US DOL Publishes Report on Pandemic Challenges

Written By: Atanu Das on Thursday, June 25, 2020

In the report, the DOL gives background on its responsibility for worker safety and health under OSHA and MSHA. These agencies cover nearly 150 million workers at more than 9 million workplaces and are challenged with determining how to help ensure employers protect the safety and health of the American workforce during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in high-risk industries such as health care, law enforcement, meat processing, agriculture, manufacturing, delivery workers, retail, and mining. The nature of this work and inherent barriers to social distancing make it particularly difficult to protect this essential workforce.

For OSHA, it becomes important to provide clear and relevant coronavirus-related guidance to help ensure worker safety during the pandemic. OSHA must also use its limited resources to timely respond to the significant increase in worker and whistleblower complaints to ensure workplace safety, and to protect workers that exercise their rights to report safety concerns.

As more and more workplaces open up across the country, employers must be aware of these and other guidelines as well as current regulatory enforcement efforts in place.