Royal Mail workers support call for a rank-and-file investigation into the death of USPS workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr.

[marat]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/ ... -n21.html



“The deaths of our two brothers in America should be a wake-up call to workers everywhere”

Tony Robson

The call by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) for a rank-and-file investigation into the on-the-job deaths of USPS workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. has been endorsed by members and supporters of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) at Royal Mail in the UK.

Postal workers have drawn parallels with the exploitative practices which inevitably sacrifice workers’ health and endanger their lives at Royal Mail—privatised more than a decade ago and now under the sole ownership of Daniel Kretinky’s billionaire equity firm, EP Group. The leaders of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Dave Ward and Martin Walsh, embraced the £3.6 billion takeover in alliance with the Starmer Labour government to drive forward the downgrading of the mail service and transform it into a low-wage parcel carrier.


Nick Acker, and Russell Scruggs Jr.
This underscores the need for an international, rank-and-file-led fightback against the profit-driven dismantling of postal services worldwide—which are being carved up for privatisation and handed over to the financial oligarchy.

Miles, a distribution driver at Royal Mail in London:
I fully support the call for an independent inquiry into the tragic, preventable deaths of two US postal workers, Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr., in such a short space of time.

Millions of workers go to work expecting to return home to their families at the end of an exhausting working day, but even this can no longer be taken for granted. My thoughts go out to the families. Why is this happening in the 21st century? These conditions were supposed to belong to the long-lost past.

The fact these tragedies are brought to light by the IWA-RFC lifts the cloak on years of speed-up, job cuts and the destruction of long-standing health and safety conditions by the corporations and their labour understudies in the trade union bureaucracy. It’s long been clear that just by changing a union’s leader brings no change to our conditions.

I work for Parcelforce, the UK parcel arm of Royal Mail, now owned by billionaire asset-stripper Daniel Kreitnsky who—working closely with the CWU—is driving up profits through hiked up workloads, to the point where heart monitors were used on postal workers to see if productivity could be increased to the maximum. It is common to see postal workers with bandages and strain supports during long days in temperatures from –1°C to 35°C.

Workers in UPS, FedEx, DPD and DHL report the same experiences. Different uniforms and vans make no difference—so why are we divided locally, nationally and internationally? These global companies extract ever-greater profits while the unions block unity to protect their relationship with management.

Technology like AI should assist workers, but instead it is used to impose higher volumes and workloads. We work in a globally integrated postal system where we are treated as nothing more than wage slaves. We need a globally integrated movement to oppose this. The work of the International Workers Alliance is crucial in exposing our dire conditions and organising a fight against the slaughter of workers in the name of profit.

James, a delivery worker in Glasgow:
With great solidarity to Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. and their loved ones. Workers in the UK face the same struggle as our brothers and sisters in the USA and worldwide. Royal Mail workers have endured the year-on-year destruction of living standards and safety conditions through every union-management agreement. Safety conditions supposedly guaranteed by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 have instead been eroded in the race for profit. The Health and Safety Executive, the body meant to enforce these laws, has shown itself to be a paper tiger.

The deaths of our two brothers in America should be a wake-up call to workers everywhere. Instead, the CWU ignores it and presses ahead with its policy of collaboration with management. We face massively increased fatigue from impossible workloads, with deliveries that once took three hours now stretched to five hours or more. New work patterns were introduced without the legally required risk assessments, despite the entirely predictable rise in accidents and sickness. Stress levels are through the roof as workers try—and inevitably fail—to complete mail duties deliberately built to fail in favour of parcels.

Any attempt to involve the union or health and safety reps is met with stonewalling. The only consistent opposition now comes from the rank-and-file committee. Senior full-time reps, once in near-daily attendance to ram through extra work, are now totally absent and unreachable. The lesson is clear: we must build an opposition from the ground up and stop relying on full-time officials who serve management’s agenda.

One example of the cavalier contempt shown by CWU and management was the replacement of proper, legally binding risk assessments with the monitoring of exhausted delivery workers using heart-tracking devices run by a private company with no experience in the postal sector. The results were never published, and no lessons were learned—except what we already knew. Increased workloads in extreme conditions leave workers exhausted, ill, and unable to enjoy family life.

