Pelosi rules out liability protections for employers of "essential workers"

[applegrove]

Pelosi rules out liability protections for employers of "essential workers"

Fadel Allassan at Axios

https://www.axios.com/pelosi-liability-protections-essential-workers-9182c486-4561-4dd6-9645-eb12660dec02.html

"SNIP.....

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday that Democrats will not support liability protections for employers of "essential workers" in the next coronavirus relief bill.

Why it matters: Senate Republicans' stimulus proposal is expected to include widespread liability insurance for schools, businesses, hospitals and more, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called his "red line."

Companies have said they could be vulnerable to a wave of lawsuits if their workers get sick during the pandemic.Pelosi argued that such a measure would fail to make employers responsible for ensuring workplaces are safe while also providing no recourse for workers who do get sick.

......SNIP"

[dalton99a]

1. Good. Don't give them a license to kill

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

[underpants]

3. It's like a DISINCENTIVE to protect their employees

and it’s all about disincentives isn’t it?

[Igel]

8. No, it's like other things.

Do what the rules say, and you're mostly exempt from bad things that happen.

It's not all/nothing, black/white, a strict, harsh binary choice with nothing between two extremes.

Lawnmowers are dangerous. So is whiskey. I have a lawnmower, and if I get hurt with it I can't sue the manufacturer if I disabled the safety measures. My family can't sue the whiskey company if I buy two gallons and drink as much as I can hold down as fast as I can so I die of alcohol poisoning. They have liability protection.

Bars wanted liability protection and that was denied. Mostly by the courts. Meaning bartenders are now my warden when I'm drinking in a bar--they have to do at least a good-faith monitoring of me sort of in loco parentis and make sure I don't as an adult do something that's bad, like drink too much and then drive.

That does not mean that the lawnmower company is free to make exploding lawnmowers, or the whiskey company can either put methanol in the booze or up the proof to 180 so that people abiding by the "one drink per hour" rule for 0.08 are tricked.

[Squinch]

4. Thank God. Lots of places would become slaughterhouses if they faced no liability.

[keithbvadu2]

5. Is it safe for businesses to reopen?

Is it safe for businesses to reopen?

[gratuitous]

6. Liability insurance or immunity from liability?

There's a difference. Will employers be required to buy insurance to protect their employees? Is this a new tax on employers disguised as insurance? Will an employer that doesn't buy insurance be allowed to reopen? Who's going to enforce the safety measures that any insurance company would insist on implementing before writing an insurance policy?

Or if it's just blanket immunity from liability, where does a worker go for relief when they get sick? Or are they on their own and fuck 'em?

As usual, the Republican proposal sounds half-assed, designed more to protect capital than to protect labor, which is what creates that wealth in the first place.

[Wellstone ruled]

7. Suspect the back story is,

the Chamber of Commerce wants the States Worker Comp System to set up and take full responsibility for any Work Place Illness Claims.

BTW,looks like Moscow Mitch is running the Clock on a new Stimulus until Trump gets his 50k Storm Troopers in place.

Mnuchin and Meadows are front running this bogus thing.

[Baked Potato]

10. Yes this.

[Igel]

9. Most media blur the difference.

Depending on their partisan leaning.

It's part of the psychological need to be all goodness and light and love and have the eternal enemy (for today) be all evil and stupidity and hate.

What limited info I've seen on it says basically that you'd be immune from tort liability provided you follow the required guidelines and could document it. Sort of like cars. If the manufacturer follows the guidelines and you get in a crash or because of your neglect the car hurts you, it's on you. If you get hurt because of the manufacturer's neglect, then you get to sue Ford or whoever.

My mother, for reasons I prefer not to agree with, decided to have a pool put in our backyard. There was the typical chain-link 3-foot fence. The county (?) told my parents it was an attractive nuisance--if a kid jumped the fence, drunk, and drowned, it would be negligence on their part. So they put up a 6' high fence that blocked the view and put locks on the gates. Problem solved. Kids still jumped the fence, but it comported with the requirements. If a kid jumped the fence, drunk, and drowned, it would be assumed they had done due diligence in preventing the death. (Assuming that it wasn't 3 a.m., parents were asleep in the bedroom, and the cries of the drowning minors could be heard.)

That kind of legal arrangement would never work these days. The absolute distrust of others is too high, the absolute defensiveness of one's affinity group is likewise too high.

[Wellstone ruled]

11. Here in Nevada,

coming down the road for Pool owners is,you will have to have a special Insurance Rider on your Homeowners Insurance for pools and Spa's. And that Rider is not going to be cheap by no means.