Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update: The US Court of Appeals is preventing the Biden Admin from implementing common sense requirements that the workplace & workers be kept safe from COVID. 1/

Parroting the over-wrought language of a Trump fundraising letter, the 5th circuit, the most conservative appeals court in the country, refers to the requirement that people either get tested or vaccinated as a “sledgehammer” that will “decimate their workforces.”

Oh my. 2/

Trying to remember, have we seen workplaces “decimated” and “sledgehammered” by asking people to take a once/week test to see if they may have have COVID?

Or have we seen workplaces and people who work there decimated by something else…COVID-19 itself. 3/

This is a “we must protect ourselves against the protection” logic that you can only arrive at when you start with the answer.

“Those bullet proof vests are oppressive and hot. Go on patrol without them to protect yourself from being decimated by the vest.” 4/

OSHA, where this rule emanates from, has one job. Make sure workplaces are safe.

You may think of them as the people who inspect the workplace to make sure companies require helmets & goggles when scraps of wood could fly around. 5/

Well, scraps of infectious air particles also fly around workplaces.

OSHA is requiring that if you have more than 100 employees, you require a negative test once/week which can be avoided if ppl are vaccinated.

Is it foolproof? No. But neither is a safety belt or helmet.6/

The Department of Labor through OSHA is charged with “acting quickly” to protect workers from emerging “grave dangers.”

The most unprotected low wage workers are at highest risk. 9% of Ag workers contracted COVID. 12,000 died.

7/

How real is the threat from workplaces? In North Carolina, 25% of all clusters came from the workplace, retail or food settings.

The court says it’s worried about devastated workforces. It’s obviously not. What is it worried about? 8/

covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

The “tell” is in the statement from the Louisiana AG who brought the case.

He called it a “major win for the liberty of job creators & their employees.”

The liberty of job creators to have a gravely unsafe workplace. Sorry. It’s not a protected liberty. 9/

The only constitutional reference in the 4 paragraphs from the court is that there is “cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.”

Issues? Hmmm. I have “issues” with traffic. But I can’t prevent it. What does that mean? 10/

It seems to weakly imply interference with the commerce clause.

If so I would expect a simple clear sentence saying so instead of relying on words like “sledgehammer.” 11/

If OSHA can’t require basic protocols to respond to COVID, the court should be asked, what can they require.

Doesn’t requiring a safety belt interfere with the commerce clause if a handful of employees don’t like them? 12/

Sadly in the views of this radical court, it probably would. As would requiring workers not to be minors or many other advances of the last 100 years.

OSHA exists so people aren’t exploited in order to make a living. 13/

This ruling comes from those who believe that government can’t be a protector of those being taken advantage of because government is your oppressor.

The court would have protested Gen Washington’s small pox vaccine requirements. 14/

The vast majority of Americans agree with the requirement & not the ruling. People don’t consider common sense protections to be oppression.

Any reasonable court would see it differently. And that may be the problem. /end