Essential Workers Initiative to Assist Frontline Employees

The coronavirus pandemic brought increased workhours, workloads, and safety risks to essential workers and their families. Many questions surfaced about workers’ wages, hours, time off, and concerns in dealing with family members with COVID-19 and other illnesses. To bring guidance to these workers, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) unveiled the Essential Workers, Essential Protections initiative last week.

Throughout May, the initiative will offer training webinars to educate for essential workers, advocates, and employers across the country on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), according to a news blog post.

The webinars cover topics like:

• • Federal labor laws and workplace rights
  • Essential protections for union members and representatives
  • DOL/WHD/ Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) essential protections
  • State-specific laws.

“We have launched the Essential Workers, Essential Protections initiative to ensure that workers know about the wage and hour laws that protect them—and how to contact us to get help if they need it,” said Jessica Looman, the WHD principal deputy administrator, wrote in the blog post. “Workers deserve to know what hours they should be paid for and when they’ll have job protection for their illness or the illness of a family member. And employers need guidance to ensure that they are doing right by these essential workers.”

The initiative also includes frequently asked questions (FAQs) pages related to sick leave and pay under federal law. Other FAQs include other common FLSA compliance issues.

Looman said they will also release multilingual material to reach essential workers through radio public service announcements, social media platforms, and posters to be displayed in neighborhoods.