Workers Lives Put at Risk

OSHA PRESSURED TO STEP UP ENFORCEMENT: Congressional Democrats, labor unions and other worker advocates are increasingly agitated that the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationhasn't set harsher requirements for masks, gloves and social distancing in essential workplaces like grocery stores and pharmacies, POLITICO's Ian Kullgren reports.

Critics say the agency's inaction could worsening a pandemic that has already claimed more than 16,000 lives in the U.S., Ian writes. During the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, OSHA published a lengthy documentenforcing CDC guidelines for the health care industry. It required health care employers to follow certain hygiene procedures, to postpone elective surgeries on patients who might be infected, and to perform high-risk procedures in airborne infection isolation rooms, among other measures.

"The Trump administration has published no comparable document for the coronavirus — meaning that the CDC guidelines are strictly optional, according to former safety officials," Ian writes. 

GROCERY UNION DEMANDS PROTECTIONS AS WORKERS DIE: The 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers union demanded Wednesday that the CDC direct grocery employees and customers to wear protective masks, Ian reports.

Retail workers and cashiers, including those in grocery stores and pharmacies, are among those most at risk of contracting the virus, data shows. At least 1,500 UFCW workers were infected as of Tuesday, and 30 had died, the union said, though it was still making tallies.

MEANWHILE... CDC SAYS ESSENTIAL WORKERS DON'T NEED TO QUARANTINE: The Trump administration Wednesday said that health workers and other essential employees who have been exposed to the coronavirus should go back to work instead of quarantining for 14 days, POLITICO's Brianna Ehley reported.

First responders and health care workers across the country had previously been isolating for two weeks — the estimated period in which an individual can develop symptoms — after coming within 6 feet of a coronavirus patient. The new guidance is an effort to address frontline workforce shortages.

But unions and worker safety groups are calling on the CDC to revoke the policy, arguing the administration has "abandoned its responsibility to protect workers."

"It is well established that there is significant risk of transmission from asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals," said Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the worker advocacy group the National Employment Law Project. "Thus these guidelines risk endangering workers, their families, their communities, and the public."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka argued that the move was an effort to ensure businesses will continue to profit. "These dangerous new guidelines tell employers to keep potentially infected workers at work," Trumka said, adding that the change "does not protect essential workers on the front lines and ignores firmly established science."