Hazard Pay Approved for Penn. COVID-19 Frontline Workers

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

Front-line workers who face risk from coronavirus at work are eligible for additional “hazard pay” of $3 an hour under a federally funded $50 million program announced by Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday.

Using federal CARES Act money, Wolf said at a press conference government wants to “say thank you to the people who have been at the heart of our ability to make it through this pandemic.”

The pay boost would last for 10 weeks and would have a maximum of $1,200 per employee.

Assisted living facility and hospital workers, grocery store employees, farm workers and ambulance and bus drivers — just to name a few categories — are eligible for the program, Wolf said. A key criteria is that they must make less than $20 an hour.

“They have been putting their lives on the line for us,” Wolf said, standing in a supermarket parking lot. “They interact with the public. That is unavoidable in all of these jobs, and with COVID-19 that has brought increased risk to those interactions.”

The program is structured for employers, not employees, to file applications to the state Department of Community and Economic Development starting Thursday. Information is available on the DCED website.

Wolf said the applicants may apply for up to $1,200 per eligible full-time equivalent employee, for up to 500 employees per location.

The legislative bill that allowed the state program to use the federal emergency money was sponsored by Lehigh County Republican Sen. Pat Browne.

Businesses, health care nonprofits, public transportation agencies, and certified economic development organizations can apply. The following industries are eligible:

• Health care and social assistance
• Food manufacturing
• Food retail facilities
• Transit and ground passenger transportation
• Certain security services and commercial industries that were not closed as a result of Wolf’s business shutdown order
• Janitorial services for buildings and dwellings

DCED Deputy Secretary Carol Kilko said the window for applying for grants is small. The deadline to apply is July 31.

She said, “We need to get this money on the street as quickly as we possibly can.”