UPDATE 
 Hundreds Of People Are Seriously Ill After A Deadly Gas Leak In India

At least 11 people have died after styrene gas leaked from the LG Polymers factory in the city of Visakhapatnam, although it is feared the death toll will rise.

Nishita JhaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From New Delhi May 7, 2020

- / Getty Images

NEW DELHI — Hundreds of people have been taken to hospital after a styrene gas leak at a chemical factory in southeast India.

At least 11 people have died after the leak took place in the middle of the night in the city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state, although the death toll is expected to rise. More than 1,000 people are thought to be ill as a result of the incident.


- / Getty Images
People gather in front of the LG Polymers plant following the gas leak.

Operations at the South Korean–owned LG Polymers factory were only just resuming due to coronavirus-related restrictions in place since March. A spokesperson confirmed from Seoul that a security guard discovered the leak overnight.



- / Getty Images
Rescuers evacuate people following the gas leak.

Styrene is a gas that is used to make plastics and rubber. Extremely distressing pictures and videos of people struggling to breathe and collapsing on sidewalks have been posted online. Several showed limp bodies of adults and children being loaded into cars and ambulances.


Srijana Gummalla@GummallaSrijana
Primary report is PVC gas (or Styrene) leaked from LG Polymers, Vepagunta near Gopalapatnam in Visakhapatnam at around 2:30 AM today Because of the leakage of the said compound gas hundreds of people have inhaled it and either fell unconscious or having breathing issues.02:51 AM - 07 May 2020


Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)@GVMC_OFFICIAL
Precautionary Measures for Gas Leak accident.06:38 AM - 07 May 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
The director-general of India’s National Disaster Response Force told broadcaster NDTV that people admitted to the hospital were semiconscious, showing signs of nausea and skin irritation.


NDTV@ndtv
WATCH | "As of now, the gas leakage has stopped but a lot of people have been hospitalised and are in a semi-unconscious state. Many of them are facing breathing problems, skin irritation": SN Pradhan, DG, NDRF. #VizagGasLeak04:07 AM - 07 May 2020


According to the AP, an 8-year-old girl was among those who died, as well as a person who died falling into a well while trying to escape the gas.

A member of the state police has told HuffPost India that at least 70 people are in critical condition in different hospitals, while the director-general of police said that 20 people are on ventilators.

"We are currently assessing the extent of the damage on residents in the town and are taking all necessary measures to protect residents and employees in collaboration with related organizations," LG Chem, the owner of LG Polymers, said in a statement. Another representative from LG Polymers told the state’s chief minister that in order for casualties to decrease, emissions would have to “come to zero,” which had not happened yet.

Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)@GVMC_OFFICIAL
GVMC officials blowing water through mist blowers to subside the effect of Syrene Gas leak at Gopalapatnam area of Visakhapatnam.05:25 AM - 07 May 2020

An official from the state of Gujarat said that 500 kilograms of another chemical that was likely to neutralize the gas leakage was being airlifted to the chemical plant.


tv9gujarati@tv9gujarati
After request of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister @ysjagan , Gujarat Chief Minister @vijayrupanibjp gives orders to chemical companies in Vapi to send PTBL chemical by road to Daman for airlift: Ashwani Kumar, Secretary to #Gujarat Chief Minister #TV9News11:06 AM - 07 May 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he had spoken to officials from the federal home ministry and the National Disaster Management Authority, who were monitoring the crisis.

Narendra Modi@narendramodi
Spoke to officials of MHA and NDMA regarding the situation in Visakhapatnam, which is being monitored closely. I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam.04:32 AM - 07 May 2020

India’s National Human Rights Commission has also taken notice of fatalities as a result of the leak and asked the state’s officials to conduct an investigation.

SEE 
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-indians-recall-horrifying.html

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-more-evacuations-near-indian.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/hundreds-of-people-are-seriously-ill.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-more-evacuations-near-indian.html







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FOTO ESSAY'S
California's 'weed nuns' on a mission to heal with cannabis
The "Sisters of the Valley," California's self-ordained "weed nuns," are on a mission to heal and empower women with their cannabis product
Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2bhyT

'Joint-smoking nuns
Based near the town of Merced in California's Central Valley, which produces over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States, the Sisters of the Valley grow and harvest their own plants - cannabis plants.

Weed Nuns Marihuana Nonnen (Reuters/L.Nicholson)
No halo
Despite the moniker, the nuns don't belong to any order of the Catholic Church. "We're against religion, so we're not a religion. We consider ourselves Beguine revivalists, and we reach back to pre-Christian practices," says Sister Kate, who founded the sisterhood in 2014.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
From 'Sister Occupy' to 'weed nun'
Sister Kate adopted the nun persona after she took part in an Occupy Wall Street protest in 2011 dressed as a Catholic nun, a look that led her to be known by protesters as "Sister Occupy."

The group's Holy Trinity is marijuana
Sister Freya ladles cannabidiol salve made from hemp. CBD, the abbreviation for cannabidiol, has analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties. The nuns explain that hemp, a strain of marijuana, has very low levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in the plant.

For the sake of well-being
Members turn the hemp into cannabis-based balms and ointments, which they say have the power to improve health and well-being. Sister Kate reports that the group had roughly $750,000 (€700,000) in sales last year, the most since it started selling products in January 2015.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
Critics of marijuana legalization won't stop the nuns
President Donald Trump's administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime critic of marijuana legalization, have worried some in the country's nascent legalized marijuana industry. But the "weed nuns" say the new administration has strengthened their resolve.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
Critics of marijuana legalization won't stop the nuns
President Donald Trump's administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime critic of marijuana legalization, have worried some in the country's nascent legalized marijuana industry. But the "weed nuns" say the new administration has strengthened their resolve.

Salvation in Canada
"The thing Trump has done for us is put a fire under our butts to get launched in another country," says Sister Kate. "Our response to Trump is Canada." The group makes online sales to Canada, and hopes to launch an operation there in two months.

Italian Army grow cannabis for medical purposes
Cannabis cures: Italy launches a pilot project for domestic production of cannabis to become independent from Dutch imports and meet the demand for medical cannabis.

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2YGh6

Person looking at cannabis plants
(Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Cannabis-based medicine is produced by the Italian Army at
Stabilimento Chimico Farmaceutico Militare in Florence.


