not caring about our health or safety.

We want better equipment, protective gear.

We have no masks.

We want hazard pay.

If I lose my job, I lose my job.

I shouldn't be speaking like this, but I don't care.

I don't care, I don't give a anymore

cause I'm scared too.

In the middle of this coronavirus crisis,

I am obviously one of the lucky ones.

I can just get my work done at home on a laptop

with my tiny coworker, Liam, here, who's four months old.

But obviously there are many, many people in this country

who aren't in that position

who still have to go to jobs at grocery stores,

warehouses, factories, etc.

It's a little hard to tell exactly how many people

are still going to those kinds of jobs,

but the Brookings Institution estimates

that before the COVID crisis,

there were as many as 62 million people in those jobs,

and no doubt many of them are still going to work.

And what started to happen in recent days

is since those jobs have become a lot more risky,

some of those workers are starting to strike

for better working conditions.

In the past couple weeks, we've seen walk-outs

at Purdue, at McDonald's, at InstaCart,

at Whole Foods, at Amazon.

There is this national and global crisis,

which is being experienced in a particularly acute way

in a number of work places that many people in America

have not thought of those places where workers

have much leverage.

And some of the calculation that workers make

about whether it's worth confronting the boss,

whether it's worth acting collectively,

that calculation is shifted when people have real fears

about it being dangerous to come into work

if they don't have changes made.

Workers at an Amazon warehouse facility

on Staten Island are staging a walkout today.

They're complaining about the fact that their facility

has not been cleaned out since a worker there

tested positive.

They think up to six other workers

may have tested positive as well,

and they want Amazon to close down that distribution center

for a period of time, have it entirely sanitized.

Tell me a little bit more about the Amazon situation.

We've heard about a lot about this Staten Island warehouse,

but I guess there's a couple other locations as well.

There've now been walkouts at Amazon warehouses

in Staten Island, in Chicago, and in Michigan.

In each of these cases, you have workers saying

the company is not doing enough to keep them safe.

I'm doing this because of my health

and my fellow workers as well.

It should be closed down.

It should be cleaned properly.

The key complaint they had was around

what the workers thought was a lack of transparency

around just how they were being told

about positive COVID cases within their workforce.

They say sometimes it took too long,

so they walked out over it,

and pressed management with some demands

about sick pay should they get the virus

and that kind of thing.

If you have sick employees at your job,

and they pass the coronavirus down to your customers,

what are you gonna say then?

We need that protection as well.

We need to know that, we want to feel safe while working.

And that's it.

Amazon released a statement on the day of the walkout

saying that the protestors accusations were unfounded,

and saying we have taken extreme measures

to keep people safe, tripling down on deep cleaning,

procuring safety supplies that are available,

and changing processes to ensure that those in our buildings

are keeping safe distances.

Amazon also offers an example of one of the challenges

for this worker pushback.

A leader of the strike in Staten Island,

the same day that the strike happened

was terminated by Amazon.

We had a successful walkout.

We got the message out.

We got people aware, that's what we here for.

Amazon says they weren't retaliating

for raising safety concerns.

They were actually enforcing safety rules,

but that strike leader says he was being punished

for standing up for his coworkers.

The question of what happens to workers who stand up

and whether those protests become inspirations

or cautionary tales about how you can get yourself

in an even worse situation is crucial.

And people are going to take mixed messages

from some of these examples.

Let's talk about the situation with Whole Foods.

Tell me about what's been going on there.

To add to the strike parade, I guess, at Amazon,

which owns Whole Foods, their workers or a subset of them

started holding a sick-out on Tuesday

where folks called in sick.

They were asking for better protections on sales floors.

Some folks had wanted to wear masks in recent weeks,

and they cited some fuzzy guidance from management on that,

and just again, the general feeling that

if something were to happen to them,

they want guarantees from management

that they'd have their costs covered

or be able to care for family members.

Myself and all the Whole Foods employees

need to keep putting as much pressure on them as possible

to make these changes for the employees, the customers,

and the public health, and the good of the company, frankly.

Paid sick leave, reimbursement for testing,

hazard pay, and a firm policy for shutting down stores

when an employee tests positive for COVID-19.

All these things have big implications for safety,

not just for the employees, but for the customers

and the public health at large.

Have you heard about any changes that the company

is going to make in response to this action?

I have not, no.

We don't know exactly how many people called out sick,

but we talked to workers in Illinois, New York,

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas

who said that they did that on Tuesday.

The company says its operations weren't affected.

Stores remained open.

Those Whole Foods and Amazon strikes

are really just the tip of the iceberg.

In the past week and a half or so,

we've seen demonstrations by employees

at a Purdue chicken plant in Georgie,

sanitation workers in Pittsburgh,

and GE factory workers in Massachusetts,

all basically advocating for similar things,

safer, more sanitary work conditions.

Although in the case of GE, those workers are also

trying to get their company to switch over

to more manufacturing of ventilators for hospitals.

Workers at McDonald's are also getting in on the action

in several states led by the advocacy organization,

Fight for $15.

We was told, we're not to wear masks or gloves by the GM

here at McDonald's.

She was told by McDonald's we're not supposed

to use masks.

And the reason we're out here today

is because we wondering what they're gonna do

about our safety.

Right now, they're doing nothing.

So, is any of this having an effect?

Well, in some cases it seems like the answer

is a cautious yes.

Just in the past couple days, we've seen McDonald's

announce that they're going to introduce

better safety practices, and that they're even considering

hazard pay for some workers.

And Amazon has announced that starting early next week,

it's going to be handing out masks to all its employees

and doing temperature checks

at all of its warehouse locations.

So it seems like some of these workers at least

are starting to get some of what they want.

The question now for many labor organizers

is can these short-term concessions be parlayed

into more permanent change for American labor?

What's going on now creates an opening

for various kinds of organizing

that might not've been there before.

We will know more in the weeks and months ahead

about how much these protests change things,

and to what extent they lead to changes

that outlast the coronavirus,

and to what extent they can lead to organization

and leverage for workers that outlast this current,

very unusual moment.