One of the largest labor unions representing direct care workers is calling on the Biden administration to beef up COVID-19 safety standards in the workplace.
Service Employees International Union and National Nurses United are urging the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to tighten the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) final safety standard for COVID-19 exposure in the healthcare workplace beyond requirements adopted in 2021.
SEIU Executive Vice President Leslie Frane told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse the union has been meeting with OSHA and sending the agency letters, demanding tougher safety standards.
“COVID-19 and other burgeoning airborne illnesses continue to pose a threat to healthcare workers who put their lives, and the health of their loved ones, on the line because of the hands-on nature of their work,” Frane said in an email. “Sadly, healthcare workers have needlessly suffered because employers failed to offer adequate protections.”
OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare providers lapsed at the end of 2021. The unions want the agency to update the policies it laid out for the ETS instead of copying the temporary standard for a long-term rule. Jane Thomason, an industrial hygienist for NNU, told Inside Health Policy a new safety standard should be more rigorous than recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said the CDC has not sufficiently accounted for aerosol transmission, asymptomatic transmission or the efficacy of masking with N95 respirators.
The OMB is meeting with various stakeholders as it reviews OSHA’s final safety standard for healthcare providers. Frane said she is optimistic a final permanent standard will be issued soon that “offers vital protections including adequate personal protective equipment, training on how to properly use it, proper ventilation and other essential mitigation procedures, time allowances for vaccination, and paid sick leave for those who test positive for COVID or must quarantine to reduce risk of spreading the virus.”
SEIU represents approximately 750,000 of the nation’s 3 million direct care workers nationwide.
