As economy reopens, Texas workers need protection now
By Houston Chronicle Editorial Board
Can you be essential and disposable?
When it comes to many of the people we depend on during the pandemic — whether for manning our hospitals, processing our food or stocking store shelves — the answer has been a callous shrug. Across the country, as front-line workers get sick and die, our message to them has been as simple as it is shameful: You are needed. You are vital. But don’t expect us to keep you safe.
Meat and poultry processing plants in Texas have turned rural counties into coronavirus hot spots, with workers forced to stand side by side regardless of the danger. Health care workers have not only struggled with lack of protective equipment, they were left out of expanded paid sick leave protections by Congress. Grocery store workers are required to wear masks to protect the public, but customers too often fail to return the favor.
This is outrageous and a dark omen as retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls prepare to reopen Friday following Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order. His approach to reopening has been appropriately measured, but if more isn’t done to ensure worker safety, the new order will put even more workers at risk of serious illness or death.
It is not enough to thank them for their service or to appreciate their sacrifice. We must do all we can to make sure workers are protected. That means demanding state and federal governments attune workplace safety rules to fit the immediate crisis.
“So many people are going to be facing these horrible choices of weighing their safety, and the public’s safety, against what for many is a desperate need to have a paycheck,” Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy told the editorial board.
So far, neither federal nor state governments have adopted standards to safeguard workers from the novel coronavirus, and those who refuse to work out of safety concerns have little recourse.
Texas doesn’t have any agency with oversight over workplace safety, so it is up to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA has taken a largely hands-off approach and been slow to address complaints, worker advocates said. It has failed to issue specific guidelines for employers on dealing with the pandemic, limiting its own ability to enforce safety issues related to the outbreak.
Without a clear set of rules, workers must rely on their employers to do the right thing. Fortunately, some have.
Responsible companies, such as the 151 businesses who have signed on to the Greater Houston Partnership’s Work Safe program, have agreed to much-needed common-sense safety measures, including allowing employees to work from home when possible, implementing social distancing, requiring sick workers to stay home and adjusting paid sick leave policies.
Pandemic another hit to Texas schools
By San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board
Texas school administrators’ worst fears about the sweeping school finance legislation approved during the last legislative session are about to become a reality.
House Bill 3, which carried a $6.5 billion price tag for the biennium and included an additional $5 billion in property tax relief, was hailed as one the best things to happen to Texas public education in a long time.
But even as educators and administrators applauded the move, they also fretted there were no designated revenue streams to underwrite the plan beyond 2021. The 86th Legislature relied on nonrecurring sources of revenue to fund full-day care for qualifying 4-year-olds, expand dual language and dyslexia programs, provide teacher raises and increase services to low-income students.
There were well-founded concerns among educators — who have struggled to operate an inadequately funded public school system for decades — that the increased funding would be short-lived. What would happen in the next biennium when the cost for the 2022-23 budget would increase to $13.5 billion, they asked. What was Plan B in the event of an economic downturn?
Those questions remain unanswered as school districts prepare their budgets for the next school year in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Forced business closures have substantially reduced local and state government budgets. Plummeting gas and oil prices are painting a grim economic future. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is expected to issue a revised revenue estimate for the current state budget, which runs through August 2021, in July. The only question is, how awful will these numbers be?
School administrators are preparing for the worst. As they look to the 2020-21 school year, they are eying slower expansion of pre-K programs, elimination of pay raises and even the possibility of layoffs, the Express-News reports.
All this comes at a time when public schools are facing a great need and have emerged as key community centers, providing meals, checking on students and scrambling to bridge the digital divide. School administrators should be focusing their energies on dealing with the expected learning slide due to COVID-19’s disruption of regular classroom instruction. The digital divide and parents’ inexperience in home-schooling have made online learning an unequal experience and left many students behind.
Instead, school officials are having to figure out how they can stretch budgets even further. They have been down this road before. In 2011, lawmakers cut $5.4 billion in public school funding to balance a post-recession revenue shortfall.
That slashing of funds left school districts reeling and resulted in a lawsuit, marking the seventh time since 1984 school districts looked to relief over the level of state spending on public education.
In 2016, the Texas Supreme Court found the state’s public school finance system is constitutional but deeply flawed.
“It is safe to say that the current Texas school system leaves much to be desired. Few would argue that the state cannot do better,” wrote Justice Don Willett in the 100-page opinion issued almost four years ago.
State leaders vowed to address the inequities. Now, it looks like all the public education funding gains made last legislative session will be lost, and once again the state’s budget will be balanced on the backs of the state’s public school children, and at the expense of the future.
