We owe a special debt to essential workers
This Labor Day, we owe a special debt to essential workers.
Since March, approximately 30% of workers continued working, often at great personal risk, so the rest of us could shelter safely at home.
Our food chain is one example: Farm workers continued to harvest our food, food processers continued to pack it, truckers made sure it got to the grocery store, and grocery store workers served hundreds of thousands of us, or, in some cases, gig workers delivered it to our homes. All these people kept working — risking their health and safety — to make sure we could eat.
It’s time we put essential workers, disproportionately people of color, at the top of our list and made sure they have the supports in place to be safe and healthy.
With 70% of the new coronavirus cases in California among working-age people, we are seeing the devastating effects for our neighbors who didn’t have the option to work from home or shelter in place. And the consequences are staggering: The mortality rate for Black, Latinx and Pacific Islanders under the age of 65 is 2½ to 4 times their share of the state’s population. CAL/OSHA has received over 3,500 complaints about workplace safety concerns since the launch of the pandemic.
How California re-opens is a public health issue, an economic issue and fundamentally a moral and racial justice issue. Every local government has the power to prioritize worker protections now and make it safe for other workers when they, too, re-enter the workplace. The Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, the coalition of the Bay Area’s public health departments, has a Rapid Response and Rolling Recovery platform with crucial protections for the health-and-economic pandemic in our midst:
• Ensure paid leave for every worker: Everyone’s health is protected if everybody can get paid to stay home if they’re sick. Without a federal or statewide comprehensive effort to protect workers, local governments must act to fill in the gaps.
• Keep workers housed: Californians already were struggling to pay for housing before the pandemic, many working two or three jobs to pay rent. Essential workers shouldn’t be worried about homelessness or eviction, especially after working so hard to be sure the rest of us are healthy.
• Expand access to county mental health services: The big three requests right now from people seeking community services by calling 211 are for food, housing and mental health services. It’s time to invest in access to mental health, whether via telehealth or additional community outreach. Essential workers are dealing with increased stressors as they face putting their lives at risk every day.
• Enforce labor protections: CAL/OSHA is underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to investigate the thousands of complaints pouring in. Essential workers can’t wait for that infrastructure to be created. Local officials should immediately develop workplace emergency standards for COVID-19 and use CARES Act funds to enforce them.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how deeply our health and economic well-being are connected — and how inequitable policies and practices put all of us at risk. As California’s death toll hits new records, we must retool our response to meet the challenge of economic and health care inequities head on.
Counties have an array of tools to protect, treat and strengthen the health of essential workers, even during a pandemic. They have been taking care of us. It’s only fair that we use our collective resources to care for them.