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Workers Making COVID Test Kits Exposed to COVID At Access Bio in New Jersey, mostly Latina immigrant temp workers lacking protections on the job face hazardous conditions. BY L U I S F E L I Z L E O N NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY – Late in the afternoon of February 19, more than 50 temporary workers disembarked from 15-passenger vans, bearing signage like “The Beginning Transportation LLC” and “Eagle Cleaning Services.” Clad in heavy layers of clothing, the workers were about to begin their second shift at the Access Bio plant. The facility specializes in producing test kits for COVID-19, malaria, and dengue fever, part of a global supply chain that includes the World Health
Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to the company’s website. Workers assemble six-by-six boxes for COVID-19 and antibody tests, pack them with a swab stick, 2.74-gram liquid vials, and instructions. They sit in tight clusters at tables, packaging boxes and placing them on an assembly line to be stacked on pallets for delivery. The repetitive motions are physically exhausting and sometimes require prolonged periods of
Workers inside the Access Bio facility in Plainfield, New Jersey. Managers don’t enforce social distancing, provide staggered breaks, or schedule routine cleaning, workers allege.
standing, resulting in swollen legs and backaches. As snow wafted gently in the biting winter air, another 50 workers left from Access Bio’s loading dock and boarded the same vans after finishing up their first shift, which runs from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. “Either we die of COVID or we die of hunger,” says Karen Romero, who has been driving workers to the biomedical plant for over ten years. “We all got COVID,” Romero says, her voice muffled by two masks covering her mouth. She points to the passenger seat to illustrate where one worker who got the virus spread it to everyone else in the van in March of last year. Since then, she’s taken extra precautions. She shows me bottles of Microban sanitizing spray, flasks of sanitizer, and bundles of masks. Masks were scarce in March, so she keeps a supply in the van’s glove compartment, handing them out to workers if they leave theirs at home. The vans serve as a perfect vector for the spread of the virus, with people huddled tightly together on halfhour trips between Plainfield and the biomedical plant in New Brunswick. The round trips cost $6 daily. As we speak, workers are settling their accounts with Romero, who scribbles in a composition notebook, as if running a numbers racket. “It’s what everybody does. They get sick, and they return,” says a passenger riding in Romero’s van, who asked for anonymity because she’s undocumented. She contracted the virus last year, and returned to work in November. She was unable to collect unemployment insurance or even use three paid sick days she had accrued. “I like the job,” she says, adding she’d prefer to work permanently at the plant, where she’s been employed off and on as a “temporary” worker for over ten years. Workers across the country are on the front lines of the pandemic, sacrificing their lives for the safety of others while lacking the most elemental labor protections. For temp workers, with fewer protections than full-time employees, the hazards are even more acute. And the fact that
MAR /APR 2021 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 9
