COVID Safety Protections Get Signed Into Law

[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. A few things about reopening New York. Today on the show, we will talk to a cast member from Hamilton plus another Broadway performer and a New York Times theater critic, not a theater critic, but a theater reporter, about Governor Cuomo's announcement of full-capacity Broadway theater reopening on September 14th.

So far, no proof of vaccination will be required, but it'll be up to the theaters. Yankees and Mets games per the governor's order will start separating vaccinated and unvaccinated fans into different sections of the ballparks later this month. We'll talk about that too. On Wednesday, the New York State Legislature passed a bill called the HERO Act, HERO for health and essential rights, that will mandate health and safety standards for reopening all the private businesses in New York State.

This is a private sector regulation bill and this has been a priority of labor advocates like the Essential Workers Coalition and the New York State Nurses Association and the New York Immigration Coalition, considering which workers tend to be most at risk. These standards, of course, would also protect customers, presumably in many businesses as well, but business leaders were resisting it, small businesses, especially standards to be enforced include provision of PPEs in certain cases, distancing in certain cases, ventilation standards in certain cases.

We'll talk about this development first, then go on to Broadway and ballparks. With me now, Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, executive director of the 40,000-member strong New York State Nurses Association, and New York State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens. He's the deputy leader of the New York State Senate and the Senate sponsor of this bill. Welcome back, both of you, to WNYC. Thank you so much for coming on today.

President Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez: Thank you for having us. By the way, I'm the president of NYSNA, not the executive director. Just a little correction there.

Brian: Sorry about that, sorry about that.

President Gonzalez: That's okay.

Brian: Senator, tell me more what's in the HERO Act.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Well, I think you described it pretty well. We went through a very difficult year where a lot of people who got sick and lost their lives or infected their families, who then subsequently passed, were infected at the workplace because places of employment were not doing enough to protect their workers. We're trying to stop that from happening.

God forbid, the COVID situation gets worse rather than better or, in the future, we have another airborne pandemic. We want to be prepared so we can avoid that in the future. There were a lot of people that went to work to keep us moving while others had the luxury of staying home. Those people brunt of the damage over the last year, we're trying to do something to protect them and make sure it doesn't repeat itself.

Brian: We can take a few phone calls on this. Listeners, do you work at a job where you think the HERO Act is needed to protect you from a resurgence of COVID? Tell us a story from your workplace. Nurses, restaurant workers, anyone, business owners, you too, what will this involve for you? (646) 435-7280. If you want to call in on this major bill that just passed the New York State Legislature, Governor Cuomo worked to soften it a little bit. We will get to that, but essential workers and other workers, (646) 435-7280. Business owners too, (646) 435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. President Gonzalez, how will this affect nurses? How will this help protect nurses?

President Gonzalez: This will be really important for us. One of the things that traumatized us at the beginning was that we were told we didn't need these N95 masks, that the virus wasn't airborne. Of course, that's been corrected now pretty much. I think for liability reasons, it's still a little bit wishy-washy. With this law, understanding what the virus does will really make a difference.

We got sick. The emergency room where I work, 80% of us were infected with COVID. That's an incredible statistic as the virus bore down on New York in the early periods and in the Bronx where I live and work. It was the epicenter of the virus with the highest per capita rate of infection and deaths. That included, of course, healthcare workers and other workers. All the essential workers were affected by this, not given the adequate protection or the adequate ventilation, and having no controls in place.

We went through something very similar in the AIDS and hepatitis C climate of the '80s and '90s, where we had these very dangerous needles we were using that people were getting infected by getting needle sticks. The technology was there to have needle assistance, but it took legislation, an OSHA standard, testimony, and many, many hundreds of thousands of deaths of infected healthcare workers to get a standard and to get a law. It's very similar.

Black lung, asbestosis, what happened after 9/11 with the inhalation of those particles, workers need to be protected. Nobody should have to risk their life unnecessarily when they're doing their job to help others and that's what happened during COVID. Anyone who was serving the public was put in danger. This law will prevent that. It'll put the onus on the employers to make sure that they have safe workplaces and that workers, frontline workers, have a say in what that looks like and what's needed.

Brian: Senator Gianaris, where does ventilation come in?

Senator Gianaris: Well, obviously, the danger is far greater with indoor spaces without adequate ventilation. These are all the things that we are requiring the Department of Labor to come up with standards for and things we've become all too familiar with over the last year. Ventilation is one of them. Mask wearing, social distancing, all of these things are common knowledge to us now. They weren't at the beginning, but ventilation is critically important. Once you're outdoors, you need the air ventilating properly to keep the virus from spreading more dangerously in an indoor space.

Brian: The bill doesn't have ventilation standards. It directs the Labor Department to come up with ventilation standards?

Senator Gianaris: Correct, the departments of labor and health collaboratively are supposed to come up with specific standards relating to the subject there is that were laid out in the legislation.

Brian: President Gonzalez, do you think that the hospitals and other facilities that employ nurses had not already by now-- because this bill, we could've been talking about a bill like this in May of 2020. It just got passed here in May of 2021. Do you feel like the hospitals and other facilities that employ nurses have not already done this voluntarily?