It is time for the rank-and-file to make a stand take up the struggle to win back our hard-fought conditions—and the right to a life outside work.

Pauline Beach, whose husband Des was victimised by Royal Mail, has also backed the call for a worker led investigation. Des died on April 23 this year at the age of 58 after he suffered a catastrophic heart attack. The PWRFC published a tribute to Des and his fight against injustice sending condolences to his family and friends. Des previously conducted a video interview with the PWRFC in November 2024 to bring his case to light. This exposed his unfair dismissal by Royal Mail on trumped charges on June 8, 2023 after 31 years of exemplary service, and the collusion of the CWU with his frame-up who withdrew support for his Employment Tribunal claim. Neither party have ever replied. The YouTube video which can be viewed here has received 8,000 views and Des received messages of solidarity from postal workers around the country.

Pauline said:

Reading of the deaths of postal workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. in the USA brought back to me how Royal Mail and the CWU contributed to the death of my husband in April this year. I send my sincere condolences to the families and close friends of those who lost their lives. An investigation led by rank-and-file workers is the only way of getting at the truth and stopping a cover-up.


Wedding day photo of Pauline and Des Beach taken on October 1, 2020 [Photo by Pauline Beach]
I can totally relate to how their families and friends are feeling. This is the sort of thing that happens when you work for a company who put profits before people, just like Royal Mail here in the UK.


Some of you will remember the interview done by my husband Des Beach in November last year. Little did we know he would lose his life only a few months later. Des looked after his health and fitness his whole life. He was diagnosed with kidney disease in October 2020 but with treatment it was well managed.

Des was dismissed for gross misconduct in June 2023 along with his CDV [van share] partner. These were allegations he always denied and a former manager who spent a week going over his case said there was nothing in it that even warranted a quiet word in his ear, let alone dismissal. The case notes are full of procedural errors, management inconsistencies and CWU negligence. The only outcome as far as Royal Mail was concerned was always going to be dismissal. Des had 31 years’ service and an unblemished record, no current sickness stages.

Despite him being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease there was never any occupational health assessment done. Personally, I find this omission in a company as large as Royal Mail totally unacceptable.

Having spoken to many former and current posties I have found what happened to Des not uncommon. Rumours abound as to the reasons, but I feel sure getting rid of long serving posties on legacy contracts and replacing them with part-time staff on much inferior contracts will save Royal Mail a lot of money. Unbelievably the CWU, who are meant to protect their workers, actually agreed to these new contracts along with new inferior sickness policies for all staff.

After almost 2 years of knowing he had lost his livelihood due to his treatment by Royal Mail and the CWU, Des suffered a massive heart attack and passed away in the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne on 23 April 2025. Some of the top cardiologists in the country looked after Des and all agreed the stress of the last 2 years had contributed to his death. Des’s colleagues at Royal Mail were threatened with being conducted [face disciplinary charges] so only a small number of brave souls stuck their heads above the parapet with supporting witness statements. These were totally ignored by Royal Mail and the CWU other than being told they were lying or mistaken.

The problem here is as long as folk choose to bury their heads in the sand this sort of situation will carry on. The workforce at Royal Mail is huge as is the CWU membership. You pay the wages of the CWU so should expect a first-class service when you need them. Workers shouldn’t be expected to take on even heavier workloads when they can’t even manage the existing ones. Des paid union fees for 31 years and got nothing. Without the union members the union will not exist.

If you don’t expose bullying managers, health and safety problems and CWU reps who are besties with the managers then nothing will ever change. Stick together and stop looking out just for yourself otherwise nothing will ever change and it could be your loved one left distraught and grieving.


“The deaths of our two brothers in America should be a wake-up call to workers everywhere”
Tony Robson
an hour ago
The call by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) for a rank-and-file investigation into the on-the-job deaths of USPS workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. has been endorsed by members and supporters of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) at Royal Mail in the UK.

Postal workers have drawn parallels with the exploitative practices which inevitably sacrifice workers’ health and endanger their lives at Royal Mail—privatised more than a decade ago and now under the sole ownership of Daniel Kretinky’s billionaire equity firm, EP Group. The leaders of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Dave Ward and Martin Walsh, embraced the £3.6 billion takeover in alliance with the Starmer Labour government to drive forward the downgrading of the mail service and transform it into a low-wage parcel carrier.


