Worker recall could aid COVID recovery

While we all have been affected, working people and people of color have paid the heaviest toll.

It is fitting that just as COVID-19 vaccinations arrive in New Haven, the city’s Board of Alders is voting on a bill that would offer recall protection to hotel workers laid off due to the pandemic. Our country is on the eve of a long recovery from a crisis that has inflicted painful economic and health hardship.

But while we all have been affected, working people and people of color have paid the heaviest toll. Recovery will require smart policies that rigorously address the social and economic impacts of this public health crisis. As a professor of law at Saint Louis University and a former assistant regional counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I believe that the proposed recall legislation would provide significant public health benefits.

In partnership with the COVID-19 Taskforce on Racism & Equity, a national group of public health researchers, practitioners and providers, I have worked to address the racial inequities in COVID-19 cases and responses. Black and Latino communities suffer from health disparities as a result of decades of racist policies in employment, housing and health care. In New Haven, as in other cities, residents in Black and Latino neighborhoods experience shorter life expectancies and higher numbers of COVID-19 positive cases than white neighborhoods. This summer, the New Haven Board of Alders joined numerous cities and counties across the country in declaring racism, embodied in part by racial health disparities, as a public health crisis.

Mitigating the inequitable impacts of COVID-19 will require government intervention. The New Haven recall ordinance is one important step. The hospitality workforce, which is predominantly made up of Black and Latino workers, has suffered disproportionate job loss. During the peak of lock-down orders, unemployment in the leisure and hospitality sector was 39 percent. Agreater sense of job security would reduce stress levels for these workers, which would protect the immune systems of a population at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. It is well documented that higher stress levels are associated with decreased immunity and other dysfunctions of the immune system. Being displaced from work with no hope of return creates additional stressors and mental health challenges for the hotel industry’s workforce, which may impair their physical and mental well-being, risk factors for COVID-19. Workers are also more likely to seek medical care to limit the spread of COVID-19 when they have access to health care, which is often connected to their jobs.

The public health benefits could also extend to the community at large. Economic factors have played an important role in determining the level of compliance with local shelter-in-place and other COVID-19 mitigation recommendations and mandates in the U.S. In addition, experienced, tenured employees are better situated to create a safe workplace for themselves and for hotel customers. Experienced employees are also more likely to speak up about health and safety concerns in the workplace. Connecticut’s reopening guidelines cannot be effectively implemented without an appropriately trained workforce that is committed to consistently enforcing many of the protocols.

Workers who testified at the recent public hearing on the recall ordinance provided many clear examples of these arguments. Jocelyn Burch testified that she has been at the Omni Hotel at Yale since before it formally opened, scouring the tubs and scraping putty off the walls. A worker with this experience is more prepared to notice conditions that put workers’ and guests’ health in peril. Burch also spoke clearly about her immense stress as she navigates the unemployment system and health concerns of her family members. Charli Taylor recounted their experience working for the Courtyard by Marriott New Haven at Yale shortly after the Great Recession. They were laid off when the hotel undertook renovations, and as a result, lost access to health insurance for almost a decade.

Even as we all struggle under the fatigue of this crisis, we recognize that recovering from it will require a long-term, concerted strategy. By passing the worker recall ordinance, New Haven’s Board of Alders and mayor have the opportunity to provide the path to recovery, by furnishing workers with the protections that this crisis demands.