Essential, Not Expendable: Protecting Workers from COVID-19: A Connect the Dots Podcast
In this episode of Connect the Dots, host Rob Verchick talks with CPR Member Scholars Michael C. Duff and Thomas O. McGarity about worker safety in the era of the coronavirus – the gaps in law, regulation, and enforcement that leave workers exposed to the virus, while permitting employers to escape accountability for providing an unsafe workplace. The conversation touches on the difficulty of creating foolproof physical transmission barriers, the Trump administration's scuttling of an Obama-initiated rule to prevent transmission of dangerous pathogens in the workplace, and efforts to deny "essential" employees or their surviving family members the right to recover damages for infection.
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More on Our Guests:
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Michael C. Duff is a Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law in Laramie, Wyoming. View bio. |
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Thomas O. McGarity holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Texas in Austin. He is a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform, and a past president of the organization. View bio. |
Related CPR Resources:
- Michael Duff's blog post, President Orders Continued Meat Production; And Then There's the 13th Amendment on CPRBlog
- Tom McGarity and Wendy Wagner's CPRBlog post Give Government Experts Their Own Microphone
- Rob Verchick's April 2020 Connect the Dots podcast with Dr. Andrew Duxbury, One Doctor's Life in the Time of Coronavirus
- CPR's May 2020 Webinar: Vulnerability and Resilience to COVID-19 and the Climate Crisis
- Check out all our coronavirus-related work.
Other Resources:
- Cases discussed: The Washington Aluminum case ("right of refusal" of work believed dangerous); and the Agent Orange case(s) (product liability)
- Tom McGarity on CNN: Read the Transcript (Apr. 26, 2020).
- Tom McGarity in the New York Times: Missouri Pork Plant Workers Say They Can’t Cover Mouths to Cough (Apr. 24, 2020)
- Mike Duff in Politico: California Labor, Business Groups in Fierce Battle Over Coronavirus Workers’ Comp Change (Apr. 20, 2020)
- Mike Duff in Bloomberg Law story A Legal Guide for Employers After Virus-Driven Union Layoffs (Apr. 16, 2020)
- More from Mike Duff on Workers’ Compensation Law Prof Blog.
- USA Today articles. One following up one week after the President's order to meatpackers, in which Tom McGarity and fellow CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendleson are interviewed. Another noting that the industry had hit a "grim milestone": 10,000 diagnosed cases tied to outbreaks at meatpacking plants.
Special thanks to:
We’re also grateful to the musical artists featured in this episode, who make their work available to us through a Creative Commons license. Please check them out!