By Ben Foldy and Chip Cutter
With more workers back on the job, companies from clothing
retailers to auto makers are increasingly confronting a difficult
question: If an employee tests positive for Covid-19, who should be
told?
Employers are prohibited by federal law from identifying the
infected worker. Beyond that, there is no universal playbook for
whether or how confirmed cases should be disclosed and to whom,
resulting in a patchwork of approaches that can vary widely even
within the same industry. Workers at Volkswagen AG are effectively
able to track positive tests among the staff each day while
infections at Toyota Motor Corp. plants are kept to a tight circle,
the companies say.
The ambiguity has left some workers uneasy about whether the new
and relatively untested protocols rushed into place in recent
months are actually working, especially when some states are seeing
a resurgence in new cases.
"There's no one really correct answer in all this," said Rachel
Benton, a worker at a General Motors Co. assembly plant in Spring
Hill, Tenn. Management "is not really saying much, to be honest
with you, but I don't know how much they can say." GM, which has
around 48,000 U.S. factory workers, said when a Covid-19 case is
confirmed, the plant's medical department interviews the infected
person to identify the most at-risk individuals and instructs them
to isolate. The company also notifies the union's shop chair and GM
supervisors inform shift workers, a company spokesman said. The
spokesman said it believes its protocols are working.
How and whether to disclose positive tests is part of a
balancing act confronting employers during the coronavirus
pandemic. Companies have had to weigh privacy concerns, legal
liability, workplace safety and absenteeism in figuring out
everything from when to test employees to what they can ask them
about their health or living situations.
At Volkswagen's assembly plant in Tennessee, workers have access
through a company app to a detailed daily update of the plant's
Covid-19 cases.
There, they can see how many workers have tested positive and
negative since the plant reopened in May -- there had been 26
positive tests as of Tuesday, combining both self-reported cases
and people tested at work -- and review the outcomes of the
company's contact-tracing investigations, according to documents
viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Workers also get information on
the newest cases and the steps taken to isolate the people who
tested positive.
"If you're transparent with the information then there's no way
that people can create a rumor culture," said Thomas du Plessis,
the plant's chief executive. "It's worked fantastically."
At Toyota, if managers in the company's U.S. factories learn of
a confirmed Covid-19 case, they use contact tracing to identify who
may have interacted with the ill employee within the 48 hours prior
to the infected person exhibiting symptoms and then notify
individuals, the company said.
"Just announcing the number of COVID cases at a given site is
not productive," a company spokesman wrote in an email.
Guidelines developed by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
say employers should inform anyone who has come into contact with a
worker who has tested positive.
Many employers with more than 10 workers are required to log
workplace-related illnesses and injuries -- including Covid-19 --
with OSHA. Any worker can request a copy of the log, which the
company must provide by the end of the next business day.
At Patagonia Inc., an employee who thinks they might have been
infected sets off a chain reaction. Once a worker notes he or she
has had contact with someone who tested positive or is experiencing
symptoms, the company will alert others who work near the person,
said Dean Carter, the outdoor-clothing company's head of human
resources and shared services. If the employee ends up testing
positive, "we immediately quarantine the entire group," he
said.
Managers call employees who work in the same area as the staffer
to let them know they may have been exposed. If the company learns
of the positive case while workers are still on the job, they will
be sent home. Patagonia then pays to send a medical worker to
employees' homes to administer Covid-19 tests and will ask workers
to quarantine.
Should someone test positive at technology startup Fast, which
reopened its San Francisco headquarters to a small number of
employees in recent weeks, the company will notify all employees
via Slack and email, and reach out individually to those who may
have come in contact with the infected worker, says Chief Executive
Domm Holland.
Fast also sends everyone home. The reason: In a small company,
with a little more than 30 employees, shutting down the office for
everyone avoids having to single people out, Mr. Holland said. "You
absolutely aren't going to be shouting about anyone specifically,"
he said.
At a GM assembly plant in Wentzville, Mo., Glenn Kage, a union
official at the roughly 4,150-worker factory, said he learned of
five positive cases in four days last month. He shared his concerns
with the media that the plant was still operating after the local
union had asked that it be temporarily closed for cleaning -- a
request the company denied, he said.
Mr. Kage said the company stopped sharing information with him
on confirmed cases within the plant for about two weeks. He
recently learned of a worker testing positive only through Facebook
but said the company has begun confirming new cases with him
again.
The GM spokesman declined to comment on specific plants.
Some auto-factory workers infected by the virus are
self-reporting their cases via social media.
Jacob Scheeler, a team leader at the GM plant in Spring Hill,
tested positive for coronavirus recently after working part of his
shift at the plant. He said GM took eight names of people he
reported as having the most direct exposure to him, but he felt his
job -- which brought him into contact with workers all along the
assembly line -- potentially put more people at risk.
He wrote on a Facebook page for the plant's union members: "I
tested positive. So please get tested if you know me."
Nora Naughton contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Foldy at Ben.Foldy@wsj.com and Chip Cutter at
chip.cutter@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 01, 2020 07:44 ET (11:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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