While businesses have finally decided to open their doors to the employees again, the looming threat of coronavirus is still there. This brings us to the critical challenge that employers are now facing, the danger of being sued by employees if they contract the virus in the workplace. Even with all the safety measures in place, the risk of covid spread can never be eliminated. With this in mind, many employers have sought to have their employees sign a COVID-19 liability waiver before resuming work.
As an employee, it's only natural for you to feel alarmed, being asked to sign a document that would put no obligation on the employer to keep you safe from infection hazards within the work premises. Read on to know everything about the COVID-19 liability waiver and whether an employer can enforce it in a workplace.
The COVID-19 liability waiver is an agreement per which the signee forfeits any right to sue their employer if they contract coronavirus in the workplace. Usually, liability waivers are signed between health clubs and members to ensure they don't get roped into a lawsuit for any injuries that any member suffers on the property. The same principles apply here. Once an employee signs a COVID-19 liability waiver, they would lose the right to sue their employer if they get infected with the virus in the workplace.
In the wake of COVID and the subsequent reopening of offices, the state and federal governments issued certain guidelines for employers to follow to keep the premises safe and disinfected for the employees' return. This is in addition to the standard safety protocols that the Federal Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) Act has laid forth. Some states have enforced other laws to protect employees from potential occupational hazards and diseases. However, with the COVID-19 waivers, the employers could escape responsibility if their employees get infected due to unsafe working conditioning.
But since workers' compensation claims cannot be waivered, and with some states considering including COVID-19 as an occupational disease against which damages could be recovered, employees could find some relief there. California is one such state that has made this disease compensable for now, provided that the employees meet certain conditions before filing for the claim. Wisconsin could also find itself on the same list.
The enforceability of COVID-19 waivers differs from state to state. Certain states are reluctant to the idea of enforcing covid liability waivers in the workplace because of the leverage that employers would get over their workers from this order. With states like Virginia and Louisiana unwilling to enforce even personal injury liability waivers, save for a few exceptional cases, it's unlikely that COVID-19, given that it is highly infectious and contagious, would be an exception to this in these states. Other states would probably follow in the same footsteps.
The only difficulty is, even if you weren't asked to sign the waiver, there is no guarantee that you would be able to recover damages for your illness. One of the prime reasons for this is that it would be difficult to prove that you got infected in the workplace, what with the massive spread of the virus, both in professional, personal, and social spaces.
So the first challenge you would face is to prove that it was in your office that you caught the infection. Next, you would have to prove that the reason you got infected was due to the oversight of your employer when it came to putting safety measures against the spread of the virus in place. Even if the employer puts in all the effort through all the guidelines and directives of the government in terms of workplace standard operating procedures, the employer won't be able to guarantee the safety of every single employee, considering just how contagious the disease is. If you choose to file a lawsuit against the employer, consider it an uphill battle.
Employers may try to save their skin by making their employees sign the COVID-19 waiver, but it could be counterproductive for several reasons. For one, the employee might lose their faith in the employee, seeing how their employer is more concerned about their economic interests than the health of their workers. By extension, this would make certain employees reluctant to come back to work and rejoin, fearing that the employer could become lax about the COVID-19 safety protocol. Not only would the employer lose face in front of the employees, but it would also reflect poorly on the company and its organizational values.
Some companies are only enforcing waivers for those employees who are choosing to work from the office, even though they are not asked to join the office just yet by the employer. This way, the employee resumes in-office work knowing the risks involved and their employer's unwillingness.
In the wake of the COVID-19, government authorities put several safety measures in place to keep the spread of the coronavirus in check. Workplaces were instructed with a new standard operating procedure to control the spread of the virus and to get back to some semblance of normalcy.
Through this, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) gives employers the go-ahead to check the employees' temperatures as and when they see fit. Several offices quickly adopted the revised SOP and implemented the same to contain the virus as best they could. So, what would happen if your employer indeed found your temperature high, possibly indicating a glaring symptom of the virus? Read on to know this and more.
One of the requirements of workplace SOP post-COVID had been the regular check of temperatures of employees and other office staffers alike to separate the ones with symptoms of COVID from the ones with none. This was put in place to ensure that people with symptoms don't transmit the virus to others, essentially turning the office into a red zone. Therefore, chances are your employer would check your temperature every day to be on the safe side.
What happens if your temperature is dangerously high, which is a telling symptom of COVID? Your employer would indeed send you back home. Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has explicitly recommended that people with COVID symptoms need to be sent home, so they don't end up infecting others in the workplace, your employer would raise the alarm at a high temperature and ask you to take some time off work.
However, many things need to be kept in mind as well. For instance, just because your high temperature doesn't mean that you have COVID. Do get yourself tested if that happens to be 100% sure. Alternatively, some COVID-infected people don't contact a fever. So, the high temperature could only be telling one part of the story.
If your test comes back positive, it's best to take time off at work. There are various programs put in place to protect the interest of employees if they are unable to work because of COVID-19 symptoms.
As per the Cal/OSHA's Emergency Temporary Standards, employers need to maintain your earnings, in all forms, and other benefits that you enjoy at your workplace, including your seniority and job status, among other things, if they return you home for showcasing signs of COVID, and advise you to isolate yourself for a given period. This privilege only extends if you cannot prevent the spread of the virus and keep the transmission low. Any employer who infringes this rule shall be punishable by law, and you can exercise this right of yours by connecting with the concerned authority.
If an employer finds one of the employees displaying symptoms of COVID-19, they are in their full right to separate such employees from healthy ones. Although, as per the CDC, it shouldn't be mandatory for the employees to provide the employer with their COVID-19 test result, or the note from their health professional, as the hospitals could be too overwhelmed with the caseloads to provide such documents.
Alternatively, if the employer has reasons to believe that their employee was exposed to COVID but isn't showing any symptoms, yet again they can ask them to isolate themselves for around two weeks.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended some safety measures to all employees to ensure that they don't have to face the eventuality of halting their work to recover from COVID.
Here are the recommendations are given by the authority that you could follow to protect yourself from unnecessary trouble:
Here are some safety measures uniquely designed for workplace protection:
