Essential Latin workers bear the brunt of the coronavirus

For Loupe Martinez doing her laundry in a riverside nursing home, there was a horrible choice every day. You’re at risk of getting a new coronavirus at work or losing the family-focused paycheck of $ 13.58 per hour.

Martinez went to work.

Even after the mask is gone. Still, she said she was sick and put in a cell after she entered without protective clothing.

Martinez, age 62, tested positive for COVID-19 last month, and her 60-year-old husband had to quit his job after a heart attack last year. Her adult sons and daughters living with them also tested positive.

“There were many times I didn’t want to go to work,” Martinez said, and he coughed badly while talking. “I didn’t want to get sick.” My husband said he couldn’t live. There are these bills … I had to go myself. There was a commitment to my family. ”

For low-paid workers who clean the floor, do laundry, provide fast food, harvest crops, and work in meat factories, for low-paid workers who rarely get the glory even if they work. The work to get America working was expensive. According to the strange calculation caused by the spread of the virus, they were considered “essential”. And that means becoming a target.

Black, latino In the California and other parts of the United States, they suffered the epidemic of the COVID-19 epidemic, became infected, and died at a very high percentage of the population. Health professionals say that one of the main reasons Latin Americans are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 is that many people leave their homes for the masses because they are engaged in low-paying jobs. He says he is forced to interact.

Latin Americans make up about 40% of the California population, but 53% of positive cases According to the state data.. In San Francisco, Latin Americans make up 15% of the population, but 25% of confirmed cases of COVID-19.

University of California San Francisco Tested researchers Thousands of COVID-19 in the city’s Mission District. Latinos accounted for 44% of those tested, but more than 95% of positive cases. About 90% of those with a positive test said they couldn’t work from home.

An analysis of last month’s Los Angeles Times data found that an excessively high percentage of young Latin Americans and blacks died. This is because we believed in old age as the common risk factor for death.

Latin Americans in California are far less likely to say that working at home during a pandemic is much less likely than whites, Asians, and blacks, New poll A California voters of the University of California, Berkeley Government Research Institute.

About 42% of the Latin Americans surveyed said they could work from home, compared to 53% of blacks, 59% of Asians and 61% of whites. The study also found that Latin Americans were almost three times more likely than whites to care about their jobs and be closer to others. This was a particular problem during the first few weeks of the pandemic. Lacking masks and other protective equipment, many companies were still trying to implement social distance policies.

“I feel they are essential. They are trying to play their part in getting us out of this crisis,” said Jose Lopez, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based Alliance for Food Chain Workers. “But we can’t provide face masks. We can’t give them space to give them 6 feet away from their colleagues.”

According to a Times analysis of U.S. Census data, Latin Americans make up less than 40% of the workforce in all industrial sectors considered critical by the California government, depending on the percentage of the state’s population. There is. However, in some sectors they are largely overrated.

In essential agricultural jobs, the workforce is more than 80% Latin American. They also have more than half of the essential food jobs, and almost 60% of construction jobs are considered essential. At the same time, the Pew Research Center says that Latino Americans in the United States are more likely than the general population to say that they and their family members lost their wages or were unemployed during the pandemic. Investigation In April.

For several weeks, Dr. Marlene Martin, a clinical assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and a doctor at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, was watching Latin American patients with COVID-19 gather in the emergency room. More than 80% of patients hospitalized for coronavirus at the facility last month were Latin American.

They were roofers, cooks, janitors, dishwashers and delivery drivers. Many of them were under 50. They lived in households where it was difficult to keep a social distance, and sometimes had a few other families. For Martin, a 36-year-old Latina, when entering the intensive care unit, he or she feels as if he is facing an obstructive mirror.

“It was already full of people who looked like me,” she said, “they share a common language and similar cultural background.”

“You understand the extreme situation of what happens when someone can evacuate there, or when no one is there. It doesn’t mean people don’t want to stay home. It’s not that they haven’t heard, it’s not that they haven’t been educated, that they have no choice. ”

The heavy damage of coronaviruses to Latin Americans raises the question of whether US and government employers are acting sufficiently to protect these workers.

In Iowa, Latin Americans make up about 6% of the population, but make up a quarter of all positive cases. Number of states.. Latin American, Washington representative 35% of all positive cases, even if only 13% of the total population.

The balance of safety and work reliance on key Latin American workers has been tested in the City of Hanford. In Hanford, a coronavirus outbreak in a meat packaging plant accounts for half of the confirmed cases in Kings County.

County regulator Doug Barboon said that about 180 employees of the Central Valley Meat Company were positive from Tuesday. He said most of the employees at the facility working in the immediate vicinity of “moist and wet working conditions” are of Latino origin. Central Valley Meet did not answer the Times phone or email.

Karla Barrera is a deli manager for a sun valley grocery store and two mothers. “I’m so scared of my baby. I pray for it not,” said Barrera.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

During the cherry-picking season, which lasts until mid-June, Barboon said he was relying on Latinos. He said the Hanford fruit-packing company, which hired 800 workers to pick cherries, told him that the same epidemic as the Central Valley Meat Company was “catastrophic.”

“We can’t beat these people because of the short working window,” Verboon said.

Loupe Martinez started in July last year at the Altavista Health and Wellness Center in Riverside after her sheet metal worker and earning husband had a heart attack and quit her job.

In the laundry room, Martinez, a local 2015 member of the 2015 International Service Union employees representing approximately 400,000 home care and nursing homes in California, was targeted primarily to Latin Americans and Filipinos. It was surrounded. Many of his colleagues work in two jobs and in turns, washing heavy blankets and comforters, cleaning shower curtains, and handling patient laundry.

Martinez’s family asked him not to go as the virus began to spread in California.