Italy military building (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Military project
The production of cannabis is just one of the activities of the military's 164-year-old chemical and pharmaceutical institute. The body prides itself on the fact that its cannabis was registered as a pharmaceutical product by Italy's medicines agency in September 2015. The end product is very different from most of the cannabis consumed around the world.


Cannabis plant (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Less THC, more CBD
The component that gets recreational users high - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - is less useful to doctors than another active ingredient, the anti-inflammatory cannabidiol (CBD). An estimated 2,000 -3,000 Italians currently use medical cannabis for instance to relieve multiple sclerosis pain and spasticity or combat nausea after chemotherapy.


"I have never tried it!"
"No, I have never tried it, and I don't have any intention of trying it either," says Antonio Medica, the colonel in charge of the Italian military's cannabis laboratory in Florence. He laughs that one of his colleagues joked the other day, saying they spent 40 years trying to stop the troops smoking it in the barracks and "now we are producing it ourselves'."


Suiting up for the growing room
Production in a sterile, sealed environment is very important. "That is the only way you can ensure a consistent product and one free from the toxic materials, particularly heavy metals like mercury, that the plants can easily absorb when grown in fields," Medica explains.


Relief for cancer patients
The German parliament In January 2017 voted unanimously in a landmark bill to legalize the use of medical marijuana, for instance ot help cancer patients feeling nauseaous after chemotherapy. The drug is also said to help fight a lack of appetite and weight loss in tumor patients, and can alleviate symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Italien Militär baut Cannabis für Schwerkranke an (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Made in Italy
Above, a pharmacist prepares a prescription of marijuana in the laboratories. The first batches of made-in-Italy pot have just arrived in pharmacies.

Grubhub Collected Record Fees From Restaurants Struggling To Stay Alive During The Pandemic 

Restaurants expect to lose $240 billion by the end of the year, but for Grubhub, “COVID-19 is a net tailwind” for now.
Venessa Wong BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 7, 2020

Cindy Ord / Getty Images
As empty restaurants around the country struggle against an uncertain future and perhaps unrealistic guidelines for reopening during the coronavirus pandemic, takeout-ordering company Grubhub reported record revenues of $363 million from January through March, up 12% from the same quarter a year ago.

Restaurant owners have long complained that fees charged by ordering platforms like Grubhub, often ranging from 15% to 30%, make orders less profitable, and sometimes unprofitable — but businesses have no choice but to use them if they want to retain customers. They also discovered Grubhub was secretly buying up thousands of restaurant domain names and using them to build shadow websites that competed with pages operated by restaurants. Now, with dining rooms closed and lockdowns still in effect, takeout orders facilitated by platforms like Gruhub have become a crucial source of business.

Susie Cagle@susie_c
The owner of @ChiPizzaBoss shared this nightmarish Grubhub invoice that will haunt me for days. https://t.co/VMDcIgAqxd
09:26 PM - 30 Apr 2020

San Francisco and Seattle recently implemented emergency fee caps on delivery services, but Grubhub has not reduced fees in other markets during the pandemic, including in New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

“I can’t believe that we have to legislate over a company whose gross food sales are in the billions in order for them to give local restaurants a break."

New York City lawmakers have proposed capping delivery service fees at 10% and banning advertising or processing fees when a state of emergency has been declared. Meanwhile, consumers filed a lawsuit against Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates last month, accusing them of using their monopoly power to charge restaurants high fees that are passed on to customers during a financially catastrophic pandemic. The companies’ “fees are shocking when one considers how little value Defendants provide to restaurants and consumers,” their complaint stated.

“I can’t believe that we have to legislate over a company whose gross food sales are in the billions in order for them to give local restaurants a break of a few hundred dollars per month!” New York City Councilmember Justin Brannan said to BuzzFeed News.


JustinBrannan@JustinBrannan
To all food delivery app drivers & workers: NYC thanks you endlessly and the @NYCCouncil is here to protect and support you. We have a bill (@FranciscoMoyaNY's Intro #1908) that would require a one-time emergency cap of 10% commission for delivery apps during the pandemic.  04:59 PM - 02 May 2020

Grubhub’s record quarter included about two weeks at the end of March that were negatively impacted by coronavirus closures, but its business quickly rebounded. The company reported the number of daily average orders in April increased by 20% compared to a year ago, and “all of our non-New York markets are experiencing a growth surge with many over 100% year-over-year.”

“For now, COVID-19 is a net tailwind for our growth metrics,” Grubhub noted in its earnings release. Executives told investors on Thursday that while business is up significantly, the company is merely breaking even, that it will invest nearly all profits in the second quarter to helping restaurants boost their orders, and that it has deferred $100 million in commissions to help restaurants (although restaurant owners say the fine print on the deferral program makes it far less helpful than waiving or reducing fees).

Critics say such measures are not enough. “If Grubhub and other delivery apps truly want to support the local restaurants they depend on for their billions, they don’t need to come up with creative schemes. Just cap the commission so the local restaurants can survive this crisis,” said Brannan.

In its call with investors, Grubhub executives called fee caps ineffective and harmful, reiterating claims it made in an April letter to New York lawmakers: “This arbitrary cap would limit how restaurants, and especially small and independent establishments, can market themselves and therefore severely limits how many customers and orders we can bring to these restaurants.”

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Tasneem Nashrulla · May 4, 2020 

Georgia, Tennessee, And Alaska Want Restaurants To Reopen — McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, And Dunkin’ Are Saying Not So Fast .   
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These Updating Charts Show The Record Number Of Americans Filing Unemployment Claims
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\Venessa Wong is a technology and business reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Zara’s Billionaire Owner Was Praised For Helping In The Coronavirus Crisis. Workers In Myanmar Paid The Price.

Fast fashion was always a problem. Now, COVID-19 has deepened the inequity between garment workers and fashion labels rebranding themselves as saviors.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING LONG READ FEATURE

Nishita JhaBuzz Feed News Reporter
Reporting From New Delhi Posted on May 7, 2020

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Zara's first store opening in Australia, in Sydney in 2011.

NEW DELHI — A woman immaculately dressed for quarantine reads on a plush sofa in her black crop top and anti-fit denim pants. Another, dressed in a flouncy floor-length peach dress, dances in her kitchen with joyous abandon. A third socially distances on a boat, her white poplin shirt dress a contrast to the lush green surroundings.

