While President Donald Trump and Republicans are hell-bent on pushing corporations to force their employees back to work, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is more concerned about shielding corporations from lawsuits than he is about employees contracting the virus when they return to their jobs.
Democrats in Congress are pushing legislation to further help the American people struggling during this crisis. Social distancing measures and lockdowns are flattening the curve, but reopening early risks a deadly second wave of the virus. Unfortunately, Republicans are the ones primarily jumping the gun to reopen without a single concern that more Americans will die — even though more than 57,000 have died already and the pandemic is still raging across the country.
What Republicans are concerned about, however, is protecting corporations from liability lawsuits from employees who contract the virus on the job because they’ve been forced back to work too early.
In a press release marking the Senate returning to work, McConnell demanded corporate immunity be the primary legislative goal as state and local governments continue to beg for aid.
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“While our nation is asking everyone from front-line healthcare professionals to essential small-business owners to major employers to adapt in new ways and keep serving, a massive tangle of federal and state laws could easily mean their heroic efforts are met with years of endless lawsuits,” McConnell wrote. “We cannot let that happen. Our nation is facing the worst pandemic in over a century and potentially the worst economic shock since the Great Depression. Our response must not be slowed, weakened, or exploited to set up the biggest trial lawyer bonanza in history. Republicans will proudly insist on these and other strong, pro-certainty, pro-growth reforms throughout any and all future discussions.”
This is not “pro-growth,” but pro-let corporations get away with murder.
Republicans clearly know that the risk is too great to reopen the country right now, but they want to do it anyway and make sure corporate executives are shielded from any accountability. And this is on top of those very same corporations receiving a trillion-dollar slush fund in the first stimulus package.
As University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers pointed out, this is an effort to let corporations off the hook for negligence with the lives of their employees and even their customers, who are also at risk of contracting the virus.
Here’s the argument: Tort law makes employers liable for being negligent with the lives of their workers and customers. McConnell is arguing that they should have the right to be negligent, and suffer no consequences for negligence that kills their staff. https://t.co/tX3eDTjnRP
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) April 27, 2020
“The idea companies can be held accountable is absolutely crucial to protecting workers,” National Employment Law Project director Debbie Berkowitz added in a statement to the Washington Post, going on to call it “one of the most appalling things I’ve heard in the context of this crisis.”
Corporations have already received enough free gifts from Congress and Trump during this crisis. It’s time for Republicans to do something to help the people. Forcing people to go back to work and needlessly risk their lives so that corporate fat cats can get richer is beyond immoral and greedy. It’s the same kind of recklessness that got us into this crisis in the first place. And when workers and customers do end up contracting the virus and dying from it, Republicans want to make sure no one is held accountable for it.
If the American people are not already monumentally pissed off and ready for a rebellion, this new GOP effort on behalf of their corporate overlords should do the trick.
Featured image via screen capture
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