She got coronavirus, then lost her job. The pandemic makes her scared to look for another one

Maria never imagined she wouldn’t have a job. And she never imagined she’d be afraid to look for another one.

But this year, so many things she never expected have happened.

First there was the letter she got in March, telling her she was an “essential worker.”

Then came the Covid-19 test results she got in April, telling her she was positive. And the fearful looks on her children’s faces as she sent them away to a nearby family member’s house so they wouldn’t get sick, too.

There were the weeks she felt so sick she feared she wouldn’t make it to the other side.

And — most jarring of all — there was the day she learned, after 13 years on the job at a meatpacking plant in Wisconsin, that she was fired.

The 42-year-old single mom says she went from packing hamburger meat in a crowded room — helping people across the country feed their families — to wondering how she’d come up with enough money to feed her own.

All of this was months ago. But these moments are still shaping her life, her choices and her fears.

“I get so stressed,” says Maria, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she is undocumented and wants to protect her family. “I don’t even know what to do.”

Many essential workers like her face ‘layers of fear’

The essential workers lauded in the early days of the pandemic aren’t making headlines like they used to or coming up much in conversation as lawmakers debate another federal stimulus package.

But Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, says Maria’s story speaks to a troubling national trend that must be acknowledged — and put to a stop.

“What we are doing to workers in this country in this moment — we are … relying on them … and yet we are subjecting them to layers upon layers of fear,” she says.

Many immigrant workers, Hincapié says, are afraid of getting sick at work and also afraid they could face retaliation for speaking out about safety concerns. Some like Maria are also undocumented and struggling to survive because their families haven’t been eligible for economic relief, Hincapié says.

“It’s this circle of trauma,” she says, “and really just frankly immoral that the very people we rely on in our country every single day are being pushed to the margins of society and are living on a cliff.”

Maria says she sees her firing as retaliation for concerns she raised about coronavirus safety and other matters. And an advocacy group that represents her says she wasn’t the only worker targeted.

Strauss Brands, the company where Maria worked, maintains the firing of workers there in July had nothing to do with retaliation, and that any claim suggesting that is “completely false.” The workers were let go solely because they couldn’t prove they were legally authorized to work in the United States, Strauss says.

“Strauss has been, and will continue to be, very committed to the health, safety and well-being of all of our very dedicated and hard-working employees,” the company said in a statement to CNN.

She says Covid-19 sidelined her for more than a month

Maria says her four children — ages 21, 16, 13 and 5 — were terrified when she kept heading into work as news of the pandemic spread. They worried she’d get sick on the job. And Maria says that’s exactly what ended up happening. At the time, she says, hand sanitizer and masks weren’t provided to workers.

Asked by CNN to respond to that allegation, Strauss Brands did not directly address Maria’s case but said in a statement that it had “worked closely with the local Health Department, employees, and the union providing early adoption of CDC recommended COVID-19 policies, protections, and communication.”

Maria says she started to feel achy one day at work. At first, she thought it was an old on-the-job injury flaring up. But the medicine she typically took to ease the pain didn’t help. Hearing her symptoms, Maria says her doctor told her to come in for a Covid-19 test. Days later, she got her results: positive.

Her kids, she says, were the main thing on her mind. She’d sent her two younger children to live with a nephew as soon as she got sick.

“I was just thinking, ‘My God, my children — I am going to die, and what is going to happen to them?'” she says. “It’s something terrible that haunts you, thinking that you are never going to see your family again.”

Maria says it took more than a month for her to be well enough to return to work.

By then, she says, there was more protective equipment available. But social distancing, she says, was only enforced in the break area — not while workers were on the floor.

Maria says concerns she raised repeatedly about the lack of social distancing weren’t heeded.

“Nobody did anything,” she says.

Weeks later, Maria feels she received the company’s response to those complaints and others she’d raised about how much she was paid. She was fired in July along with dozens of other workers who she said had also been complaining about conditions and other matters.

Her employer cites a different reason for why she was fired

Strauss Brands says there was only one reason the workers lost their jobs, and it had nothing to do with the pandemic or pay.

“The employees were let go because they were unable to produce documents establishing that they were legally authorized to work in this country,” the company said in a statement, adding that employees were given a chance to prove they were legally authorized to work before they were let go.

In response to questions about the firings and Maria’s case, the company released statements describing the overall situation but did not specifically mention Maria or detail why she was let go. On the matter of worker compensation, the company said employee payment is governed by a collective bargaining agreement between Strauss and the union that represents its workers.

