Advocacy News – December 17, 2020
Good news! The Senate moved a bill late Wednesday strongly supported by the Michigan Chamber to update the COVID-19 related definitions in a recently enacted state law to reflect the latest Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.
The Michigan Chamber strongly advocated for this fix because the law, which was enacted in October, was already out of date on many items, including the mandatory quarantine period for employees who’ve had “close contact” with symptomatic or COVID-positive individuals. This conflict in state law was causing significant operational challenges for many Michigan companies.
Public Act 238 of 2020, which went into effect in late October, prohibits an employer from taking adverse employment action against an employee who is absent from work because of COVID-19. Among other things, the law prohibits an employee who has close contact with an individual who tests positive for COVID or displays the principal symptoms of COVID from reporting to work until one of the following conditions is met: (1) 14 days have passed since the employee last had close contact with the individual; or (2) The individual the employee had close contact with receives a medical determination that he or she did not have COVID-19 at the time of that contact.
The law is in conflict with several new guidelines adopted by the CDC late this fall and early winter. This includes the CDC guidance that allows for an “alternative window” of 7 or 10 days for these “close contact” situations. Further confusing matters, MIOSHA and MDHHS are both recognizing the 10-day window (i.e., if the individual does not develop any symptoms or clinical evidence of COVID-19 during daily symptom monitoring for the 10 days after the last exposure and daily symptom monitoring continues through day 14 after the last exposure).
Senate Bill 1258, which passed the Senate 37-1, updates the law by deferring to the CDC on key COVID definitions. In addition, the bill creates several exemptions to PA 238, including:
- A worker in the energy industry who performs essential energy services as described in the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce (i.e., CISA version 2.0, March 28, 2020).
- A worker identified by MDHHS “as necessary to ensure the continuation of essential public health services and enforcement of health laws, or to avoid serious harm or danger to public health or public safety. The director…shall designate categories of critical employees at facilities where the cessation of operations would cause serious harm or danger to public health or safety.”
Although these exemptions do not exempt as many entities from the act as we would have liked, it does give MDHHS the ability to identify classifications of employees who could be exempt along the lines of the CDC guidance on critical infrastructure. The Chamber, along with other businesses and business groups, pushed for additional exemptions but the language wasn’t included in the Senate-passed version because they recognized including it would likely result in a veto of the whole thing.
The bill now moves to the House and is expected to be tackled on the chamber’s last day of the 2020 legislative session. We do not expect further changes because it is unlikely the Senate will return to Lansing to concur in any changes before the session adjourns sine die.
Please contact Wendy Block at wblock@michamber.com with any questions.