When Brigitte Tran arrived Wednesday morning at the Rodeo Drive shopping center where she works as a salesperson, she was on edge.
Smoke from several wildfires raging across Los Angeles County billowed overhead. The ornate shopping corridor that is usually crowded with tourists seemed to be haunted.
Tran's colleague sent a message to their manager informing him that the neighboring shops were closed, and explained the clear smoke in the air. But the woman, at home in Orange County, didn't seem to understand their concerns. “We will not close unless the mall orders us to close,” he replied.
Tran, who said that because of the fear of facing it, he asked that his place of work not be disclosed, he became more worried as the hours passed. Around 3 pm, he and two other workers who were working that day rebelled. They packed up, told the security guard to go home, and locked the doors a few hours before closing time.
As wildfires raged across Los Angeles County, suffocating air, closing schools and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate, employers and employees alike have had to manage the difficult balancing act between work and wellness. Some employers have responded quickly to the crisis, closing offices and switching to remote work, providing outside workers with masks and other protective equipment, and providing support for workers forced to leave. Others were unintelligent, sloppy in their communications or completely unmoved by the concerns of the workforce – thereby provoking anger among their ranks.
The fire underscored the need for companies to have a clear emergency response plan, said Jonathan Porter, a meteorologist at independent weather forecaster AccuWeather. The responsibility, he said, goes beyond making sure the office is in the exit zone. For example, as the current damage continues, businesses should be aware of the “large amount of hazardous fumes blowing into the air” and be prepared to provide outdoor workers with high-quality respirators or remove them from contaminated air.
Some employers offer employees flexibility. Snap, the Santa Monica-based creator of the photo messaging app Snapchat, for example, kept offices open Wednesday but encouraged employees to work remotely, a company spokeswoman said.
Others changed course after criticism.
UCLA's announcement that the campus will remain open for classes and normal operations on Wednesday drew the ire of some faculty and students on social media.
Victor Narro, project director of the UCLA Labor Center and an instructor at the school, said in a post on X that he would ignore UCLA's mandate and voluntarily hold the class online.
“Students have been up all night due to evacuation orders, winds are still high, branches are falling all over Westwood, power is out across the city, and our new chancellor (on his second day) thinks this should be his first phone call…” Nour wrote. Joudah, an assistant professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA, in another post by X.
That night, UCLA backed down, announcing it would close the campus.
On Saturday, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk issued a statement saying classes will be held remotely for at least another week and campus operations will be curtailed. “We ask for continued flexibility and understanding as we all work through these difficult times,” wrote Frenk.
But for many workers, the chaos of the past few days has left them feeling like they're taking care of themselves.
Tim Hernandez, a driver for Amazon Flex, an on-demand Uber-like service where people use their cars to deliver packages, was assigned a route Tuesday along the Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu, which is closed.
When he asked if the delivery was safe, he said the dispatchers at the Amazon center in Camarillo turned him away, leaving him to choose between worrying about his safety and worrying that his rating on the Flex app would be hurt if he refused to go. He decided to try to deliver, fighting the wind that knocked him down at once. However, he lost cell signal, and was forced to return to the warehouse without filling the majority.
And when he arrived at his job on Tuesday, Alfred Muñoz, 43, an Amazon delivery driver who works at a warehouse in the City of Industry, said he was given an N95 mask but given few other instructions.
“It was just business as usual,” Muñoz said.
The high number of packages and the number of stops on the assigned routes this week made the task even more difficult. On Tuesday, with the wind blowing debris making it difficult to see, he had about 180 stops and 290 packages to deliver. On Thursday, the air filled with smoke and ash, he was carrying more than 300 packages.
He woke up on Thursday morning with a bloody nose and dark crusts around the corners of his eyes.
In response to a request for comment, Montana MacLachlan, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company is “monitoring the wildfires throughout Southern California and is adjusting our operations to keep our employees and those who deliver to us safe.”
“If the driver arrives at the delivery location and the conditions are not safe for him to deliver, he is not expected to do so and the driver's work will not be affected,” he said.
At the Brentwood location of popular Italian restaurant Jon & Vinny's, employees complained of headaches and sore throats in a text group chat. The worker, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said on Tuesday, workers huddled around an iPad with a fire department map pulled up to look for an increasing number of exits. In front of the restaurant, they could see the light of the Palisades fire.
The employee said they were frustrated management kept the restaurant open when the mandatory exit was only two blocks away. On Wednesday, all the servers scheduled to work called and said they weren't coming, the employee said.
A spokesperson for the Joint Venture Restaurant Group, owner of Jon & Vinny, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During natural disasters and extreme weather, employers' choices can sometimes mean life or death, said David Michaels, a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health and former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
He pointed out the recent floods of Hurricane Helene which killed many workers in the plastics industry. The disaster has drawn scrutiny from federal investigators, and a wrongful-death lawsuit accuses the company of requiring workers to stay on site during the flooding after they requested permission to leave.
“It is up to employers to ensure the safety of their employees,” said Michaels. “The safety of their employees must come before business concerns.”
Yasha Timenovich, 48, a driver for the rideshare app Lyft and the food delivery platform DoorDash, is more concerned about reduced wages than job security. With many restaurants and other businesses closed and potential customers fleeing the city, he said pickup and delivery are slow. Traffic patterns were strange and unpredictable as families piled into cars to escape the fires.
Timenovich, who faced an order to vacate her Hollywood apartment with her boyfriend and 6-year-old daughter Wednesday night, said she planned to stay with relatives for a few days in San Luis Obispo, where she hoped business would pick up.
“I'm going to get out of here because it's so crazy with these fires,” said Timenovich.
Source link
