COVID-19: What Should Employers Know About Legal Protections for Workers?

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the year for people from Wuhan to Milan. New York City alone now has almost 100,000 confirmed cases and all nonessential businesses, including many in the fashion sector, have shuttered since March 22 in response to orders from the state governor and a collective effort to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus infections. Workplace consequences have been dramatic. Last week, the federal Labor Department reported that a record 6.6 million Americans had filed for unemployment insurance, bringing the total number of people who have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks alone to almost 17 million. Reports of employers mistreating nurses and retail workers have trickled onto social media, and newly enacted federal laws provide various forms of emergency relief. James Brudney, a professor at Fordham University School of Law with extensive experience in employment and international labor law, stressed the importance for employers, particularly larger brands, of “doing the right thing by their workers and in reputational terms, not just the barely legal thing.” Referring to recent walkouts by Amazon warehouse workers protesting conditions of unsafe exposure to the virus, he said employment lawsuits based on job-related illness and death are likely, just as they were common

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