Lori Walsh: The number of COVID-19 cases in Minnehaha County continues to spike. New case numbers now report a county total of 100,000... I'm sorry, 1,065 positive cases. That's 1,065 positive cases. Statewide COVID-19 cases increase in a single day by 143 workers. At the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls account for more than half of those new cases. That brings the state's total positive COVID-19 cases to 1,311.
Now, the closure of the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls has sent shockwaves through the city as hundreds of people have tested positive for COVID-19. It also sent shockwaves across the nation as national news organizations have picked up the story, focusing on the plight of essential workers and the potential disruption of the nation's protein supply chain. A local group of grassroots community organizers called the South Dakota Dream Coalition has been speaking out on behalf of the workers and family members of Smithfield. And we're joined today by Nancy Reynoza and Taneeza Islam. Taneeza, welcome back. Thank you for being here.
Taneeza Islam: Thank you so much for having us.
Lori Walsh: Nancy, welcome. It's nice to meet you.
Nancy Reynoza: Thank you. Nice to meet you too.
Lori Walsh: We're also joined today by Kooper Carraway. He's president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO. He works with the unionized workers at the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls. Kooper, welcome back too.
Kooper Carraway: Good to be back, Lori.
Lori Walsh: Nancy, I want to start with you and I want to start with these families and these employees, these people who are considered essential workers, hundreds of whom are falling ill. Tell me a little bit about the early awareness that this was going to be a problem, that it was a problem and that it was maybe even a bigger problem than people realized. How have the past few weeks evolved and transpired for you from their perspective?
Nancy Reynoza: Yes, from their perspective they started to call us about, I'm going to say about two weeks ago. We started to receive phone calls from employees talking about how scared they were because they felt that there were going to be a lot of people getting sick, and they were seeing some people around them already sick and just a lot of people missing from work. And so that's when we started to really sound the alarm that this was bigger. So we started to talk amongst each other and all the group people in our community that are members of the Dream Coalition, and they were getting the same phone calls.
Lori Walsh: They said people around them are getting sick. Did they mean at work or in their communities, in their families or they meant when they reported to work, they were reporting to work and working alongside people they perceived to be ill?
Nancy Reynoza: They meant at work. So, different phone calls coming in. One that I recall here a lot was one that said I was working one day and then the next day one line in front of me was gone and then the next day the other one behind me was gone. And that was pretty scary. And they weren't getting any notifications.
Lori Walsh: So the communication was not working for them?
Nancy Reynoza: No, because the employer was just telling them that they would let them know if somebody and when an employee would get sick. They said if it was in your department we would let you know and close the department down.
Lori Walsh: Give me an idea of... And I want to bring Kooper into this conversation. Tell me a little bit about what you know about how the inside of the plant and the different departments are organized. When we talk about what working conditions are like, what can you describe to me as far as how close people are together and any adjustments that were made?
Kooper Carraway: Well, this is an old plant. The plant is about a hundred years old, so you have many different departments. About eight different floors, very narrow hallways, very narrow staircases to get from each floor. And you have oftentimes crowded locker rooms, crowded lunch rooms. And so the workers there, particularly through their union leadership, identified the plant as a potential hotspot about six weeks ago.
Workers there are from dozens of different countries, speak over 80 languages. So they're getting calls and reports from their family, their friends, from Asia, from the African continent and other places that tell them how the pandemic is affecting the world. And so they identified the plant as a potential hotspot six weeks ago, started pushing for stricter safety precautions, temperature checks, secondary screening, things like that. But unfortunately the management didn't take it seriously, didn't think it was really necessary until about a week ago, about 10 days ago when they did implement all of those things. But by then dozens of people had already tested positive.
Lori Walsh: So six weeks ago Kooper were in early March, late February, somewhere in that timeframe?
