infected 
 hundreds, health officials tipped off company executives about a Cal/OSHA 
 inspection, coordinated media talking points during the crisis, withheld 
 information from the public and issued no corrective actions.\nAt least 
 five people who worked at the South Cherry Avenue plant have died in 
 connection to the virus, according to data provided by the company and 
 Cal/OSHA. At least 22 people who worked at Foster Farms’ Fresno 
 facilities have been hospitalized due to COVID-19 related complications to 
 date.\nFresno County Public Health officials defended their relationships 
 with local businesses, saying their role is to be “the eyes and ears” 
 of the community and to help companies curb the spread of the virus. 
 Regulation is left to more powerful agencies, like Cal/OSHA.\n“What we do 
 is quite different,” said Tom Fuller, an environmental health specialist 
 at the Fresno County Department of Health. “We are a ministerial type of 
 work, is the way that we approached them.”\n“What we do is quite 
 different. We are a ministerial type of work, is the way that we approached 
 them.”\nTOM FULLER, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SPECIALIST AT FRESNO COUNTY 
 DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH\nRegulatory agencies like Cal/OSHA have been stretched 
 paper-thin during the pandemic, however, and local-level health agencies 
 have sometimes acted as a last line of defense.\nIn August, Merced County 
 Health Department ordered the Foster Farms plant in Livingston to shut down 
 following a large outbreak. A UFW lawsuit accused the company of ignoring 
 social-distancing protocols and failing to provide workers with masks. At 
 least nine workers have died, the lawsuit alleges. Foster Farms called the 
 lawsuit “without merit.”\n“There’s nothing ministerial about the 
 plant shutdown, which they have the power to do,” said Jon Eisenberg, an 
 attorney representing UFW.\nCity Councilmember Miguel Arias told The Bee 
 the emails between Foster Farms and Fresno County raise serious questions 
 about who the Fresno County Department of Public Health serves.\n“I’m 
 disgusted by the level of intentional coordination to limit information on 
 an outbreak by one of the largest employers in our city by the county and 
 the employer,” he said.\nFresno County Administrative Officer Jean 
 Rousseau issued a statement to The Bee:\n“Since the County of Fresno 
 declared a local emergency due to the COVID-19 virus in March 2020, our 
 Public Health Department has taken a collaborative, not a heavy handed, 
 approach in working with businesses to employ best practices to protect 
 their employees from the virus. Our Public Health team has worked in tandem 
 with our state partners, in particular Cal Osha, to ensure businesses were 
 fully informed of what was required of them under the law.\nFurther, the 
 statement continued, “Public Health welcomed the testing regimen employed 
 by the local Foster Farms processing plant as a proactive approach in 
 protecting its employees. Any allegation of collusion or abrogation of our 
 duties under the law are absolutely false and grossly misrepresents our 
 heroic efforts in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.”\nIn a written 
 statement, Foster Farms told The Bee that when the county reviewed their 
 COVID-19 mitigation plan, they were found to be “in adherence with county 
 guidance.” With help from the county, Foster Farms has vaccinated 951 
 full-time employees at the plant to date and has a robust testing strategy, 
 according to the statement.\nFoster Farms receives a heads up on Cal/OSHA 
 inspection\nWorkers arrive at the Foster Poultry Farms site at 900 W. 
 Belgravia Ave., Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 9, 2020 in Fresno. Photo by Eric 
 Zamora, The Fresno Bee\nWorkers arrive at the Foster Poultry Farms site at 
 900 W. Belgravia Ave., Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 9, 2020 in Fresno. Photo 
 by Eric Zamora, The Fresno Bee\nFoster Farms has two large chicken 
 processing plants in Fresno, located on South Cherry Avenue in southeast 
 Fresno and West Belgravia Avenue in southwest Fresno, at times employing 
 over 1,000 employees each.\nOn Nov. 22, about 21 of 254 Cherry plant 
 employees tested positive for COVID-19. Nine workers tested positive 
 outside the plant, Foster Farms reported in an internal memo dated Dec. 
