Health Care Workers Bring Suit Against OSHA over Pandemic Rules

A large coalition of union-represented workers in health care and education are pressing the Ninth Circuit Court to require the Department of Labor to direct its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to put a rule into effect which has been batted about since the scare of H1N1 in 2009.

According to the writ of mandamus before the court, the coalition, which includes AFT, AFSCME, and several West Coast nurses unions, argues that OSHA must issue a firm set of policies about workplace safety that puts the good of the workers first. OSHA first proposed a policy framework related to infectious diseases in the years following the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, but under both Presidents Obama and Trump failed to follow through with a concrete plan.

The suit notes that healthcare workers, especially nurses in hospitals and nursing homes, have borne a large brunt of non-geriatric deaths due to coronavirus, and that it is high time OSHA followed through on its plan to lay out firm regulations and guidelines about occupational safety for “essential workers,” an issue obviously made more pressing by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The coalition’s lawyers argue that at the very least OSHA should have devised Covid-specific policies and further charged that OSHA has largely skirted its responsibilities to workers, allowing businesses to avoid providing proper safety rules for workers.

As Law360 notes, a writ of mandamus is rarely granted because of the federal bench’s reluctance to impose on the workings of federal agencies. However, the coalition’s legal team believes strongly that this is one of those rare instances where the courts must step in because of how dire the situation is and how immediately it is affecting workers.