Amazon.com Inc. and other major retailers could face new national safety mandates starting in 2021, put in place by President-elect Joe Biden to protect essential workers from COVID-19 exposure, according to policy and labor experts.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have outlined an agenda focusing on a national response to the pandemic and emphasizes worker protections, including ensuring that all frontline workers gain access to testing and personal protective equipment, or PPE. The COVID-19 protections are one part of Biden's broader pro-labor platform, which has also called for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, nearly double the current rate of $7.25 per hour.

The safety measures stand in stark contrast to the Trump administration, whose Labor Department has not issued any mandatory safety standards amid the pandemic. Biden will be pursuing his labor agenda amid growing unrest from frontline employees of companies such as Amazon and Walmart Inc., who have been advocating for better working conditions since the start of the pandemic.

The Biden-Harris transition team did not respond to questions about its plans, but Biden's campaign website calls on the Trump administration to issue an "Emergency Temporary Standard" to give employers and frontline employees "specific, enforceable guidance" on how to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Any worker safety enhancements could have a profound impact on about 15 million Americans who work in the U.S. retail industry.

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Judy Conti, government affairs director for the National Employment Law Project, said labor unions have been begging since the early days of the pandemic for the Trump administration to issue the standard, which would not require any legislation to be enacted. Potential safety measures could force companies to put a six-foot distance between all employees; provide adequate protective equipment to workers; allow employees plenty of time to wash their hands and offer paid leave for employees who are exposed, she said.

"Because there's no requirement for it, a lot of employers play fast and loose," said Conti in an interview. The National Employment Law Project is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that advocates on issues affecting underpaid and unemployed workers.

"A standard is good for workers, and it's good for businesses as well, and we expect to see the Biden administration move on that extremely quickly," Conti said.

New rules

The new Biden safety measures will have a limited impact on large companies that have already invested significantly in protecting their employees, such as Amazon, Walmart and Target Corp., said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst for Raymond James, in an interview. Restaurants and other small businesses could have a tougher time adjusting to the new rules.

"You're going to have businesses that are too small to comply with new regulations or too small to have the ability to weather COVID," Mills said.

Amazon declined to comment on the potential for an emergency temporary standard, but the e-commerce company has already spent more than $7.5 billion on COVID-19 costs in the first three quarters of 2020 to fund efforts including social distancing measures, temperature checks, masks, gloves, enhanced cleaning, extended pay and benefits, and testing. It plans to spend another $4 billion on COVID-19 expenses during the fourth quarter.

Walmart did not respond to inquiries for this story but the Arkansas-based retailer spent about $900 million in the first quarter on coronavirus-related costs and $1.5 billion on COVID-19 costs during the second quarter. The company spent $600 million on coronavirus expenses in the third quarter and expects to incur more expenses related to COVID-19 in 2021. A Target spokesperson said the retailer does not separately break out COVID-19 costs but that the retailer's coronavirus pandemic response includes investing more than $1 billion this year in team member pay and benefits and safety measures.

Big companies that have invested in safety and worker projections should be well placed to comply with any new rules, Mills said. "There will be some need to ensure that what you have done aligns with any new standard, but for companies who have proactively used science and best practices to protect their employees, this should not be a scary prospect," he said.

That said, companies have plenty of room to improve worker safety standards, especially at a time when they are seeing sales soar amid the pandemic, labor experts say.

Mills noted that there is bipartisan support for a second round of Paycheck Protection Program loans for businesses, but those potential funds are "locked up" in a larger debate over the size of a second stimulus package, which would come on top of the support provided by the CARES Act this year that gave consumers one-time stimulus payments and a temporary $600-per-week boost to unemployment benefits. A bipartisan bill unveiled Dec. 1 by the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is made up of 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans, would provide $288 billion in additional aid to small businesses, including PPP loans.

Any move to create a national safety standard would be part of Biden's broader approach to enhanced worker safety as the coronavirus rages on.

Conti said she expects the Labor Department and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to become more empowered under Biden. Under Trump, the Labor Department has provided "unenforceable guidance" on coronavirus safety so far, she said. Meanwhile, OSHA "is ignoring, for the most part, the vast majority of complaints it's getting about unsafe workplaces," Conti said.

Biden calls for doubling the number of OSHA investigators to enforce the law and working closely with health agencies, local governments and unions to ensure comprehensive protections for frontline workers, according to his plan for essential workers.

Hazard pay

Over the past couple of months, Amazon, Walmart and Target announced additional bonuses for workers. Some retail employees had been lobbying companies to bring back hazard pay ahead of the holiday season, The Washington Post reported Nov. 23.

Amazon announced on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, that it will pay its staff a special recognition bonus, totaling more than $500 million. Full-time U.S. operations workers employed by the company from Dec. 1 to Dec. 31 will qualify for a bonus of $300 while part-time employees will qualify for a bonus of $150, said Dave Clark, senior vice president of Amazon's worldwide operations, in a blog post. All told, the company has spent more than $2.5 billion on special bonuses and incentives for employees so far this year.

Walmart announced Dec. 3 more than $700 million in additional cash bonuses to its U.S.-based associates, which includes $319 million in quarterly bonuses paid in associates' Nov. 25 paychecks and an estimated $388 million in special cash bonuses to be paid Dec. 24. The company says it has invested more than $2.8 billion in quarterly and special cash bonuses this year.

Target said in October that it would award more than 350,000 frontline workers a $200 bonus by early November.

"Almost every big retail company had hazard pay in the spring and almost all of them ended it by the summer, despite billions and billions of dollars in extra profits," said Molly Kinder, a fellow with the Brookings Institution, in an interview.