 5.\nBy Nov. 29, the company began testing all employees. About 220 of 1,000 
 employees were positive for the virus in one round of testing, and 58 of 
 652 employees had tested positive in another round, according to the same 
 memo. It is unclear from the document whether anyone tested positive more 
 than once.\nIn the same memo, the company reported the plant was shut down 
 for a two-day deep cleaning and would continue twice-weekly testing on all 
 employees.\nFuller, from the health department, showed up to Foster 
 Farms’ Cherry plant facility for an unannounced inspection before the 
 November outbreak on an unspecified date. He told The Bee he felt “very 
 uncomfortable” during the visit.\nMany of the executives and engineers he 
 needed to talk to, he said, were not present, and those who were were 
 “crowded in a small room.”\nSo when the county began getting calls 
 about the outbreak in late November, Fuller gave the company a heads-up 
 before conducting another inspection to observe safety precautions and make 
 sure all the relevant people were present, he told The Bee.\nIn a Dec. 8 
 email, Fuller also notified Foster Farms that Cal/OSHA would be showing up 
 at the 10 a.m. appointment the following day due to recent hospitalization 
 reports.\nCal/OSHA public information officer Erika Monterroza told The Bee 
 that the state agency was not aware the Fresno County Health Department had 
 given advanced notice to the employer of the inspection.\nShe said that 
 Cal/OSHA sometimes coordinates with local agencies ahead of inspections and 
 said the cooperation comes “with the expectation that the coordinating 
 agencies will keep that information confidential.”\nAna Padilla, 
 executive director of the University of California, Merced, Community and 
 Labor Center, said giving advance notice of an inspection can jeopardize 
 the integrity of an investigation, as companies have time to prepare and 
 alter normal working conditions.\n“They should not be giving them 
 advanced notice,” Padilla said. “I was surprised to see 
 that.”\nHowever, the health department said Cal/OSHA representatives were 
 aware of the advanced notice and said the agency could show up unannounced 
 whenever they pleased. Fuller said the advanced notice was necessary, 
 again, to ensure COVID-19 safety protocols with more visitors.\nIn his 
 email, Fuller gave the phone number for the Cal/OSHA representative who 
 informed him of their visit in case the company had “concerns” about 
 the inspection.\n“He did indicate that you should feel free to contact 
 him if necessary,” Fuller wrote.\nCounty tells Foster Farms they are not 
 Cal/OSHA\nIn his heads-up, Fuller emphasized the county played a very 
 different role than Cal/OSHA. He was there, he wrote, “to gain an 
 understanding of the situation in the two plants and see if I might help 
 identify any issues that could be contributing to the current 
 outbreak.”\nFresno County Health Department Director David Pomaville told 
 The Bee that Cal/OSHA and the state occupational health branch have more 
 regulatory tools at their disposal. The county sees its own role as 
 observatory, he said, hence the prior notice.\n“Those two entities have 
 more authority inside of the work environment,” he said. “There’s a 
 huge resource allocation with regard to staff being able to go into the 
 level of investigation we would like to.”\nBut extensive reporting on 
 Cal/OSHA has shown the state regulatory agency is floundering. 
 Understaffed, the majority of its inspections have been reduced to letters, 
 CalMatters reported. A Sacramento Bee investigation showed that Cal/OSHA 
 has also failed to track workplace inspections and deaths during the 
 pandemic.\nCal/OSHA has opened several investigations into the Foster Farms 
 Fresno facilities. The state has issued no fines to date.\nAlice Berliner, 
 director of the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and 
 Health or SoCalCOSH, said while Cal/OSHA has powers beyond local health 
 departments, the reverse is also true.\n“The fact that a health 
 department can close down a business is actually a pretty strong tool, and 
 it’s so rarely used,” she said. “They also have the power to cite 
 employers, and I rarely hear about that happening, either.\n“If they’re 
 just sitting back and trusting the employers are going to do that when some 
 employers are breaking the law and doing their best to hide cases, my 
 perspective is that they should definitely be using the tools they have,” 
 she added.\nFresno County tracks COVID-19 outbreaks at workplaces. Why keep 
 it secret?\nby Manuela Tobias\nDECEMBER 11, 2020\nCalifornia isn’t fully 
 tracking serious workplace COVID-19 cases in Fresno. Here’s why\nby 
 Manuela Tobias, Jason Pohl, Dale Kasler and Phillip Reese\nFEBRUARY 2, 
 2021\nCounty trusts data provided by Foster Farms\nAfter his planned visit, 
 Fuller wrote, “Thank you for your continued transparency and for the 
 proactive testing approach that Foster Farms has taken. I have (no) doubt 
 that those measure [sic] have been helpful.”\nNot all counties have 
 accepted the data provided by Foster Farms with open arms, however.\nThe 
 Merced County Health Department, KQED reported in February, “repeatedly 
 expressed skepticism about the outbreak information they were receiving 
 from the poultry company, saying they believed the company hadn’t tested 
