What Responsibility do Employers Have to Keep Employees Safe?

Though most Americans are doing their best to stay home to socially distance and keep their families and community safe from coronavirus, with offices closed and roads largely empty, there are a handful of businesses where employees still have to report for work and see people frequently. That includes grocery store employees, social workers, pharmacists, and health care workers.

Employers are required to provide safe working conditions for their employees by federal and state law. However, amid a global pandemic, the steps employers are taking may not be enough to keep their employees entirely safe.

On March 25, Wando Evans of Evergreen Park, Illinois, was found dead in his home. He was 51 and had been complaining of symptoms consistent with COVID-19—the disease caused by the novel coronavirus—two days before. His family filed a lawsuit claiming the company failed to provide reasonable protection for him, including personal protective equipment and social distance practice enforcement, according to an ABC News report.

If you are an essential worker—a person who still has to go to work as the pandemic keeps others at home—then your employer is obligated to keep you safe. But if something does happen and you are exposed or made sick, is your employer responsible?

Employers’ role

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has compiled guidelines for employers covering a wide variety of topics related to COVID-19 prevention: disinfection, money handling, social distancing, and so on. However, the ways that individual private companies operate within their premises is still up to them.

First, employers are asked to evaluate the risk to their employees depending on industry and job function. If possible, they are supposed to actively encourage sick employees to stay home, following the CDC’s guidelines for self-isolation and the advice of health professionals. Employees with a sick family member at home are also to be encouraged to stay at home.

Within the workplace, prevention largely depends on good hygiene and distancing practices. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration released basic guidelines for employers, including providing places for workers to frequently wash their hands with soap or alcohol disinfectant, providing trash cans and tissues for the public, and providing flexible work and operating hours where possible to facilitate distancing.

In the case of Wando Evans, it’s not entirely clear if he became sick due to exposure at work, but the lawyer for the family says his coworkers were not informed that he had symptoms until after he had died, according to ABC News. OSHA and the CDC recommends employers develop procedures for identifying and isolating sick workers, preventing exposure for other workers.

Walmart has since implemented temperature checks and other safety measures for employees to prevent further spread of COVID-19. As of April 17, Walmart associates are required to wear face masks at work, which it will provide to the employees.

Liability and personal injury

The logic the lawyers in Wando Evans’ case are using is relatively straightforward: If an employee dies due to COVID-19 contracted at work, the business could be liable for wrongful death. Essentially, the plaintiffs have to prove that Evans would not have contracted COVID-19 and died if the employer had acted reasonably.

A personal injury case resulting from exposure at a workplace may be hard to prove. That’s in part because tracing the exact source of an illness, particularly in the middle of a pandemic, can be difficult. Thus, showing that an employer’s reasonable action could have prevented an illness may be a difficult claim to make. Workers’ compensation may be the more readily available route, as it’s a benefit available to you as an employee and may cover medical expenses or time off related to contracting the virus.

Wrongful death lawsuits may have the same issue—it could be hard to prove exactly where the person encountered the virus. This could be easier in the case of workers on oil platforms, in nursing homes, or on cruise ships, but in cases where workers come and go every day, it could be harder. In the Illinois case, two workers have died, and multiple others have become ill, which demonstrates a correlation between the workplace and the illness, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer.

Every case differs, and the circumstances surrounding cases of COVID-19 in the law are still emerging. A lawyer will be able to offer you some insight on how to go forward if you think you have been exposed or made ill based on negligence on your employer’s part.