Three Messages On Essential Workers Hazard Pay That You Need To Know Now
Over the past six months, Congress passed three different coronavirus relief packages and spent trillions of dollars in an effort to buttress the struggling economy. Yet, not one dime—not one single cent—has been specifically allocated as hazard pay for essential workers on the frontlines who are risking their lives so that the rest of us can be safer.
Essential workers are risking—and suffering—more than the rest of us so that the economy won’t completely flounder. Yet, as a category of employees, they haven’t been singled out for coronavirus relief as has been done for individuals/families with the $1,200 stimulus checks or as was done for the unemployed with the extra $600 weekly unemployment checks. Here are three messages that essential workers need to know about the status of hazard pay in Congress.
1. The House passed hazard pay for essential workers, but the Senate refuses to include it.
There have been all sorts of frenzied discussions over the past six weeks about whether or not the Senate and the House would actually come together to pass a fourth coronavirus stimulus relief package. The House passed the Heroes Act for additional stimulus relief back in May, and the Senate put forward its stimulus proposal known as the Heals Act back in July.
What became immediately clear is that the two chambers were miles apart on their priorities with many notable differences—one being that the House included hazard pay for essential workers in its bill, and the Senate did not include hazard pay for essential workers in its proposal.
Senate Leader Mitch McConnell proposed just over $1 trillion in new stimulus monies, and the House was calling for more than $3 trillion in new stimulus monies. In order to bridge this gap, Speaker Pelosi is now proposing that they meet in the middle at $2.2 trillion. This means that the Senate would have to come up another trillion and the House would need to reduce its ask by a trillion. What’s clear is that House Democrats seem completely ready to drop hazard pay from the priority list in order to make a deal with the GOP Senate and Trump’s White House in order to get a fourth stimulus relief package into the economy.
2. Hazard pay for essential workers isn’t a top priority in Congress.
While the Republicans have so far refused to include hazard pay for essential workers in any additional stimulus package, Democrats have failed to ever really fight for it in the first place. Despite the fact that Senator Schumer (D–NY) stated back in April that getting hazard pay approved in the next phase relief bill “is one of our very highest priorities,” hazard pay no longer appears to be a priority at all.
Although hazard pay for essential workers passed as part of the Heroes Act, Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t appear to be fighting for it any longer as they make trade offs in order to get a deal on other priorities. Actually, hazard pay fell off the priority list as soon as negotiations between the two chambers and the White House began.
Here’s the deal. Nearly four months ago, the House passed the Heroes Act as its version of a fourth coronavirus stimulus package and included within it $200 billion in hazard pay funds for essential workers as well as a second $1,200 stimulus check—again, nearly four months ago. As of today, near silence is coming from Congress on the topic of hazard pay. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle appear willing to move forward without factoring in hazard pay for essential workers as a sticking point with negotiations.
3. Hazard pay for essential workers is less important than stimulus checks and extra unemployment.
Both the House and the Senate seem to have agreed that a second $1,200 stimulus check is still a priority. Both Democrats and Republicans (at least White House Republicans) agree that passing extra unemployment monies is important, though Democrats want to continue the $600 per week unemployment check while the White House recently put forward an executive order that amounts to an additional $300 per week in unemployment instead.
And though Democrats passed a bill to allocate $200 billion in hazard pay for essential workers, they appear to be ready to drop it off the plate completely as part of negotiations if it’s what they must do to get other priorities approved.
Essential workers feel expendable and exhausted.
Essential workers were unappreciated, undervalued and underpaid before coronavirus, but they are now being called heroes so it would stand to reason that hazard pay would remain a top priority for Congress. Today, essential workers are being celebrated, thanked and applauded. But they aren’t being properly compensated.
In case anyone isn’t clued in, essential workers don’t feel like heroes. And they don’t feel appreciated. Instead, they feel expendable and exhausted.
Imagine how much worse they are going to feel post pandemic. Imagine being damn near ordered to show up to work or risk being denied unemployment while also being told that you won’t be paid anything extra for the serious risks you are being asked to take. Imagine knowing that stimulus checks and extra unemployment checks were important enough for Congress to pass, but hazard pay for you—as an essential worker—wasn’t. Imagine being told to hold firm and man the frontlines while also being told you won’t be paid anything more for doing so.
If another stimulus package gets approved by both chambers of Congress but doesn’t include hazard pay for essential workers, both political parties will have failed these employees. The message to essential workers from both parties will be that essential workers—though important—aren’t important enough to receive hazard pay.
