A bill of rights for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic ... PRELIMINARY DRAFT

Last update: Friday 6/5/20

President Trump and most governors are encouraging businesses to reopen as soon as possible in order to restart the economy as quickly as possible.




Many working class employees who can't work at home -- Black, Hispanic, White, and others -- are sheltering at home. Pressures from the president and from the governors will now force them to face vicious individual choices of risk vs. certainty: 

• Go back to work at jobs that barely pay their bills, jobs that entail significant risks of infection and death, jobs that also entail significant risks that employees will bring the virus into their homes thereby imposing significant risks of infection and death on their families
  
  ... or alternatively
• Stay at home, lose their unemployment benefits (if they have any), lose their healthcare benefits (if they have any), and rapidly sink into abject poverty plus the disease, misery, and early death associated with extreme deprivation.

This being a Hobson's choice, it isn't really a choice at all; so the vast majority of these employees will go back to work ... if their jobs still exist.

It's important to note that in May 2020 some middle class employees who can work at home are being given treatment that is far more considerate. For example, the well paid techs at Google, Facebook, and Amazon were recently told that they did not have to come back to their offices until September, after the predicted peaks of the pandemic have passed. Better still, the well paid techs at Twitter were told that they never have to come back to their offices at all .... ever ... never ... unless they want to ... :-)

That any two groups of workers could face such starkly contrasting workplace choices suggests that one is being treated too well or the other is being treated too poorly ... or neither, as in, that's how labor markets are supposed to allocate paychecks and perks. If employees have skills that are useful and relatively scarce, e.g., the West Coast techs, they will receive bigger salaries and more expensive perks than employees whose skills are useful but widely available, e.g., most working class employees. 

In the context of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic -- deadly because there are no COVID-19 vaccinations or cures -- large differences in paychecks may still be acceptable. However the perks or lack or perks for working class employees impose high risks of disease and death, whereas the perks for middle class techs bestow low risks. It should be unacceptable in any advanced society such as ours that any employees could be forced to accept high risks of disease and death in exchange for ordinary paychecks. These failures of the labor markets must be corrected by a combination of government interventions at the federal, state, and local levels.

The next section presents the "Bill of Rights" referenced in the title of this note. Readers should keep the following design principles in mind when considering these suggestions:

• None are original. The author merely assembled various rights he encountered in print publications, radio/TV newscasts and podcasts, and conversations with friends.
• The rights only cover the perks that employees will need to cope with the pandemic; so they don't cover perks not directly related to the pandemic.
• The rights don't specify which government agencies at which levels should administer the perks; but it is likely that multilevel consortiums of federal, state, and local government agencies will be required
• None of the perks should be paid for by the employers because the employers did not create the virus nor the economic chaos the virus has generated.
• The bill provides a conceptual framework; it is not an operational proposal. That's why the dollar values of the rights are not specified, although the total cost for all 50 states is likely to be measured in trillions of dollars. The dollar values of rights may vary from one state to the next, so one size does not fit all. Each state will have to produce its own operational bill based on the specific dollar values of the rights that are acceptable to the citizens of each state.
• No fault infections. Employees don't have to prove that they contracted the virus from their workplace; and employers don't have to prove that employees contracted the virus from somewhere else. The bill seeks to expedite the fastest possible identification and recovery of infected employees, so it avoids protracted adversarial investigations, legal wrangling, etc, etc, etc.
• The federal government should be the ultimate source of the funds required to pay for these rights because the federal government is the only government that can "print money" and/or issue (almost) zero interest bonds to cover the trillion dollar costs of the pandemic.

Note: Readers are encouraged to consider the articles linked to the hyperlinks (in bold font) in the preceding paragraphs before reading the following bill of rights. The articles provide real world data about the conditions the articles are designed to address.

Bill of rights for pandemic employees

1. The right to a safe workplace
Standard COVID-19 best practices should be implemented:

• The employer should provide appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for all employees -- masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, etc
• Employee workstations should be at least six feet apart
• Employee workstations should be disinfected frequently
• Employees should be encouraged to wash their hands frequently
• Employees should be tested for COVID-19 frequently
• Infected employees should be directed to leave the workplace and enter isolation until their condition satisfies CDC recommendations
• All persons who had close contact with infected employees should be tracked down, tested, and quarantined for at least two weeks if they sho no symptoms of infection, but isolated until their condition satisfies CDC recommendations

2. The right to know how safe their workplace really is

• Current and prospective employees have the right to know how many employees of an organization have tested positive and how many have died. This information should be freely available on the Internet and should be updated frequently.
• Current and prospective employees have the right to know if their employer is following all of the COVID-19 guideline published by the government agency designated as the workplace inspector for their employer. The results of government inspections should be freely available on the Internet and updated after each inspection.

3. The right to paid sick leave
Employees who are sent home to quarantine should receive their regular paychecks throughout the full period of their convalescence. 


4. The right to free health care

Health care for infected employees and their families should be be free.

• If infected employees have health insurance, co-pays and other fees should be paid for by designated state or local agencies. If they don't have health insurance, they should be retroactively enrolled by an Obamacare insurer
• Healthcare should also be free for family members of an employee who contracted the virus after the employee became infected.

5. The right to be retrained for new job opportunities (if no immunity)
If it turns out that becoming infected with the virus affords no immunity or very limited immunity, employees should not face double jeopardy:

• Employees should be given the opportunity to retrain for other jobs in safer workplaces. The new jobs should pay salaries that are about the same as the employees' current job.  
• This retraining should be free to employees, and they should receive their current paychecks until their retraining is completed
• If the current employer cannot provide safer opportunities, employees should be offered retraining for safer jobs at at other places of employment. 

6. The right to early retirement 
Recent reports suggest that not all recoveries from the COVID-19 virus are complete recoveries. Employees who are left with severe disabilities should be allowed to retire with generous pensions.


7. The right to substantial death benefits 

• Funeral and burial services should be free, i.e., paid for by designated state or local agencies
• Substantial lump sum payments or annuities should be given to a deceased employee's heirs

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Editor's note to readers

I would greatly appreciate any comments, modifications, or changes you might suggest to the rights proposed in this preliminary draft. Please enter your ideas into the "Post a Comment" form at the bottom of this page ... or send me a direct message via Twitter -- @neoskeptics.

Thank you,
Roy L Beasley, PhD
Editor, Neoskeptics blog and Twitter account 


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Related notes on this blog:

• Coronavirus Guide