Government By Scumbag

Who would have thought that electing a racist carnival barker who names right-wing extremists to head the Department of Labor would lead to bad consequences for workers?

The Labor Department is facing growing criticism over its response to the coronavirus pandemic as the agency plays a central role in ensuring that the tens of millions of workers affected by the crisis get assistance.

The criticism ranges from direct actions that the agency has taken to limit the scope of worker assistance programs to concerns that it has not been aggressive enough about protecting workers from health risks or supporting states scrambling to deliver billions in new aid.

In recent days, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who has expressed concerns about unemployment insurance being too generous, has used his department’s authority over new laws enacted by Congress to limit who qualifies for joblessness assistance and to make it easier for small businesses not to pay family leave benefits. The new rules make it more difficult for gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers to get benefits, while making it easier for some companies to avoid paying their workers coronavirus-related sick and family leave.

“The Labor Department chose the narrowest possible definition of who qualifies for pandemic unemployment assistance,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has spent two decades working on unemployment programs.

At the same time, frustrations have built among career staff at the Labor Department that the agency hasn’t ordered employers to follow safeguards, including the wearing of masks, recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect workers. Two draft guidance documents written by officials at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department, to strengthen protections for health-care workers have also not been advanced, according to two people with knowledge of the regulations granted anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.

Scalia, a longtime corporate lawyer who is the son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, has emerged as a critical player in the government’s economic response to the pandemic. Nearly 17 million Americans have applied for unemployment insurance since President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, and states are struggling to get their systems working to deliver $260 billion in new aid approved by Congress.

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Two recent laws passed by Congress expanded paid and sick leave policies as well as the size and scope of unemployment benefits for Americans. But worker advocates argue that as Scalia begins to implement these measures, his department is being much less generous toward workers than toward companies.

New Labor Department guidance says unemployment benefits apply to gig workers only if they are “forced to suspend operations,” which could dramatically limit options for those workers if their apps are still operating. Other workers also face a high hurdle to qualify for benefits.

The guidance says a worker “may be able to return to his or her place of employment within two weeks” of quarantining, and parents forced to stop work to care for kids after schools closed are not eligible for unemployment after the school year is over. Workers who stay home because they are older or in another high-risk group are also ineligible unless they can prove a medical professional advised them to stop working.

Meanwhile, left Twitter is making its usual stands about how the Supreme Court is meaningless and how both parties are the same.