On the surface, Michigan’s largest health insurance company – Blue Cross Blue Shield – has championed health precautions and safety throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
But behind the scenes, long-time employees are quitting and some have had panic attacks because of the company’s apparent apathy toward COVID-19 protocols, workers say.
Blue Cross Blue Shield sent almost all of its nonunion employees home at the start of the pandemic and they’ve been working remotely ever since. But the company’s 1,500 unionized employees haven’t been so lucky – while they were home for a couple days last March, they’ve been forced to work from the office ever since, according to the UAW local that represents Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan employees.
Customer service workers, claims adjudicators, junior accountants, graphic designers and more are required to show up every day and subject themselves to the virus – even though their work is done from computers.
Tiffany Muhammad, a customer service representative and employee of 15 years, quit last week because of it.
“When COVID first hit, the way that Blue Cross responded really hit me that, ‘I work for an employer that does not really care about my wellbeing.’” Muhammad said. “I worked at a medical insurance company. Like, that’s our thing. That’s the whole basis of our company.”
Muhammad’s elderly mother lives with her and has health problems. She was terrified of bringing COVID-19 home to her family.
Still, Muhammad said she’ll miss her work and her coworkers. She doesn’t know where she’ll go next.
“I am going to miss that aspect of that check every two weeks and that stability,” Muhammad said. “But my peace of mind is way more important than a check every two weeks.”
COVID-19 has hit Blue Cross Blue Shield offices hard. More than 200 employees have tested positive from its Detroit offices alone, said Kristofor Harrison, president of the UAW Local 2500.
In early April, the company was averaging about 50 cases per week across the state, he said. The company has about 6,000 employees.
“They represent themselves as being the standup company, corporate citizen, concerned about the health of the state of Michigan,” Harrison said. “But behind closed doors, amongst its own employees, there’s a depraved indifference and flagrant disregard for the health and safety.”
The company denies wrongdoing and says it has taken actions to protect its workers, even though state safety inspectors have fined Blue Cross Blue Shield for a number of violations.
The company is appealing the citations issued earlier this month.
The atmosphere inside
Masks aren’t required for employees once they’re at their desk.
But indoor spaces where people are maskless for long periods of time are among the highest-risk areas for COVID-19, health experts have said.
That’s why one customer service representative – whose husband and daughter are vulnerable with health conditions – wears three masks to work every day. She asked to only be identified by her first initial and last name, K. Jones, out of fear of company retaliation.
MLive has independently confirmed all employees referenced in this story work for Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Jones takes two of her three masks off once at her desk. The company mandates temperature checks, but Jones said she’s seen the result say “error” multiple times, but was told by the checker she was good to go.
“It’s scary to come to work every day,” Jones said. “It’s a health insurance company, but they don’t care.”
Michigan offices are the source of 68 active COVID-19 outbreaks, per state records. The office setting is one of the biggest sources of COVID-19 spread, but is behind spaces like schools, manufacturing/construction sites and bars/restaurants.
The virus has been disruptive at Blue Cross Blue Shield, since exposed employees are supposed to be sent home to quarantine. But one employee in the quality department said she’s been exposed to three people with COVID-19 – and even though the infected people shared her name with human resources, the company never alerted her.
Others have similar stories – saying HR didn’t want to send people home with pay if they could help it.
At the start of the pandemic, Blue Cross Blue Shield allowed union workers to stay home and collect unemployment if they didn’t feel safe coming in. Once Michigan’s stay-home order was lifted in June, workers had to return – or forfeit their pay or vacation time.
Blue Cross Blue Shield has begrudgingly complied with most of Michigan’s health rules, Harrison said. But every step has been a battle, he said.
“Even when they were passing out masks to the public, they were not giving their employees any masks,” Harrison said.
For a while, employees lost hope that their situation would change. They reluctantly continued to play Russian roulette with their health as their coworkers passed around the virus. Some ended up hospitalized and at least one employee died of COVID-19, according to union representatives and workers.
And then workplace safety inspectors showed up – at the request of the employees.
The Michigan Occupational Health and Safety Administration found a litany of violations, including not keeping people 6 feet apart, not having sufficient barriers between workers, not having a complete COVID-19 preparedness plan and not keeping records of employee trainings.
MIOSHA fined Blue Cross Blue Shield $7,000.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is the first Michigan workplace to be penalized for making employees to come to work when their jobs could be done from home. MIOSHA’s rules require remote work when “feasible.”
The company claims office workers must come in because sensitive patient health information could be compromised remotely.
But that excuse doesn’t hold up, employees say, because the company has nonunion employees and contracted workers doing the same jobs remotely.
