On Workers Memorial Day 2020, as the pandemic was rapidly spreading, we announced our Protein Processing Worker Project (PPP), a collective effort to ensure that workers with limited knowledge of English had access to accurate information about COVID-19, their rights, and how to protect themselves from communicable diseases.
Today, we are proud to share with you our second year impact report which details our partnership-based model and the incredible results we achieved alongside our 13 partner organizations.
Both in-person and online, we helped workers defend their rights, protect their health and access vaccines, testing, and vital information about their right to a healthy and safe workplace. In the project’s second year alone we reached 271,800+ workers and community members across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Leveraging the knowledge and resources of our partner organizations and expertise of processing workers, our efforts supported more than 500 community events and activities, delivered information and resources to 110,500+ workers and their communities in person, and reached 161,000+ more through digital and online multimedia resources and programs in Spanish, English, Haitian Creole, Mixtec and other indigenous languages.
You can read more about the project’s incredible impact in our Year Two Impact Report here.
Fighting for all workers’ right to a healthy and safe workplace has been a priority for CDM since its foundation in 2005. The PPP project has allowed us to further this effort through a targeted campaign for protein processing industry workers and their communities. Now, as the Biden administration prepares to end the COVID-19 emergency declarations next month, it is more important than ever to continue to prioritize frontline workers’ health and strengthen occupational health and safety for migrant workers through the next phase of the pandemic and beyond.
One of the most important lessons we learned from the COVID pandemic is that workers’ health IS public health. As such, we must keep working together to ensure that workers not only know their rights, but also feel protected when exercising those rights to health and safety, without a fear of retaliation. Will you join us in defending whistleblowers and workers standing up for their rights and seeking fair working conditions?