California will keep workplace pandemic rules through 2022

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California workplace regulators on Thursday extended mandatory pay for workers affected by the coronavirus through the end of 2022, acting more than two months after state lawmakers restored similar benefits through September.

The decision again pitted management against labor as the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board renewed revised workplace safety rules that would otherwise have expired in early May.

“I don’t think we’re done with this yet,” board chairman David Thomas said of the pandemic.

“There’s going to be a surge in a week or so,” Thomas added. “This is the best … protection we have.”

Laura Stock, an occupational safety representative on the board, echoed employee advocates who lobbied board members to continue special protections for workers even as health officials ease mask, quarantine and other requirements for the general public.

Unlike members of the public who can choose their own risk tolerance, Stock said, “people who are in the workplace … have no choice but to be there.”

Management representative Kate Crawford said the rules have caused confusion as she cast the only “no” in a 6-1 vote.

Keeping what is known as “exclusion pay” for workers who are sent home due to the coronavirus is both costly and confusing, particularly since the Legislature recently approved COVID-19 sick leave, said Rob Moutrie, a policy advocate with the California Chamber of Commerce,

Small businesses have particularly struggled with the obligation, Moutrie said. The Cal/OSHA rule applies in almost every workplace in the state, covering workers in offices, factories and retail businesses, while the state sick leave law applies only to companies with 26 or more employees.

The debate comes as the highly transmissible omicron variant BA.2 becomes dominant in California and across the U.S., threatening a new wave of infections.

The state’s case rate is up by one-third and test positivity has doubled since late March. Hospitalizations and intensive care patients remain at or near their lows for the pandemic. But the state’s models predict hospitalizations will increase from fewer than 1,000 now to nearly 1,400 in another month, while ICU admissions will begin to climb in early May.

In another sign of California’s changing response to the pandemic, public health officials are canceling the state’s contract with diagnostics company PerkinElmer Health Sciences Inc. as of May 15, ahead of schedule. The company had been operating the state’s new $25 million COVID testing lab in Valencia, opened in November 2020, under a no-bid contract initially worth up to $1.4 billion. The state renewed the contract in October.

Republican state lawmakers hailed the cancelation, citing repeated problems reported at the facility, including testing delays and quality control.

“This lab failed to serve Californians, and the state delayed accountability for months,” Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk said.

State health officials said Thursday that they are now relying more on a different form of testing and efforts that link positive test results to immediate treatment. But they said the state will maintain the ability to test up to 500,000 people a day through a network of labs as part of the state’s rapid response plan to future coronavirus outbreaks.

Los Angeles County said Thursday that it will continue requiring masks for travelers aboard public transit and inside indoor transportation hubs, including Los Angeles International and other airports along with bus terminals and train stations.

Also Thursday, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer and L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón announced two settlements totaling nearly $26.5 million related to allegations of fake COVID-19 testing and false advertising by Venice, California, based Sameday Technologies, doing business as Sameday Health, which operates 55 testing locations nationwide.

Sameday Health said the problems arose “amidst the chaos of massive surges in demand for services” early in the pandemic, but it said it has since corrected the problems.

The renewed workplace regulation requires employers to keep paying workers’ wages and maintain their seniority and other benefits for as long as they can’t work because of a coronavirus exposure or infection, unless they receive disability payments or the employer can prove the close contact wasn’t work related.

“It is important that employees who are COVID-19 cases do not come to work,” Cal/OSHA said.

The state’s sick leave law differs in that it provides employees with up to one week of paid time off if they get the coronavirus or are caring for a sick family member. They qualify for a second week off only if they or their family members test positive.

There’s a troubling provision in the revised Cal/OSHA paid leave rules that isn’t in current regulations, said Mitch Steiger, a legislative advocate for the California Labor Federation.

Currently, an employee who has had close contact with an infected worker is also sent home, with pay. But the revised rules can keep them on the job until they test positive.

“The employer could force that person to stay at work and interact with co-workers, members of the public and immunocompromised people and whomever until that person tests positive,” Steiger said before the board’s decision.

“The more that we walk that back, the more space we give the virus to spread,” he said.

Agribusiness representatives objected that the workplace rules give employers two choices when dealing with an outbreak of three or more coronavirus cases if an employee comes in close contact. The employee must either test negative, or be given a week off with pay if they decline to be tested.

“You’re encouraging people to not get tested,” Michael Miiller, California Association of Winegrape Growers’ government relations director, told the board.

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Associated Press Writer Stefanie Dazio contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

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