The Biden/Democratic 'Leave No Promise Unbroken' tour continues...
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Biden’s new COVID rules protect profits, endanger workers
Joyce ChediacDecember 30, 2021 199 4 minutes read
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The number of COVID-19 cases has reached new records, fueled by the highly contagious Delta and Omicron variants. More and better safety measures are clearly needed to stop the spread. The Biden Administration, however, is doing the opposite. Caving in to corporate demands, on Dec. 27 the Committees for Disease Control and Prevention cut in half the recommended isolation time for people with COVID-19 from 10 to- five days. On Dec. 28 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cancelled regulations which gave mandatory protection to health care workers.
Unions and nurses are outraged, charging the government with protecting profits and endangering workers.
Businesses hails CDC safety cuts
The CDC’s slashing of isolation guidelines to five days for those infected and for unvaccinated people exposed to COVID-19 caves in to businesses wanting workers back on the clock fast, regardless of safety, to maximize profits. The CDC change came a week after Delta Air Lines urged it to reduce isolation time. The new recommendations were immediately hailed by the Food Industry Association, the National Retail Federation and Airlines for America, the trade groups of the respective industries. Their biggest concerns are net losses, as airlines have cancelled thousands of flights and many restaurants and retail stores have had to shut down because so many of their employees were sick.
Especially appealing to big business is the following part of the CDC guidelines : “Alternatively, if a 5-day quarantine is not feasible, it is imperative that an exposed person wear a well-fitting mask at all times when around others for 10 days after exposure.” This “alternative” leave the door open for corporations, not scientists, to determine whether a five day quarantine “is feasible,” and to force workers to come in when they are sick.
Airline staff already pressured to work sick
This is exactly what airline workers fear. The Association of Flight Attendants responded to the guideline changes by emphasizing that employees should not be expected to return to work unless they have no symptoms and test negative.
Sara Nelson, the international president of the union points out that, “Already the lack of paid sick leave creates pressure on workers to come to work sick.” She added, “Corporations that fail to recognize this with paid sick leave, or pressure workers to come to work sick or face discipline, are failing their workers and their customers.” The AFA represents 50,000 flight crew workers at 17 airlines.
With hospitals overflowing and ICUs stretched thin, the CDC also shortened the isolation period for nurses and other healthcare workers testing positive for COVID-19 from 10 to seven days. The government agency no longer requires exposed vaccinated and boosted health care workers to quarantine at all. This puts both health care workers and their patients at risk. “Let’s be clear, this is about what’s good for business, not what’s good for public health,” said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, President of National Nurses United, which represents 175,000 nurses nationwide.
OSHA protections removed
On Dec. 27, OSHA discontinued an Emergency Temporary Standard adopted in June that made compulsory health care worker protections on infection control, with penalties for employers who violate the requirements. The temporary standards were adopted due to unrelenting campaign by union nurses, and over the extensive opposition from the hospital industry and other corporate interests. The temporary ETS, which expired Dec. 21, was not replaced with a permanent standard.
40 organizations back nurse safety
OSHA made this pro-boss decision even though more than 40 organizations, including unions, and more than 6,300 individuals signed a petition urging it to make its emergency temporary standard permanent for healthcare workplaces.
“It is unconscionable that OSHA would not make the Covid-19 health care ETS permanent,” said NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN.
“Without a permanent standard, we will see more preventable transmission of the virus, more hospitalizations, and more deaths from Covid-19. It is absolutely essential that our frontline health care workers have these lifesaving protections to do their jobs safely so they can continue to care for patients, especially when we are now facing Delta and Omicron variants as well as flu season.”
Some 476 RNs have died of Covid-19, among 4,702 health care worker deaths overall, according to NNU, and more than 1 million U.S. health care workers have tested positive for Covid-19.
“Strengthening, not weakening protections, is the solution to the staffing crisis,” said Triunfo-Cortez. “The hospital industry manufactured the current staffing crisis by imposing unsafe working conditions on nurses. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated long standing staffing issues when hospitals failed to protect us and our patients.”
The nurses are backed by other unions. On Dec. 28, the AFL-CIO; the American Federation of Teachers; National Nurses United; AFSCME; the United Food and Commercial Workers; the United Steelworkers; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW; and SEIU issued a joint statement condemning OSHA’s removal of the ETS for health care workers.
“The ETS made clear to health care employers that proven prevention measures limiting airborne exposures to COVID-19 are absolutely necessary and would be fully enforced to keep workers from getting sick and being removed from work. These include improved ventilation, patient screening and respirators, and providing paid leave when workers are infected and must quarantine. … all proven protective measures must remain in place. …to protect workers now, we need to build on the emergency COVID-19 standard by making it permanent, not scrapping it altogether.”
This fight is far from over. The NNU and its backers have pledged to continue the fight for mandatory and enforceable science-driven safety standards that fully protect healthcare workers, patients and all workers. To draw attention to the failure of the federal government and employers to protect patients, nurses and other health care and frontline workers, NNU has called a national day of action on Jan. 13.
“Nurses across the country will be standing up for change on Jan. 13, and we call on our communities to stand with us,” said Triunfo-Cortez. “Nurses have fought every single day of this pandemic for strong protections, and we are not going to stand by while the federal government and our employers weaken those protections by the day. We are not going backward now.”
