Democrats introduce additional COVID-19 actions to ensure health workers’ safety

Building off of the momentum embodied in an $8.3 billion emergency funding package approved earlier this month, House Democrats have introduced legislation meant to guarantee health care facilities have exposure control plans in place to protect workers from COVID-19.

The COVID-19 Worker Protection Act of 2020 would require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard that would require health care facilities throughout the country to establish comprehensive infectious disease exposure control plans that guarantee the safety of their workers. Currently, such health care workers benefit from no enforceable standard for protection against airborne infectious diseases. While a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance is on the books, it is in no way binding, and OSHA currently operates without such a standard.

“As we enter into what is likely to be the greatest infectious disease crisis this country has faced in over a century, it is in the national interest that OSHA be on the forefront of protecting workers essential to the country’s health care system,” Committee on Education & Labor Chairman Bobby Scott and U.S. Rep. Alma Adams said in a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia earlier this month. “If health care workers are quarantined in large numbers, or get ill or die, or fear coming to work due to the risks, it’s not just a personal or workplace problem, it’s a national public health disaster.”

The Department of Labor has thus far resisted calls from Democrats to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard, despite their claims that employees are being exposed to grave danger from the new viral hazard. If passed, the legislation would demand OSHA issue such a standard within 30 days, followed by a permanent standard.

Scott and Adams were joined in sponsoring the bill by 19 other House members.