Workplace safety and health advocates have long agreed that the most effective way to make your job safer is for the employer to eliminate the danger or replace it with something that is not harmful. Although COVID-19 cannot be eliminated until a vaccine is developed and administered, you and your co-workers can still demand that your employer do everything in their power to help keep you safe.

These are some of the demands that working people and our unions are winning right now by taking action together:

Isolate Us from the Hazard

• Implement remote work policies where possible.
• Provide additional paid leave related to COVID-19, which allows sick or exposed employees to stay home, including care for a sick or immunocompromised family member.
• Ensure that all work areas have proper ventilation, including air filters that capture airborne viruses.
• Redesign the workplace to ensure physical distancing (at least 6 feet) where job tasks are performed and in common spaces.
• Use physical barriers to separate people by at least 6 feet at all times.
• Install touchless technology for doors, sinks and other commonly touched surfaces.
• Inform employees of our possible exposure to COVID-19 if there is a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19 in our workplace and promptly decontaminate all areas that were accessed by those infected.

Change the Way We Work

• Stagger shifts and break periods to reduce person-to-person contact.
• Reduce use of shared tools and perform regular sanitizing when sharing occurs.
• Routinely clean and disinfect all frequently touched surfaces and heavy traffic areas in the workplace.
• Require all employees to be trained on new workplace safety measures and provide the training in languages workers understand.

Personal Protections on the Job

• Provide all personal protective equipment (PPE), respirator fit testing and training, at no cost to the employee. Learn more about respirators.
• Provide washing stations with soap and paper towels, as well as hand-sanitizer stations.
• Require and provide masks and hand hygiene for employees, customers and visitors.
• Encourage workers to report hazards without fear of retaliation.
• Provide free COVID-19 testing for all employees.