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Preparing for the Pandemic, Part 1: Guidelines for ‘Inevitable’ Pandemic Put Workers at Risk |
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The threat of a deadly flu pandemic—influenza or avian—has been in the headlines and in people’s fears for the past several years. Those fears are justified. Just this month Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), called a pandemic “inevitable. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”
But workplace and community health and safety experts say the preparation and planning offered so far by the Bush administration falls far short of protecting those most at risk—health care workers and first responders—and of providing solid and practical answers to help communities and families cope.
Several times during the past year, we’ve reported on the government’s incomplete and ineffective measures. (Click here, here, here and here.) The most recent reports, one from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the other from the CDC, continue the pattern. Today we take a look at OSHA’s guidelines for workers at risk. Tomorrow we will examine CDC’s recommendations on how communities should prepare.
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Health and safety experts say the first problem with OSHA’s pandemic flu guidelines, released Feb. 6, is that they are simply that—guidelines—when what is needed are enforceable workplace standards covering issues from infection and exposure control and prevention to personal protective equipment and training.
In any pandemic, health care workers and first responders will be most at risk because they will be on the front lines of an emergency that some government estimates predict will affect up to 35 percent of the population.
Last year, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, Communications Workers of America (CWA), United American Nurses (UAN) and the Steelworkers petitioned OSHA for an emergency standard to protect health care workers, first responders and others whose jobs might put them at risk.
Not only has OSHA failed to develop a workplace standard to deal with a pandemic, but the recent guidelines, says William Kojola, the AFL-CIO’s industrial hygienist, place more emphasis on
…planning for the continuity of business operations than for comprehensive planning and preparation for the safety and health and elements of protecting workers potentially exposed to the pandemic virus at work.
The OSHA guidelines encourage employers to stockpile supplies such as soap, cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment, to allow ill workers to stay home and to be prepared to deal with a high rate of absenteeism. But the guidelines ignore some basic issues.
For example, says Kojola, nowhere does it suggest that employers make sure protective gear, such as respirators to guard against possible airborne transmission, be tested to make sure they fit each worker properly. It also places little emphasis on establishing a safety and health program, a respiratory protection program and workers’ training before a pandemic hits.
Such workplace issues should be addressed in a standard that employers cannot ignore, rather than in voluntary guidelines, Kojola and other experts say.
Although it has been more than a year since the unions petitioned for an emergency standard, OSHA Administrator Edwin Foulke Jr., in response to a reporter’s question at a recent press event, said the agency has not yet made a decision whether to issue a standard to protect health care workers and first responders.
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Why am I not surprised by this administration? It really gets depressing after a while.
“…to allow ill workers to stay home and to be prepared to deal with a high rate of absenteeism.” THIS LEAVES OUT PARENTS AND ADULT CHILDREN OF THE ELDERLY WHO WILL NEED TO CARE FOR CHILDREN AND PARENTS THE MOST LIKELY TO BE THE FATALITIES IN A PANDEMIC. IT IS ABSOLUTLY ESSENTIAL THAT THE HEALTHY FAMILIES ACT BE PASSED AND PUT IN TO LAW. WE CAN NEVER DEPEND ON BUSINESS TO HAVE THE WISDOM TO KNOW THAT ALLOWING THE SICK AND THE FAMILIES OF THE SICK TO STAY HOME WITHOUT THE FEAR OF LOOSING A JOB TO BE GOOD FOR THEIR BOTTOM LINE AND FOR THE WELFARE OF OUR COUNTRY.