Duckworth, Warren, Baldwin and Colleagues Urge Biden Admin to Issue Delayed OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard for Workers
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) led a group of colleagues in urging the Biden administration to issue the delayed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to finally provide workers with enforceable health and safety protections specific to COVID-19.
“More than a month has now passed since your deadline for issuing an ETS. The consequences of each day of delay are dire – and potentially fatal – for frontline workers who have toiled without enforceable health or safety standards specific to COVID-19 since the beginning of this pandemic,” the Senators wrote. “An ETS will prevent additional, unnecessary worker illnesses and deaths due to COVID-19. We urge you to issue this necessary standard without further delay.”
OSHA has the statutory authority to issue an ETS to take immediate effect if workers are exposed to grave danger from exposure to hazards and an emergency standard is necessary to protect workers from the hazard. On his first day in office, President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) on Protecting Worker Health and Safety. The EO called on the Department of Labor (DOL) and OSHA to consider whether any ETS on COVID-19, including masks in the workplace, are necessary, and if such standards were determined to be necessary, issue them by March 15, 2021. The standard has still not been issued.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of essential workers have become sick, and many have died, after being exposed at their workplaces. In the food industry alone, an estimated nearly 90,000 workers tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 383 have died from the disease. A majority of essential workers are at increased risk for severe COVID-19.
In addition to Duckworth, Warren and Baldwin, the letter was signed by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Corey Booker (D-NJ), Mark Warner (D-VA), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Tina Smith (D-MN).
Full text of the letter is available here and below.
Dear President Biden:
We write to seek information about the delay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), and to urge your administration to release the ETS as soon as possible to address the heightened risks for frontline workers during the pandemic.
On your first day in office you issued an Executive Order calling on the Department of Labor (DOL) to “consider whether any emergency temporary standards on COVID-19, including with respect to masks in the workplace, are necessary, and if such standards are determined to be necessary, issue them by March 15, 2021.” According to reports, by mid-March, OSHA had “provided the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a draft ETS for review.” Yet, to date, the Office of Management and Budget has not formally noticed receiving the standard.
More than a month has now passed since your deadline for issuing an ETS. The consequences of each day of delay are dire – and potentially fatal – for frontline workers who have toiled without enforceable health or safety standards specific to COVID-19 since the beginning of this pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of essential workers have become sick, and many have died, after being exposed to coronavirus at their workplaces. In the food industry alone, an estimated nearly 90,000 workers tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 383 have died from the disease. A majority of essential workers are at increased risk for severe COVID19.
We first called for an OSHA ETS more than a year ago, and an ETS has been a top priority of labor groups since the earliest days of the pandemic. A recent DOL Inspector General report recently reaffirmed the importance of an ETS, given “[g]uidance in and of itself cannot operate in lieu of an ETS as an enforcement tool.” While we appreciate that your administration is working to aide in mass vaccination efforts, to date only about 26.9% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Frontline workers remain at risk.
An ETS will prevent additional, unnecessary worker illnesses and deaths due to COVID19. We urge you to issue this necessary standard without further delay.
Sincerely,
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