U.S. Chamber lobbied to lower worker protections

By Nina Jacobs & Leo Menninger, Feb. 3, 2021

Butchers in Rigby, Idaho. In the US, more than 20,000 meatpackers have fallen sick © Natalie Behring/AFP

As the Senate negotiated a much-needed  COVID-19 relief bill in late 2020, Mitch McConnell and the GOP took advantage of the dire circumstances and attempted to attach dangerous corporate liability shields to the legislation. Behind the scenes, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce encouraged this reckless behavior in every way possible.

U.S. CHAMBER’S EFFORT TO GET THE SHIELD PASSED

Many corporations and their lobbying groups — including the U.S. Chamber — lobbied for immunity from employee lawsuits resulting from workplace COVID-19 infections. The U.S. Chamber has released multiple statements on the behalf of over 300,000 corporations, claiming that COVID-19 posed an “acute threat of lawsuits” that could ostensibly inhibit the recovery of the American economy. The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform has released over 90 reports and articles warning of the potential threat to economic recovery posed by COVID-19 lawsuits. Furthermore, the U.S. Chamber and its subsidiaries have spent an unknown amount of money lobbying for the liability shield.

In an attempt to build the case for corporate liability protections, the Chamber conducted a survey of 800 individuals to gauge support for the issue. The Chamber’s survey found that 79% of individuals supported protections for the businesses. However, surveys by other organizations have found contradictory results to the same question — the American Association for Justice found that 64% of Americans opposed a liability shield and a poll by Yahoo Finance-Harris found that 23% of Americans believed it was a priority. The Chamber has also conducted polls in the past that were described by law professors at Cornell as “inaccurate and unfair.”

LAWSUITS ARE NOT ACTUALLY AN ECONOMIC THREAT

Upon closer examination of the Chamber’s threatening claims around COVID-19 related lawsuits, we find that they often exaggerate the risk. In August, the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform published a short article claiming that without a liability shield, Arizona’s schools might not be able to reopen. Since the start of the pandemic, schools in Arizona have opened and closed their doors erratically as cases rise and fall. However, there has consistently been an extremely low rate of COVID-19-related lawsuits. In fact, the Hunton COVID-19 case tracker shows that since the start of the pandemic, there have been only eight COVID-19-related complaints in education, seven of which were requests for refunds.

What’s more, the Hunton case tracker indicates that less than 8,000 lawsuits related to the illness have been filed since the start of the pandemic. Focusing on employment litigation alone, the number drops to 1,405. For reference, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims to represent over 300,000 corporations. If every single employment litigation case was aimed at a U.S. Chamber member, only 1 in every 213 member corporations would have been served an employment lawsuit. Distributed across all 10.75 million employers in the United States, only 0.07% of employers have experienced legal action related to COVID-19. 

THE EFFECTS ON WORKER PROTECTIONS

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is endorsed by the Chamber, advocated on behalf of the proposed corporate immunity. If McConnell’s wish had been granted, corporations would be completely immune to COVID-19 related lawsuits for five years. This means that employees who were forced to work in dangerous conditions and contracted the coronavirus may have faced expensive hospital bills simply for seeking treatment. Those that pushed these employer protections aimed to take advantage of the rising need for a stimulus check — if American workers accepted a one-time check or a meager expansion of unemployment benefits, they would have become vulnerable to the dangers of such corporate immunity. 

Additionally, the liability protections would have allowed employers to sue employees who reported COVID-19 safety violations and requested compensation for working in dangerous conditions. Organizations such as “law firms, unions, and other entities that are ‘engaged in a pattern or practice’ of seeking compensation for similar violations” could have also been sued by the U.S. Attorney General, leaving workers with few options for legal assistance. The effects of such corporate protections would have been felt severely by workers, as businesses would no longer be held accountable to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) or enforce social distancing among their employees. With no fear of being held accountable for their negligence, corporations could take advantage of their employees at a time of intense job insecurity.

PROTECTING BIG BUSINESS IS NOTHING NEW

Many viewed the inclusion of corporate liability protections in the proposed bill as yet another corporate bailout. In March 2020, a multi-trillion dollar leverage fund was passed which allowed multi-million dollar chains to receive large amounts of federal funding, often at the expense of small businesses. Healthcare lobbyists were also busy during this time, working closely with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to protect nursing homes from lawsuits after a tragic rapid rise in coronavirus deaths among elderly patients. Opponents of these protections have characterized them as being “designed to make it easier for nursing home corporations to profit off unsafe business practices.” Only a few months later, Republican senators would copy Cuomo’s liability protections nearly word-for-word in their July stimulus proposal. The Chamber had hoped that such business immunity could be successfully snuck into the COVID-19 relief bill, continuing the trend of protecting big corporations over small businesses and the health of the American worker. 

CONCLUSION

The business liability protections represent yet another corporate bailout that was lobbied on by the Chamber in order to protect their member companies. While these are usually paid for with taxpayer dollars, a corporate liability shield would have been paid for with human life. While Congress denied this attempt at protecting big business, there is no doubt the Chamber will continue to use their influence to protect their member companies.