‘Very High Risk’ : Longshoremen Want Protection From the Virus So They Can Stay on the Job

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  • ‘Very High Risk’: Longshoremen Want Protection From the Virus So They Can Stay on the Job - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/us/politics/coronavirus-longshoremen-ports.html

    The coronavirus is surging again, and outbreaks are starting to re-emerge in ports across the country. In interviews with over a dozen longshoremen, their families and maritime officials at multiple ports in the United States, all urged government officials to recognize the essential nature of longshore work and protect individuals from conditions that make it ripe for the virus to spread.In particular, they say longshore workers should be provided rapid testing and early access to the coronavirus vaccine so they can remain on the job and prevent outbreaks from shutting the nation’s ports. “We’re hidden,” said Kenneth Riley, the president of the local longshoremen’s union in Charleston, S.C. “But if you think some of the store shelves were empty as we got into this pandemic, let these ports shut down and see how empty they’ll be.”Longshore work is exhausting, and often requires close contact with others. The trade is essential to the economy, with longshore workers serving as a crucial link between moving goods from a shipping vessel onto trucks and trains that send them to their final destination, experts said.
    Over 95 percent of overseas trade for the United States flows through one of around 150 deepwater ports in the country, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. The workers at highest risk of being exposed to the virus are deep sea longshoremen, who are primarily Black and do most of the work that requires the lifting and moving of goods, union officials noted. Lashers, who take steel rods off containers so they can be lifted by crane operators, sweat and breathe heavily as they work in pairs side by side. Shuttle drivers, responsible for transporting their fellow longshoreman to and from either ends of a dock that can stretch for miles, spend their days packed in Ford Crown Victoria’s and school buses with other longshoremen.
    “It’s very high risk,” said Gail Jackson, 45, a shuttle driver on the docks in Charleston who contracted the virus and spent weeks off the job. “There’s no way for us to be six feet distanced.”,The International Longshoremen’s Association, a union that represents about 65,000 longshore workers, has lobbied the federal government and state officials for support. In a letter in September to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, union officials asked that longshore workers be provided personal protective equipment, sanitizer and rapid coronavirus tests, saying the officials who operate the terminals where longshore workers operate have “provided no protective equipment to our members despite Covid-19 risks.”
    They added that many of their local unions were working to shield longshoremen from the virus by trying to provide protective equipment. They said some ports, such as the one in Charleston, are spending upward of $200,000 a week to protect their workers from large-scale outbreaks on the docks that would grind their work to a halt and cause significant delays in shipping goods to consumers. “This is not sustainable,” the union’s president, Harold J. Daggett, wrote of the costs. In May, the Transportation Department provided longshore workers with cloth facial coverings, as part of its effort to donate 15.5 million masks to transportation workers. Since then, they have not provided any other protective equipment, sanitizer or rapid tests to port workers, according to union officials. The transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, has been reluctant to involve the federal government in protecting transportation workers from the pandemic, saying it is a “labor-management” issue in an interview in June with Politico.

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