Coronavirus or COVID-19 is a dangerous disease, which affects one’s lungs and can cause death. The first cases of the new disease COVID-19 (Coronavirus) appeared in the United States on January 20, 2020 (Holshue et al., 2020). This pandemic dispersed quickly and soon became a significant strain on the healthcare system and healthcare workers in the United States. To reward health workers for their self-sacrifice, a hazard pay law must be implemented. The United States Department of Labor defines Hazard Pay as “additional pay for performing a hazardous duty or work involving physical hardship (DOL, ND). Providing a hazard pay law for all essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will increase frontline healthcare workers’ safety, engagement, and productivity.
Additional pay always serves as an encouragement for all the employees worldwide, and hazard pay can do a similar job concerning healthcare workers to increase their performance during the pandemic. Some healthcare companies have voluntarily offered hazard pay to their employees during the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, other organizations do not provide the same because some of their employees are non-unionized. However, as Kinder states, the lack of hazard pay for non-unionized healthcare workers results in a lack of compensation for the risk they take and a lack of motivation to work. Furthermore, because non-unionized workers are not able to negotiate with their employers, they get meager pay. Besides, these threatening work duties can cause extreme physical discomfort and distress, which are not adequately alleviated by protective devices (DOL, ND). If to add dangerous conditions of labor to the lack of additional payment, one can be discouraged from working altogether.
Moreover, the disproportionate amount of people working in the medical field as non-unionized employees are women and people of color. Most of these people work as nursing assistants, home health aides, janitors, etcetera, and earn a median wage of just $13.48 an hour (Kinder, 2020). Non-unionized workers are an undervalued segment of the healthcare workforce and comprise nearly 7 million people in the United States. Therefore, because of their prevalence, they are less likely to receive an additional payment, such as hazard pay (Kinder, 2020). This factor leads to general work dissatisfaction and recuses the number of health workers.
Additionally, private owners may choose whether to provide hazard pay or not. However, even if they are willingly choosing to get an additional payment to their workers, it does not mean that private owners would be committed enough to fulfill the promise. The private owners are too unreliable because they cannot decide and voluntarily offer employees additional or hazardous pay during the COVID-19 outbreak (Melin & Steverman, 2020). If workers cannot rely on private owners’ promises, because employers fail to provide adequate protection, their overall trust can deteriorate. Thus, a standard law providing sufficient pay for all essential workers irrespective of unionized or non-unionized status will help provide a neutral ground and a plain field for all frontline healthcare workers to perform their duties without fear of retaliation for asking for a higher payment.
Correspondingly, private owners may not provide frontline healthcare workers with appropriate protection, or employers can provide employees with substandard protection, which can be equally dangerous for the worker’s health. Owners may not give the right PPE when necessary or even give their employees fake PPE, which results in mass sickness of medical workers. If to look at the percentage of nurses who are forced to work almost unprotected or with minimum protection, they are at higher risk of getting sick or even dying from COVID-19. Nurses complain that employers ration essential protective gear or also lock it up (Mesley, 2020). However, it would be better if an employer would provide more protection to their employees, which can significantly increase their happiness and the desire to follow the appropriate healthcare guideline. A team with complete confidence in their safety will have fewer risks concerning getting ill; it will also increase their productivity and staff retention. In the safe space with appropriate additional pay, there would be no problem, such as the outflow of personnel.
The owners usually attribute hazard pay to an increased cost of operation, less profit made by the company, and reduced productivity rates with time spent donning and removing PPE. These people claim that the problem of hazard pay would involve a significant increase in the costs of operations and an increase in resources needed (Thorbecke, 2020). However, these arguments are not scientifically backed and are based on false narratives. Such believes may result in staff termination to account for additional pay, few staff with more patient caseloads, and an unhappy working environment. With a standardized pay system in the form of hazard pay for all frontline healthcare workers, the private company staff will not be victimized for their requests for hazard pay.
To conclude, the hazard pay law for all essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will result in improved staff and patient safety, increased engagement, and team productivity. Despite the predicted increase in the cost of operation, job cuts, and improved patient caseload from hazard pay, it would still be a beneficial decision for employees. They would feel more engaged in work as well as feel safer in the work environment. It has more positive outcomes than negative ones, and that is why this law is essential in American society.
References
Holshue, M. L, et. al (2020). First case of 2019 novel coronavirus in the United States. The New England journal of medicine. 382:929-936.
Kinder, Molly, 2020. Essential but undervalued: Millions of health care workers aren’t getting the pay or respect they deserve in the COVID-19 pandemic. Brookings, COVID-19 Analysis Report.
Melin, A., & Steverman, B. (2020). Essential workers are losing their ‘hazard pay’ even as the pandemic rages on. Time.
Mesley, W. (2020). ‘I was made to feel belittled’: Nurses reveal fears working on front lines of COVID-19 pandemic. CBC.
Thorbecke, C. (2020). What to know about hazard pay if you’re working during coronavirus crisis. ABC News.
United States Department of Labor, Hazard Pay, (ND) Washington D.C. United States. 2020.