Hispanics/Latinos represent only 9% of the population but account for 26% of all cases in the state. A lot of them work in the construction sector, one that was deemed ‘essential’ during the pandemic even though construction sites are considered “high-risk” settings for the disease
Mariana Janjácomo
North Carolina’s construction sites have contributed to form one of the state’s most glaring disparities when it comes to ethnicity and Covid-19: the high prevalence of cases among the Hispanic community. Hispanics represent only 9% of the population but account for 26% of all Covid-19 cases in the state. One of the main factors that led to this situation is the fact that there are higher proportions of Hispanic workers in sectors that are considered essential, including the construction sector.
On its website, the North Carolina Department of Health’s Covid-19 Response team admits that “farms and meat and poultry processing plants along with construction sites throughout North Carolina appear to be high-risk settings for transmission of Covid-19 due to the nature of the work, the challenge for employees to practice social distancing and the continuous nature of the plant operations”.
According to Fiorella Horna, from El Centro Hispano, a Latino nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the community of Hispanics and Latinos in North Carolina, the big issue with construction workers is the transportation to construction sites. “A lot of those workers share transportation to and from sites, they are taken by the contractors or the employers and sometimes those vehicles are packed, so that is where a lot of the concern is.”
So far, North Carolina registered 18 reported clusters of Covid-19 in construction workplaces, according to state data. What officials consider a cluster is a minimum of five cases with illness onsets or initial positive results within a 14-day period and plausible epidemiologic linkage between cases. The manufacturing sector had the highest number of clusters in the state: 74. But what draws attention to the clusters in construction sites is that these happened mainly in places where the percentage of Hispanics is higher than the average.
A bubble of clusters in construction sites happened in Charlotte, the largest city of North Carolina, which belongs to Mecklenburg County. Hispanics represent 14% of the population in and 21% of all cases of Covid-19 in the county. Officials there also admit that at least a big part of that situation in Mecklenburg County is due to the fact that Hispanics work in jobs considered essential, mainly in the construction sector.
Financial insecurity
Besides practical worries about the logistics of the job, such as the means of transportation of these workers, another issue that has contributed to the clusters in construction sites is the financial insecurity that a lot of them struggle with. “Some workers are just worried that if they get sick, they will have to miss days of work and then get no payment”, said Fiorella Horna. “There are construction employers who provide healthcare and all the right warranties to workers, but there are some small businesses that just don’t do that. Then those employers tell workers that they should get tested if they feel symptoms, but some workers just don’t do that, because they actually don’t want to find out if they are sick.”
Besides contributing to the transmission of the disease, a scenario like this is also worrying because it means that even if those workers suspect they are sick, they will not look for a doctor until the aggravation of symptoms — which is extremely dangerous. In order to try to avoid clusters of Covid-19 in construction sites, the Charlotte Commercial Construction Coalition (4C), a coalition of more than 30 Charlotte-area general contractors defined in April a series of rules that employers and employees of the sector should follow. But those are not enough to tranquilize the workers.
Not a new problem
The thing is the worrying situation of Hispanics during the pandemic of Covid-19 in North Carolina is, of course, a 2020 issue. But being more affected by workplace injuries and illness unfortunately is nothing new to the Hispanic community. Data from “Death on the Job 2020”, a report from AFL-CIO (The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), shows that 67% of Latinos killed on the job were immigrants; their job fatality rate was higher than the national average. In 2018, there were 961 deaths of Hispanics because of fatal work injuries. Of those, 294 occurred within the construction industry.
The same document also shows that Hispanics represent the largest number of people affected by Covid-19 by population size: 3.5 million persons were living in the hotspot counties around the country that were examined by the research. The report highlights the responsibility of the agencies in charge of enforcing working conditions and the federal administration: there were simply no standard procedures regarding that to follow across the country during this pandemic.
According to CPWR (The Center for Construction Research and Training), a nonprofit dedicated to reducing occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities in the construction industry, in 2015 there were 2.8 million Hispanics working in construction in the United States. About 73% of them were born outside the U.S. Which brings its own set of challenges.
More concerns and barriers — and a few solutions
“Language barriers and the spread of misinformation are a huge problem in general, of course, but also one that worries a lot when we think about the situation of immigrants in North Carolina”, explained Alison Kuznitz, a journalist at the local newspaper The Observer who has been covering the pandemic in Mekclenburg County since the early days of the disease. She also said that she witnessed efforts by the government to reach those populations.“They are doing campaigns in Spanish and briefings with Spanish subtitles; actually not only Spanish but they are translating the campaigns to ten different languages because we have immigrants from other parts of the world who don’t speak English nor Spanish.”
Grassroots organizations and food pantries have also been of huge help on not only giving access to meals to families of workers who lost their jobs, but also on bridging the communication gap between the state, the health professionals and the immigrant communities. Fiorella Horna, from El Centro Hispano, said the organization used funds received from federal Covid-19 relief to hire what they call “promotoras de salud”: these are women who serve as community wellness workers. Their job is to be in close contact both with the healthcare professionals and with the Hispanic community to eliminate the language barrier and combat misinformation.
Although it is still high, the percentage of Covid-19 cases among the Hispanic community in North Carolina has already been higher — it reached 46% of all cases in the state in July. Fiorella said that while she recognizes that the work of the “promotoras” may have been one of the reasons behind the percentage going down, she likes to remind people that this is still a public health issue, so the state has responsibility over it. “We can help, but we can’t be solely responsible for shifting numbers, of course. We believe that is being done collectively.”
She also commented that the work that El Centro Hispano did was an example of North Carolina’s strategy of infusing money on non-profits across the state to reach the Latino community. The fight against Covid-19 is far from over yet, of course. But a new one has already begun: fighting to keep and expand the rights and benefits that were obtained during this health crisis.
“A lot of the reasons why this pandemic affected Latinos at a disproportionate rate are systemic reasons. So now we must continue to advocate, we must continue to inform the decision-makers about all the challenges this community faces always, not only during the pandemic”, said Fiorella Horna. “We want changes that are made now thinking about the future, not only in the face of an immediate threat.”