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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
June 2020 #12251 Page #100
Protection Needed for ‘Good Faith’ Business Operations Robert Glowinski is the President & CEO of the American Wood Council (AWC).
s elected officials discuss potential policies to support the nation’s economic recovery, the American Wood Council (AWC) is supporting a number of policy efforts to stimulate housing, and construction in general. In addition, we have engaged on a related issue that has the potential to affect all wood products facilities, as well as the rest of our supply chain.
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In mid-March, following comments AWC filed with the Department of Homeland Security, the wood products industry, among others, was designated by the federal government as an “Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce.” Remaining open, these industries took major risks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, implementing their own best safety practices to protect employees, associates, and others at a time when effective procedures were not yet imagined, yet alone available, from OSHA or other agencies, and recommendations weren’t released until many states had already started to reopen. Perhaps as a consequence, we have begun to see the filing of opportunistic, virus-derived lawsuits against companies. By one report, there have already been over 900 federal and state lawsuits filed against a variety of companies, including some claiming workers were subjected to unsafe working conditions. In response, AWC has been working with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in seeking legislation that would limit frivolous lawsuits related to steps companies took, in good faith, to protect workers, associates, suppliers, customers, and others from exposure to COVID-19. To be clear, we are not talking about any limits on lawsuits for companies that acted negligently, in bad faith, or didn’t do anything to safeguard their workers. However, we believe Congress and the Administration should protect businesses that took on the risk of remaining open, under very challenging circumstances, and made the best decisions they could, with the information they had, to ensure critical products and supply chains remained open during this time. Already, more than a dozen states including Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey have granted civil-liability protections to healthcare providers, hospitals, nursing homes, physicians, or other medical personnel dealing with surges of patients infected with COVID-19. Some states also have expanded liability protections to manufacturers, architects, engineers, and contractors aiding in the crisis. But to avoid piecemeal solutions, national legislation is needed.
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