Workers on the line

CERUE COTTON NEVER EXPECTED TO FIND HERSELF ON A PICKET LINE. As a forklift operator for Cash-Wa, a regional food distributor in Fargo, N.D., she enjoyed the physical challenges and responsibility of her job, and was used to working overnight hours. Then COVID-19 arrived.

The coronavirus, which had seemed like a faraway problem last spring and summer, began spiking in her community in September. Cotton had a newborn baby and two older children at home, both of whom have asthma. She no longer felt safe going to work. For months, Cash-Wa had failed to require masks in its warehouses, enforce social-distancing rules or screen employees. The company’s only precautions, she says, were handing out cloth masks and placing two bottles of hand sanitizer in the break room. By late November, Cotton and her fellow workers—all deemed “essential” under guidance from the federal government—had reached a breaking point. They banded together and refused