Gustavo \u201cKike\u201d Ramirez would have turned 17 this year. He died when his employer failed to provide him with a safety harness at a Nashville, Tennessee construction site on June 23, 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was ten months ago, and I still think about him every day,\u201d said Jenifer Enamorado Ayala, recalling her brother\u2019s preventable fall that ended his life at age 16. She is one of the family members and co-workers remembering those who lost their lives on the job for Workers’ Memorial Week – April 24 – May 3, 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fighting now to make everyone\u2019s job safer, so no other family has to suffer this kind of tragedy,\u201d said Enamorado Ayala, joining Workers\u2019 Dignity in Nashville to reform the city\u2019s building code.<\/p>\n
During a virtual National Speak Out to observe Workers\u2019 Memorial Week, labor safety activists called\u00a0for a new COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to save workers\u2019 lives. Jessica Martinez is the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH). She hosted the online commemoration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe health and safety movement has been fighting for mandatory COVID rules in the workplace since this pandemic started,\u201d she said. \u201cGetting the ETS to the White House is a huge victory; now we have to make sure this life-saving rule is rapidly approved and rigorously enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new COVID-19 ETS rule would require all employers to create pandemic protection plans with full input for workers. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) transmitted the rule to the White House this week for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review.<\/p>\n
To date, U.S. employees have gone without COVID-19 safety rules for their employers to obey. Think about what that means.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that mandatory COVID-19 safety rules will reduce risk in our workplaces, which is essential to stopping the spread of the pandemic in our communities,\u201d said Martinez. Community spread of the coronavirus created the U.S. public health disaster, driving a country with four percent of the globe\u2018s population to experience\u00a0one-fourth of earth\u2019s pandemic fatalities.<\/p>\n
Martinez continued. \u201cWorker health is public health. Workers go home at the end of every shift\u2014so unless we are safe at work, we won\u2019t be safe at home, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pascaline Muhindura is a nurse at HCA\u2019s Research Medical Center in Kansas City, MO and a member of National Nurses United. \u201cOver the course of the past year, every single nurse and health care worker in my unit has contracted Covid-19,\u201d she said \u201cThat includes my beloved co-worker Celia Yap Banago who died last April after taking care of a patient with COVID-19 at my facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lack of Personal Protective Equipment for health care workers is a disaster of the for profit health care system. The reason why in big part is the lack of a profit in maintaining adequate supplies. Yet the consequences of this deficit are lethal.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the grave risks to hospital workers, we still don\u2019t have the personal protective equipment we need,\u201d said Muhindura. \u201cIn my hospital, we are still fighting for N95 masks to be used for single use only, as intended by the manufacturer, and there is only limited stock of more protective, reusable respirators.\u201d<\/p>\n
A National COSH report, released April 27, \u201cDeadly Risks, Costly Failures<\/a>,\u201d found:<\/p>\n Worker complaints to OSHA increased by 20% in 2020 when compared to 2019\u2014but safety inspections dropped by 50%;<\/p>\n No public agency is monitoring workplace infections or fatalities from COVID-19.\u00a0 The total number of those who have died after workplace exposure is untracked and unknown.<\/p>\n In Ontario, researchers estimate that 20 percent of infections among working-age adults is due to workplace transmission.<\/p>\n In California, researchers found significant excess mortality among front line workers due to COVID-19:<\/p>\n + A 39% increase in mortality among food and agriculture workers<\/p>\n + A 28% increase among facilities workers<\/p>\n + A 27% increase among transportation\/logistics workers.<\/p>\n + A 23% increase among manufacturing workers<\/p>\n + A 19% increase among health and emergency workers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The OMB’S Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs could publish the new workplace safety requirements by early May, at which point they would be \u201clikely to take effect immediately,\u201d according to Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Work to Die For: COVID-19 and U.S. Labor<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gustavo \u201cKike\u201d Ramirez would have turned 17 this year. He died when his employer failed to provide him with a safety harness at a Nashville, Tennessee construction site on June 23, 2020. \u201cIt was ten months ago, and I still think about him every day,\u201d said Jenifer Enamorado Ayala, recalling her brother\u2019s preventable fall that More<\/a><\/p>\n The post Work to Die For: COVID-19 and U.S. Labor<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143818,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143817\/revisions\/143818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}