Nick Acker, and Russell Scruggs Jr.
This underscores the need for an international, rank-and-file-led fightback against the profit-driven dismantling of postal services worldwide—which are being carved up for privatisation and handed over to the financial oligarchy.

Miles, a distribution driver at Royal Mail in London:
I fully support the call for an independent inquiry into the tragic, preventable deaths of two US postal workers, Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr., in such a short space of time.

Millions of workers go to work expecting to return home to their families at the end of an exhausting working day, but even this can no longer be taken for granted. My thoughts go out to the families. Why is this happening in the 21st century? These conditions were supposed to belong to the long-lost past.

The fact these tragedies are brought to light by the IWA-RFC lifts the cloak on years of speed-up, job cuts and the destruction of long-standing health and safety conditions by the corporations and their labour understudies in the trade union bureaucracy. It’s long been clear that just by changing a union’s leader brings no change to our conditions.

I work for Parcelforce, the UK parcel arm of Royal Mail, now owned by billionaire asset-stripper Daniel Kreitnsky who—working closely with the CWU—is driving up profits through hiked up workloads, to the point where heart monitors were used on postal workers to see if productivity could be increased to the maximum. It is common to see postal workers with bandages and strain supports during long days in temperatures from –1°C to 35°C.

Workers in UPS, FedEx, DPD and DHL report the same experiences. Different uniforms and vans make no difference—so why are we divided locally, nationally and internationally? These global companies extract ever-greater profits while the unions block unity to protect their relationship with management.

Technology like AI should assist workers, but instead it is used to impose higher volumes and workloads. We work in a globally integrated postal system where we are treated as nothing more than wage slaves. We need a globally integrated movement to oppose this. The work of the International Workers Alliance is crucial in exposing our dire conditions and organising a fight against the slaughter of workers in the name of profit.

James, a delivery worker in Glasgow:
With great solidarity to Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. and their loved ones. Workers in the UK face the same struggle as our brothers and sisters in the USA and worldwide. Royal Mail workers have endured the year-on-year destruction of living standards and safety conditions through every union-management agreement. Safety conditions supposedly guaranteed by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 have instead been eroded in the race for profit. The Health and Safety Executive, the body meant to enforce these laws, has shown itself to be a paper tiger.

The deaths of our two brothers in America should be a wake-up call to workers everywhere. Instead, the CWU ignores it and presses ahead with its policy of collaboration with management. We face massively increased fatigue from impossible workloads, with deliveries that once took three hours now stretched to five hours or more. New work patterns were introduced without the legally required risk assessments, despite the entirely predictable rise in accidents and sickness. Stress levels are through the roof as workers try—and inevitably fail—to complete mail duties deliberately built to fail in favour of parcels.

Any attempt to involve the union or health and safety reps is met with stonewalling. The only consistent opposition now comes from the rank-and-file committee. Senior full-time reps, once in near-daily attendance to ram through extra work, are now totally absent and unreachable. The lesson is clear: we must build an opposition from the ground up and stop relying on full-time officials who serve management’s agenda.

One example of the cavalier contempt shown by CWU and management was the replacement of proper, legally binding risk assessments with the monitoring of exhausted delivery workers using heart-tracking devices run by a private company with no experience in the postal sector. The results were never published, and no lessons were learned—except what we already knew. Increased workloads in extreme conditions leave workers exhausted, ill, and unable to enjoy family life.

It is time for the rank-and-file to make a stand take up the struggle to win back our hard-fought conditions—and the right to a life outside work.

Pauline Beach, whose husband Des was victimised by Royal Mail, has also backed the call for a worker led investigation. Des died on April 23 this year at the age of 58 after he suffered a catastrophic heart attack. The PWRFC published a tribute to Des and his fight against injustice sending condolences to his family and friends. Des previously conducted a video interview with the PWRFC in November 2024 to bring his case to light. This exposed his unfair dismissal by Royal Mail on trumped charges on June 8, 2023 after 31 years of exemplary service, and the collusion of the CWU with his frame-up who withdrew support for his Employment Tribunal claim. Neither party have ever replied. The YouTube video which can be viewed here has received 8,000 views and Des received messages of solidarity from postal workers around the country.

