John,

The COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping throughout the United States. Every day, workers on the front lines are being exposed to the coronavirus in their workplaces. Hundreds of thousands of health care workers, transit workers, meatpacking workers, first responders, grocery workers, utility workers, solid waste workers, letter carriers, doormen, retail workers, construction workers, janitors and many more have become infected and thousands have died.

These front-line workers deserve to have the appropriate resources, equipment, training and protocols in their workplaces to be protected, as well as to avoid infecting other people. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has the obligation to ensure the health and safety of all working people, particularly from an infectious disease such as COVID-19.

Tell Congress now: OSHA needs to issue an emergency temporary standard to protect workers from infectious diseases.

Due to reckless inaction by the Trump administration, working people do not have the protections we need to be at work now or to return to work. There is no existing OSHA standard or basic regulatory framework that comprehensively addresses an employer’s responsibility to protect workers from infectious diseases. Without mandatory infection control requirements that employers must implement, there is no assurance that all workers will be protected from infectious diseases like COVID-19 and future infectious agents.

Now is the time to provide workers with the protections required to prevent exposure to the virus on the job and slow the transmission of COVID-19.

Contact your member of Congress now and urge them to support H.R. 6559, the COVID–19 Every Worker Protection Act of 2020.

In Solidarity,

Team AFL-CIO