Meanwhile, in crowded factories located in chaotic, crime-filled industrial hubs, the workers making these clothes find themselves abandoned by Zara, the global retail brand that’s making quarantine look so glamorous.

When more than one-third of the planet went under coronavirus-related lockdowns, fashion changed. The globe-trotting, stylish woman from Zara’s campaigns moved indoors — or at least, that’s where you’ll see her in the slickly produced videos that the global fashion brand uploads to Twitter. It’s possible that no one will don a Versace cape anytime soon, but consumers are ordering clothes online to reflect their new lives: clothes to wear on work Zoom calls, athleisure for exercising at home, sweats and pajamas for lounging around, and clothes that simply make us feel good. The world might be full of uncertainty, but being able to choose the fit, color, and fabric of the shirt we pair with those comfy pajamas still offers the possibility of feeling in control.

The cost of this retail therapy, the longing for comfort and normalcy under lockdown, is being borne by workers thousands of miles away, faces you’d never see in a summer fashion campaign, even when the videos include token models of color. These workers cannot work from home and, in some cases, they are being forced to labor in factories in close proximity to each other without concern for protecting them from the coronavirus. While brands like Zara, which has stores in 96 countries, ramp up work at logistics centers, workers assembling clothes, swimwear, accessories, and shoes are being sacrificed to meet the demand

Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA, Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA, Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA A selection of still images from Zara's recent Twitter campaigns.

Issues with fast fashion far precede the emergence of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but its rapid spread has deepened the incredible inequity between garment workers who work at one end of the supply chain and wealthy individuals like Zara’s Spanish billionaire owner Amancio Ortega, the world’s sixth-richest man, who are rebranding themselves as benevolent saviors.

At the height of the pandemic in Spain this year, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, closed more than 3,000 stores. Ortega pivoted his fashion empire to making hospital gowns and masks, and according to Forbes, flew in medical supplies worth millions from China. Ortega also made sure that Zara’s Spanish employees received their full salaries during the crisis — all of which won him plenty of great press and support in Spain. On March 28, ambulance crews gathered outside his home to wish him a happy birthday. But Ortega’s generosity and concern for Zara’s workers stopped at the borders of Spain.

Nacho Louro@NachoLouroLas ambulancias de La Coruña delante de la casa de Amancio Ortega para expresar el agradecimiento de toda la sociedad y felicitarle por su cumpleaños. Felicidades Amancio, Marca España 🇪🇦07:38 PM - 28 Mar 2020Reply Retweet Favorite

Although Inditex does not publicly disclose the list of factories it sources clothing from, BuzzFeed News has spoken to employees from two factories that form part of Zara’s supply chain in Myanmar, where workers put in 11-hour shifts, six days a week, for as little as $3.50–$4.74 per day.
While people sang “Happy Birthday” to Ortega from their balconies in Spain, more than 500 workers at the two factories were laid off when they asked to be supplied with durable masks and for social distancing to be introduced to protect them from the coronavirus. One of the factories, Myan Mode, fired every single member of a workers’ union, along with a woman who had complained of being sexually harassed at the factory last year.



Obtained by BuzzFeed News
Inside a Zara factory in Yangon, Myanmar.

Inditex told BuzzFeed News it was working with suppliers to ensure they were following official guidance to protect workers during the pandemic. A spokesperson said that the dispute at Myan Mode had been at least partially resolved, with 29 sacked workers reinstated.

Anxiety about being laid off or having your salary slashed because of the coronavirus crisis has led to thinkpieces, graffiti, and “eat the rich” memes. Britney Spears might be a communist now, and teenagers on TikTok are calling Karl Marx “daddy.” Jeff Bezos — memed mercilessly for losing a minuscule portion of his money — has in fact now added $25 billion, more than the GDP of Honduras, to his total wealth since the coronavirus crisis began. Billionaires in the US have seen their net worth increase by tens of millions of dollars in the last three months.

Many want the ultra-rich to do more, which might be why Rihanna, who has donated millions of dollars to coronavirus relief efforts, has been described as a “one-woman COVID-19 foe.” But the pandemic and its economic repercussions have laid bare the hypocrisy of the super-wealthy who do just enough to make sure they get good press, while treating workers who labor for their brands as disposable.

“We could all die, and for what? Making already rich brands super rich,” one worker said on the phone from Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The working class is being sacrificed so they can wear good clothes.”



Sai Aung Main / Getty Images
A man wearing a face mask walks on an empty road, amid restrictions put in place to halt the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Yangon on April 10.

The coronavirus has so far not spread extensively in Myanmar, despite the country sharing a nearly 1,400-mile border with China, and the fact that an estimated 10,000 migrant workers were crossing the border on a daily basis until late January. As of May 7, the country has officially recorded only 176 cases and six deaths.

The country’s first positive case of the coronavirus was recorded on March 23 — a Myanmar citizen living in the United States who had recently returned for a wedding. Until then, Myanmar’s government was still patting itself on the back because there were “no cases of coronavirus in the country” — something the health minister said the people owed to their diet and lifestyle. There was still no mention of social distancing. But like several parts of Southeast Asia, it is difficult to give a true picture because there is insufficient testing — as of May 1, the government had administered 8,300 tests. Experts fear that if the number of coronavirus cases increased dramatically, the country’s public healthcare system would collapse. The World Bank has estimated that Myanmar has only 249 ventilators for a population of almost 55 million.

Not a whole lot had changed in the working practices at Myan Mode, the Zara factory which lies in the heart of the industrial district of Hlaing Tharyar, in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon. Since the factory, whose owners are based in South Korea, opened in 2016, half of all orders have been from Zara.

Hlaing Tharyar is a crowded hub of garment factories and light manufacturers, home to gang violence, police violence, and union clashes. Most of Myan Mode’s workers are young women from rural villages — Myanmar’s garment workforce is over 90% women. At the insistence of the workers’ union, factory bosses had added a basin for workers to wash their hands, while temperature checks took place as workers entered the factory. Employees had been provided with cloth masks in February but they were not durable, and the factory did not supply any other masks.



Courtesy Ohmar Myint
Ohmar Myint


Then suddenly, in the last week of March, everything changed. “The husbands of two women who worked at the factory returned from Thailand and were showing symptoms of COVID-19,” Ohmar Myint, a 34-year-old sewing machine operator at Myan Mode, told BuzzFeed News. “The women and their husbands lived in the dormitory, so everyone found out.”

