‘Are we essential or disposable?’ Workers say they need to know more about positive cases on the job.

By the Philadelphia airport, at one of the biggest UPS hubs in the country, package handlers are finding out that coworkers have tested positive for the coronavirus. But management isn’t telling them anything else about the positive cases, leaving workers on edge about if they could have been exposed.

At the city’s jails in Northeast Philadelphia, corrections officers say they’re also in the dark about confirmed cases, both among coworkers and inmates. Officers have taken to spreading the word about positive cases themselves, hoping it will help their coworkers protect themselves.

And at a high-end organic grocery store in Center City, workers were skeptical that management would be honest with them about a positive case in the store because it would likely drive more people to call out — and the store needed its workers to keep up with the flood of customers.

In Philadelphia, and across the country, some workplaces deemed essential during the coronavirus pandemic have become hotbeds of infection, paranoia, and fear. Essential workers, many of whom are black or Latinx, say that not only are they dealing with a lack of personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, and social distancing on the job. They also live in a state of constant suspicion: Who has the virus? Did I work with them? And would management inform me if I did?

Workers interviewed for this article said they were frustrated, but not surprised, by what they described as a lack of transparency from their employers. To them, it was another sign that management didn’t care about their safety as long as they kept coming to work.

As workers die of the virus, like those employed at grocery stores, SEPTA maintenance facilities, and meat-processing plants, employees are increasingly seeing information about positive cases as a matter of life or death. The stakes are so high that they’ll walk off the job if that information is withheld. And the issue will likely become even more critical as businesses and officials across the country debate how and when to reopen the economy.

» READ MORE: Does my boss have to tell me if a coworker has coronavirus? What to know about your rights.

There are no laws that specifically require an employer to alert workers about a positive case in the workplace, or if they have potentially been exposed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines recommend that employers alert workers if it’s possible they were exposed to someone who has tested positive. And Pennsylvania officials issued an order on April 15 saying that upon learning of a positive case in the workplace, employers must take temperatures of all their workers, and send employees home if they have a temperature above 100.4 degrees.

But enforcement of these guidelines is murky at best. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency in charge of protecting workers, is not enforcing CDC guidelines as law. Lyndsay Kensinger, spokesperson for Gov. Tom Wolf, said “appropriate" agencies are responsible for enforcing the Pennsylvania order, but the state has largely talked about the order as a guideline that could result in a warning for businesses that do not comply.

» READ MORE: On the coronavirus front lines, Philly nurses also battle supply shortages and tension with employers

And Shannon Farmer, an employment attorney with Ballard Spahr, said the CDC guidelines raise questions, such as: How do you assess which workers were close enough to the employee who tested positive to possibly be exposed? And if we’re in a phase of community spread, where everyone is potentially exposed, how should that affect an employer’s responsibility to inform workers?

Employers are barred by the Americans With Disabilities Act from revealing the identity of a worker who tested positive, Farmer said. They can, however, ask for consent from the worker to reveal the identity, and in labor attorney Nan Lassen’s experience, workers almost always want their identity to be known because they want their coworkers to know if they’ve been exposed.

There’s also the issue that a positive test is an imperfect marker of exposure, as it assumes workers have access to testing, said Lassen, an attorney at Willig, Williams & Davidson. A better question to ask employers, she said, would be: Have any workers shown symptoms of the coronavirus? But that question isn’t foolproof either, as workers with the virus could show no symptoms.

» READ MORE: A meatpacking worker in Montgomery County died of coronavirus. Could it have been prevented?

While there’s no agency enforcing the guidelines around sharing information on positive cases, workers could sue a company for reckless endangerment and negligence if an employer did not. That could shape how and when businesses reopen, as some employers have said they fear legal liability if customers or workers get sick. One such lawsuit, which alleges an employer failed to notify workers of a positive case, has been filed against Walmart on behalf of an Illinois employee who died of coronavirus complications.

In place of information from their employers, workers have resorted to their own communication channels.

At the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, which saw its first coronavirus-related death last week, administrators won’t share the number of workers or inmates who have tested positive at the facilities on State Road. Gregory Trueheart, president of the union representing corrections officers, said that has prevented his members from assessing the risks they face at work.

Instead, guards have taken matters into their own hands, spreading the word about confirmed cases on social media and elsewhere to warn one another, according to a 10-year veteran corrections officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.

As of April 16, there were 60 corrections officers who had tested positive for the virus, said Eric Hill, business agent with union District Council 33.

» READ MORE: ‘It’s terrifying’: Corrections officers say jails aren’t doing enough to protect them as coronavirus spreads

The Department of Prisons said that after confirming positive cases among workers, its policy is to inform any workers who were potentially exposed.

With a policy like that, it becomes a question of trust between workers and their employer — trust that in many workplaces does not exist, “and for good reason,” said Carl Rosen, the Pittsburgh-based president of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

That lack of trust is “reflected in the fact that this country has become so unequal,” said Rosen, who’s seen workers at places like Amazon warehouses go on strike when they find out management has been hiding information about positive cases.

It’s not as though there were positive feelings between workers and management before, he said.

“But people will survive with it when it’s not life or death," he said. "They’re now being pushed to the brink because it is life or death. If not for themselves, then for their families.”

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UPS spokesperson Matthew O’Connor said the company was only informing workers who were potentially exposed and not sharing information across an entire facility, “as this is beyond the scope of guidance provided by public health officials.”

Richard Hooker, who runs the Teamsters local that represents 4,000 UPS workers across facilities on Oregon Avenue and near the airport, said that on April 16, UPS began handing out notices to his members saying a worker had tested positive in the building. But that’s not enough, he said. There are multiple shifts and areas in the hub, with thousands of workers moving throughout the facility.

Knowing where and when the person worked would go a long way in helping essential employees “have some sense of ease going through these times,” he said. That will also apply to workers returning to their jobs when the economy gradually reopens, as they’ll face the same risks that essential workers do now.

There were 12 cases across the two Philadelphia facilities as of April 16, Hooker said.

When a company withholds information about positive cases, Hooker said, it sends the message that it doesn’t value its workers.

“Are we essential," he said, "or are we disposable? Which one is it?”

Staff writers Anna Orso and Angela Couloumbis contributed to this article.