“That was a bunch of B.S.,” Jones said. “I could possibly believe that if the vendors weren’t working from home.”
A Blue Cross Blue Shield spokesperson said the company’s IT department is already strained and near “maximum capacity” with the amount of employees working from home. Blue Cross has appealed the MIOSHA fines, claiming it did nothing wrong.
“We are confident in the appeal we have filed with MIOSHA and the actions we continue to take to protect the health and safety of our employees,” spokesperson Helen Stojic said.
Needless to say, the work situation at the Blue Cross Blue Shield skyscrapers on East Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit has not changed.
The company declined to answer questions on why union employees have been singled out.
Outside of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan building on Jefferson Avenue, on Monday April, 26, 2021 in Detroit Michigan. Nicole Hester/ MLive.com
Targeting the union
Union workers have “absolutely” been targeted by Blue Cross Blue Shield, said Harrison, the union president.
“They’re just absolutely unwilling to even broach the subject with us,” Harrison said.
The UAW has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing the company is discriminating against union workers. The UAW was part of the reason MIOSHA came to inspect the offices in the first place.
Some older employees retired to get out of the situation, Harrison said. He’s still hopeful Blue Cross Blue Shield will adjust its policies.
“They never really make a lot of movement until they feel that their image is being tarnished,” Harrison said.
The situation raises red flags for Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University and expert in unions and labor relations.
“There’s no need for people to have to be sitting in a call center at a central location in order to perform the work,” Masters said.
Custodial workers and facilities maintenance employees obviously can’t work from home, Masters said. But when two people are doing the same job – and one can work from home and the other can’t – that’s a problem, he said.
Unions have had a lot of power during the pandemic, Masters said, as they interpret how COVID-19 rules fit into union contracts. If the union feels the contract is violated, it can file grievances and force the debate into arbitration.
Having MIOSHA side with the employees instead of the company is a big step forward, Masters said.
None of the workplaces appealing MIOSHA citations for violating COVID-19 rules have gotten their fines overturned so far. MIOSHA has cited 228 workplaces and counting for violating pandemic safety rules.
The $7,000 isn’t much to a massive entity like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Masters said. It’s more about the principle of whether the company is in the wrong – and the resulting consequences of that.
“This is going to create discord and disharmony in the workforce and that’s all bad for the environment that people work in,” Masters said. “It’s also bad for the reputation of the company – particularly a company involved in health care.”
The psychology of an unfair work environment
Dr. Diane Buffalin, a psychologist in Farmington Hills, specializes in stress management and has worked in the field for 30 years. She calls herself a “one-woman crusade against anger.”
A handful of her clients are Blue Cross Blue Shield employees.
The situation has had a very “pejorative” impact on employees, causing stress, anxiety and depression, she said. That leads to poor productivity in the workplace, Buffalin said. She hasn’t seen any other employer handle the pandemic like Blue Cross Blue Shield has.
The anxiety stems from union employees feeling like the company doesn’t care about them.
“If I die tomorrow, they’re just going to replace me with another employee,” said a senior performance quality analyst with Blue Cross Blue Shield, who declined to share her name on the record because of fear of retribution. “The anxiety of just coming into work is affecting my health.”
The anxiety level is at a 10, she said, leading to almost-daily panic attacks before work.
The employee has worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield for 15 years. She has friends doing similar jobs at other health insurance companies who are working from home.
“I can’t really concentrate on working, being in there,” the quality analyst said. “My mind is not here – I’m constantly trying to wipe stuff down. I’m not really even a productive employee at this point because I’m totally afraid for my life.”
If management thinks its offices are safe, the executives should prove it by working in the offices alongside them, the employee said.
“They’re home safe with their families,” the quality analyst said. “I feel like it’s a slap in our face for them to be home safe, but to put our lives at risk.”
Buffalin thinks Blue Cross Blue Shield would fix the problems if the right people knew about the work conditions.
As employees fight feelings of helplessness, she tells them to keep faith – and eventually the right person will hear.
“Blue Cross and other large corporations spend a lot of money, time and energy building a sense of team,” Buffalin said. “And now, (team leaders) go home to where they can be in their pajamas and drink coffee or hot chocolate all day long. That’s such a sense of alienation and betrayal. These companies have invested so much money in creating a sense of team, it’s counterintuitive and counterproductive that they would do this.”
While Muhammad is done working at Blue Cross, she hopes for her former coworkers that the “hypocritical” and “inhumane” treatment ends soon.
“If you are a medical insurance company, you need to show a little bit more humanity toward your employees,” Muhammad said. “You just have to.”
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