California’s leading workplace protection agency, Cal/OSHA, is removing any requirement that employers pay exclusion pay to workers who are exposed to or infected with COVID-19.

California’s frontline workers - disproportionately people of color and women - are facing devastating losses in the COVID-19 pandemic. We are losing our jobs, our family members, our child care, our savings.

Despite this ongoing disaster, the latest proposed workplace Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) does away with exclusion pay, while at the same time preserving the requirement that employers “exclude” any “COVID-19 case.”

This means that anyone who tests positive or is ordered to quarantine would be required to stay home without pay. With the recent expiration of supplemental paid sick leave, the eviction moratorium, and utility shut-offs, workers will be forced to make the impossible decision of going to work while sick or staying home without pay.

Sending essential workers home without pay for weeks is an outcome that few can absorb. The result would be that contagious workers would quietly stay on the job, infecting their co-workers and members of the public. Workers will fall ill, people will die, and the pandemic will worsen.

We join with Worksafe <worksafe.org> and demand that the Cal/OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board keep exclusion pay for exposed/infected workers in the ETS for COVID-19.