On March 28, the union decided to speak to the factory’s owners again. “We wanted masks to be made mandatory, an end to mandatory overtime while the crisis was on, and we wanted them to send home the two women whose husbands had COVID-like symptoms,” a veteran union leader named Mau Maung, who was part of the negotiating committee, said. “It was a half-day, Saturday, so the management told us it would come back with a decision soon.” A few hours later, an official came to the room where the workers were gathered and read out a list of 571 names. Everyone on the list, including Myint, Maung, and 520 union members, was fired on the spot, representing about half of Myan Mode’s workforce.

“We were given no notice at all,” Maung said.

Nearly half a million people in Myanmar work in garment factories, living cheek by jowl in dormitories that factories rent to them for half of their salaries. The country’s minimum wage is one of the lowest in Asia, and following a wave of strikes last year, approximately 50,000 garment workers have joined or formed unions. These unions are a lifeline for people who are treated by big brands as convenient, but ultimately disposable, cheap labor. Myan Mode’s union was able to negotiate small victories for the workers, like permission to be up to 15 minutes late for work, and more reasonable working hours than other factories demanded — 44 hours a week, with up to 14 hours of overtime.

Dig into Zara’s history, and you will find its owner Ortega’s origin story recounted in breathless detail. It always begins with poverty, the seed for his philanthropic nature was planted when as a 12-year-old boy he saw his mother being denied food on credit at a local shop in La Coruña.

That kind of poverty is familiar for Myint, who was one of the 571 employees laid off at Myan Mode.

When she spoke to BuzzFeed News on the phone from Yangon, she sounded defiant and sad in turns — the factory had fired every single union member, and a woman who had complained that a senior colleague at the factory had made sexual advances toward her.

Myint said sexual harassment was rampant at garment worker factories in Myanmar, and she admired the way the union stood by the complainant, their solidarity ultimately leading to the man’s resignation from Myan Mode. This, she said, was why she joined the union. BuzzFeed News has been unable to contact the complainant, who union members say has left Yangon and returned to her native village.

“Workers cannot oppress workers, but that’s what happens at the factories,” Myint said. “The factory owners have absolute power — we cannot talk back to them no matter how much they exploit us, or demand better pay, or even ask for leave. If we take even one day off, we lose money. On days we finish our work early, we cannot sign out of the factory, we’re simply given another task, and then another, and another...the work never stops.”

Being in the union gave Myint more bargaining power, she was part of a collective of over 500 people, most of whom were women. But at the end of each day, Myint said, she still felt as though she was a machine whose batteries had died. Her entire body ached from hunching over the zippers and lining she sewed into skirts, jackets, shirts, and hoodies for Zara and its rival Spanish brand, Mango. Once her shift ended, there was still housework to be done, groceries to be carried home, food to be cooked for her family. She had five hours to herself in the entire day, and those were meant for sleep.

Myint said she first learned about the novel coronavirus in January, while browsing Facebook.

“[I was reading about] how contagious it is, and that’s scary for me, because we work so close to each other all day, if one of us fell sick, everyone would fall sick,” she said.

By February, Myint and the other union members had heard that the supply of raw materials from China, things like zippers, fabric, buttons, rivets, and velcro, had stopped coming to Myan Mode. That’s when Myint and the union decided to talk to their employers at the factory.

“We told them, ‘If you have plans to close the factory or fire workers because of coronavirus, let the union know first so we can help people look for other work,’” she said. “The owners agreed, but said there was no plan to close the factory yet.” Myan Mode confirmed the details of this conversation.



Iago Lopez / AP
Amancio Ortega, founding shareholder of Inditex fashion group, in July 2013.

The reputation that Ortega, Inditex’s billionaire founder, enjoys as a small-town hero in Spain is bolstered by stories about his legendary humility. Stories like how his first fashion distribution network began in 1963 at the port city of La Coruña to help women earn money, while their husbands went out to sea to fish. At Inditex’s headquarters in Arteixo, northwestern Spain, he sits at a desk in a corner of a Zara Woman workspace. Ortega, now 84, is so reclusive that until 1999 no photograph of him had even been published. Until lockdowns in Spain forced everyone to stay indoors, Ortega still drank his coffee at his favorite local café.

But Ortega’s true gift is speed. Inditex owns several other brands, including Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Stradivarius, Zara Home, and Uterqüe. But the company’s crown jewel is undoubtedly Zara. Last month Spanish media gleefully noted that even Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s second deputy prime minister and one of Ortega’s most vocal critics, was spotted wearing a black, fitted Zara Man jacket.

Over the years, as Zara evolved both its name — from Zorba to Zara — and its fashion ethos, the brand built its reputation by trend-spotting and delivering those trends to customers at warp speed: in fashion terms, weeks, instead of months.

Ortega’s quick thinking served him well even when the coronavirus hit Spain. He directed 11 of his factories in Galicia, northwest Spain, to immediately switch to making personal protective equipment (PPE). Zara also delivered washable, splash-proof, even arguably stylish turquoise hospital gowns to medical workers in the city of La Coruña. Soon after that, Ortega flew in another 3 million units of PPE from China, along with 1,450 ventilators for Spain.

In a pre-coronavirus world, Ortega’s way of doing business courted plenty of controversy. In 2015, Zara was accused of discriminating against black employees at its corporate offices (Zara denied the reports), while conditions in factories in Brazil were likened to “slavery” (Zara Brazil responded to the charges saying “the alleged criminal offences pointed out by the inspection report refer to third-party conduct that is not to be confused with Zara’s”). In 2016, Inditex was accused of tax evasion worth over 550 million euros, about $596 million (Inditex published a lengthy response denying the allegations). In 2017, workers making clothes for Zara in Turkey began sewing pleas for help into their lining.

When confronted by these allegations from Brazil and Turkey, Zara turned to the argument often used by big brands that rely on cheap labor for supply chains — they had a contract with the factory, and the factory alone. The way those factories treat their employees is not the brand’s business.

“That’s completely false, of course,” Andrew Tillett-Saks, a labor rights activist who lives and works in Myanmar, told BuzzFeed News. “If these brands were to indicate any interest in keeping workers safe, the factories would immediately follow suit. The fact is the brands have all the power to change things. They just don’t because they prioritize their financial profits over the people who make their clothes.”

