CPR was one of 30 organizations writing in support of a petition from the AFL-CIO calling for an OSHA emergency temporary standard for infectious disease to address the Coronavirus epidemic. March 13, 2020.

CPR joined with 48 public interest organizations on a letter endorsing passage of the COVID-19 Health Care Worker Protection Act of 2020, a vital bill to require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue an emergency temporary standard to protect healthcare workers from COVID-19.

Worker safety advocates from CPR and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health expressed outrage today at the newly released coronavirus guidance from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control (CDC), which fails to protect essential workers, is weaker than previous guidance, and is not based on scientific evidence. Reports of essential workers dying on the job from the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need for additional protections, not less.

CPR joined more than 500 labor, racial, legal, interfaith, and women’s justice organizations and individuals on a letter demanding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention retract its flawed guidance that allows workers exposed to coronavirus to return to work without self-quarantining.

CPR joined more than 50 organizations in a letter urging Congress to ensure that its coronavirus stimulus legislation protects food workers and producers and a safe, resilient food system instead of exploitative industrial livestock production.

CPR joined more than 750 organizations in a letter to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue urging the agency to allocate $9.5 billion appropriated for farmers in the CARES Act to local producers rather than corporate agribusiness.

CPR joined with 117 other major labor, worker, consumer, small business, civil rights, women's rights, environmental, legal, justice, health and safety organizations in a letter to congressional leaders opposing legislation that would immunize unsafe businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.

CPR joined more than 225 other worker safety organizations in urging Members of Congress to pass the COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act, which would require OSHA to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect all workers who continue to go to work during the pandemic from exposure to the coronavirus.

In the Baltimore Sun: President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to order meat and poultry plants to continue operating despite COVID-19 outbreaks, exposing Maryland's poultry workers to enormous risks. Poultry processors haven't demonstrated they're able to keep workers safe and healthy, but they know that many of these low-wage workers will be forced to return. To top it all off, one of the president's goals with this order was to provide legal immunity to companies, so that they can't be sued by employees who are infected as a result of unsafe working conditions.

Comment letter to OSHA ahead of its Whistleblower Stakeholder Meeting on May 12, 2020, providing recommendations on how the agency can address key issues and improve its administration of the Whistleblower Protection Program.

Writing in the Waco Tribune, Thomas McGarity warns that Sen. Mitch McConnell's effort to extend a federal COVID-19 liability shield over businesses will endanger workers' lives. Such immunity from accountability would allow employers to force workers to choose between losing their jobs or returning to workplaces where they are not sufficiently protected from the coronavirus.

Responding to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's threat to attach to a future stimulus bill a liability shield for companies that fail to protect workers or consumers from the coronavirus, CPR Member Scholars and staff wrote to congressional leaders urging that they not interfere with the ability of workers, consumers, and members of their families to hold businesses accountable when their unreasonably dangerous actions have caused them to contract COVID-19.

The "re-opening" of the American economy while the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is still circulating puts workers at heightened risk of contracting the deadly virus. In some blue-collar industries, the risk is particularly acute because of the inherent nature of the work itself and of the workplaces in which it is conducted. And the risk, for a variety of reasons, falls disproportionately on people of color and low-income workers. With governors stay-at-home orders and other pandemic safety restrictions, CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity, Michael Duff, and Sidney Shapiro examine the federal government's many missed opportunities to stem the spread of the virus in the nation's workplaces, and make recommendations for what needs to happen next to protect employees on the job.

Even as COVID-19 continues to rage across the United States, governments and industries are "reopening" the American economy. As a new report from the Center for Progressive Reform shows, in the absence of sufficient safeguards, this puts workers and the general public at heightened risk of contracting the deadly virus.

The nation's workplaces are not nearly as safe or healthy as they need to be to protect all workers, and workers lack the power they deserve to speak up against exploitation without fear of significant retaliation. Fixing the current system requires an updated and vastly improved labor law that empowers workers to speak up about health and safety hazards, rather than risk their lives out of fear of losing employment and pay. It also requires that workers be empowered to fight back when government agencies fail to enforce safety and health requirements. The authors propose guaranteeing all workers a private right of action to enforce violations of the law, coupled with incentives for speaking up and strong whistleblower protections.

Over the last several decades, U.S. workers have been systematically disempowered and silenced. A new report from the Center for Progressive Reform explains that because of this, the nation's workplaces are not nearly as safe or healthy as they need to be, and workers lack the power they deserve to speak up against exploitation and abuse without fear of significant retaliation. Read the news release accompanying CPR's report, OSHA's Next 50 Years: Legislating a Private Right of Action to Empower Workers.

CPR joined unions, public health professionals, advocates, workers, faith leaders, and Maryland residents across the state calling on Governor Hogan to issue an executive order requiring the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) division of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation to adopt an emergency standard to protect workers from the novel coronavirus.

CPR joined with 70+ organizations in a joint letter to Maryland legislative leaders calling on them to convene a special session of the Maryland legislature in order to adopt legislation to protect the state's farmworkers from COVID-19.

CPR joined workers' rights, occupational safety and health, academic, and faith organizations and leaders in a letter to President Joe Biden, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) urging approval of OSHA's long overdue Emergency Temporary Standard to protect frontline workers from COVID-19.

On October 26, 2021, CPR Vice President Sidney Shapiro testified about the need and legality of the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine standard for workplaces. Shapiro presented his testimony to the Workplace Protections and Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittees of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Although vaccination rates continue to rise and coverage on COVID-19 is fading away from prominent news dashboards, our rates are still higher than in summer 2020. While we still adapt to living and working with COVID-19, we must prepare for future public health emergencies so we do not lose another year figuring out our response.