On behalf of New Virginia Majority and our community members across the Commonwealth of Virginia, we urge you to adopt and implement strong protections to ensure the health and safety of all Virginia workers.

We appreciate the thoughtfulness in DOLI’s approach to developing the proposed emergency regulations, and have some additional recommendations/points of clarification outlined below.

• Worker and workplace protections should explicitly include independent contractors, as many of them are currently on the frontlines, working through this pandemic.
• Required training should be extended to all workers who meet in a physical location, not just to employers of “high risk” and “very high risk” workers. All workers should be made aware of their rights under these regulations.
• Masks should be required at all times, except when eating, or for health or religious reasons as in EO 63, when employees are within six feet of another employee, customer or other individual, not just in customer-facing areas or when interacting directly with customers. Employers should be required to provide masks to employees who unable to provide their own.
• Information about these emergency regulations should be made readily available in multiple languages for non-English speaking workers.

We support the overall efforts and urge DOLI to swiftly implement worker protections. Thank you for your consideration of these recommendations from New Virginia Majority.

Sincerely,

Tram Nguyen, Co-Executive Director