Letters

We must do a better job protecting our essential workers. While most of us spent the last seven weeks sheltering in place, modern-day heroes left their families and the safety of their homes to put their lives at risk to protect the rest of us and/or make our isolation more bearable.

Whether it was the doctors and nurses and other health care workers on the front lines, or the delivery people at the U.S. post office and other delivery providers who kept packages and mail flowing, or the employees in our supermarkets who kept produce on the shelves and worked the cash registers, or the cooks at local restaurants who cooked the delicious meals we had delivered to our doors.

Perhaps the best example of essential workers who are at risk are the meatpacking employees and others responsible for our food supply — they are getting sick in record numbers but have been ordered to continue to work to provide for the rest of us.

What can we do for them? Hazard pay might be a good start. Perhaps people who perform such essential roles in times of crisis deserve better compensation for the risks they take?

What about better health insurance? The irony is that many of these workers have the worst health insurance plans, or even none at all.

It’s great to see New Yorkers and others cheer for the medical professionals nightly at 7 p.m., but our society owes them more than just words of gratitude. Our stimulus packages enacted so far are meant to take care of big and small business, and protect employees through trickle-down effects. But many of the essential workers got lost in the shuffle, and Congress has a duty to reward them as well.

Paid sick leave for everyone, better enforcement of workplace safety regulations, even testing availability for all front-line workers — all of these items seem like a cheap price to pay for the services provided. What if deliveries stopped, the supermarkets could not open and sell goods, or the food chain came to a halt?

It’s time to make our society fairer, especially for the people whose services we rely on so the rest of us can survive. It doesn’t seem like this is too much to ask.

Perry Gershon

East Hampton

Mr. Gershon is a Democratic candidate for the 1st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives — Ed.