Pauline said:

Reading of the deaths of postal workers Nick Acker and Russell Scruggs Jr. in the USA brought back to me how Royal Mail and the CWU contributed to the death of my husband in April this year. I send my sincere condolences to the families and close friends of those who lost their lives. An investigation led by rank-and-file workers is the only way of getting at the truth and stopping a cover-up.


Wedding day photo of Pauline and Des Beach taken on October 1, 2020 [Photo by Pauline Beach]
I can totally relate to how their families and friends are feeling. This is the sort of thing that happens when you work for a company who put profits before people, just like Royal Mail here in the UK.


Some of you will remember the interview done by my husband Des Beach in November last year. Little did we know he would lose his life only a few months later. Des looked after his health and fitness his whole life. He was diagnosed with kidney disease in October 2020 but with treatment it was well managed.

Des was dismissed for gross misconduct in June 2023 along with his CDV [van share] partner. These were allegations he always denied and a former manager who spent a week going over his case said there was nothing in it that even warranted a quiet word in his ear, let alone dismissal. The case notes are full of procedural errors, management inconsistencies and CWU negligence. The only outcome as far as Royal Mail was concerned was always going to be dismissal. Des had 31 years’ service and an unblemished record, no current sickness stages.

Despite him being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease there was never any occupational health assessment done. Personally, I find this omission in a company as large as Royal Mail totally unacceptable.

Having spoken to many former and current posties I have found what happened to Des not uncommon. Rumours abound as to the reasons, but I feel sure getting rid of long serving posties on legacy contracts and replacing them with part-time staff on much inferior contracts will save Royal Mail a lot of money. Unbelievably the CWU, who are meant to protect their workers, actually agreed to these new contracts along with new inferior sickness policies for all staff.

After almost 2 years of knowing he had lost his livelihood due to his treatment by Royal Mail and the CWU, Des suffered a massive heart attack and passed away in the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne on 23 April 2025. Some of the top cardiologists in the country looked after Des and all agreed the stress of the last 2 years had contributed to his death. Des’s colleagues at Royal Mail were threatened with being conducted [face disciplinary charges] so only a small number of brave souls stuck their heads above the parapet with supporting witness statements. These were totally ignored by Royal Mail and the CWU other than being told they were lying or mistaken.

The problem here is as long as folk choose to bury their heads in the sand this sort of situation will carry on. The workforce at Royal Mail is huge as is the CWU membership. You pay the wages of the CWU so should expect a first-class service when you need them. Workers shouldn’t be expected to take on even heavier workloads when they can’t even manage the existing ones. Des paid union fees for 31 years and got nothing. Without the union members the union will not exist.

If you don’t expose bullying managers, health and safety problems and CWU reps who are besties with the managers then nothing will ever change. Stick together and stop looking out just for yourself otherwise nothing will ever change and it could be your loved one left distraught and grieving.

Help lift the lid on the conditions facing postal workers and expose the workplace injuries, stress and death toll caused by the ruthless drive for corporate profit. Messages of support to the Scruggs and Acker families can be sent using the report form below. Please say whether you are willing for them to be published as part of the IWA-RFC’s campaign for a rank-and-file investigation.

[Tman]

here's a simple question...how did they die?

[marat]

This basic information is contained in the link for the call for a rank and file investigation into the their deaths in the first paragraph of the article.

"On November 8, at the Detroit Network Distribution Center in Allen Park, Michigan, Nick Acker was killed by a mail sorting machine that he was performing maintenance on. His body was not recovered for eight hours, and then only after his wife came to pick him up. Workers report that a grievance had been filed on the machine, whose safety features were allegedly disabled in order to keep operations moving.

On Saturday, November 15, Russell Scruggs, Jr. died after falling and hitting his head at the Palmetto Processing & Distribution Center in Georgia. Workers say the lack of cell phone service in the facility and the lack of emergency protocols inside the plant contributed to his death because of a lengthy delay in providing him with medical attention."