 its entire workforce and was not providing reliable data.”\nThe company 
 failed to notify the county of several hospitalizations and deaths as they 
 occurred, KQED reported.\nPomaville told The Bee that the Fresno Public 
 Health Department had no reason to doubt the data provided by the company 
 because they knew the contractor that had performed the biweekly COVID-19 
 tests, a company called Color.\nHe said the county also receives testing 
 data from the state, but the process is lengthy and convoluted and would 
 not have allowed them to step in as quickly as the transparency provided by 
 Foster Farms. Fuller said they fact-checked a portion of the data provided 
 by Foster Farms against the state database.\nIn fact, Pomaville heralded 
 Foster Farms’ testing strategy as a model for the rest of the county in 
 an interview with The Bee. He said the company was testing and sharing that 
 information at an exemplary clip before it was required.\nIn another email 
 exchange, county officials asked Foster Farms whether it would be OK to 
 share their testing plan with three smaller employers undergoing similar 
 outbreaks. The identities of those employers were not made public, but 
 Foster Farms executives were invited to participate in the call.\nKeep tabs 
 on the latest California policy and politics news\nI'M NOT INTERESTED\nIn 
 their statement, Foster Farms officials said they have “been fully 
 transparent in communicating Cherry testing protocols and positivity 
 results with the Fresno Department of Health and in communicating any 
 fatalities with the Fresno Department of Public Health and Cal 
 OSHA.”\nFresno County keeps workplace outbreaks secret\nDuring the 
 outbreak, employees received little to no information and were forced to 
 rely on media coverage, according to Deep Singh, executive director of the 
 Jakara Movement, a nonprofit that advocates for the Sikh Punjabi community, 
 many of whom are Foster Farms employees.\nReporting from early December 
 showed at least 193 people had been infected.\nSingh said he started 
 receiving calls about positive COVID-19 tests in late November. By early 
 January, he had attended multiple funerals.\n“It was total disarray,” 
 he said. “People were scared. People were worried.”\nIn emails, county 
 officials twice told Foster Farms executives they were getting pressure 
 from media outlets for more data. They asked that they share more 
 information with media about the outbreak.\nIn response, Foster Farms Vice 
 President of Communications Ira Brill said he wanted to see how events 
 developed further before sharing more information, and would only speak 
 “with members of media that are reasonable in their past 
 coverage.”\n“OK,” a public health official wrote back in a Dec. 7 
 email and asked for contact information to provide media.\nIn an early 
 December exchange, Brill asked for a call to discuss media protocol. 
 Simranjit Dhillon, a county public information officer, told him they have 
 only been offering media outlets “a generic … type of response to most 
 agencies but we can further discuss on the call.”\nPomaville said the 
 correspondence regarding media coverage with Foster Farms was neither 
 unprofessional nor atypical.\n“We’ve done this with other situations 
 where we’re trying to understand what’s going to be communicated, but I 
 don’t view that as cozy,” he said. “We have independent 
 decision-making and discretion.”\nChoosing what to disclose and keep 
 private has been one of the toughest parts of workplace outbreaks, 
 Pomaville told The Bee. Ultimately, they have decided to withhold case 
 numbers to build trust with employers, who have the most updated and 
 reliable information on case counts and outbreaks.\n“We believe it has 
 allowed us to have better reporting to us by companies and to be able to 
 work in closer partnership with them in investigating outbreaks,” he 
 said.\nAnother reason they don’t find it necessary to publicize workplace 
 outbreaks, Pomaville said, is an inability to trace contagion back to the 
 job. He said many communities were experiencing high positivity rates 
 during this time, too.\nBut advocates said they are tired of companies and 
 public officials blaming community spread, especially among communities of 
 color who spend most of their time in the workplace.\n“They’ll 
 pathologize low-income communities, they’ll pathologize cultures, but 
 what ties a Punjabi worker in Fresno to a Haitian person infected on the 
 East Coast?” Singh asked. “Oftentimes, it has been working in meat and 
 poultry plants.”\nVarious studies have found that working in meat and 
 poultry plants increase a person’s risk for COVID-19 exposure, especially 
 among minorities.\nWORKPLACE SAFEY\nA bus parked in front of El Dorado 
 Motel drops off farmworkers as a van that also transports farmworkers 
 drives right next to it in Salinas on Aug. 1, 2020. Photo by David 
 Rodriguez, The Salinas Californian\nState mandates emergency workplace 
 COVID-19 protections, less crowding for guest farmworkers\nby \nJackie 
 Botts\nNOVEMBER 19, 2020\nOregon posts workplace outbreaks, California has 
 no such plan\nby Laurence Du Sault\nNOVEMBER 11, 2020\nWorkers say they 
 have nowhere to turn\nPadilla wondered what the closeness displayed in the 
 emails between a private company and the public health department meant for 
