With support from the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity, we created this resource with recommendations and actions that local health departments can take to protect worker health and safety during COVID-19 and beyond.
April 11, 2021
With support from the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity, we created this resource with recommendations and actions that local health departments can take to protect worker health and safety during COVID-19 and beyond.
With support from the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity, we created this resource with recommendations and actions that local health departments can take to protect worker health and safety during COVID-19 and beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many Californians to work in unsafe conditions that threatened their health and safety, with workers in essential and low-wage jobs facing the biggest risks and inequities in health outcomes, including death. Local health departments (LHDs) play a critical role in ensuring everyone has the protections needed to stay safe and healthy at work during public health emergencies.
Most LHDs do not have occupational health expertise or staff, and lack the time, resources, and information about the activities they can do to support worker health during COVID-19. The pandemic has forced health departments into unprecedented territory, and many LHDs across the state took bold and urgent moves to protect worker health. Yet there are still more actions they wish they could accomplish to protect workers in COVID-19, vaccination, and recovery, and many lessons learned from the past year.
This guide can serve as a resource for California LHDs to learn about the range of actions they can take to protect and support workers during the pandemic and beyond.
We used in-depth interviews with governmental public health practitioners and community organizers to uncover key issues impacting worker health and safety during COVID-19, and to learn what additional resources and actions are needed to support workers. We review the literature and policies supporting worker health during COVID-19 in California and the US. We provide examples and case stories of innovative approaches that California LHDs took to protect workers in their jurisdiction, and offer recommendations and actions LHDs can take to protect workers.
Based on interviews with seven county LHDs, we’ve distilled the following eight recommendations for LHDs to protect worker health and safety during COVID-19:
We discuss the major barriers LHDs faced in protecting worker health during the pandemic, including inadequate public health resources, infrastructure, and capacity due to historic disinvestment and austerity, polarized political environments, pushback from employers and businesses, community mistrust of government due to immigration policy, deportations, and racial profiling, pre-existing inequities across social determinants of health, and lack of data and data transparency on occupational and workplace exposure, illness, and death.
Based on our research and interviews with LHDs, we propose state-level approaches to address the harms that workers in low-wage essential jobs in California are experiencing. Lawmakers, government agencies, and employers need to work in partnership with community organizers, worker centers, academic labor centers, unions, and advocacy organizations to advance worker protections. In this way, millions of Californians can work safely through this and future pandemics, and benefit from improved worker health and safety, economic and housing security, and recovery efforts.