Kooper Carraway: That's right.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. What kind of you say people who were connected with them from all over the world were giving them information in all these different languages. Let's talk a little bit about what information came from the state department of health, from Smithfield leadership, from the city of Sioux Falls or whoever is in charge of providing that information to them in different languages. And Taneeza you can maybe jump in here or tell me whose responsibility it even is that to provide translation services for something like this.
Taneeza Islam: Well, we feel as a coalition that the responsibility is the government's responsibility. Even though we're considered an "English only state", and I'm doing air quotes over the phone when I say that. If you look at the statute, it has a public health emergency that city governments, county and state governments can use funds to translate public health information.
I am not aware of any resources that the county or the city or the state has had until the announcement was made this past Saturday that they are working with translators. As Dream Coalition, there's some piecemeal flyers we have found on reemployment assistance in Spanish for example, but nothing substantive. So we at South Dakota Voices for Peace, which is a member of the coalition, predicted that this was going to be an issue and applied for a spot grant from the Sioux Falls area community foundation on March 20th, and received funding to translate key local information.
So I think it's really important in this narrative to understand that even though our communities may not speak English as their primary language, they do receive information and from other sources, from family members in different countries, different areas of the country and also news outlets. There are several, like Telemundo for example is a news channel and programming completely in Spanish. So to believe that our communities didn't know about COVID or don't know about social distancing or hygiene is inaccurate.
What they don't have access of information to in different languages, local information. So, though we have translated a baseline of information which is on our website in five different languages. What we know is the news is evolving so rapidly. There's no access for our communities to know what's going on in Sioux Falls or the state after a press briefing for example. So we have advocated with news organizations to please translate at least the press briefings so our communities know what the mayor and the governor is saying. But to date, we have not seen what is coming out from the city or the state in terms of local information.
Lori Walsh: Taneeza, how would that work with 80 languages? Explain what some of the logistics of that would be.
Taneeza Islam: I think we have to hone in into the top five or six languages. It's very easy to get that information from the Sioux Falls public school district for example. And we feel confident in saying that our multi-ethnic populations across the state reflect what we see here in Sioux Falls. Even if we had two languages, it would be much more information. And the chances that if you receive information in Spanish and Amharic and you understand that, then you can ask people in your families and in your communities questions who speak English as well.
So this isn't about translating everything into 80 languages. This is figuring out strategically what does our community need to know. And I would argue our community needs to know what the mayor and the governor is saying. Not that they need to wash their hands and social distance, which is very important. Those resources are already available and we have correlated a library of national and international resources on our web page as well.
What our community needs access to information is local stuff, right? What is contact tracing? What should you expect if someone tests positive? What is the process if you're not feeling well and to go to the hospital or call your primary care physician? We need to make some strategic decisions as community organizations who are in first contact with our communities and advise state and local governments because they have the funding. All of us coalition organizations, we're one to two people organizations who are severely under-resourced. So we need the government to fund it and be very strategic in how they're translating. And what they're translating information to would be our ask right now.
Lori Walsh: Kooper, I want to go back inside that plant and to Taneeza's point in the middle of those comments was, six weeks ago the workers had identified Smithfield as a potential hot spot. And you're telling us that those concerns were largely ignored? Tell me a little bit about the process looked like again. What do you know about what happened next?
Kooper Carraway: Well, Taneeza is 100% correct when she says that the workers, the people in these different communities that they know about COVID, they're very educated about COVID. Many of these workers upwards of a month and a half, two months, two and half months ago were coming into the union hall and canceling their cultural gatherings, canceling weddings, canceling family reunions because they knew that this was going to be an issue and they wanted to start social distancing.
And so this was identified very quickly. But the reality is people like to separate the business community and how it operates, and the government and how it operates. But the reality is they take cues from each other. And when the state government's mentality is that this is not a big deal, it's not going to require any serious action, it's not going to require any ingenuity or any creativity, or it's not going to require any kind of change or disruption in business or in the economy, when that's the state government's mentality the business community oftentimes will take their cue from the state government. So if the state government is saying this is not a big deal, even if their workers are saying it's going to be a big deal, we need to make changes, the state government is giving them all the cover they need to not act.
