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States instead of feds become worker safety watchdogs as pandemic worsens
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States are increasingly bypassing the federal government and imposing their own rules to protect workers from the coronavirus, creating a patchwork of regulations that could serve as a blueprint for new national standards promised by President-elect Joe Biden.
Oregon last month began requiring employers to supply masks, develop infection control plans and notify staff of ill coworkers. California rushed out 21 pages of business mandates covering everything from proper ventilation and social distancing to testing, reporting and quarantine procedures. In New Jersey, more than 1,000 complaints of alleged workplace health and safety violations have poured in from workers in the four weeks since the state enacted its own new safety program.
In all, 14 states have instituted their own comprehensive restrictions as the federal worker safety watchdog, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has come under fire for its lax enforcement during a pandemic that has turned America’s most mundane jobs into dangerous, frontline deployments.
Labor leaders and other advocates for tougher rules say the hands-off approach taken by President Donald Trump’s administration has put workers in harm‘s way, forcing the states to step in...
Experts say Biden could borrow heavily from the states that have crafted their own policies, and the most stringent local requirements could give the new administration a baseline for those standards. But negotiating with industry groups could take months, and labor leaders say any delay will only result in more cases and, in turn, more deaths.
A report released Nov. 19 found that up to 8 percent of the early U.S. coronavirus cases could be rooted in outbreaks among workers at meatpacking plants. Large outbreaks of the virus, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans, continue to be linked to employers that hold important positions in the nation’s supply chain. ...
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