This is the response of Nick Acker's colleagues in this article




“Our voices need to be heard”
Nick Acker’s coworkers speak out against unsafe conditions, APWU complicity in his death
Kathleen Martin
20 November 2025



Nick Acker, 36, was killed at the Allen Park USPS distribution center on November 8, 2025.
Postal workers: Fill out the form at the end of this article if you have information on the death of Nick Acker or other postal workers, or to get involved in the rank-and-file investigation into their deaths.

On November 8, postal worker Nick Acker was killed in a mail sorting machine at the Allen Park Detroit Network Distribution Center. Authorities estimated he had been dead for six to eight hours before his body was found.

Nick’s coworkers are speaking out about unsafe conditions inside the facility, as well as the fact that grievances were filed less than 90 days before Nick’s death. Workers told the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) that the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) officials were aware of these grievances but did nothing to fix the problems that contributed to his death.

John, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is encouraging other workers to come forward with what they know to prevent further needless deaths. Deaths are widespread in processing plants, as workers in Palmetto, Georgia and at other USPS locations throughout the country are reporting, following the death of Russell Scruggs, Jr. just one week after Nick died.

Nick’s death
John showed up to work and was informed by a coworker that the coroner was inside the building. He was told that Nick “went up to unjam a machine and even though it was supposed to be off, someone possibly turned it on while he was up there. They keep it idle while you’re unjamming,” which is not supposed to happen. “It’s a safety problem.”

He said that maintenance workers are supposed to have a spotter down below when they go up to remove packages from the machinery, but Nick was working alone. “What I have heard was that they turned that machine on, and the belt came out from under him, and he basically went into the machine.”

He described how there are mechanisms in place to protect workers that have been actively disabled to keep the mail running rather than shut machines down.

“There’s supposed to be a stop switch every couple feet that was disabled. The maintenance guys will tell you straight up that the only stop switch there, is on the ground, and there’s nothing up on top that’ll stop that machine. That’s where they’re supposed to have that extra person where you can radio down, but then they don’t even give you the extra person anymore.

“There’s a button or sensor that is supposed to shut the machine down entirely if there’s a jam, but all the switches, all the boards have been taken out.” He also said that there are piles of boxes in front which make it impossible for workers to access the switches, and that fire exits are blocked.

The reason to keep the machine idling instead of turning it off is because “when we’re pushing stuff out quickly, the plant manager gets a higher bonus. When there’s issues, he doesn’t get a bonus.”

Grievances filed less than 90 days before Nick’s death; “absolutely nothing has changed”
John said that the machine that killed Nick is still running and that “absolutely nothing has changed” to fix the safety issues on it. “The employees say it’s weird to run that machine because of what happened. And they’re just like, ‘Run it up. We have to process this mail whether you like it or not.’” He said that maintenance workers were given expired hard hats to wear and are not allowed to bring their own, even if theirs are better than the ones given by USPS.

He said they had 90 days to fix the problems and that apparently Nick had filed grievances himself, but that management told them “it takes too much time to tag out to be able to fix it correctly, that they don’t have time for it, the mail needs to move at all costs. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. When they were retrieving Nick’s body, the plant manager was telling them to hurry up, we need this machine back running.”

He also said that the manager threatened to AWOL/LWOP all the workers who were sent home on the day that Nick died, and that if they left to attend the funeral last Friday they would be written up, which was confirmed by other employees in the facility last week.

APWU corruption and cover-up
John told the WSWS that workers have been concerned about corruption in the APWU for some time. “The union is terrible here,” he said. “They talk safety but don’t act on it at all.”

He said that the APWU “old regime” was ousted in local elections last year and in an act of retaliation, outgoing officials destroyed files, smashed up computers, and got rid of years’ worth of grievances. He said that some new officials have been “playing catch-up” with backlogged grievances ever since, but not in time to resolve the safety issues that cost Nick his life.

“All we get told is, ‘We’ll look into it, we’ll see what we can do,’” when workers send in grievances, he alleged. “Our rep makes it seem like it’s a big inconvenience when you bring safety to her. She just doesn’t care. The people who get in these union positions, like the rep I’m talking about, she’s friends with all the managers, she’s friends with the supervisor that has had probably hundreds of grievances on her already, and that’s why she still has the job. They’re all buddies, and they don’t want each other to get in trouble. They just throw grievances out, stuff just miraculously disappears.”

