More than a year into a pandemic that has killed nearly half a million Americans, millions of workers still toil in dangerous infection-spreading conditions, in hospitals and clinics, nursing homes, factories, supermarkets, and fields—perilously providing America’s food and health care in hazardous conditions.
While there is no single source enumerating COVID-19 health effects on workers, there is ample reliable data showing that worker exposures are a significant part of the pandemic’s deadly toll.
Many of these workers are near the front of the vaccination queue, but this process could take months, and COVID-19 remains a serious workplace hazard.
A detailed analysis by The Guardian found that at least 3,400 health care workers died from COVID-19 last year; more than half of them worked in clinics, nursing homes, and residential facilities, and 44 percent worked in hospitals.
As of February 12, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network, “At least 87,237 workers (57,332 meatpacking workers, 17,114 food processing workers, and 12,791 farmworkers) have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 374 workers (283 meatpacking workers, 48 food processing workers, and 43 farmworkers) have died.”
A new study of California workers by the University of California at San Francisco shows that agricultural and food industry workers experience the greatest risk of COVID-19 infection. Deaths among all working-age adults have surged by 22 percent during the pandemic, researchers found, and death rates soared by 39 percent for food and agricultural workers, and 28 percent for transportation and logistics workers.
The study also found that, among Latinx food and agriculture workers, the death rate rose by a distressing 59 percent from pre-pandemic norms, compared to 16 percent for white workers in these sectors. “In-person essential work is a likely venue of transmission of coronavirus infection and must be addressed through strict enforcement of health orders in workplace settings and protection of in-person workers,” it said.
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that food and agricultural workers are at heightened risk for COVID-19. Based on extensive worker health data from thirty-six states, the study called for increased worker safety equipment, distance and mask protections, and multilingual training to help protect these workers.
Many of these workers are near the front of the vaccination queue, but this process could take months, and COVID-19 remains a serious workplace hazard.
But actions by President Joe Biden and Congress may deliver some modest, long-awaited help. Experts and critics say it’s a good start but not enough.
On January 21, his first full day in office, Biden signed an executive order tasking the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with beefing up COVID-19 workplace safety guidelines. Critically, it included a review of “emergency temporary standards on COVID-19, including with respect to masks in the workplace.” Unions first proposed this emergency temporary standard back in March 2020 when the pandemic began sweeping across the US—but the Trump Administration blocked it repeatedly.
On February 8, House Democrats released legislation to inject “not less than” $75 million into OSHA, including at least $5 million to bolster enforcement of workplace safety protections related to COVID–19. Another $10 million would go to “Susan Harwood training grants,” which fund nonprofit community-based programs to help workers and employers make worksites safer. (As the program’s website currently states, “no funding opportunities are available at this time.”)
But progress on the recovery package is now being delayed by a week-long Senate recess and Democrats’ debates over means-testing for stimulus payments.
“There is no reason workers—inside and outside of health care—shouldn’t be provided respirators that would keep them safe today.”
Once enacted, these measures would begin to repair a worker safety agency decimated by the Trump Administration’s cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and its staunch opposition to an emergency standard requiring employers to protect workers from COVID-19 exposures in the workplace.
Through staff cuts and attrition, OSHA has plunged to its most anemic state in its fifty-year history. As of 2019, according to a report by the AFL-CIO, the agency had just 1,815 inspectors (752 federal and 1,063 state) to cover 9.8 million workplaces across the country. That’s one safety inspector for every 79,262 workers.
At his February 4 confirmation hearing, Marty Walsh, Biden’s nominee for Labor Secretary, stressed the need to expand both worker safety standards and inspection, Safety and Health magazine reported. “If we increase standards and don’t increase inspectors, then we really don’t protect the American worker,” Walsh told senators. “OSHA will be one of the first and top priorities if confirmed.”
Even before the pandemic, Trump’s gutting of worker protections left America’s workers less safe on the job. In 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace deaths rose to 5,333—one worker dying on the job every 99 minutes—the highest level since 2007.
“Given the size and importance of its vital mission, OSHA has long been under-powered and under-resourced,” Dr. David Michaels, former OSHA administrator under President Barack Obama, and now a professor at George Washington School of Public Health, tells The Progressive. “The proposed funding boost, he says, “will help OSHA jumpstart its efforts to stop workplace transmission and prevent more worker deaths, but it is only a fraction of what the agency needs in the long run to ensure that nation’s workers are safe at work.”
In an October 2020 report, Michaels and coauthor Gregory Wagner made the case for an emergency temporary standard: “There is extensive evidence that OSHA standards are effective in preventing injuries and illnesses, and that OSHA inspections lead to decreases in injuries for several years after a workplace is inspected.”
While praising Biden’s executive order as “a strong first step,” Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO’s director of occupational safety and health, warns that “the CDC still downplays its acknowledgment of airborne transmission of this coronavirus that is widely recognized and promoted by scientists, and the CDC still has not translated this acknowledgment into the high level of protections that workers need to be safe from workplace exposures to this coronavirus.”
This ongoing failure, Reindel notes, “is a major problem and will be a significant barrier to Biden releasing strong COVID-19 workplace safety standards.”
Under its current guidelines, Reindel explains, the CDC “has given license to employers to still use ‘crisis conditions’ as a way to withhold adequate respirators that science tells us are necessary in many workplaces for this particular virus.” As a result, “Employers have stockpiled and locked up respirators that workers could be using now to keep from being infected,” Reindel adds. “There is no reason workers—inside and outside of health care—shouldn’t be provided respirators that would keep them safe today.”
Milly Rodriguez, occupational safety and health specialist with the American Federation of Government Employees, concurs that the CDC needs to “recognize airborne transmission as a workplace consideration and address it in their guidance document”—meaning give it the weight and power of enforcement.
If Biden’s OSHA enacts a temporary emergency standard in March and ramps up COVID-19 worker safety enforcement with the added funds from Congress, those government inspectors will also need protections.
“We have raised concerns with inspectors having the PPE, training and other protections they need, including the vaccine before they are sent out in the field,” Rodriguez notes, adding that mine inspectors, too, must be kept safe while they go about ensuring mineworkers’ safety.
Keeping all workers safe—including workplace safety inspectors—should be at the top of the pandemic recovery agenda.