Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo
Workers produce FDA-approved isolation gowns in Tempe, Arizona, on April 13, 2020.
The following is a guest version of Unsanitized from Brian Callaci, a labor economist and Postdoctoral Scholar at the Data & Society Research Institute. He has spent over a decade as a labor researcher and organizer and received his PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019.
First Response
COVID-19 is taking a grim toll on frontline workers. Eighty-three MTA employees in New York City have died of the disease as of April 22. A processing plant that produces five percent of America’s pork shut down after 700 of its workers tested positive and one died; subsequent outbreaks infecting thousands of workers have taken one-quarter of all pork processing offline. At least forty grocery workers have died of the virus while thousands more have tested positive.
In response, Senate Democrats have proposed a “Heroes Fund” to give all essential workers $25,000 in hazard pay. With essential workers facing an escalated threat of dying, they absolutely deserve the increased wages. However, stopping with hazard pay overlooks an argument at the center of the labor movement for seventy years: workers should not have to shoulder the burden of occupational injury and death, employers should. If all that dangerous employers must do to provide for workers is offer a “risk premium,” then we effectively render health and safety protections unnecessary.
The worker health and safety movement emerged in the 1950s, led by labor leaders like Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union and Lorin Kerr of the United Mine Workers. They rejected this framework, known as “compensating differentials,” arguing instead that every worker deserved a safe and healthy workplace as a matter of right. This “general duty” of employers to make workplaces safe was enshrined into law in the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
While some worker advocates have rightly suggested the enactment of new emergency OSHA rules and stepped-up enforcement during the pandemic, more rules and enforcement, by themselves, are not enough. For one thing, there are just not enough OSHA inspectors. By one estimate it would take 165 years for OSHA’s current number of examiners to inspect every workplace in the U.S. just once. For another, new rules, if implemented in a top-down fashion without worker input, can do more harm than good. For example, given the realities of low unionization and “at-will” employment, new rules of any kind provide employers with weapons to get rid of “troublemakers” on pretextual grounds.
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According to Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota and New York City, that’s already happening. They allege that Amazon, fearing unionization, has already used its new “social distancing” workplace safety rules as an excuse to fire or discipline the very organizers pushing for improved sanitation and safety measures.
Though oddly missing from the current policy debates around COVID-19, the history of the health and safety movement offers a better pathway to protect workers than hazard pay or new rules alone. Past experience reveals successes when workers are empowered to identify hazards and determine the conditions they need to protect themselves. Frontline workers are often the first to notice workplace safety hazards. For example, miners first noticed the link between uranium exposure and lung disease. And throughout the pandemic, workers at Amazon facilities have been consistent about what they need: closure of contaminated worksites for sanitization, consistent protective equipment, and paid sick leave, so exposed or sick workers are not incentivized to clock in. (Amazon will end its unlimited unpaid time off policy April 30, so workers could be fired for choosing not to risk their health on the job.)
While there are some limited protections for workers to refuse unsafe work under the Occupational Safety & Health and Taft-Hartley Acts, they are weak and unevenly enforced (though workers should challenge this in court). The structurally vulnerable position of workers is aggravated by the pandemic, in which workers face soaring unemployment, few alternative jobs, and unemployment benefits often unavailable to workers who are fired rather than laid off. In short, workers who speak out about unsafe conditions are putting their jobs at risk.
Because individual whistleblowers can be gotten rid of easily, workplaces like Amazon warehouses need elected health and safety committees, which would offer workers more protections to identify and eliminate workplace hazards. It would not be new; in fact, the US government has aided the formation of such committees before. Joint union-management health and safety committees were promoted by the War Production Board during World War II. President Truman forced coal companies to heed the advice of United Mine Workers health and safety committees during a heated mining strike in 1946. And as recently as 1991, federal lawmakers sought to enshrine health and safety committees through the Comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Reform Act, which would have given all employees in workplaces of eleven or more the right to establish joint health and safety committees that could conduct inspections and recommend corrective action. Subsequent coronavirus response bills could require this framework for at least the duration of the crisis.
Hazard pay is an essential component of a pro-worker pandemic response. But the proposal seems to reflect the recognition that many frontline workers have been paid below their true social value all along. The wage increases should therefore be made permanent. To truly honor frontline workers, we must do more than call them heroes and pay them a few extra dollars to risk their lives. We should empower them to protect themselves—and the rest of us in the process.
Today I Learned
- Auto Nation, the nation’s largest auto dealer with 7,000 employees, is the latest to return “small business” loan funds, having acquired $77 million through affiliates. Overall there’s been $170 million in returns. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Wall Street Journal)
- Trump is forcing graduating West Point cadets to return to campus, quarantine for two weeks, and then show up to his commencement speech. (New York Times)
- Federal Reserve money cannon being watched closely. (Financial Times)
- Bipartisan group of lawmakers seek payday lender bailout. (Politico)
- A nice weekend in Southern California led to packed beaches. (Los Angeles Times)
- Only 29 percent of jobless Americans received benefits in March. (Pew Research Center)
- Grover Norquist’s group is keeping a list of hundreds of regulations waived in the crisis, presumably so they can push to make the deregulation permanent. (Americans for Tax Reform)
