- The Biden administration wants to ensure that workers can refuse jobs that are unsafe due to the pandemic and still be eligible for unemployment.
- In the executive orders released Friday, Biden lays out a plan for emergency economic relief.
- The Trump administration had previously left this provision up to individual states.
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President Joe Biden on Friday announced plans to protect workers who refuse unsafe working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing them to receive unemployment benefits should they leave their jobs.
The move is part of the Biden administration’s executive order detailing an “all-of-government effort to provide equitable emergency economic relief.” The move lays out a plan for Biden to ask the Department of Labor “to consider clarifying that workers have a federally guaranteed right to refuse employment that will jeopardize their health and if they do so, they will still qualify for unemployment insurance.”
Under current law, workers who voluntarily leave their jobs are generally unable to receive unemployment benefits.
About 16 million people are currently receiving some type of unemployment benefit nearly a year after the outbreak of the pandemic.
Read more: Here’s how Biden will demolish Trump’s legacy
If the Department of Labor issues this clarification, it will set a federal standard for a scenario that has been unevenly enforced throughout the pandemic. The Trump administration did not specify whether unemployed people can refuse a job with unsafe conditions and still qualify for unemployment, instead leaving the decision to state governments. Enacting Biden's order would clarify this gray area at the federal level.
The new president has inherited a historically bleak labor landscape. Insider reported Thursday that in the week before Biden's inauguration, 900,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits. The number was a slight dip from the week prior. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its most recent summary of employment and unemployment, found a November 2020 unemployment rate of 6.7 percent -3.2 points higher than in November 2019.