by An Anonymous Office Worker
There is a sense of impending doom hanging over the company. The fourth positive COVID test sends rumors through the staff, but there’s no word from management except to a select few. No one is given a chance to decide for themselves whether they’ve been exposed.
Everyone is confused and upset: “Why are they making us come in when it’s not safe? Why won’t they let us work from home? Who’s going to be next?”
The lack of information only makes the terror worse. The bosses want the company to remain open no matter what danger it brings to workers. The measures taken to protect the workers are the bare minimum and clearly not adequate. When someone gets sick, the managers insist the exposure didn’t happen at the company. “We don’t know what they do in their free time” is a mantra they repeat, as if it will wash the blood off their hands.
“This is the new normal,” they claim, despite many other countries getting the pandemic under control. “We’re following the guidelines,” they insist, despite multiple people being sick.
They pass the blame onto workers while putting a metaphorical gun to our head, forcing us to work or be fired. As eviction courts reopen and the unemployment rate skyrockets, the alternative is to find another job in a dead job market or risk quitting and becoming homeless.
They twist every word to keep the company open. They ignore the fact that the guidelines have failed to stop the pandemic, that there are more than a thousand deaths per day around the country. They have the ability to make the workers safer, but they refuse, all in the name of making money. They don’t care that their excuses don’t make sense. To call them “irresponsible” is to suggest they don’t know exactly what they’re doing. They have prioritized profits over people.
Workers have little choice, unless we’re organized. In many places, management has kept people isolated, disorganized, and terrified of causing trouble. Throughout the city, the infection rate increases as workers are forced into danger. Workers feel powerless to stand up for themselves against manipulative bosses. But the truth is, the bosses are scared. They got a glimpse of what the world would look like if workers took back their power, organized, and refused to work when the pandemic forced them to shut down initially. They have called people back in a desperate attempt to save their businesses, knowing that if we unite and fight back, there’s nothing they can do.