[ I’m a New York City subway conductor who had Covid-19. Now
I’m going back to work.] [[link removed]]

‘WE ARE NOT ESSENTIAL. WE ARE SACRIFICIAL.’  
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Sujatha Gidla
May 5, 2020
The New York Times
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_ I’m a New York City subway conductor who had Covid-19. Now I’m
going back to work. _

Since March 27, at least 98 New York transit workers have died of
Covid-19.Credit..., Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

 

When I heard that a co-worker had died from Covid-19 — the first in
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — on March 27, I thought,
“It’s starting.” More deaths followed in quick succession,
frequently more than once a day. Some of those people I used to see
every day and fist bump.

On Facebook, when bad news comes, my co-workers and I express grief
and offer condolences to the families. But our spontaneous response is
the numb curiosity of an onlooker. We knew this was coming. We knew
many among us wouldn’t make it through the pandemic.

Every day I see posts on the M.T.A. workers’ group pages striking a
jaunty tone: “Oh Lord, here we go. I got the symptoms, see you all
in 14 days. Or not.”

We work at the epicenter of the epicenter, with a mortality
rate substantially higher
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that of first responders. Common sense tells you that subway trains
and platforms are giant vectors of this virus. We breathe it in along
with steel dust. As a conductor, when I stick my head out of the car
to perform the required platform observation, passengers in many
stations are standing 10 inches from my face. At other times, they
lean into the cab to ask questions. Bus drivers, whose passengers
enter right in front of them, are even worse off.

My co-workers want doors locked on the two cars where the crew rides.
Bus drivers want to let passengers enter through the back doors. We
want hazard pay and family leave for child care.

In mid-March, a bulletin came out mandating that conductors make an
announcement every 15 minutes. Wash hands, soap and water, sanitizer,
elbow-sneeze. “Together we can help keep New York safe.”

The irony was that we didn’t have soap and water. At my terminal at
that time, the restrooms were closed for three days after a water main
break. Most employee restrooms are in similarly bad shape. Crew rooms
are packed.

The M.T.A. takes stern action against workers seen without goggles or
cotton knit safety gloves. Yet we had to work without protection
against the coronavirus.

At first we were warned not to wear masks. The M.T.A. said it would
panic the public. It said
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Later it said we could wear masks we bought ourselves. But by then
there were few masks for sale.

One week after the pandemic was declared, a vice president of TWU
Local 100 came to my terminal to give a talk. I rose to my feet in
outrage and asked why we weren’t receiving masks. I was told healthy
people didn’t need masks and that doctors needed them more. Aren’t
doctors healthy? No answer. How about rubber gloves and hand
sanitizer? No answer.

Finally, the M.T.A. agreed to supply us 
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personal protective equipment. When signing in, we get an N95 mask and
three small packets of wipes the size of those used before a shot at
the doctor’s office. This is meant to last three days. We also get a
small container to fill with hand sanitizer from a bottle in the
dispatcher’s office.

The masks are cheaply made. My co-workers complain that the masks
pinch their noses. The straps break easily. Many masks must be secured
with duct tape.

Or so I have heard. Two days after the vice president’s visit, I
developed severe body aches, chills and a dry cough. On March 27, I
woke up at 6 a.m. to go to the bathroom and collapsed. I made a quick
call to a close friend and then dialed 911. An ambulance took me to
NYU Langone Medical Center, where I was treated and discharged. I
stayed isolated for 14 days, after which I felt better. My co-workers
told me about a place where I could get tested. On April 15, I tested
positive. Further quarantine. My direct-deposit statement shows $692:
less than half my wages for the first pay period and nothing
thereafter. (I had used up all of my sick days).

The third death I heard about was a black co-worker I used to see
every day who once saw me reading Michelle Alexander’s “The New
Jim Crow.” He wanted to know why a woman from India was interested
in the condition of black people. From then on, whenever we ran into
each other we hugged and cheek-kissed.

I used to talk to another co-worker across the platform when his N
train and my R train reached Atlantic Avenue. He was one of only two
Orthodox Jews in the rapid transit operation. A train buff, he once
noticed that a cable that connects one car to another had come loose
and was hanging dangerously near the third rail. He may have saved
lives that day. Now he’s dead, too.

We are stumbling upon dead bodies. I know of two cases. A train
operator nearly tripped over one while walking between cars. The other
person was sitting upright on a bench right outside the conductor’s
window and discovered to be dead only at the end of an eight-hour
shift after my co-workers kept noticing the person on each trip.

The conditions created by the pandemic drive home the fact that we
essential workers — workers in general — are the ones who keep the
social order from sinking into chaos. Yet we are treated with the
utmost disrespect, as though we’re expendable. Since March 27, at
least 98 New York transit workers have died of Covid-19. My co-workers
say bitterly: “We are not essential. We are sacrificial.”

That may be true individually, but not in our numbers. Hopefully this
experience will make us see clearly the crucial role we play in
keeping society running so that we can stand up for our interests, for
our lives. Like the Pittsburgh sanitation workers walking out to
demand protective equipment. Like the G.E. workers calling on the
company to repurpose plants to make ventilators instead of jet
engines.

I took my second test on April 30. It was negative. Tomorrow, I will
go back to work.

_Sujatha Gidla, an M.T.A. conductor, is the author of “Ants Among
Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
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