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Law360 (April 13, 2020, 7:01 PM EDT ) Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., are pushing for Congress to guarantee hazard pay, child care, free health care and increased whistleblower protections to Americans who are essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Warren and Khanna said Monday they're asking Congress to include 10 pro-worker policies they've dubbed the "Essential Workers Bill of Rights" in the next coronavirus relief package.
The Essential Workers Bill of Rights calls for free personal protective equipment, up to 14 paid sick days and access to child care for all essential workers, according to a press release from the lawmakers. Previous coronavirus relief legislation guaranteed only some workers paid sick leave, exempting all companies with more than 500 workers from the mandate.
The policy goals also include mandates forbidding companies from tampering with collective bargaining agreements during the pandemic, cracking down on worker misclassification and offering Americans paid family and medical leave.
"Congress must pass Sen. Patty Murray's Paid Leave Act, which provides 14 days of paid sick leave and 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, so essential workers can care for themselves, family members or dependents," Warren and Khanna said in a statement Monday.
The Paid Leave Act, co-sponsored by lawmakers including Sens. Warren, Bernie Sanders, Vt., Chuck Schumer, N.Y., and Kirsten Gillibrand, N.Y., was introduced in the Senate on March 17.
Warren and Khanna want companies to guarantee they won't fire workers for reporting unsafe conditions on the job related to the pandemic, according to the policy goals.
Amazon.com Inc. recently came under fire after terminating an employee at its Staten Island, New York, warehouse who led a walkout over working conditions, with New York's attorney general calling the company's decision to fire Christian Smalls "disgraceful." Amazon has maintained that it fired Smalls because he disobeyed orders to self-quarantine after coming into contact with an employee with coronavirus.
Notably, the Essential Workers Bill of Rights includes a call for hazard pay, although it stops short of using those words. Instead, Warren and Khanna say Americans classified as "essential workers" must "be paid robust premium pay to recognize the critical contribution they are making to our health and our economy."
That "premium pay" should "provide meaningful compensation for essential work, be higher for the lowest-wage workers and not count towards workers' eligibility for any means-tested programs," Warren and Khanna said.
The lawmakers did not offer a framework for how the pay should be calculated, although they said it "must be retroactive to the start date of the pandemic." Warren and Khanna's offices did not immediately respond to requests for additional information about how that pay should be calculated.
Warren and Khanna are also asking Congress to "ensure that any taxpayer dollars handed to corporations go to help workers, not wealthy CEOs, rich shareholders or the president's cronies." The government could do that by checking to see that companies haven't fired or furloughed workers in order to access tax credits, the lawmakers said.
The lawmakers also want essential workers to have access to "public programs that provide no-cost health care" during the crisis.
The Essential Workers Bill of Rights' final tenet asks the federal government to "treat workers as experts" on public health crises such as the coronavirus. The government could do that by soliciting workers' input when crafting safety and compensation standards during pandemics.
The government could seek that input by involving unions and other organizations that advocate for workers' rights in policy discussions and in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Warren and Khanna said.
Congress is on hiatus until April 20, at which point it will most likely consider passing a fourth coronavirus relief package, House leaders have said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to her fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives on April 4 that she is hoping to push forward a fourth relief package by the end of April. She said she wants the bill to include more help for workers and small businesses.
Pelosi has recently ramped up demands to get a relief package passed as soon as possible, saying Monday in a joint statement with Chuck Schumer that "small businesses, hospitals, frontline workers and state and local governments across the country ... need more help from the federal government and they need it fast."
But it's unclear whether Congress will reopen on April 20 as planned, considering the state of the pandemic. In an interview televised by C-SPAN on Monday, the head of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said she didn't think it was possible.
Just less than 22,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus and there were roughly 554,000 reported cases in the country as of Monday afternoon, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
--Editing by Stephen Berg.
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