“The claim that any of these unfortunate events was motivated by retaliation is completely false. Strauss worked collaboratively with the local Health Department, employees, and the union encouraging input and providing early adoption of CDC recommended COVID policies, protections, and communication,” Strauss Brands said. “Indeed, even before any such steps were recommended or required, Strauss shut down its plant, at full pay to employees, when it had the first presumed positive COVID-19 case so that it could use the time to clean/disinfect and make certain that it had in place all feasible safety measures.”

Strauss says safety measures at the plant include employee education, visitor restrictions, masks and other personal protective equipment, physical distancing when possible, symptom screening and temperature monitoring and paid leave for Covid-19 related absences.

But advocates who protested outside the company’s Franklin, Wisconsin, meatpacking plant after the firings argued the company was unjustly throwing out essential workers. They accused Strauss Brands of disregarding safety concerns and punishing workers for speaking out.

“It was clearly retaliation,” says Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy organization that led protests as part of its Essential Worker Rights Network.

According to Voces de la Frontera, fired workers were told the company had received “no-match letters” from the Social Security administration, a document that points out discrepancies between federal databases and the names and numbers employers provided.

Advocates argue the letters don’t have anything to do with work authorization or immigration status, but are frequently used by companies to retaliate against immigrant workers.

“Whatever the worker’s rights issue that’s being raised, oftentimes that’s when employers remember that they’ve suddenly, conveniently gotten a no-match letter. Sometimes it’s months old. Sometimes it’s years old. But it is very typical of what we’ve seen employers do throughout the years,” says Hincapié of the National Immigration Law Center.

“You couple that with covid, with the pandemic and the particular conditions that these workers are working under, and it’s really a recipe not just for disaster for those particular workers, but for the workplaces as a whole. Employers can use these letters as a tool to depress health and safety.”

In August, union officials and Neumann-Ortiz announced a $264,000 agreement had been reached with the company. The deal granted the 28 fired workers four days of pay for each year they worked for Strauss, plus unused vacation pay for 2020 and projected vacation pay for 2021, Voces de la Frontera said in a statement.

Strauss says the employees who were let go will be welcomed back to the company, retaining their seniority and severance, if they’re able to prove before August 2022 that they’re legally authorized to work.

“No employer should immediately terminate employees upon receipt of a social security mismatch letter. We had to work through a thorough investigation and provide the employees with the opportunity to provide legal authorization to work. We then had to work through our negotiation with the union to provide transition packages,” Strauss Brands said. “No good time exists for a move like this one; we were devastated, but we had no other choice.”

Now she’s terrified of getting sick again

Maria says she doesn’t have the paperwork the company is now requesting — but even if she did, she says she wouldn’t want to return to work there after what she and other employees endured.

She says Strauss Brands’ explanation for firing her and the other workers doesn’t add up.

“They found the perfect moment to fire us. … They used us. We all feel used. They knew the situation. They knew everything about our lives. They said there was no problem,” she says. “Why is it that when someone complains about their rights, they get fired?”

The severance money helped, but now her share — which she says amounted to around $5,000 after taxes — has run out. She’s trying to get by with support friends and family who live nearby occasionally give her.

“Right now I’m surviving with the little help I get. Sometimes (my children’s) father gives me $100 or $50. A friend, or my nephew, sometimes gives me $50,” she says. “And with this little bit, we buy something.”

But she says it’s not nearly enough to make ends meet. This month, she says she hasn’t been able to pay her rent.

Maria says she feels far healthier than she did back in April. But even now, she says, there are still symptoms she can’t shake.

Sometimes, she coughs up phlegm and feels her chest burning. It’s harder to breathe at night. She loses focus and struggles to remember details. Thoughts feel harder to grasp onto — something that Maria says never happened before her diagnosis.

“Sometimes it’s like someone has erased my hard drive,” she says.

Above all, Maria says there’s a feeling that hasn’t left her since Covid-19 first took hold: fear.

“I’m afraid of not having work. But another fear is getting sick again. I don’t think I can make it through another illness like that. … I feel powerless,” she says. “I’m scared I’m going to get it again.”

That’s why for now, as tough as things are, Maria says she’s not ready to look for a new job. And even once she is, she worries her limitations due to injury will make other companies reluctant to hire her.

Maria says she burned her foot years ago at work and still struggles to stand for long periods of time. Many essential worker jobs were already difficult and dangerous, she says. And the pandemic has made them even more so.

She wonders whether most Americans are aware of the risks she and other food industry workers face.

“Sometimes they don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” she says, “that you’re risking your life so that others can survive.”

Maria says she’s determined to do everything she can to make sure her own family survives. And to her, that means hunkering down at home and staying safe.

These days, Maria says she only leaves to buy food and do laundry.

Fear of getting sick again follows her wherever she goes.