NC violated obligations to protect workers from COVID, labor groups claim
The state of North Carolina failed to protect workers from COVID-19, according to an administrative complaint filed by civil rights and workers’ rights groups Tuesday.
In the complaint, the groups ask the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate the N.C. Department of Labor’s failure to respond to a request for rulemaking regarding COVID-19 safety in the workplace and its failure to investigate worker complaints about lack of coronavirus protections.
In 2020, the state Occupational Safety and Health division received over 4,800 complaints from workers concerned about COVID-19 safety on the job, according to the agency’s communications director, Jennifer Haigwood. Only four of these complaints resulted in a workplace inspection, she said.
North Carolina is one of 22 states that operate their own job safety programs, rather than a program operated by the federal OSHA. But those states must develop standards “at least as effective in providing safe and healthful employment” as those established by OSHA, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
In their complaint, the groups argue that the state has failed to meet that standard. Similar complaints have been filed in Maryland and Iowa.
“Many of North Carolina’s workers, including those who provide the critical services in healthcare and food production on which everyone relies, face dire health and safety hazards in the workplace,” reads the complaint from the groups, which are represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the North Carolina Justice Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The complaint notes that workers of color are overrepresented in these industries and cites a January 2021 CDC report on meat and poultry processing facilities, which found that 83.2% of cases from March through May 2020 occurred among racial and ethnic minority workers.
“We do see workers that are still falling ill,” said Hunter Ogletree of the Western North Carolina Workers Center, one of the groups that filed the complaint. Without stricter workplace standards, “employers are going to continue to do the bare minimum,” he said, because they are currently subject only to recommendations. “This is going to continue until the pandemic is over and until workers can get vaccinated, which we don’t know when that’s going to happen.”
Months-long fight for protections
The complaint comes after the groups, which also include the N.C. State AFL-CIO, Episcopal Farmworker Ministry, and NC Raise Up/ Fight for $15 and a Union, filed a petition to the state labor department in October to implement new rules to protect workers from COVID-19.
The proposed rules would require employers to develop a COVID-19 response plan, provide workers with face masks, ensure adequate ventilation, and require workers to report symptoms of COVID-19 and self-isolate if they have symptoms.
Then-Commissioner Cherie Berry denied the request, arguing that “the virus has not been proven likely to cause death or serious physical harm from the perspective of an occupational hazard,” as The News & Observer previously reported.
However, according to its own reporting, nearly one-third of workplace deaths in 2020 were related to COVID-19.
There have been 8,257 COVID-19 cases associated with workplace clusters, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The number of additional cases not associated with clusters is not tracked by any state agency.
Berry, the five-term Republican labor commissioner, left office in January. Her successor, Josh Dobson has so far declined to revisit the denial of rulemaking.
In December, the labor groups filed a complaint with a Wake County court to compel the Department of Labor to reconsider the denial of rulemaking. That litigation is on-going.
In response to a request for comment on the complaint Tuesday, Haigwood responded that the DOL is in the “process of reviewing it” and that federal OSHA “must first make a decision as to the complaint’s validity before our department would take any sort of responsive action.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 5:03 PM with the headline "NC violated obligations to protect workers from COVID, labor groups claim."
