Earlier this week, Senate GOP leadership introduced their $1 trillion opening response to the $3 trillion Congressional HEROES Act, originally proposed in May. As we have noted, the signal demand coming from Mitch McConnell’s office is liability protection (the “L” in HEALS) for businesses and health care organizations. Translated, McConnell wants to prevent workers from suing employers if they contract coronavirus at work. And the GOP appears firm that without consensus on this issue, there will be no new stimulus.
Conspicuously absent from the bills is any firm guidance or requirements for updating OSHA workplace safety standards during the pandemic. We have documented over the last month how ineffectual OSHA, a long-time target of dark money from the Kochs and other industrial oligarchs, has been since the pandemic began. And last week, as ProPublica reported, meat-packing workers at Pennsylvania-based Maid-Right Specialty Foods are suing OSHA and the Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia, under Section 13 of the OSH Act of 1970, which states:
“If the Secretary arbitrarily or capriciously fails to seek relief under this section, any employee who may be injured by reason of such failure, or the representative of such employees, might bring an action against the Secretary in the United States district court for the district in which the imminent danger is alleged to exist or the employer has its principal office”
In the case of Maid-Right, workers made OSHA complaints as far back as April, which the agency failed to respond to. ProPublica has also covered OSHA’s failure to prioritize investigations into the health and safety standards for “essential” workers during the pandemic.
The HEALS Act seeks to exploit the pandemic to enact far-right legislation related to workplace safety, as a pair of reports from The Intercept demonstrates. The first, reported by Akela Lacy, exposes how ALEC, one of the Koch-funded groups, has been lobbying McConnell and others in Congress to pass model legislation to shield employers from lawsuits like the one being brought by Maid-Right workers. Meanwhile, meatpacking heavyweights Smithfield and Montaire Farms have been pouring money into the Republican Attorneys General Association and other campaigns in the hopes of getting favorable legislation passed to shield them from wrongful death suits. The meatpacking industry has been at the heart of multiple massive outbreaks in the US and abroad, with US meatpackers being accused of failing to be transparent with workers.
Our Firm, and many Americans, will continue to monitor the HEALS Act with interest.