President Gonzalez: I think there's some work being done around it, but we still have overcrowded emergency rooms that people are cohorted together because the spaces are open. The HEPA filters probably are not as good as they need to be. Definitely, conditions are better right now, but it does vary. It varies from hospital to hospital. There's no standard that anyone is held accountable to.

It's a crapshoot as to what kind of protection you're going to have. We don't have enough negative pressure rooms. Just to explain to the public what's ventilation, how important it is, these viral particles sit in the air for a certain period of time, which is why indoor space is so dangerous. They don't necessarily get removed. These HEPA filters, which filter the air or these negative pressure rooms, which basically suck the particles out, make it much safer for you.

Of course, outdoors, you have a natural ventilation system, but no, the ventilation is not adequate. A lot of these buildings were built with-- that's why you see in cruise ships or these-- you can get infections because the ventilation systems that aren't clean and that aren't monitored and that aren't in the right state to be able to take these particles out, this is how people get sick. In terms of the PPE and the products that are necessary, it's better now certainly than it was a year ago.

There's no comparison, but who's to say it will last and who's to say that there'll be that prevention in place? There's not enough storage for the next pandemic. These are the things that really need to be addressed. This will make a permanent way of being able to prevent these things, not a "makeshift last minute, let's scramble for stuff" kind of a way, which means that the people in the frontline in the very beginning are the ones who suffer.

Brian: Ron in Cranford, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in, Ron.

Ron: You're welcome. My story is relatively simple. My daughter is a nurse in Philadelphia on the respiratory floor in one of the hospitals. I have a good friend who's been in and out of the hospital for a few years, not that hospital, but a New Jersey one. Any rate, the point being that he tells me every time a medical professional comes into the room, they don new masks, gloves, and gowns and dispose of it on the way out. In her situation over the last year, the gowns were not for medical use. The gloves were being reused because they had writing on them when the nurses take notes and the masks were issued on a weekly basis and that was it.

Brian: Not all corrected by now?

Ron: I have not heard anything recently. Hopefully, yes. As a matter of fact, a donation was made by a resident here of something like 40,000 masks to her hospital.

Brian: Ron, thank you very much for your call. Senator Gianaris, here's a tweet that just came in and, sorry, they're going by pretty fast. This one says the HERO Act will basically make it so any business already considering leaving New York State will make haste in doing so. Your reaction.

Senator Gianaris: Nonsense. I can't imagine a responsible business would say, "I would rather put people's lives at risk than comply with some regulations intended to save lives and preserve health and safety of the public." We hear this cry all the time from an ideological corner of the world. It never is born out to be true and I think this is just more a hysteria from people who have an agenda other than trying to come back home, which is what we're trying to do.

Let me just also say we can chew gum and walk at the same time. We just passed a state budget that had $1 billion in small business relief. That's a billion dollars over and above whatever the federal government is doing. We recognize small businesses need help. We're providing that help, but at the same time, it would be irresponsible if we did not require them to make sure that it was a safe work environment at the same time.

Brian: My understanding from the reporting I've seen is that Governor Cuomo got the legislature to soften this bill a bit from the standpoint of business, adding an anti-lawsuit provision. What can you tell us about that?

Senator Gianaris: Well, this is a normal part of the legislative process. You need three parties to agree. The Senate and Assembly passed this bill and the Governor wanted his input before he signed it. What he did was something we agreed upon as a reasonable change to give 30 days for an employer who was notified of a violation to correct a violation before they'd be subject to a lawsuit. If someone's not doing the right thing and it gets pointed out to them that they're not complying with the regulations, they would have 30 days to do so before they would get hit with a-- or could get hit with a lawsuit.

Brian: Sammy in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sammy, thanks for calling in.

Sammy: Why not have an even approach about an open and shut according to surges and abatement? Just have a hybrid approach. For example, Goldman Sachs calling their employees back 100%. That's a bad model for future pandemic growth because right now, what's happening from India, a lot of Indians are coming in. There's aforethought and [unintelligible 00:12:21] that's multiplying. These vaccines are not a panacea. As The Epoch Times just noted, 9,142 cases happen after [unintelligible 00:12:34] vaccines of Pfizer.

Brian: Sammy, thank you very much. Well, Senator, how do you react to anything that he brought up there?

Senator Gianaris: Well, look, that's the point is right now without uniform standard in place for all workplaces, you're just leaving it up to the employers to determine whether their workers are going to be safe or not. Some of them will be responsible and do the right thing and some of them will not. This is a matter of great public interest. The public should absolutely lay out some standards and say everyone has to comply with these minimum standards to make sure that the people working there and their customers are safe.

Brian: What that caller was asking for, I think, was more of a hybrid reopening in general with respect to the business sector rather than a full-capacity reopening. I realized this would be different for little stores than it would be for something like a big office building. He cited Goldman Sachs. Of course, we know the Mayor controversially started bringing office workers in city government back this week, but he did it in a hybrid model. Hybrid in that they're not all working on the same day. Is something like that necessary in your opinion as regulation going forward rather than these full-capacity things that the Governor is now rolling out?