To some extent, fashion’s exploitative practices looked like they were about to change following a massive factory accident in Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza in 2013, when an eight-story commercial building collapsed, killing over 1,000 garment factory workers. Inditex was among 200 fast fashion labels to sign a worker safety accord for Bangladeshi workers following the accident — but increasingly, that accord has ceased to matter. This month, for instance, thousands of workers including those who sew clothes for Zara are returning to garment factories in Bangladesh, even during the pandemic.

Courtesy the Myan Mode union
Workers protest unsafe conditions at garment factories in Yangon, Myanmar.

As Thingyan, Myanmar's annual new year water festival, began in April, hundreds of workers returned to their hometowns, uncertain of when they would return to work. Some had accepted a small severance from the factory; others had not. Myint said she and the other union members were growing increasingly certain that they were being punished. Another factory, Rui Ning, located in the same industrial complex as Myan Mode, had laid off 30% of its workers, most of whom were union members too. By this time, the coronavirus crisis was also growing: Yangon imposed a lockdown during the holiday season from April 10 to April 19, as well as a night curfew when it was discovered that 80% of the country’s positive COVID-19 cases were in the capital.

In the past, labor unions and NGOs have been wary of publicly calling out brands because they were afraid of precisely what happened at Myan Mode and Rui Ning — troublemakers would be fired, or the brand would shut that particular factory down and sign a contract with another. “Owners briefly shut down the factory only to quickly reopen with new, nonunion workers,” Tillet-Saks, the labor rights activist, said. “Often, they will change technical details such as the factory’s name or registrant to circumvent labor laws, while maintaining the same core operation.”

VIDEO

 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nishitajha/coronavirus-zara-spain-inditex-myanmar
A union leader in Rui Ning explains what happened at the factory.

But the prospect of being unemployed during a pandemic might change that. For the past month, around 30 members of the Myan Mode union who were sacked appeared daily outside the factory’s gates in protest, where they ate, slept, sang union songs. The union has also approached the South Korean consulate and Yangon’s Arbitration Council. “If that does not work, we might even sue,” one leader told BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity. BuzzFeed News also learned that union members from the Myan Mode and Rui Ning unions have reached out to union workers in Spain, who have assured them that they will add pressure to negotiations with Inditex and Mango.

“If the Spanish unions do help, this is a great step in the international labor rights movement. It will mean a lot to the union in Myanmar,” said Tillett-Saks, who was aware of emails exchanged between the unions in Myanmar and Spain. “With the employers and brands being so multinational, workers need to be united internationally as well if they are going to have any power to improve the garment industry. All they want is that workers who were fired should be reinstated and that they do not use the pandemic as an excuse to attack the union.”

Inditex’s own code of conduct states that the company supports unions and wants factories to treat workers in the supply chain with care for their health and safety. Days after BuzzFeed News reached out to the company’s ethics committee for a response on the sacking of workers at Myan Mode, a representative from Inditex said the dispute at Myan Mode with 29 workers had been resolved through dialogue, and that the factory had agreed to reinstate the protesting workers. The more than 500 workers who had accepted severance pay could possibly be able to return to the factory once it resumed work at full capacity — although it was unclear when that might happen.

“We have communicated with suppliers to follow local government recommendations and instructions and/or to implement measures to ensure they are following the health protection guidelines for workplaces detailed by the WHO regarding Covid 19,” the Inditex representative wrote.

“We are working closely with our suppliers at this difficult time and we expect continued compliance with our Code of Conduct, which clearly requires fair treatment of workers and no discrimination against workers’ representatives.”

But union workers said the olive branch from Zara, which arrived on May 6, more than a month after 571 workers were fired, was a belated attempt at damage control. “This union-busting case using COVID-19 as cover has not yet been resolved,” a union worker told BuzzFeed News, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The union worker said that the offer to reinstate 29 people fell short of the union’s demands.

For instance, more than 500 workers who were laid off still had no jobs, and the fact that they had accepted a paltry severance was being used against them. Myan Mode had failed to honor an agreement that it would not target the union and lay off workers during the pandemic, the union member said. Myan Mode is still refusing to recognize the union officially, while it has hired hundreds of daily migrant workers who are not members of any union.

Mango did not respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.


Sai Aung Main / Getty Images
Firefighters wearing protective clothing spray disinfectant along a street as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 in Yangon, April 23.

Across Asia, countries have had two kinds of responses to the pandemic: complete shutdowns like India and Sri Lanka, or partial lockdowns with restrictions, like Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar, where governments have banned gatherings but kept factories running. While these decisions have largely depended on the health of each country’s domestic economy, countries suddenly closing down their borders have caused panic — particularly among the poorest and most invisible populations of migrant workers, who cross domestic and international borders searching for work. This exodus of worried workers, desperate to return home as the worst economic and health crisis grows around them, is occurring in tandem with spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Everything is terrible — but the pandemic is particularly worrying for the people making our clothes, because readymade garment workers work on short-term contracts or are sometimes paid per piece of apparel, existing precariously close to poverty. Already, several brands have canceled orders of clothes that have already been made in factories, and many have reneged on payments promised to workers in Asia. The relentless consumer hunger for branded clothes and fast fashion means that when the worst of the crisis is over, and our appetite for shopping returns, all that a big brand has to do is find the next bunch of cheap laborers.

For too long, we’ve pretended that fast fashion and eco-consciousness can coexist, that the worst excesses of sweatshop exploitation are a thing of the past. Brands like Zara and Mango advertise sustainability all over their stores; other brands assure customers that they recycle all their packaging. But in the middle of a pandemic, it is no longer enough to wear faux concern. ●



Nishita Jha is a global women's rights reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in India.
Contact Nishita Jha

Betsy DeVos Changed The Title IX Rules For How Schools Handle Sexual Assault Reports

Victim advocacy groups say the changes will let schools off the hook and make it harder for victims of sexual assault to seek justice.

Ellie Hall BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 7, 2020

Jim Watson / Getty Images

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Wednesday finalized new federal regulations that give more protection and power to students accused of sexual assault — which advocates say will hurt survivors.

The new regulations lay out how schools must interpret the federal Title IX gender equity law. In particular, the law has guided how colleges and universities respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment on campus.