Lori Walsh: Nancy, when people call you and say they're frightened, they're seeing things that they can't confirm, but it seems like there's a high risk situation, is there a place, or was there a place, or is there now a place for people to report those concerns outside of the place that they work at?
Nancy Reynoza: Yes. A lot of them did report them to their union. And a lot of them have started, like I said, they called a lot of people in the community that they know that they feel comfortable with telling their story because they didn't want their name to be put out there. They still love their jobs, they still need their jobs and all they were wanting from us is can you do something to make sure that we're protected while we're working?
And so they started to call a lot of different people that work in the community to help the immigrant community. And that's when we formed the South Dakota Dream Coalition, so that we could together get all of these text messages and the messages we were getting, and phone calls we were getting, put them all in one place where we can actually try to do something with that and let the community know this is what's happening, this is what the employees are saying.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. And how is that process going?
Taneeza Islam: And Lori if I may interrupt.
Lori Walsh: Yes.
Taneeza Islam: I wanted to say the work that Nancy and all of our frontline community advocates are doing is heartbreaking, because these people who are calling us our friends and our neighbors, and people we go to worship with and birthday parties to. And one call we just received yesterday is a mom who everyone on her line at Smithfield tested positive and she had not had any symptoms yet. But she's a single mom and she is so scared to expose her two teenagers to the virus that she has been sleeping in her car, in the parking lot of the apartment complex that they live in.
And these are stories that we're trying to get out because the media can only report so much because our employees don't want to say anything bad. They're scared, they don't know what the future holds. They don't know if they're going to be able to keep their jobs if they say something. But the information we're receiving is heartbreaking. And we're trying to figure out how we can honestly and ethically share this information. Because the narrative that we see just from the city council meeting yesterday to what's been reported in the media, there's more stories to that. But those folks are not sharing because they are so scared. So we hope that as a coalition we can be the conduit for giving that information. And we've started to post some of those firsthand accounts on social media as well.
Lori Walsh: Kooper, talk a little bit, if you will, about retribution and how to protect workers or whistleblowers from losing their jobs. As right now the plant is closed. There's a conversation to be had there about when they will go back, if they will go back, who goes back and how. But talk a little bit Kooper, if you will, about a retaliation. This is something that you have a lot of experience with trying to figure out how workers can speak out without losing their jobs.
Kooper Carraway: So there's two things here. Number one, the fortunate reality of Smithfield. Even though Smithfield management has created a culture where they pressure workers not to speak out, not to blow the whistle, not to talk about unsafe conditions and things like that. Fortunately in Smithfield itself, the union contract and as well as there's some federal whistleblower laws that will protect any worker who wants to speak, particularly speaking to their union or speaking to community organizations and things like that. They have protection against retaliation.
Notifying of unsafe conditions is protected activity under most federal labor statutes. The unfortunate side of this is that a lot of those protections do not extend to workplaces across Sioux Falls and South Dakota that might be affected but do not have a union and don't have a union contract. South Dakota state labor laws do not provide any protection for workers to blow the whistle. They do not provide any job security. They do not provide even any guidance under which a worker can be terminated.
So basically if you do not have a union, you are what's called an at will employee. It means you can be fired if you blow the whistle. It also means you can be fired if your manager steps on his kid's leg in the morning, is in a bad mood and comes in and wants to fire you. So we have kind of two labor force realities here, and the unions are working hard to navigate it the best we can. We're taking calls from workers who do not have unions and we're working with them and to try to find out ways to make all of these different workplaces that are going to be effected safer.
