NY HERO Act Requires Dealers to Have a Plan to Prevent Spread of COVID and Other Airborne Infectious Diseases
/Last week, Governor Cuomo signed the New York Health and Essential Rights Act (HERO Act) into law, making NY the first state to put healthcare protections imposed during the COVID crisis into permanent law. The HERO Act imposes two significant changes on all private-sector employers.
1. Plan to Prevent Airborne Infectious Diseases
Employers will need to draft, provide notice about, and post their written “airborne infectious disease exposure prevention plan." The prevention plan must include and address a number of topics, including but not limited to: health screenings, face coverings, personal protective equipment, hand hygiene, cleaning and disinfecting of shared equipment and common use surfaces, and social distancing.
The New York Department of Labor (DOL) must develop model prevention plans for all industries, which it is yet to do. Once these models are published, dealers are free to use the DOL model or adopt their own alternative plan that equals or exceeds the DOL model standards. We anticipate that these plans will be similar to those dealers already have in place, as they were required in order to comply with the New York Forward Reopening Plan. GNYADA will alert you when the DOL publishes its model prevention plan.
2. Workplace Health and Safety Committee
By November 1, 2021 employers must allow employees to establish a joint employer-employee workplace health and safety committee authorized to raise health and safety issues and evaluate workplace health and safety policies. The committee is empowered to:
Raise health and safety concerns which the employer must respond.
Review any current workplace policy relevant to the HERO Act and provide feedback to the employer.
Review the adoption of any policy in the workplace in response to any health or safety law, ordinance, rule, regulation, executive order, or other related directive.
Participate in any site visit by a government regulator responsible for enforcing safety and health standards.
Review any report filed by the employer related to the health and safety of the workplace.
Conduct committee meetings at least once per quarter.
What Dealers Should Do
Review your current health and safety policies, such as your required COVID-19 Safety Plan
Ensure staff are aware that new requirements will have to be in place soon
Train staff to ensure they do not retaliate if/when an employee raises safety concerns under this new law
Monitor GNYADA emails for updates about this new compliance requirement.
Should you have any questions, call the Association’s Compliance team at 718-746-5900.
