Forum Post: Why Your Thank You Letters are Hurting Essential Workers

Corporations are using customer thank you letters and social media photos of them to their advantage. Please stop posting these letters on facebook etc. If you really want to thank them please contact your representatives in government and ask for basic worker protections and safety measures. Please remember they have children as well and some of them also have children who are likewise immunocompromised. Do you really want your child's photo being used to pressure or guilt a sick worker into going in and working sick? Then possibly contaminating many more people?

Though only a few items per day being shipped are essential per truck - the companies are using customer thank you's as propaganda and social media memes to show government representatives how necessary and popular their role is. (Which appeals to those running for re-election). So companies are able to get them to lax enforcement of Covid workplace protocols. Though they didn't choose this role for themselves most workers would gladly risk their lives to deliver truly essential items and help sick children - BUT the companies are not limiting shipments to essential items and they are using this status to get away with reducing safety measures and social distancing for workers. So though workers appreciate the thanks - it's being used to their disadvantage by greedy corporations, and effectively harming their cause for more protections from the virus. Remember this hurts us all - when hundreds of thousands of workers continue to carry and transmit the virus - the curve will remain high when others are required to return to work it will still be circulating which defeats the entire purpose of social distancing to begin with.