Is There a Right to Not Work During COVID 19?

This session builds on a prior webinar entitled Why Occupational Standards Matter and focuses on the question of whether health personnel have the right NOT to work when they feel their health or their family’s health, or life, is in danger.
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The WHO affirms that employers must "allow workers to exercise the right to remove themselves from a work situation that they have reasonable justification to believe presents an imminent and serious danger to their life or health ..." without undue consequences.

Panelists from three professions - medicine, nursing and home care - discuss the different ways in which they are experiencing tensions between the social mission of their work, on the one hand, and its limits when employers have not provided adequate worker protection, on the other. They also discuss policies and practices that would help alleviate this tension, including child care, housing, and hazard pay. READ SUMMARY

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relevant resources

• Human Rights Dimensions of COVID-19 Response
• WHO  Rights, Roles, and Responsibilities of Health Workers
• ANA Nurses, Ethics, and the Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
• What Happens If Health-Care Workers Stop Showing Up?
• How Many Health Care Workers Are at Risk of Being Sacrificed to COVID-19 in the US?
• Older Clinicians and the Surge in Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)​