Transit Workers Are Still Dying -- With No End in Sight
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- Published on Monday, 21 September 2020 00:26
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2197 ... September 21, 2020
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Transit Workers Are Still Dying -- With No End in Sight
Marcia Brown
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, public-transit workers have been called "essential" and "heroes." Yard signs plaster suburbia with "Thank you essential workers" and "Essential workers are heroes." City apartment windows boast similar signs. And every day, these transit workers show up to work, exposed to hundreds of people a day, and transport other frontline essential workers to their jobs as nurses, grocery clerks, and other jobs we can’t do without.
But their work has come at an appalling cost. Hundreds of these transit workers have died as a result of their exposure to the virus while at work. Nearly 100 members of Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 in New York City alone have died. Every time there’s a hot spot around the country, labor leaders told me, transit workers in that region contract COVID-19 and some die. "As soon as I see a hot spot, I’m like ‘Oh no,’ because there’s the buses," said John Costa, international president... of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).
As of September 4th, at least 87 ATU members have died. TWU has lost at least 150 members, and no fewer than 10,000 members have tested positive or been in quarantine. But for the most part, states and agencies aren’t tracking COVID deaths of transit workers. According to ATU Local 192 president Yvonne Williams in Oakland, California, AC Transit officials claim that workers for bus system serving parts of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, contracted the disease outside the workplace. As of September 3rd, 37 of her members have contracted the disease and two have died.
