Unfair Labor Practice Charge on Covid-19 Related Issues

ULP Response – Allegheny General Hospital
Student’s Name
Course
ULP Response - Allegheny General Hospital
Introduction
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was enacted with the anticipation of the brewing tensions between the employers and the employees, particularly on matters to do with basic rights and cases of inequality in bargaining powers between the two parties (NLRB, n.d.). According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the body in charge of enforcing the NLRA and overseeing cases of unfair labor practices, “protection by law of the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively safeguards commerce from injury, impairment, or interruption, and promotes the flow of commerce by removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest” (NLRB, n.d. para. 4). The NLRA, however, failed to effectively anticipate other unfortunate situations that are likely to disrupt the workplaces and potentially cause retaliation by some employees including pandemics, the reasons for the upsurge in ULP cases relating to workers' safety during the COVID-19 pandemic ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"V3qKDKfs","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(The National Law Review, 2020)","plainCitation":"(The National Law Review, 2020)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":3689,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/IBolxqVE/items/D4DT78AM"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/IBolxqVE/items/D4DT78AM"],"itemData":{"id":3689,"type":"webpage","abstract":"Flintville Plastics Inc. is slowly resuming operations at the Michigan plant where it manufactures plastic components for automobiles. The coronavirus pandemic hit the region particularly ha","container-title":"The National Law Review","language":"en","title":"The NLRA in a Pandemic","URL":"/article/nlra-pandemic","author":[{"literal":"The National Law Review"}],"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2021",4,30]]},"issued":{"date-parts":[["2020"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (The National Law Review, 2020). COVID-19 has had major implications to the NLRA, and the concern on the risks of exposure by the healthcare workers makes the interruptions within health care institutions even dire (Damm & Stuart, 2020). New policies need to be enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to address the safety concerns and the confidentiality issues without compromising the NLRA acts. An important point to note is that COVID-19 related cases might also be cases of occupational safety and may attract the attention of OSHA.
Background of the Case
When COVID-19 struck in the early months of 2020, Allegheny General Hospital of address 322 North Avenue Pittsburgh, PA, had to restructure its operations and policies in anticipation of the deadly virus. Among the drastic measures undertaken by the hospital included formulation of policies dealing with the compensation of high-risk workers, quarantine and medications arrangement in case of exposure, facilitation of protective gears, and information dissemination model regarding the pandemic. Due to the emergencies and difficulties that came along with the pandemic, most of the adjustments were implemented in a haste. ...