But the reality is the Smithfield plant is not a city in and of itself, it does not exist in a vacuum, it is a part of our community just like the workers are a part of our community. And so while it may have started and spread very quickly through the Smithfield plant the virus is going to affect every single aspect and every corner of our community. And it's all hands on deck time, we need as many community organizations, political leaders and unions to be on board and be on the same page here.
Lori Walsh: Kooper and maybe somebody else wants to jump in and answer this question. But we also had a call from a listener the other day or an email from a listener who talked about the processing plant in Huron, and other factories across the state people are asking why Smithfield? Why is it so bad there? Are there going to be other factories, other manufacturing plants where similar outbreaks happen or is there something unique about what happened at Smithfield?
Kooper Carraway: If the governor doesn't act the Smithfield plant will look a lot like other plants across the state.
Lori Walsh: You mean other plants will have similar outbreaks to Smithfield? Is that...
Kooper Carraway: That's true.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. Taneeza you want to add anything to that? What makes it, why Smithfield? Why now? Versus other plants that are already operational and are considered essential.
Taneeza Islam: Yeah, I'm curious about that as well Lori. We have not received any reports from Aberdeen or here on yet. I would venture to say that Beadle County had a shutdown order, I think it was two weeks ago. And I'm not sure if that's curtailing the containment and what's going on. We don't know yet how to answer that question.
Lori Walsh: Right. In our remaining minutes here. I just want to give you each an opportunity to sort of what's the question that I didn't ask you that you think is really key to understanding how we think about these people who are now getting sick and will end up, and a percentage of whom will end up in the hospital. Nancy, I'll start with you. We just have a couple minutes so.
Nancy Reynoza: Yes. So I just want to say that these are hardworking families that all they wanted was to be protected while they did their job. They want to go back to work, and their main concern as to continue to provide for their families.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. Kooper, can they go back to work at some point? The plant has said it's closed indefinitely. The mayor was asking for two weeks and what happens next?
Kooper Carraway: The plant in all likelihood I would say with 95% certainty will be reopened in 14 days. The issue is making sure that the workers who left work this week are not returning to the same unsafe and unsanitary conditions that they were working in before. So it was working in coordination with the CDC. I'm glad that they're in town with the CDC. Hopefully more coordination with the state government and with continued coordination with the city government who's been cooperative so far to make sure that the workers reentering the job market and reentering the Smithfield plant are going into a much cleaner, a much safer and much more innovative plant. So they can continue to provide the food that the country needs, but also be in a place where they're not risking their own health or the health of their families and communities
Lori Walsh: And Taneeza, the question I want to ask you in the remaining minute is about discrimination or violence or harassment against the immigrant community or against specific Smithfield employees. Mayor Paul TenHaken came on Facebook and said this is a zero tolerance situation. Everybody pay attention, I'm paying attention. What do you want to say about that? And in about 30 seconds please.
Taneeza Islam: Yeah. We appreciate the mayor making that announcement after we send out our action alert for community members to make that a point in talking to the mayor that he take drastic and effective action if there were any complaints of discrimination, which we haven't heard of. But as an advocacy organization, we're here to protect people from retaliation and take their stories. And we're also working on an emergency relief fund. We hope to be able to announce in the next couple of days so that we can provide direct cash assistance to employees that do not qualify for state or federal resources for various reasons. So stay tuned.
Lori Walsh: All right. And you're all welcome to come back and tell us more stories, our time is short now. Kooper very briefly, are you able to get inside the plant? Are the union representatives inside the plant before people come back to work? What does that look like?
Kooper Carraway: Right now it's going through a process of deep cleaning. We'll probably be inside the plant before it reopens to inspect everything.
Lori Walsh: All right. Kooper Carraway, Taneeza Islam, Nancy Reynoza. Kooper is with the South Dakota or the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO. And Nancy and Taneeza are talking to us today as part of the South Dakota Dream Coalition. Thank you all so much. We appreciate your time.
Taneeza Islam: Thank you.
Kooper Carraway: Thank you.
Nancy Reynoza: Thank you.