Labor unions push White House to add worker protections to Biden

Some of the nation’s largest labor unions are pushing the Biden administration to expand its vaccine mandate for private companies to include additional protections for workers, including mask requirements and other safety measures to minimize the spread of Covid-19.

The AFL-CIO and about two dozen other major unions representing teachers, service employees, meat processing plant, auto and steel workers spoke with the Biden administration on its proposed safety rule in an Oct. 18 teleconference call with White House officials from the Office of Management and Budget.

“We stressed the importance of mitigation measures,” Rebecca Reindel, who represented the AFL-CIO on the call, told CNBC. “We really need to be getting ahead of the transmission piece of the virus. It takes a while to get vaccinated — we need protections in the meantime,” Reindel said.

Three of the biggest labor groups, specifically the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, told CNBC they asked the administration to expand employee protections, requiring employers to improve ventilation and enforce mask rules and social distancing. Reindel said companies should also be required to conduct a risk assessment, in consultation with labor, to determine which combination of mitigation measures are needed to best protect their employees in the workplace.

President Joe Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Labor Department to write a rule requiring private companies with 100 or more employees to ensure they are all vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19.

OMB and Labor Department officials have held dozens of calls and meetings with industry lobbyists over the past two weeks as the OMB reviews the mandate, OMB records show. The vaccine and weekly testing requirements will go into effect soon after the OMB completes its review.

The AFL-CIO has called for sweeping measures to protect workers from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. However, OSHA, which polices workplace safety, hasn’t yet issued any broad-based Covid safety rules.

Instead, OSHA issued requirements over the summer limited to health-care workers. Most health-care providers had to develop plans to mitigate the risk of Covid, ensure employees wear masks indoors, keep people 6 feet apart when indoors, install barriers at work stations when employees aren’t 6 feet apart, and ensure proper ventilation — among a number of other requirements.

The AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers took the Biden administration to court, arguing that the OSHA standard “fails to protect employees outside the healthcare industry who face a similar grave danger from occupational exposure to COVID-19.” The…