Know Your Rights
The COVID-19 virus is a workplace hazard. A safe workplace is a human right and a legal right. Employers must guarantee it.
Federal agencies are giving extremely vague and voluntary guidelines to employers on how to keep their workplace safe from COVID-19. This leaves workers to fend for themselves. Given these conditions, understanding your health and safety rights in the workplace is important. You are not alone. So we’ve worked with the National Employment Law Project (NELP) to create this guide, Get M.A.D. and Stay Safe—COVID Straight Talk on Legal Rights. We’ll direct you to the legal frameworks and resources to help you get M.A.D. and advocate for a safe and healthy workplace. To check out more in-depth information on legal employment rights from NELP, click here: National Employment Law Project (NELP).
Although there are no specific requirements under current federal law for COVID-19, employers are still required to provide a safe workplace. However, the federal OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has chosen not to establish these as requirements for employers to implement in response to the risk of COVID-19 in the workplace. Further, although employers have an obligation under the federal OSHA law to provide a safe workplace even in the absence of a specific standard for COVID-19, the agency has decided to only do very, very limited enforcement.