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8.A. - Page 20 of 21 <br />In addition to legal challenges, the main limitation of the new ordinances is their narrow <br />scope, primarily benefiting frontline grocery and pharmacy workers. The mandates do not <br />cover other frontline essential workers such as nursing home and hospital staff, home <br />health aides, security guards, janitors, and food service workers—who, like grocery <br />workers, earn low wages and face risks to their health on the job, but whose employers <br />have not financially benefitted during the pandemic. <br />As we emphasized in reports from April and October, the best way to ensure all frontline <br />essential workers receive hazard pay is for Congress to dedicate federal funds for it. <br />However, with federal relief uncertain and local and state government budgets pummeled <br />by the pandemic, government funding for hazard pay may not transpire. <br />In the absence of public funding, local policymakers have several options to expand <br />eligibility for mandated hazard pay. All of them come with trade-offs, as they pass on the <br />cost of wage increases to employers, including some that are barely surviving and others <br />that are holding steady. The following are several options for expanding locally mandated <br />hazard pay, with varying implications for employers based on their abilities to absorb <br />higher labor costs: <br />• Hazard pay for all workers: A more sweeping legislative change could result in <br />higher wages for the widest range of frontline workers. For instance, a successful <br />ballot initiative in Portland, Maine raised the city's hazard pay minimum wage to <br />150% of the normal minimum wage during a public health emergency. But without <br />public funds from the state or federal government to help struggling employers pay <br />for it, a broader mandate for higher pay across all employers could leave financially_ <br />struggling employers in a difficult position. <br />• Generous hazard pay for more frontline workers at highly profitable <br />companies: One low -hanging fruit for local policymakers is to broaden mandates <br />like those in Seattle and Los Angeles County to include generous hazard pay to other <br />workers at highly profitable companies outside of food retail. For instance, discount <br />retailer Dollar General, e-commerce giant Amazon, and delivery company FedEx have <br />earned large pandemic profits while offering little or no hazard pay to their workers. <br />IN <br />