“I told them,” I will trust God. I’m not going to get it, “she said. “I’m going to work. I’m worried.”

A few weeks ago, Martinez said she entered an older woman’s room to bring her clean clothes. If the patient is ill, there is usually a notice on the door and staff must wear gloves, masks and other equipment. Martinez said nothing had been posted, so she entered without a mask.

Martinez said the woman told him that she was sick. A few days later, the door sign showed that it was quarantined.

Altavista Health and Wellness Center did not return phone or email for comments.

On April 13, Martinez returned home with a sore throat, a dry cough, and a sore body. She couldn’t taste the tea her son brought to her. She had difficulty breathing. She was sent to a hospital before and after a positive COVID-19 test, sent to her home, and told to quarantine herself.

When her husband, son and daughter living at home gave a positive test, she lay on the bed yelling at God.

Another son and his wife live in the backyard of the property. He is a barber She is a dental hygienist. They are currently out of work and out of business. They did not get COVID-19.

Martinez said she wasn’t eligible for sick benefits because she hadn’t worked in a nursing home for a year yet. She requested state disability but has not yet received a reply. Martinez said she felt she needed to return to work.

“My kids don’t want me to come back,” Martinez said. “But I have an invoice. I think it’s my life, but I don’t know.”

Rosa Arenas, another member of the Orange Nursing Home and a certified nurse assistant, said she was tested last month after she learned she was COVID-19 positive. On May 2, Arenas tested positive.

She is currently isolated in the bedroom of her family’s apartment, away from her husband and her two children aged 12 and 6 (test negative). On Mother’s Day she read the Bible alone and had outdoor video chats with her children and husband.

“My children told me I was sad not to hug me on Mother’s Day,” said the 32-year-old Arena.

She said her work did not have enough personal protective equipment and her colleagues were infected. Her landscaper was recently sent home by her employer for quarantine and inspection, and she burned all paid and sick leave while she was quarantined at home. And she can’t work.

Rafael Sarvedra, 40, outside his home last week in the Alhambra.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Rafael Sarvedra, a 40-year-old truck driver from the Alhambra, comes home from work, undresses in the garage, throws his clothes into the washing machine, and rushes into the shower, taking care not to touch anything. interior. Her greatest fear is infecting her 16 and 6 year old daughters.

At San Pedro’s dispatch center where he and hundreds of other drivers drop down documents and take a break, he finds little soap or hand sanitizer.

According to Saavedra, the employees who normally work in the center work in remote areas and have little communication with the driver on how to be safe. He said the driver received one thin mask about a month ago and nothing else.

Saavedra said the majority of drivers who work with him are Latin American immigrants who struggle to overcome pandemics due to language barriers and lack of resources.

“They don’t know their rights. They are afraid to speak. They stay in their cocoons,” he said.

Saavedra has carved out a comfortable life for his family. He often travels with his wife and daughter who attend private Christian schools. However, the reduction in time cut his salary in half. He is afraid to lose his house.

His wife, a nurse in a homeless shelter in Pasadena, reduced his own time in fear of catching the virus and infecting their daughter.

Sonia Hernandez, who raised four children as a single mother, has been working as a cook at McDonald’s in Monterey Park for 18 years and earns a little $ 14 per hour, her daughter Jennifer Barrera Hernandez said. ..

In early April, Hernandez was hospitalized with COVID-19 and was in a coma for a few weeks.

“They told us that she wasn’t going to spend the day, and we had to decide whether she wanted to go peacefully or had chest compressions to try to beat. It was, “said Barrera Hernandez. “It was really difficult to make this decision.”

Miraculously, her mother woke up, Barrera Hernandez said.

After her diagnosis, Hernandez’s colleague quit his job to demand safety equipment such as masks, gloves, soaps and hand sanitizers. Valera Hernandez said she couldn’t make a phone call after calling McDonald’s to warn the company that her mother had a positive reaction.

“I’m really sad because my mother really liked this job. You’ve been offering business for a long time, but in the end you’re just a number.”

Hernandez is recovering at her home in South Los Angeles. She was very tired and could not walk for a long time or make her phone last longer, her daughter said. She feels guilty and she still can’t get back to work.

David Tober, vice president of communications for McDonald’s in the US, said many of the statements made by Valera Hernandez and certain employees were false.

He said McDonald’s restaurants, including the one where Hernandez worked, had a large amount of soap, hand sanitizers, and cleaning supplies, and closed overnight a week for late night cleaning. According to Tovar, the restaurant is only open for take-out, social distance requirements apply and the bathroom is closed.

When McDonald’s learned of Hernandez’s diagnosis on April 8, the company immediately notified the four crew members it was in contact with, he said.

“We have the utmost respect for Hernandez and all McDonald’s employees, but it’s unreasonable to let them tell you something that isn’t true,” Tober said. “We are a very large employer of diverse employees, especially Latinos. We want everyone who works at McDonald’s to have a good experience.”

Mariana’s mother proudly announced it when she received a letter from her employer in March calling her a mandatory worker.

A mother from Mexico, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who works in a food production warehouse in San Fernando preparing her school meals, told her daughter that she has never been considered “mandatory”. .. Now she says, people needed her.

But his colleagues, including many undocumented Latinas, began to get sick. They stopped appearing on the assembly line, where she says they stack the ingredients on the sandwich while standing side by side.

His mother spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, fearing she would be out of work. He also spoke to The Times, a 31-year-old legal assistant who lives in Whittier with a surname different from his mother.

His 50-year-old mother said that his colleague continued to work with aspirin despite his fever and headache. Then she began to show symptoms.

“I was tired of work and had a little cough,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal, so I kept working for three to four days.”

A few days later she tested positive for COVID-19.