Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack says it out loud
Trump and Republican's policies have made it clear workers don't count, especially during a pandemic
She only said out loud what the Republicans have shown us through their actions.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack doesn't consider meatpackers as worth consideration when talking about the rate of spread of the coronavirus' in Wisconsin.
In the middle of oral arguments Tuesday about the legality of the state’s stay-at-home order, an attorney for Gov. Tony Evers (D) had just pointed to Brown County, Wis., as an example of how fast the novel coronavirus can spread.
The county, home to the JBS Packerland meatpacking plant, had its coronavirus cases surge more than tenfold, from about 60 cases to almost 800, in just two weeks.
Roggensack interjected:
“These were due to the meatpacking, though. That’s where Brown County got the flare. It wasn’t just the regular folks in Brown County.”
Apparently in this conservative justices mind, like in the mind of the rest of the GOP, laborers are some "other" kind of folk.
Roggensack’s statement immediately caused an uproar, but it should come as no surprise, as she was only expressing out loud the GOPs contempt for workers, which has become increasingly obvious during this pandemic.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration and congressional GOP have made preserving the (im)balance of power between capital and labor one of their top priorities.
Trump and the GOP are looking to:
- Legally protecting employers who violate workplace safety standards from the threat of lawsuits as part of the next coronavirus relief package.
- Ensuring that recently laid-off workers have no choice but to accept jobs in hazardous workplaces, as the GOP vows to slash federal unemployment benefits.
- Refusing to endorse Democrats’ proposals to provide hazard pay to frontline workers (let alone to put upward pressure on wages for all workers by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour). In Wisconsin, Republicans actually passed legislation that makes it more difficult for frontline workers to collect unemployment should they become infected.
- Republicans led by Trump and Mitch McConnell are threatening to starve blue states of aid until they are forced to cut the pensions of public workers.
- Labor secretary Eugene Scalia is trying to deny unemployment benefits to gig workers.
- Trump’s Labor Department is refusing to enforce CDC guidelines for workplace safety.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/cdc-guidance-coronavirus-reopen-america/index.html
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=567892567467022&ref=watch_permalink
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/28/workers-court-states-safety-protection-trump-217372