What exactly constitutes a safe workplace during a pandemic?
The Biden administration is answering that with a clear set of rules, directing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to provide guidance to employers and employees about virus safety protocols.
"What this is means is that OSHA now will have the workers’ back," said Debbie Berkowitz, director of the Worker Safety and Health Program at the National Employment Law Project and a former OSHA official during the Obama administration.
Berkowitz said this should have been done already.
"It’s a complete 180 from the last administration…the Trump administration sidelined the workers’ safety agency, the national workers’ safety agency and really sort of shut them down."
She expected the guidelines to include basic safety protocols that have become a fixture of daily life, including "a standard that requires six feet apart, that requires masks, that requires quarantine, that requires notification of workers."
These provisions have already been enacted in California.
She also expected OSHA to include a provision that protects workers from losing pay if they have to quarantine.
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