Some of the key changes in the new regulations include narrowing the definition of what constitutes sexual harassment and mandating live hearings, during which those accused of sexual assault are given the new right to cross-examine their accuser via a third party.

DeVos said Wednesday that these new regulations will make the investigation process smoother and provide better protection to accused students.

"Too many students have lost access to their education because their school inadequately responded when a student filed a complaint of sexual harassment or sexual assault," DeVos said in a statement.

"This new regulation requires schools to act in meaningful ways to support survivors of sexual misconduct, without sacrificing important safeguards to ensure a fair and transparent process," she added. "We can and must continue to fight sexual misconduct in our nation's schools, and this rule makes certain that fight continues."

In 2011, the Obama administration implemented a number of steps schools were required to take when a student reported a sexual assault, such as 60-day time limits on investigations, increased protections for accusers, and a broader definition of what constitutes sexual harassment and assault.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who as vice president led the Obama administration's "It's On Us" campaign against campus sexual assault, said in a statement Wednesday that he would put a "quick end” to DeVos's Title IX changes if elected, saying that the new regulations "[give] colleges a green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their rights.”

Victim advocacy groups say the changes will let schools off the hook and empower them to ignore accusations of sexual assault and harassment.

"The final rule makes it harder for survivors to report sexual violence, reduces schools’ liability for ignoring or covering up sexual harassment, and creates a biased reporting process that favors respondents and schools over survivors’ access to education," Sage Carson, of Know Your IX, a group that combats gender violence in schools, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News on Wednesday.

In 2018, the Trump administration estimated that rolling back the Obama-era expansion of Title IX would save schools nationwide between $286 million and $368 million over 10 years as they were required to investigate fewer sexual misconduct cases.

The executive director of the advocacy group End Rape on Campus, Kenyora Parham, said on Twitter that the changes show DeVos and the Trump administration have "absolutely no regard for survivors."

In a column published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday, the presidents of the National Women’s Law Center and the NAACP said that new Department of Education regulations threaten "racial and gender justice."

"DeVos’s Title IX rules would make it harder for students who are sexually harassed to receive vital support and protection, while mandating unfair processes for investigating and addressing sexual harassment," the NWLC's Fatima Goss Graves and the NAACP's Derrick Johnson said in the op-ed, which they coauthored. "All these changes would particularly hurt black women and girls, who face even higher stakes when reporting sexual harassment."

"Both of our organizations have stated, again and again, that an attack on Title IX is an attack on all civil rights. DeVos’s rules would forbid schools from proactively addressing sexual violence, forcing too many student survivors into a broken criminal legal system in order to hold their abusers accountable. While some may choose to report their assaults to law enforcement, this cannot be the only option for survivors."

The new regulations will go into effect in August.


MORE ON THIS

Betsy DeVos Wants New Regulations That Protect Students Accused Of Sexual Assault And Their Schools

Tyler Kingkade · Nov. 16, 2018

The Trump Administration Has Revoked A Federal Directive On Campus Rape

Molly Hensley-Clancy · Sept. 22, 2017

Betsy DeVos Reveals Plan To Overhaul Obama-Era Campus Rape Policies

Tyler Kingkade · Sept. 7, 2017


Ellie Hall is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Ellie Hall

Magician Roy Horn Of Siegfried & Roy Has Died Of The Coronavirus At 75

Horn was severely injured in an attack by one of his tigers in 2003.

David MackBuzzFeed News Reporter  May 8, 2020

Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images Siegfried & Roy in the 1970s.

Roy Horn — one half of the tiger-toting and extravagant German magic duo Siegfried & Roy, who became world-famous for their Las Vegas nightlife show — died Friday of the coronavirus. He was 75.

Horn died in the Mountain View Hospital in Las Vegas, according to a media statement to several news outlets.

“Today, the world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend,” Siegfried Fischbacher said in the statement. “From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world. There could be no Siegfried without Roy, and no Roy without Siegfried."

Responding to Horn's death, magician David Copperfield described him as "a wonderful artist, a legend."

"Roy gave so much to entertainment and our community," he tweeted.


John Locher / AP
Siegfried Fischbacher, left, with Roy Horn in 2014, some nine years after he was attacked by one of their tigers.

Horn was born in Germany in 1944 as Allied bombs rained down toward the end of World War II. His mother, Johanna, left her three other children in a basement in order to cycle through the carnage to her sister's place to give birth, according to the magicians' website biography.

At a young age, he befriended his family dog, Hexe, while his stepfather struggled with alcoholism and the family sank into post-war poverty.

“I was a prince and Hexe was my unicorn,” Horn said. “We ran, we flew; out there we knew no boundaries—we were free.”

Sensing his affinity with animals, his mother's friends organized for Horn's birthday for him to have access to a zoo where they served as patrons. It was there that Horn grew an affinity to the zoo's tiger and cheetah, beginning his love for wild cats.

While working as a waiter on a cruise ship in the late 1950s, Horn met Fischbacher, who had been working performing magic shows, and teased him that his show needed scarier animals to be more entertaining.

It was the beginning of a multi-decade partnership that saw them tour first the seas, then Europe, then North America, and the world with their levitating tigers and vanishing elephants.

A 1989 New York Times piece on the pair described their show as "a sorcerer's extravaganza, a pageant of Las Vegas glitter and circus glitz."

The performance involved 55 cast members, 24 big cats, an elephant, a python, and an understudy python "just in case."

The pair established a decades-long residency in Las Vegas and were even parodied on The Simpsons.



In 2003, Horn was attacked by a 600-pound white tiger during a show at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. The animal mauled his neck and dragged him offstage, as crew members tried desperately to free him. But Horn was left partially paralyzed and permanently disfigured.

In 2009, after some 5,000 shows over 13 years, the pair performed one final farewell Las Vegas performance.

''We haven't done too badly for a couple of immigrants,'' Roy told the New York Times in 1989 as they performed in the city. ''When two guys come from Germany with absolutely nothing, it's a great thing to have your name in lights at the Radio City Music Hall, don't you think?''

David Mack is a deputy director of breaking news for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact David Mack 

Ukrainian Prosecutors Drafted Documents To Charge Paul Manafort With Corruption. Then The Case Disappeared.

Manafort and a former Obama White House counsel were on the brink of being charged for aiding the embezzlement of more than $1 million in Ukraine. And then they weren't.

