President Joe Biden is asking the Department of Labor to make this clear: workers have the right to refuse jobs that harm their health, without sacrificing unemployment insurance.
The problem is different in every state, with millions of Americans facing the choice of working on the front lines of a pandemic or lose the ability to put food on the table.
Among a series of executive orders signed by Biden during his first 48 hours in office, the president on Friday instructed the Department of Labor to clarify that “workers have a guaranteed right by the federal government to refuse jobs that will endanger their health. and if they do, they will still be entitled to unemployment insurance. “
In revealing the order, the White House cited a 2019 Gallup survey in which 43% of American households reported having at least one member with pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable to serious illness or death if they hire COVID-19. “President Biden believes that workers should be entitled to safe working environments and that no one should have to choose between their livelihood and the health of their own family or of their family,” said the White House.
Many of the impacted workers are among the most underpaid, including employees in asylum, meat processing factories and grocery stores, for anyone going to work during a pandemic can be a daunting experience for which few have signed up. As Michelle Gonzalez, a nurse at the intensive care unit at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, Bronx, told CBS MoneyWatch at the end of March: “I have elderly relatives at home, so this is putting my family at risk.”
Instead of setting a national standard, the Trump administration let states interpret the rules, according to Andrew Stettner, an unemployment expert and senior researcher at the Century Foundation, a New York City think tank.
In Iowa, for example, the rules were quickly set in favor of companies that needed manpower. “If you are an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, this is a voluntary departure,” said Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, in April. “Therefore, they would not be entitled to unemployment money.”
Security fears end in heartbreak
Limited options were played in heart-breaking ways, with a daughter speaking openly after her father’s death from COVID-19, just a month after he returned to work as a security guard in Chandler, Arizona. “My father called me on May 16 fearing for his safety,” Lina Washington tweeted in mid-June. “He said that no one was distancing himself socially and few wore masks.”
His 68-year-old father, Robert Washington, had diabetes and was recovering from prostate cancer – conditions that made him vulnerable to infections. But he chose to return when the casino that employed him reopened, as he needed health benefits and a paycheck to cover the costs of insulin, rent and life insurance, she said. Her father’s other options were to take a free license or resign.
“It’s a big problem” that affects hundreds of thousands of workers, said Stettner. Since the second quarter of 2020, some 500,000 unemployment insurance claims have been denied by states, but it is not clear how many of the cases were related to COVID-19, he said.
“The question on which this executive order is trained is that of the more than 40 million people who received unemployment insurance after the pandemic,” said Stettner. The usual rule that you have to look for work to receive unemployment benefits was basically suspended, as it was not a safe time to work, especially if you had a high-risk job, he explained.
Emergency standard never defined by DOL
Each state requires basic health and safety as a condition of employment, but the Centers for Disease Control guidelines on working conditions during the pandemic have been issued and terminated, and the Department of Labor has never released an emergency rule dealing with COVID-19 , recalled Stettner.
“So people started being called back to work or offered jobs, so there was no guidance on this issue. It was really left to the states to determine what that means, ”said Stettner. Now, he added: “the president is saying, ‘we need to find a policy on this’.”
Biden’s order comes a day after another order directing the Department of Labor to revise the worker’s health and safety guidelines in two weeks.