EP 1: What the pandemic has shown us about what essential workers need

In this episode of “America Amplified: Life, Community, and COVID-19,” Rose Scott of Atlanta’s WABE and Mina Kim of San Francisco’s KQED get a better understanding of what life is like for the workers who have been defined as “essential.”

These workers have been going to their jobs when it seems everyone else is sheltering. They’re having to figure out how to live with the fear of being exposed to the coronavirus while providing services that keep their cities functioning, that provide meals, that keep farms running, that help the elderly or the ill.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Georgia allowed gyms, bowling alleys, hair and nail salons and massage and tattoo parlors to reopen, presenting a dilemma for business owners who are dealing with weeks of lost revenue but are still in the middle of fighting a pandemic.

How should businesses regard “essential workers” from now on? What rights do these workers have during a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic? How do these workers feel about their jobs now?

In this episode, you’ll hear from:

• Keith Parker, President and CEO of Goodwill of North Georgia and former General Manager/CEO of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority 

• Mily Trevino, longtime Central Valley farmworker, founder of Lideres Campesinas, a non-profit supporting farmworker women and girls.

• Debbie Berkowitz of the National Employment Law Project and a former OSHA official

• Two teenagers in Clovis, California, whose Mom is an ER nurse in Oakland. She comes home only occasionally and to see her kids -- at a distance -- for an hour or two at a time.