BBC offers this deep dive into one young legislator's efforts to pass a law to protect Nebraska's meatpacking workers. The legislator is a 35-year-old Latino whose father was still working as a machinist when he died of COVID-19 this spring at age 72. Here's an excerpt:
Vargas was attempting to persuade his colleagues to allow him to introduce a new bill to enact protections from Covid-19 in the meatpacking industry, an issue he'd been working on for months. It was an action which required special permission to "suspend" the rules of the senate - a Hail Mary in a legislative session that had only 10 days left in it. But after weeks of other attempts, he had run out of options.
"Over the last several months I've been working closely with workers at meatpacking plants across the state," he said. "What is happening in these plants - not only how workers are being treated, safety and health measures that need significant follow-through, and misinformation spread that everything is fine - is what brought us here today. Is what brought me here today."
He led with the data. Of the state's 25,000 Covid-19 cases, one in five of them was a meatpacking worker. Of those, 221 workers were hospitalised and 21 of them died. According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, Nebraska ranks second in the nation in Covid-19 related deaths among meatpacking workers.
On top of that, 60% of the state's confirmed cases were in Hispanics, while they make up just 11% of the overall population. (Since August that percentage has dropped to 40%, but it may still be the worst racial disparity for Hispanics for Covid cases in the country.)
There's much more to this feature story, from personal narrative to politics, so its worth a read in its entirety.
Here's a related story out of Maryland's Eastern shore, where the salient food industry is crabs and COVID has infected many who shell the product.
P.S. Here's a story out of rural Vermont, where a COVID outbreak has struck orchard workers.
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