On May 11th, PRINTING United Alliance published a First To Know alerting the industry regarding the passage of the New York Health and Essentials Right Act, more commonly referred to as the HERO Act. The Act requires each business, including printing operations, in the state to establish a written exposure prevention plan (Exposure Prevention Plan) designed to eliminate or minimize employee exposure to airborne infectious agents in the event of an outbreak of airborne infectious disease. The plan can either be developed by the company or they can follow a model plan issued by the New York State Department of Labor (NY DOL).
On July 6th, the NY DOL published its model plans, including one for the manufacturing industry which triggered the 30-day compliance deadline outlined in the HERO Act. If your plant is operating in the state of New York, here are the next steps you need to take to come into compliance with this legislation:
-
Adopt a plan by August 5, 2021. All employers must adopt a plan by August 5, 2021. While employers can develop their own plans, the NY DOL has provided a model plan for manufacturing and industry
-
Once you have adopted a plan, you must provide the plan to all employees within 30 days of adoption, and to all new employees when hired. The plan must be provided in English and in the language identified by each employee as their primary language if a model standard is available in that language. Currently, the model plan is only available in English.
-
All employers must post the plan in a visible and prominent location.
-
If you have an employee handbook, then the handbook must be updated to include the prevention plan.
These plans ONLY need to be implemented when the Commissioner of Health designates an airborne infectious agent or disease as a highly contagious communicable disease that presents a serious risk of harm to the public health. As there is no current designation, employers are not required to IMPLEMENT the plan, but a plan must be in place.
Next implementation date: November 1, 2021. The Act requires employers with 10 or more employees to permit their employees to establish and administer joint labor-management workplace safety committees to help ensure worker safety. The Department of Health will be working towards the adoption of rules and regulations related to the implementation of workplace safety committees.
PRINTING United Alliance will continue to keep the industry updated on developments regarding implementation of the NY HEROS Act. For more information, or if you have questions, please reach out to Marci Kinter, mkinter@printing.org, Gary Jones, gjones@printing.org, or Adriane Harrison, aharrison@printing.org.