Senator Gianaris: Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense. What we learned over the last year is that there's a lot that we still need to learn. To just pull the plug and go cold turkey back into work all at once may raise some issues we're not thinking about then. Doing it in a graduated phase, I think, makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, we want the economy back to normal as fast as possible, but we have to make sure people are safe along the way.

Brian: Do you have a reaction before we transition to our next segment, which is going to be on the Governor's proclamations about Broadway returning full capacity, no vaccine required on September 14th? The ballparks Yankee Stadium and Citi Field starting later this month will start separating vaccinated and unvaccinated people into separate sections. Do you have a reaction to either of those things?

Senator Gianaris: Well, Brian, I'll be at the Mets game tonight, so I could tell you what they're doing after I sign the game this evening, but there's a big difference.

Brian: Well, they're not doing that yet.

Senator Gianaris: Correct. There's a big difference between an outdoor stadium, which I think most experts agree is a lot safer than an indoor space. I'm a lot more comfortable with the return to normalcy or as close as we can get through it in Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, the places that are outdoors by definition. The Broadway theater example, it's not until September, so we hope that things will be even better by then, but I do think we need a cautious approach and we should continue to evaluate as we get through the summer whether we're in a place where that makes sense.

Brian: Is it something that the state could mandate or should, in your opinion, mandate a vaccination or a negative test requirement for Broadway theaters because that was not in the governor's order?

Senator Gianaris: We need protection. Just to say, "Come September, everything will be as it was a year and a half ago," is risky. I do think we need to take stock of where we're at in July and August before we do that to say we should plan in that direction. I'm fine with as long as we reserve the option to make changes as necessary. As we just discussed, doing it slowly, doing it in a gradual phasing makes a lot more sense to me than just assuming everything is fine when we don't really know.

Brian: If you go to another Mets game in a couple of weeks, the fans will be segregated by or separated by vaccine and unvaccinated status. You good with that?

Senator Gianaris: Well, I'm a season ticket holder, so I will be going back in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know about that too, but I think that's something that's been tried in other stadiums around the country. As long as there's not some kind of discriminatory impact where if you're not vaccinated, you're sitting in the bleacher seats or in the upper deck where you can't see the game. The most important thing is safety. Vaccines are a very well-established way to avoid COVID and stop the spread. I have no problem with, say, if you're vaccinated. You're assumed to be a safer individual and, therefore, can sit with other people who are similarly situated.

Brian: New York State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens.

President Gonzalez: If I could just say a word--

Brian: One thing, President Gonzalez, I'm going to get right back to you in a second. I have to let the Senator go. Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens, obviously, showing his home team pride. He's the deputy majority leader in the New York State Senate. Thank you very much. I know you have to go. President Gonzalez, go ahead.

President Gonzalez: Yes, I think the issue, there's an overarching issue when it comes to safety and protection. We need to be proactive rather than reactive as a society. What happens is it always takes a tragedy to get laws passed that protect us. It always takes a desk. We're going through the same thing with our staffing law. How many tragedies have to take place before things can happen to prevent these things? When we look at prevention and protection, we have to be forward-thinking, do the research, get preparation, get protection, do what we have to do to avoid these tragedies.

I think that's the concept within this law. We don't want to be held-- we don't want to be caught off-guard. We were behind the eight ball to begin with and that's how we function. We wait till tragedy occurs before we do these things. It happened with child labor laws. We think of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. All throughout history, it's after the fact that these things happen. We have technology now to develop anything that can protect us and that's what's important here. That's why this law is so important moving forward.

Brian: One last thing, I've read two things recently about your profession, nursing. One is that frontline healthcare workers, including nurses, are leaving the profession in notable numbers because they're burnt out, and also that applications to nursing schools are up. Both things true as far as you know and how would you see the state of nursing going forward here a year and a couple of months after COVID hit us?

President Gonzalez: Well, it's a little bit of a double-edged sword. The people who are in the profession, we enter the profession because it's a calling. We really care about people and we want to take care of people, but we get a culture shock. We walk into a healthcare system that is totally dysfunctional, that is so built on generating profits for these hospitals or these safety-net facilities, which can't do that when you're so under-resourced.

When nurses enter the profession and they can't properly take care of patients, they're just horrified and shocked and some people who begin to leave the unsafe conditions, particularly the under-staffing that exists cause people to leave. At the same time, I think a lot of younger people saw us as heroes, saw the joys of really helping people, and want to appreciate that. Seeing us in this region taking care of people, saving lives, that's an exciting thing for people when they want to help people.

That's why we're seeing the increase in enrollment. At the same time, we've got to make those conditions in the hospitals safe for people so that people can actually take care of human beings instead of pushing paper, entering stuff into computers, trying to make ends meet, keeping their heads above water. We've got to improve the conditions in our facilities, better staffing, better safety, more appreciation for the people who are doing this work so that this will be a rewarding profession in its true sense as it should be.

Brian: Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, president of the 40,000-member strong New York State Nurses Association, on the occasion of the passing by the state legislature of the New York HERO Act, which will provide new health and safety standards in private businesses going forward. Thank you for joining us today.

President Gonzalez: Thank you so much.

 

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.