Washington, D.C. — The following are opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, from Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR) during today’s hearing titled, “Protecting Transportation Workers and Passengers from COVID: Gaps in Safety, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps.” See video of Chair DeFazio's opening statement here. More information on the hearing can be found here.
Chair DeFazio:
Today, we are here to discuss one aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on the U.S. transportation system, its workers and its passengers, the gaps that still exist in protecting these workers and passengers from the virus, the lessons that have been learned from the Federal Government’s response to the pandemic so far, and potential next steps to better protect transportation workers and passengers from COVID-19 and any future public health crisis we may confront.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a public health catastrophe and economic disaster for our country and a calamity for the world. Still, the chaotic, contradictory, and lackluster federal response inarguably made things much worse than they needed to be, cost more lives, and created the conditions that exacerbated the widescale spread of the disease across our nation. The COVID-19 virus has now taken the lives of more than 440,000 Americans to date and infected more than 26 million others in the U.S. alone.
And it has hit the transportation sectors hard. The reduction in mass transit riders and air passengers has led to devastating economic consequences for local, regional and state governments, transit agencies, and commercial airlines. The maritime and trucking industries have also suffered dire economic consequences. Our transportation networks will take a long time to recover financially, and they may be forever altered fundamentally by changing workplace practices. Transportation workers in particular have been hard hit by the devastating health dangers and significant financial repercussions of the public health crisis our nation continues to face. The Transportation Trades Department, which represents a lot of those transportation workers, is sharing some of those stories online as we speak and I would encourage people to check out “COVID transportation stories” on Twitter to hear even more examples of why today’s hearing is so important.
I am thankful, however, that we now have a common-sense national strategy unveiled by the Biden administration on its first day in office to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. It won’t be easy. There is no immediate fix. More lives will be lost in the weeks and months ahead. Correcting the damage that has already resulted from waiting so long to lead the nation out of this public health crisis will take time. A long time. In the meantime, this Committee will help lead the way in protecting the health and safety of transportation workers and passengers. I believe there is hope on the horizon.
The U.S. transportation network and its workers play a critical role in keeping passengers and freight moving to their destinations on time. During the pandemic they have helped to get personal protective equipment (PPE) to where it needed to go via air, sea, rail and truck. Maritime workers are keeping our economy running by moving cargo through our ports. Bus drivers and rail operators are helping transport doctors, nurses, and American workers engaged in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic to their essential jobs. All of these efforts and others have put transportation workers—and continue to put transportation workers—at a high-risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus. The close quarters, large numbers of individuals that travel on transportation systems, and frequent trips make transportation workers particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
Truck drivers and bus drivers, delivery personnel, mechanics and engineers, maritime workers, pilots and flight crews, and railroad conductors have all been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic economically, socially, and medically. Many have been infected with the virus and some have lost their lives. For many months, I have pushed for a national mask mandate to protect transportation workers and passengers from the risk of being infected with the COVID-19 virus. A lack of federal resolve by the Trump administration to implement uniform national policies on this basic and most critical public health safety measure has led to confusion and confrontation.
Flight attendants and bus drivers have been harassed, beaten, and attacked while carrying out their job duties trying to protect themselves and their passengers from those who refuse to wear a face mask. We owe all of these workers a debt of gratitude for their commitment and their courage for showing up for their jobs every day to move America.
Unfortunately, efforts to rely on science to protect transportation workers and passengers from COVID-19 were often impeded and ignored by the Trump administration. According to the New York Times, the CDC drafted an order in September 2020 under its quarantine powers that would have required all passengers and employees to wear face masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the United States, but it was blocked by the White House.
In addition, the White House reportedly prevented the CDC from extending its original No Sail Order for cruise ships to mid-February. The Trump administration also failed to use its statutory powers to enforce fundamental health and safety best practices in the workplace to help protect transportation and other workers from the COVID-19 pandemic by holding employers responsible for this basic duty.
As Dr. David Michaels, the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Obama administration and one of our witnesses here today has pointed out, the Trump administration steadfastly refused to implement regulations that would protect transportation workers and the American workforce at large from the deadly risks of the COVID-19 virus.
While there are federal regulations requiring workers to wear hard hats in construction sites and their employers face financial penalties if they do not, the Trump administration was unwilling to issue mandatory workplace requirements surrounding some of the hard facts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic: that wearing face masks saves lives, that physical distancing prevents the spread of the virus, that proper ventilation systems can help diminish COVID-19 infections. These are hard scientific facts and the lack of clear, comprehensive, and mandatory measures to protect transportation workers and passengers from the COVID-19 virus has cost lives and spread infections among co-workers, into their local communities and across the nation.
We must do better. There is hope on the horizon with a vaccine, new plans by the Biden administration to double the Nation’s testing capacity, and to mobilize 100,000 Americans in a new U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps to conduct contact tracing, and implement a national mask mandate.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about these important issues.
With that I yield to Ranking Member Graves. Thank you.
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