-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MARKEY. I rise today in opposition to the latest effort by Republicans to undermine Americans' health and safety. COVID-19 remains a grave danger. We have lost more than 775,000 Americans to this virus, and cases are rising yet again.
Despite this clear and present danger, millions of workers across this country have been showing up to their jobs every day since this pandemic began. Essential workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, security guards, retail employees, and countless more were never able to work remotely. They can't Zoom to the cash register, checkout, or the driver's seat of a bus. But these workers faced and continue to face on-the-job exposures and the hazards those exposures entail.
We are lucky to have tools to mitigate these dangers for workers. Testing works. Vaccines work. Booster shots work. Masks work. And as these new variants begin circulating around the globe and as vaccine effectiveness begins to wane, for those who were among the first vaccinated, especially for older Americans and the immune compromised, it is incredibly important that everyone get their boosters now.
Let me just say that again: If you are eligible, don't wait. Get your booster shot now. If you have two shots already and you got them 6 months ago, you are not fully vaccinated. If you don't have your third shot right now, you are not fully vaccinated. If you have two shots already, and it is more than 6 months after you got those first two shots, just understand that, when you say ``I am vaccinated,'' it is not accurate. You need the third shot.
Not only do the vaccines work, but vaccine requirements work. They increase vaccination rates and improve worker safety. We have seen in Massachusetts that, as the State government implemented vaccine requirements, vaccination rates approached 95 percent of State employees.
We aren't just the Bay State; we are also the ``Brain State.'' We listened to what scientists and medical experts are telling us.
So to protect workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, at the Department of Labor, published a rule known as an emergency temporary standard--an emergency temporary standard, or ETS. That emergency temporary standard will keep employees safe by requiring large companies to ensure that each of their workers is fully vaccinated.
And if employees cannot or will not be vaccinated, they simply must test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week before coming into work. It is as simple as that: Get vaccinated or get tested.
The ETS also requires that employees protect their coworkers by wearing a mask in the workplace. This requirement is not onerous. In fact, it is flexible for all workers to require employees to provide paid time off to workers to get vaccinated and ensures that paid leave is provided for recovery from any side effects of the vaccinations that keep employees from being able to work.
These are simple, commonsense rules that will save lives--testing, masks, vaccines, boosters. OSHA estimates that its emergency temporary standard will prevent 6,500 people from dying and 250,000 people from having to go to become hospitalized over just a 6-month period.
But while Democrats and the Biden Administration are doing everything possible to maintain an economic and health recovery, Republicans are doing everything they can to undercut science and confidence in this administration. This latest attempt--trying to overturn the OSHA emergency temporary standard and threatening to undermine the health and safety of millions of workers--is outrageous and the worst kind of political stunt.
We mandate vaccinations for our children so that they can be healthy and go to school. We mandate vaccinations so our servicemembers are protected in the line of duty. Let us protect our workers in our workplaces so that they can stay healthy and stay on the job.
But there is a terrible irony here from my Republican colleagues. At the exact same time that the Grand Old Party is bemoaning this OSHA worker protection effort as a so-called mandate, they are celebrating mandating government control over women's reproductive freedom at the Supreme Court. They would rather mandate government control over a woman's body than mandate worker safety.
If we want to end this pandemic, we need to get as many people vaccinated as we can. Unfortunately, Republicans see a political benefit to prolonging the pain and the suffering from the virus and preventing vaccinations where possible.
This is wrong. This is immoral. And I urge my colleagues to support the OSHA emergency temporary standard. I urge my colleagues to support that emergency temporary standard and oppose this effort by Republicans to overturn this critical, life-protecting regulation, which is on the books, if we can keep it there.
So we need to ensure that we are saying to every family: We have your back. We are going to be protecting you. We are going to make sure those safeguards are in place.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source