Jan. 10—If there’s a pandemic flu outbreak, 15 million health care workers and first responders will be on the frontlines and five unions, led by AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, are working to ensure they are protected.
In a Dec. 21 letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao the unions asked for an emergency temporary standard that would require employers to provide comprehensive protections for the caregivers who will be called on to protect the public in case such an outbreak occurs. The Occupational Safety and Health Act provides for the issuance of such emergency measures when a hazard poses a grave danger to workers.
“Hurricane Katrina exposed the devastation and misery that is created when our government is unprepared for and does not adequately respond to a major disaster,” says AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee. AFT, the Communications Workers of America, United American Nurses and United Steelworkers also are joining with AFSCME and the AFL-CIO.
In November, President George W. Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to help prepare the country for an influenza pandemic. Most of the money would fund development of vaccines, drug and vaccine stockpiling, disease surveillance and local health departments’ manpower needs.
In a huge giveaway to drug manufacturers, Bush said he would ask lawmakers to limit legal liability for vaccine manufacturers. As a result, Americans would become “human guinea pigs” for the drug industry, according to the non-partisan legal education group Center for Justice Democracy. The Center warns that under Bush’s proposal, families of those who are injured or die due to a defective or dangerous vaccine would have no recourse even if the drug company or health care provider was negligent, reckless or, in some cases, intentionally harmful.
Bush Flu Plan Fails to Protect America’s Caregivers
Pandemic influenza differs from the seasonal flu that spreads each year. An influenza pandemic is a global outbreak of disease that occurs when a new strain of influenza virus appears that causes serious illness in humans and spreads easily from person to person worldwide. Such a disease is highly contagious because people have no immunity against it.
If a pandemic flu outbreak occurred, U.S. health experts estimate 25 percent to 35 percent of the U.S. population would become ill. In a worst-case scenario, experts predict there could be tens of millions of deaths worldwide--1.9 million in the United States alone. The concern for the last few years has centered on the potential threat posed by an unprecedented outbreak of avian influenza (“bird-flu”) in Asia and Europe.
On Nov. 2, 2005, the Bush administration released the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Pandemic Influenza Plan to combat a possible outbreak of avian flu. Although the plan recognizes the importance of vaccine development, it fails to protect health care workers and first responders, according to union leaders. For example, Bush’s plan recommends surgical masks to protect workers from the threat of airborne transmission of the disease. Surgical masks are not respirators, union safety and health experts say. They are not designed for, nor are they capable of, preventing workers from inhaling airborne droplets of the influenza.
“The president’s plan dismisses the devastating potential for airborne transmission of pandemic influenza,” McEntee says. “Its only answer––calling on employers to stockpile surgical masks for health care workers––is akin to sending soldiers to Iraq with a BB gun instead of a firearm.”
The letter also calls for the emergency OSHA standard to require employers to develop a flu exposure plan and address such needs as hazard communications training, vaccination and recordkeeping and making mandatory the use of portable air filtration units to reduce workers’ exposure to infectious particles.
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