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Biden administration results in more of the same Trump immigration policies
By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
Updated 9:17 AM ET, Thu December 30, 2021
(CNN)President Joe Biden kicked off his administration with lofty goals to revamp America's immigration system, but with the end of the year approaching, lawsuits and infighting have stalled policy changes, officials have fielded criticism from allies and critics over management of the US southern border, and efforts to pass immigration revisions seem farther away.
The administration's best-case scenario is a "totally mixed bag," said Jorge Loweree, policy director at the American Immigration Council. "And worst case is an effective continuation of what Trump wanted."
Immigration has been a politically perilous issue for Biden, whose approval rating has sagged. During an influx of unaccompanied migrant minors in the spring, Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to address root causes of migration -- an intractable issue that's dogged previous administrations. While Harris has announced private-sector investments in Central America, she's largely kept the situation at the US-Mexico border at a distance.
Republicans have continued to seize on the record number of border arrests and have filed lawsuits challenging policy changes, hampering the administration in its attempt to execute some of its pledges.
Most notably, a federal judge in Texas blocked the termination of a Trump-era border policy forcing non-Mexican migrants to stay in Mexico until their US immigration court dates and required the administration to bring back the controversial program it opposes and still seeks to end.
Another Trump-era border policy that immigrant advocates and the United Nations have urged the Biden administration to ditch also remains in effect. A public health authority, invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, allows authorities to turn away migrants encountered at the US southern border, effectively barring them from claiming asylum.
When asked about the authority, known as Title 42, the Biden administration has referred to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention, which, according to a White House spokesperson, deems it necessary given the Delta and Omicron variants.
There's also been frustration internally over immigration policy. "There's been disillusionment with immigration policy and lack of follow-through on principles espoused in executive orders issued earlier in the year," said one administration official said.
Immigrant advocates -- who expected significant changes after four years of curtailed immigration under then-President Donald Trump -- have welcomed the unwinding of some Trump-era policies but also have increasingly voiced concern and disappointment to officials over the administration's actions in numerous discussions.
"The Biden campaign promised to welcome people with dignity, and instead we have returned to Trump policies," said Karen Tumlin, attorney, founder and director of Justice Action Center, in a call with reporters. "This is not the change millions sought when Biden was elected."
The White House defended the administration's actions and reversal of Trump-era immigration policies.
"The President has made clear that restoring order, fairness, and humanity to our immigration system are priorities for this Administration. Our immigration system is outdated and in bad need of reform; But this Administration is committed to working day in and day out to provide relief to immigrants and bring our immigration system into the 21st century," a White House spokesperson said in a statement.
Treatment of migrants
Tumlin, among others, is suing the administration over the treatment of Haitian migrants who amassed at the US-Mexico border this fall.
In a December letter directed to Biden and Harris, dozens of immigrant advocacy groups urged the administration to ditch Trump-era border policies, calling them "harmful" and "illegal."
"Nearly eleven months since taking office, this administration continues to violate U.S. asylum law and evade U.S. treaty obligations by blocking and returning asylum seekers to places where their lives and safety are in peril," the letter reads.
The United Nations refugee agency has also repeatedly chimed in, lambasting the use of the public health order.
The continued use of the public health order is an example of the unique position the Biden administration finds itself in: tackling a pandemic and wrestling with a growing number of migrants at the US southern border, many of whom are fleeing conditions at home that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
Early on in Biden's presidency, officials grappled with a record number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the US-Mexico border that stretched thin resources and overwhelmed border facilities. While slightly fewer migrant children have arrived in recent months, other flows, like those stemming from South America, have presented new challenges.
"The volume and emergencies have had us in a defensive posture rather than reforms and a proactive agenda," an administration official told CNN.
Reuniting children separated during Trump years
Despite various setbacks, the Biden administration has made some inroads on its immigration agenda, including changing enforcement guidelines to prioritize certain undocumented immigrants for arrest and deportation, ending mass worksite enforcement, halting border wall construction and no longer applying controversial rules, like the Trump-era public charge regulation that made it more difficult for immigrants to obtain legal status if they used some public benefits.
Biden also established a task force to reunite families who had been separated at the US-Mexico border under the Trump administration. Last week, the task force -- led by the Department of Homeland Security -- reunited the 100th family separated under the Trump-era "zero tolerance" policy.
Even so, for parents who experienced their children being taken from them -- with no hint of where they were going -- it's been difficult to trust the federal government, regardless of who's president. And the recent fallout over settlement talks strained that already-fragile relationship.
Lawsuits have stemmed from the zero-tolerance policy and separation of families. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit in 2019 seeking damages for the toll the separations took on families, and attorneys for families have filed separate claims.
After a steady drumbeat of criticism from Republicans about the ongoing settlement negotiations, the Justice Department this month broke off the talks with attorneys for separated families.
Next year is expected to bring more court hearings, including in the class-action lawsuit seeking damages, and additional immigration policy changes, like building out asylum capacity.
Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have pledged to continue to fight for immigration revisions -- an effort that's dogged Congress for decades. The Senate parliamentarian this year rejected multiple attempts to include immigration provisions in the massive spending bill, a setback to getting changes passed without Republican support.
Those efforts are likely to keep facing the same uphill battles in the coming year.
"They have to win on this because they're in such a bad place with advocates and immigration broadly," a source close to the White House told CNN, referring to immigration restructuring. "Not delivering on this issue will be terrible for them politically."
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And you ask me why the ruling class prefers their bourgeois democracy?
If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal."
