The United States played fast and loose with the health of essential workers during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, and the push to reopen businesses despite surging COVID-19 infections is no different. Essential workers and advocacy groups that represent them are calling for stronger health and safety protections, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ro Khanna have called for an Essential Workers Bill of Rights, and some local governments have increased protections, but businesses—backed, of course, by the Trump administration—are pushing back, even as workers are “on the frontlines like sacrificial lambs,” call center worker Hope Gilmore told NBC News.
“Employers are tending to take the position that they’re complying with OSHA guidelines, but it’s extremely clear that OSHA guidelines are not protecting workers and are toothless,” Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations, said. “The entire reason for having government regulation is that the market will not create safe workplaces.”
This isn’t only the case in the Republican-controlled states that have become the new epicenters of the pandemic. “We know the majority of these essential workers are people of color in New York City, and it’s unfair in a city that was built by immigrants that there’s no job protection, health and safety during a pandemic where they’re risking their health,” Laundry Workers Center co-executive director Rosanna Rodriguez said.
“It took an epic public health crisis and economic recession to wake us up, but as the economy reopens, we must not forget what we have seen,” the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s Ai-Jen Poo and Palak Shah write in The New York Times. “We must shore up every last job, especially those that have been invisible, and every worker who has taken care of us, until every job is a good job, and dignity is restored to work in America.”
This blog originally appeared at Daily Kos on July 11, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Laura Clawson has been a Daily Kos contributing editor since December 2006. Full-time staff since 2011, currently assistant managing editor.
