MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A lot of people with underlying medical conditions are worried about what is going to happen at the end of July. It is not currently safe for many of them to go back to work. An extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits from the federal government has enabled them to pay rent and bills, but that is scheduled to go away at the end of the month, as NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Lauren Van Netta lost her job at a perfume store in New Orleans during the outbreak. She says she's had serious bacterial infections that have damaged her lungs and compromised her immune system. And she has asthma, so even if she could find another job in retail, she says her doctors have told her that would be very risky.
LAUREN VAN NETTA: Even with, you know, wearing a mask and six feet distance, you know, it's, like, the fear of - I could make a mistake. And for me, that could be a matter of life or death. So it's scary.
ARNOLD: She says she hasn't been able to find a job that she can do remotely. Before her unemployment money started coming, Van Netta says she sold her favorite pair of boots for $120 just to have some cash to buy food.
VAN NETTA: It was pretty stressful.
ARNOLD: Since then, she's had enough to live on thanks to the expanded unemployment benefits. But that extra $600 a week goes away at the end of the month even for people like her with underlying health conditions. And Van Netta says her state benefits alone - about 200 bucks a week - just won't pay the bills.
VAN NETTA: For people like us, we don't - you know, we don't have a whole lot of options that don't involve risking our lives. And we need help. We really do.
ARNOLD: Democrats in Congress want to extend those expanded benefits, but Republicans have expressed concern that the extra money is keeping some people from going back to work in lower-paying jobs. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Sharon Block heads up the labor and work life program at Harvard Law School, and she's a former senior Labor Department official.
SHARON BLOCK: It's absolutely critical that it's figured out before this expires in July, I mean, especially when you think about where we are in an expanding pandemic and not an ebbing one.
ARNOLD: Block says the added federal benefits are needed for unemployed workers in general but especially for those with serious underlying health conditions. Also, for those people, the conditions that their family members are working in can pose a threat, too.
ALAN: My wife, she has an autoimmune deficiency and takes medicine that suppresses her immune system.
ARNOLD: Alan works as a manager at a real estate company in Alabama. He doesn't want to use his last name because it might jeopardize his job. He says he was working remotely until mid-May, when his employer insisted that everybody return to work at the office. But he says the company is taking almost no safety precautions.
ALAN: I remember even my first day, I was called into a meeting in a conference room with four other people, a small conference room. And I was the only one wearing a mask. You know, in an office of about 35-plus people on a daily basis, I'm the only one that wears a mask when I'm around other people.
ARNOLD: Alan says a co-worker's family member came down with COVID, and still nobody wore masks. He's worried about catching it and bringing it home to his wife, who has the autoimmune disease lupus. He says he's gone through feeling angry, frustrated, disappointed, depressed.
ALAN: It's difficult for me to see so much selfishness - or that's the way that I interpret it - when really, we say we're all in this together. There's millions of people in the same situation that my wife and I are in, with one of us being at higher risk.
ARNOLD: But Alan says he didn't feel comfortable pushing the issue too hard with his employer because he's afraid of losing his job in the pandemic and he has to support his family. Sharon Block says a lot of people are in that same situation.
BLOCK: They're very, very vulnerable to retaliation for speaking out when it's this kind of labor market. You know, most workers have to be afraid that an employer could very easily replace them if they make trouble.
ARNOLD: Block's group at Harvard just released a report on what state officials can do as far as mandatory rules to make workplaces more safe going forward. That's because so far, there are basically no federal safety workplace requirements that are mandatory for the pandemic.
Chris Arnold, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