 worker trust.\n“We want workers to feel comfortable and safe to report 
 non-compliance with employers, and if there’s a message that the employer 
 is the most important ally, it could be a problem,” she said.\nPomaville 
 said they had received input from workers throughout the outbreak, too, 
 although he did not detail the extent of their role in the 
 investigation.\nBerliner, from SoCalCOSH said that workers making 
 complaints have traditionally been excluded from both local and Cal/OSHA 
 investigations. During investigations, for example, inspectors walk around 
 with managers but rarely get a chance to build trust and hear from 
 workers.\n“They just are not trained to work collaboratively with 
 workers,” she said. “It’s actually mind-blowing.”\nLos Angeles 
 County, on the other hand, has recently committed to working with labor 
 organizations to strengthen workplace enforcement and recently passed an 
 anti-retaliation ordinance.\nThe LA Department of Public Health is 
 partnering with community-based organizations to train workers in several 
 industries, like meat processing, to form public health councils. The 
 councils then report working conditions inside the workplace to the county 
 to ensure employer compliance with county orders and speed up response 
 times when complaints arise, Berliner said.\nIn Fresno, Singh said, “most 
 workers don’t even know who they can even turn to, period.”\nA Punjabi 
 Fresno resident echoed that sentiment. He asked not to be named because he 
 feared retaliation for his multiple relatives who work at Foster Farms.\nHe 
 said his relatives and their respective families fell ill during the 
 December outbreak. Securing time off after five sick days for his elderly 
 mother was impossible, he said, and he felt he was her only advocate.\nMost 
 frustrating, he said, was how the company made his family feel 
 expendable.\n“It felt as if they just wanted people to get sick and 
 recover and come back,” he said. “Like, if 100 people get sick and 95 
 recover, we’ll just hire five more.”\nThis article is part of the 
 California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income 
 inequality and economic survival in California.\n\nCal/OSHA fines Sutter 
 Health's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center for COVID safety 
 violations\nPhoto of Lauren Hernández\nLauren Hernández\nMarch 20, 
 2021\nUpdated: March 20, 2021 11:28 p.m.\nCo-workers at Alta Bates Summit 
 Medical Center in Oakland hold a vigil in July for nurse Janine 
 Paiste-Ponder, who died of COVID-19 after working with patients with the 
 disease.\nCo-workers at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland hold a 
 vigil in July for nurse Janine Paiste-Ponder, who died of COVID-19 after 
 working with patients with the disease.\nCarlos Avila Gonzalez / The 
 Chronicle 
 2020\nhttps://www.sfchronicle.com/.../Cal-OSHA-fines-Sutter...\nState 
 health and safety regulators have fined the Summit Campus of Sutter 
 Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland more than $155,000 
 for allegedly violating infectious disease control standards related to the 
 coronavirus, California Nurses Association officials said.\nOfficials with 
 the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Cal/OSHA, could 
 not be reached for comment on Saturday.\nAccording to the nurses union, 
 Cal/OSHA issued eight citations in part because the hospital failed to 
 properly isolate patients with COVID-19 and did not give appropriate safety 
 equipment to nurses who worked on the same unit as Janine Paiste-Ponder, an 
 Oakland nurse who died of COVID in July after caring for infected patients. 
 The union said the hospital was fined $155,250.\nSutter Health officials 
 told The Chronicle on Saturday that they disagree with Cal/OSHA’s 
 findings and have appealed the citations.\n“None of the findings are 
 specific to the passing of our beloved colleague,” Sutter Health 
 officials said in a statement. “We continue to mourn her loss and are 
 disappointed that her memory is being used for political gain.”\nAmong 
 the other safety violations that union officials said prompted the Cal/OSHA 
 citations were that the hospital required nurses to reuse N95 masks, failed 
 to implement a plan to control airborne diseases, and did not quickly tell 
 nurses about coronavirus exposures.\n“It is heartbreaking Janine had to 
 die before these problems were taken seriously enough for a state 
 investigation,” Mike Hill, chief nurse representative at the Oakland 
 facility said in a statement Friday.\nIn 2015, Sutter Health agreed to pay 
 $71,275 in fines issued by Cal/OSHA after an investigation found safety 
 violations for handling patients with suspected airborne diseases at the 
 same facility. In that case, Sutter Health also appealed the findings. In a 
 settlement, the hospital agreed to pay half of the fines first issued, and 
 to change its procedures for handling patients with airborne 
 illnesses.\nLauren Hernández is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. 
 Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/04/13/18841572.php
SUMMARY:On Workers Memorial Day: Remember The Dead & Fight For The Living
LOCATION:By Zoom
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/04/13/18841572.php
DTSTART:20210429T020000Z
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