Biden calls out Trump for not protecting health care workers

In a short virtual address to a network of Pennsylvania’s labor unions Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden said that although Donald Trump should not be blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic, the president “does bear responsibility” for not using his powers to get health care workers the protective equipment they need.

Mr. Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, alleged that Mr. Trump didn’t move quickly enough to respond to the coronavirus — a delay that he says has caused “real pain for so many Americans” and for workers who are on the front lines without adequate supplies.

“Trump likes to say he’s a wartime president,” said Mr. Biden, appearing by video chat during the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO’s virtual 44th Constitutional Convention. “Well, he needs to step up and act like it.”

Specifically, Mr. Biden pointed to the Trump administration’s lack of action on imposing official occupational standards to protect workers from infectious diseases — standards that the Obama administration was working to adopt but that were moved to a less urgent agenda by Mr. Trump’s administration and ultimately stalled, according to reporting in The Washington Post.

Now, labor unions are urging Congress to issue temporary standards for employers to protect against COVID-19, Mr. Biden noted. The advocacy fight was a main topic of the AFL-CIO’s virtual convention, and in comments to reporters last month, its president, Richard Trumka, said the lack of action is “part of the Trump administration’s pattern of reckless and dangerous deregulation.”

“Over the past three years, the president and his team have systematically rolled back workplace protections and cut funding for the programs that keep us safe, healthy and alive,” Mr. Trumka said. “The agency charged with protecting workers — OSHA — is rudderless and still without a full-time director. And there are fewer workplace inspectors today than at any other point in history.”

Mr. Biden said he’d work to make it easier for workers to unionize and bargain collectively, and also build a National Labor Relations Board that’s “on the side of workers,” framing it as the least the federal government can do to stand up for labor unions that are fighting to get their workers protective gear and paid sick leave during the pandemic.

When the pandemic is over, the U.S. can’t return to “an unfair and unequal economy that’s stacked against American workers,” Mr. Biden said, pledging to urge investments in infrastructure, greater access to job training and education, a hike in wages and overtime pay, and access to “universal health care while guaranteeing that unions and union members can keep their current insurance if they choose.”

“We’re being tested like never before — I mean like never before — but I know that we’re going to come through it,” Mr. Biden said. “The American people have always led this country and led this country all the way through every crisis we’ve had. Ordinary people, given an opportunity, are capable of accomplishing extraordinary things.”