Posted on May 8, 2020, at 1:28 p.m. ET

Timothy A. Clary / Getty Images
President Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort arrives at Manhattan Supreme Court, June 27, 2019.

KYIV, Ukraine — A little over a year ago, in a pre-coronavirus pandemic world, Paul Manafort was convicted in the US of financial fraud, witness tampering, and lobbying crimes related to his work in Ukraine, and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

The charges against him stemmed from, but were not directly related to, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s 2016 election interference, which came to a close shortly after Manafort’s sentencing.

Many wondered at the time why prosecutors in Kyiv, ground zero for the crimes that landed Manafort behind bars in the US, had not charged Donald Trump’s former campaign chair with crimes in Ukraine.

It wasn’t for lack of trying.

As BuzzFeed News has reported, Ukrainian prosecutors made several unsuccessful attempts to get US law enforcement officials to turn over evidence from Manafort or make him available for an interview, as they pursued three separate corruption investigations in Kyiv in which he was a “key witness.”

But as the probes went on, Manafort quickly became more than just a witness in one case: he became a suspect.

BuzzFeed News can now reveal that in May 2019, as Manafort settled into his US prison cell, a special investigations unit inside the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office was preparing to wrap up a four-year-long investigation, drafting an indictment for him as well as for Greg Craig, a former Obama White House counsel and partner at the big-shot law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

The charge: aiding in the embezzlement of state funds.

“The managing partner of Skadden Law Firm Gregory B. Craig and Paul Manafort intentionally participated in the misappropriation of the funds from the State Budget of Ukraine totaling $1,075,381.41 (8,595,523.61 Ukrainian hryvnias and more than 600 times the tax-free minimum of citizens’ salaries), causing damage to the state,” reads the draft indictment for the two US citizens obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The document, which has never before been reported and would have been the first criminal charge brought against Manafort abroad, details in more than 4,000 words how and when Manafort and Craig allegedly facilitated the embezzlement of more than $1 million in Ukrainian state funds.

The draft indictment’s authenticity was confirmed to BuzzFeed News by Serhiy Gorbatyuk, the former top Ukrainian prosecutor for special investigations who led the effort to charge Manafort and Craig, and a second prosecutor involved in the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he continues to work in the prosecutor general’s office (PGO) and feared retribution for sharing details about the case with reporters.

“In the course of the investigation, enough data was obtained to decide about pursuing criminal prosecution, including that of [Manafort and Craig],” Gorbatyuk told BuzzFeed News.

Craig and Skadden were paid nearly $1.1 million in 2011 by Ukraine’s justice ministry, which at the time was headed by Yanukovych ally Oleksandr Lavrynovych. The firm’s task was to produce a report that justified the controversial imprisonment of the politician Yulia Tymoshenko, who had been jailed for allegedly brokering an unfavorable gas deal with Russia when she was Ukraine’s prime minister. (Tymoshenko’s sentence was viewed by much of the international community as political persecution by the Yanukovych regime. She was released in February 2014 and later reelected to Parliament.)


Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
Gregory Craig (left), former White House counsel to Barack Obama, arrives at federal court in Washington, DC, Sept. 3, 2019 .

Manafort was guiding Ukraine’s efforts to improve its international image at the time and helped connect Craig and Skadden with the Yanukovych government. Manafort had worked for Yanukovych and his Russia-aligned Party of Regions for the better part of a decade.

In June 2017, Skadden refunded $567,000 to the Ukrainian government — roughly half of the total it was paid by the Yanukovych government for the report, according to the Kyiv Post. Skadden told the New York Times that it returned the money because it had been placed “in escrow for future work” that never took place.

Manafort, who is currently serving out his sentence in a Pennsylvania prison, has sought early release because of the threat that the novel coronavirus poses to his health. He could not be reached through his lawyer for comment

Craig, who served as White House counsel for President Barack Obama, was charged in April 2019 with lying to the justice department about his role in the Tymoshenko saga and work for Manafort on behalf of the Yanukovych government, but he was acquitted by a jury in September. Reached by BuzzFeed News, Craig’s attorneys declined to provide comment for this story.

For Gorbatyuk and his team of prosecutors taking on many of the highest-profile cases in the country, seeing a portion of the money returned to Ukraine wasn’t enough. They were bent on pursuing a case against Manafort and Craig and getting back every penny.

After four years of investigating the case, a final push to possibly indict the men came at a particularly critical moment for Ukraine. It was May 2019, and the presidential office was changing hands in Kyiv.

The incoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his team were well aware of the importance of keeping the US–Ukraine relationship strong and wary of offending Trump, who described Ukraine to his envoy at the time as being full of “terrible people” who “tried to take me down.” Trump would also be the one to give final approval for $391.5 million in US military aid to Ukraine that the country needed to continue the fight against Russia-backed separatists in its war-torn eastern regions. That assistance package was the one at the center of the Trump impeachment saga that would be set off by a phone call between the US president and Ukraine’s Zelensky in July — a call in which Zelensky said he was about to appoint a new prosecutor general who would be “100% my person.”

Around that time in July, Gorbatyuk said the criminal charges for Manafort and Craig were nearly ready but one of prosecutors decided to hold off because he wanted to send one more request for assistance to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment, saying the department does not publicly speak about communications with foreign governments on investigative matters, including confirming or denying the very existence of such communications.

That decision to hold off may have been the thing that ultimately kept Manafort and Craig from being charged in Ukraine.

In August, Zelensky appointed Ruslan Riaboshapka as Ukraine’s new prosecutor general. Riaboshapka was an anti-corruption expert who vowed to clean up a dirty justice system and deliver high-profile corruption convictions.

“Riaboshapka came on. And in September, I reported to him about the prospects for all our cases, and in particular, in this case, I reported that we had actually prepared a draft notice of suspicion,” Gorbatyuk said, describing the Manafort and Craig indictment document.

But Gorbatyuk’s optimism was quickly dashed when Riaboshapka transferred to other departments the cases being pursued by his unit, which had been created to investigate high crimes committed during the 2014 Maidan revolution and corruption offenses committed by top officials during the Yanukovych presidency.

“He [Riaboshapka] destroyed our unit,” Gorbatyuk said. “I assume that it was done to intervene and destroy most of the investigations that we were conducting.” He said that included the case involving Manafort and Craig but he did not believe that that case was the sole reason behind the moves.