He said the union is at fault in Nick’s death. “As soon as it happened, there was a union guy right there that I’ve never seen before in my life, shaking our hand and saying, ‘I got you brother.’ But it’s like, no, you don’t. You take my money every week, but you don’t represent me at all. You don’t care.” He also stated that their rep is absent and often has other people clock her in when she’s not at the office.


Nicholas (Nick) Acker, 36, was found dead at the Allen Park DNDC on Saturday, November 8. [Photo]
He charged that a local secretary-treasurer was caught funneling dues money to her spouse, another local official, to use for home repairs. “There are guys who try to stand up against that kind of stuff, but they get punished,” he said. “The thought of the union is a great thing. It was a great thing years ago, but now it’s for people who don’t wanna work and for management to get what they want from it.

“The union higher-ups are not for the actual working people anymore. And people are scared to stand up because they’re afraid of retaliation. It’s crazy. I just wanna go to work and do right by my family, but I have to fear coming in here that I’m gonna lose my life.”

Widespread safety issues in the postal service
John said that other workers saw management attempting to clock Nick out when they found his body so that it would look like his death happened off-duty. “A similar thing happened with a girl out in Pontiac [Michigan]. The Pontiac facility is built on an old GM waste dump, and there’s a ventilation system in the building. Well, somebody shut it off, a bunch of people got sick. She went out to her car to get her inhaler and she died in her car, and then they clocked her out,” he said, referring to the death of 38-year-old Keesha Gray at the Pontiac USPS Metroplex in 2015.


“Our trucking system is dangerous. We will lock-out/tag-out trucks, and they just rip it up and throw it in the garbage and let the next driver get in it. You could lose a trailer going down the highway, and they just shrug their shoulders and say, ‘It is what it is.’ No, it isn’t what it is—I don’t feel like killing myself or somebody else! I’ve brought up multiple trucks and as soon as you turn your back, they throw the keys back in the box and throw the write-up out.”

He claimed that the facility’s fire suppression system was severely damaged last year—and has likely still not been fixed—causing flooding. Hi-lo drivers were told to move packages in the water in spite of the danger of being electrocuted. He also stated that workers get hurt when unlicensed contractors pull off the docks where there are little safety measures implemented.

Workers need to organize a fight back
“A lot of this stuff was hidden until what happened to Nick,” he said of safety issues in the postal service, but that workers should not let his death be in vain and should come forward to expose the poor conditions and fight to make a change.

“Everything that should have been in place to stop it failed. That company failed him in making sure that he could go home to his fiancée, go home to his mom. He was someone’s son. He’s somebody’s future husband, and they’re making it like he’s nothing. Something happens, and we just get kicked to the side, like we’re just common street trash after years and years of service. I don’t wanna see it happen anymore.”

Many maintenance mechanics have been calling out of work in protest against the poor treatment by management following Nick’s death, but they are beginning to get concerned about retaliation, he said.

“Everybody in there feels the same way. We’re mad because we’re not allowed to strike. If it takes two hours to fix a machine, that’s worth somebody not getting killed over. The mail can sit for a couple extra minutes, but no, to management it don’t matter, only these packages matter. And the union says, ‘Just keep pushing and do your best, don’t ruffle feathers.’

“But we have to stand up and fight, we have to cover each other. Whether you’re in California or Georgia, we as fellow workers got your back. There’s 600,000 of us, and there’s only so many of them. They can’t stop us all. If I gotta stand up and start something myself to push forward for this, I will, because I’m not gonna stand for watching people die anymore.

John also said that this is not limited to American postal workers. “Even though they’re [Canadian postal workers] across the bridge, they’re still brotherly to us. I wish I could stand up for all these other people. I couldn’t imagine my life being gone and my family not having me because of an accident. It breaks my heart to see people getting hurt, losing their lives. What are they gonna really do to us? They can’t fire everybody. Our voices need to be heard. Just like the autoworkers, when something happens with them, their voices are heard, and I’m tired of being silenced.

“I know that this sounds crazy, but I think that there needs to be some sort of conference where everybody, all workers, can stand up and say how they feel,” he concluded.