CDC’s Latest Guidance Puts BCTGM and other Essential Workers at Risk
Representing manufacturing, production, maintenance and sanitation workers in the baking, confectionery, tobacco and grain milling industries.
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10 Apr CDC’s Latest Guidance Puts BCTGM and other Essential Workers at Risk

Posted at 11:47h in Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health & Safety by

On April 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) substantially weakened workplace protections for essential infrastructure workers – like BCTGM members – from COVID-19. The new CDC guidelines for businesses allows employers to require workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 to continue to work following exposure, provided they remain asymptomatic and some additional precautions are implemented.

“This recommendation to put essential workers back to work after being exposed to COVID-19 is irresponsible and reckless and could put BCTGM members at risk. With this new policy, the Trump administration has completely abandoned its responsibility to protect America’s workers,” states BCTGM International Secretary-Treasurer Anthony Shelton.

These hazardous new guidelines ignore firmly established facts that transmission can occur from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals.

“This is a total reversal of the policy CDC has for the public, which states clearly that people who have been exposed to COVID-19 quarantine for 14 days. It is well established that there is significant risk of transmission from asymptomatic and presymptomatic individuals; thus these guidelines risk endangering workers, their families, their communities, and the public,” states Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

Hard-working BCTGM members, making bread, cereal, sweet goods, flour, sugar and candy, have proved indispensable in feeding Americans during this crisis and should not be carelessly put at risk.

“These reckless guidelines were not issued to protect workers, but rather to ensure the continuity of business profits. These recommendations will lead to many more deaths of those working on our front lines. They must be immediately revoked,” concludes Shelton.

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