Update from New England Council on region's response to COVID-19 crisis

Headquarters building of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain, in Quincy, Mass. The company is donating food to health-care workers.

Update from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):

As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak.  Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among council members throughout the region.  We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.

You can also check our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar for information on upcoming COVID-19 related programming – including Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members.

Here is the April 2 roundup:

Medical Response

• Northeastern University Models Used in White House Response to Virus – The White House coronavirus response team has been using models produced by the Network Science Institute (NSI) at Northeastern University to project how varying mitigation strategies could “flatten the curve” of COVID-19. The models allow policymakers and members of the response team to visualize the effects of policies being considered, such as specific travel restrictions and staggered school closings. Read more.

• Boston Scientific Begins Work to Produce Ventilators, Protective Equipment – To confront the growing need for medical equipment, Boston Scientific is collaborating with public and private partners to bring necessary devices to market. From making more affordable and portable ventilators to producing face shields and reusable protective equipment, the company continues to use innovation to address some of the most pressing problems facing healthcare workers. Read more.

• Abiomed Expands Remote Training for Medical Providers – Medical device manufacturer Abiomed is expanding its utilization of its online physician community to provide expanded physician education and training. The company has plans to launch its largest interactive educational site in its history in April. More information can be found here.

Economic/Business Continuity Response

• Proctor & Gamble Increases Production During Crisis – In the wake of shortages of some of its most common products—including napkins, paper towels, and diapers—P&G has increased production of all paper goods at its factories. The company is also manufacturing face masks to help alleviate the increasing demand of protective equipment. USA Today has more.

• M&T Bank Provides Hardship Assistance – M&T Bank has created an impact form for its clients to identify their need for a variety of assistance options, including late fee suppression and changes to loan payment plans. In addition to case-by-case measures, the bank is offering unsecured personal loans, suspending negative credit reporting, and more. More information can be found here.

Community Response

• Stop & Shop Donates Daily Meals to Healthcare Workers, $500,000 for Research – Using its expansive food production and delivery network, Stop & Shop (owned by Ahold Delhaize) will provide 5,000 meals daily to health-care providers in the greater New York City and Boston areas. In addition to the daily meals, the grocer is providing $500,000 to Boston Children’s Hospital for research on a potential vaccine. Read the press release here.

• DraftKings Announces New Charity Initiative, $500,000 Donation – DraftKings has created its own charity initiative, #DKRally, to mobilize sports fans to donate to relief efforts. In addition to an initial $500,000 donation, the betting service will match up to a total of $1 million from contributors. The donations to the initiative will be distributed to United Way to support relief efforts across the country. US Betting Report has more.

• Holy Cross Student-Run Nonprofit Raises Over $23,000 for Response Fund – Working for Worcester, a student-run nonprofit founded at the College of the Holy Cross, has raised more than $23,000 for the Worcester Together COVID-19 emergency response fund. The money was raised in just five days as part of a blitz from the school’s alumni and students. The Worcester Together fund provides money for immediate needs and to support local community organizations. The Worcester Business Journal

Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.

In search of small grocery stores

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Did the now-settled strike at Dutch-owned Stop & Shop permanently boost business at New England-based supermarket chains, such as Shaw’s, Market Basket and Dave’s Marketplace? And how much at the few remaining small grocery stores?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more of the latter, places – better than 7-Elevens -- that you could nip into and buy small quantities of stuff? Yes, small grocery stores’ items are more expensive than those in the big supermarkets, with their efficiencies of scale, but faster and more pleasant. (Reminds me of Benny’s vs. Home Depot.) I think that New England towns and cities would be considerably more agreeable if we had more of those little grocery-and-other-stuff stores you see in New York City that we often called “Korean markets’’ when I lived there because so many were owned by Korean-American, or bodegas, with their Latin American focus. Very handy.

All this reminds me of the store called simply “Central Market,’’ in the small downtown of the village I lived I as a boy. The smells of ground coffee, (overripe?) fruit, fish, some of it perhaps just brought in from the nearby harbor, and other goods were rich, and the floor was covered with sawdust, which wouldn’t pass an OSHA inspection now. Eventually a big A&P supermarket went up on the edge of town, closer to a new superhighway (that all too soon became a long parking lot in rush hours). The owners of Central Market couldn’t compete and so the store was eventually shut down. So now there was no grocery store we could walk or bike to. Another triumph for the car culture.

Chris Powell: Nursing-home workers have better claim than Stop & Shop's

Stop & Shop’s headquarters, in Quincy, Mass

Are all those Connecticut elected officials who have been joining the picket lines in the strike by the United Food and Commercial Workers union against Stop & Shop experts in the supermarket business? Or are the only numbers that matter to them the numbers of their constituents on strike as compared to the numbers of the supermarket chain's Dutch owners who can vote in Connecticut?

A few days ago U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal boasted that he had told Stop & Shop's president to do better by his employees. But the senator didn't say how he came to that judgment.

The supermarket business is high-volume, low-margin and extremely competitive. Most of its labor is not highly skilled and so is difficult to unionize. Organizing it and keeping it organized as the UFCW has done at Stop & Shop is an achievement.

But that doesn't make the company's contract offer unfair. Not being unionized, the company's competitors enjoy substantial advantages over Stop & Shop and more easily can offer better prices to their customers.

So what does anyone outside the business really know about who is right or wrong in the dispute, or if there is any right or wrong rather than mere self-interest?

Meanwhile, a far more compelling labor dispute is developing in the state.

Workers at 20 nursing homes, members of the New England Health Care Employees Union, are threatening to strike May 1, and their wages and benefits are largely matters of state government appropriation. That's because most nursing-home patients are welfare recipients and what the nursing homes pay their employees is determined mainly by how much state government pays the nursing homes.

The nursing-home workers are not highly skilled either and organizing them is as much a challenge as it is to organize supermarket workers. But the work of nursing home employees, caring for the infirm and disabled, can be much more tedious.

While state government treats its direct employees luxuriously because of their political mobilization, it always has treated the nursing-home workers poorly, controlling patient reimbursements so tightly that raises have been tiny and have badly lagged inflation.

The nursing-home workers union wants state government to appropriate enough for 4 percent raises in each of the next two years. While that may seem high, it is not when averaged with the meager raises of the last decade.

But it would be hard for state government to appropriate such raises for the unionized nursing homes and not for the scores of other homes. So big money is at issue here even as state government faces a budget gap of $1.5 billion or more.

Despite that gap, Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly lately have been approving substantial raises for unionized state employee bargaining units and even approving the unionization of supervisors who should not be unionized at all. Further, the jobs and compensation of all state employees have been guaranteed for years to come by the Malloy administration's infamous long-term contract with the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition.

In these labor issues the nursing home workers are plainly far more deserving. But when fairness requires direct state appropriations for people who are not politically influential, the politicians are not as eager to be photographed.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.