Riaboshapka told BuzzFeed News in an interview that he did not remember discussing an indictment being drafted for Manafort and Craig. And he said that Gorbatyuk’s unit was “not disbanded, it was reorganized and those people who wanted to work wrote a statement and were recertified [and] remain at work.”

Riaboshapka himself was fired from his post in March after falling out with Zelensky. Critics in Zelensky’s ruling party in Parliament said the prosecutor failed to make sufficient progress in prosecuting corrupt officials.

On Thursday, Manafort’s name was in the news in the US once again. The House intelligence committee released thousands of documents relating to the Russia investigation. In them, Hope Hicks, a Trump adviser, expressed concern that Manafort had been stealing from the Trump campaign.

“Was there ever any concern about Mr. Manafort stealing money from the Trump campaign," Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell asked. “Yes,” Hicks replied, adding that she had discussed it with several people, including Trump himself.

As of the time of publication, no charges had been filed against Manafort and Craig in Ukraine, and it is not known whether the indictment will ever be filed. For now, the case is sitting amid a pile of dozens of other corruption cases on a desk somewhere inside the national anti-corruption bureau of Ukraine. Prosecutors there did not respond to requests for comment.

Tanya Kozyreva is an investigative correspondent for BuzzFeed News based in Kiev, Ukraine.
Contact Tanya Kozyreva

Christopher Miller is a Kyiv-based American journalist and editor.

Contact Christopher Miller 

Costco Meatpacking Worker: "We’re All Worried About Getting Sick"

As concerns about a meat shortage mount, a meatpacking worker discusses her fear of getting the coronavirus while still needing to work.

Melissa Segura BuzzFeed News Reporter May 8, 2020

Nati Harnik / AP
Workers process chickens at the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant in Fremont, Nebraska, in 2019.

Costco announced Monday that it would be limiting the amount of meat and poultry each customer would be allowed to purchase because supplies had been affected by coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants. On that same day, the first worker at one of Costco’s poultry producers, Lincoln Premium Poultry, died of COVID-19. The worker was one of 28 diagnosed at the Fremont, Nebraska, plant, which employs 1,100 workers, most of them immigrants.

With some plants closing because of the spread of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has classified meat processing as critical infrastructure in a move to keep plants open and safeguard the nation’s food supply. The CDC reported nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers in 115 facilities across the country tested positive in April. At least 20 have died.

BuzzFeed News spoke with an employee of the Fremont plant. She asked that we not use her name for fear of retaliation by the company; BuzzFeed verified she worked for the company by checking her employee identification.

The employee arrived in the United States from Central America more than 10 years ago. She is an unauthorized immigrant who has mostly worked in meatpacking plants since arriving in the US. BuzzFeed News talked with her about what it’s like going to work in one of the virus’s hot spots, what she and her colleagues are talking about, and why she keeps showing up despite the dangers.

Below is an edited transcript of that conversation, translated from Spanish to English.

I know about 18 of the people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant where I work.

They say the virus feels like death. That it brings about this deep cold in your body. Everyone says stay in your house, but if I stay in my house, how am I going to survive?

It’s a question without an answer.

I don’t feel safe going to work. Before the virus, I used to get to work early to start my 5 a.m. shift. Now I struggle to get to the plant. I worry about getting sick and bringing the virus home to my three children.

Fortunately I work in an area where we have a good amount of space, not like the place where they kill the chickens. In that area, they’re practically on top of one another. I stand at one of three conveyor belts where 120 chickens pass per minute. They’re mostly clean by the time they get to me, without their feathers. I look for the chickens that look purple or still have feathers and take them off of the belt. I make $16 per hour doing that. Sometimes if someone is missing, I’ll go to the area where they cut the chickens’ necks.

I first heard of the outbreak at Lincoln from Facebook. There were posts from the City of Fremont and from the media about the virus. Then when five people had been diagnosed with the virus, we had small meetings where supervisors told us to make an extra effort not to get too close to one another, not to touch our faces. The company put up dividers to separate us at the round tables in the lunchroom. They say they’re sanitizing the plant in the early morning hours, but people continue being contagious.

At Lincoln Premium Poultry, the majority of us are Latinos. For those of us who are unauthorized immigrants, in reality, there are very few jobs we can do. The owner of the plant smiles and says, “Without Latinos this plant wouldn’t exist.” That’s something [Trump] doesn’t value — the help that Latinos provide. We talk about the government a lot at the plant. Trump declared that meatpacking plants had to stay open; he doesn’t think of the workers, right? It’s when you go to the store that you see the importance of what we do. If we didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t have those products in the store.


Icon Sportswire / Getty Images

Chicken refrigerator cases inside a Costco Wholesale Club on March 13 in East Hanover, New Jersey.

But it’s really hurtful, for example, that I’ve been in the United States for more than 10 years and I’ve paid all my taxes and the government doesn’t recognize it. The government is giving money to a lot of people but as an unauthorized immigrant, I don’t qualify for anything.

We’re all worried about getting sick. Last week, I wasn’t feeling well and had to go to get tested. I had to stay home from work until the coronavirus test came back. I didn’t have the coronavirus.

Everyone is asking one another, “Do you think you’ll keep coming to work?” No one wants to fall behind on their bills. There are lots of people working because of that.

Since the virus, the company realizes that we’re falling behind on production. Now they’re offering us overtime. Logically, the more time we spend at work, the more likely we are to get sick. A lot of people in the plant are saying, if the coronavirus kills us, who are the ones who are going to die of hunger?

Response from Lincoln Premium Poultry: Spokesperson Jessica Kolterman listed a variety of measures to keep workers healthy and assist those who are sick. She said the company provides masks to employees and hand sanitizer in designated areas of the plant. In other areas, 20-second handwashing is required. Plant doors are propped open in areas to assist with ventilation but are not opened in zones where doing so would compromise food safety or violate regulations. Kolterman said that Lincoln provides sick pay, that those employees who test positive for the coronavirus are paid, and that days missed from work do not count against the sick leave that works accrue. The company will pay a $2-per-hour bonus in May for those who have worked during the pandemic. Additionally, the company says it provides housing and meals for workers who are ill or who are healthy but don’t want to risk infecting members of their households.

Melissa Segura is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New Mexico. Melissa Segura at melissa.segura@buzzfeed.com.