WASHINGTON (From news reports) -- The WestRock paper mill has started screening its Longview mill workers at least four days of the week to "further minimize" potential coronavirus exposures.
And similar screening paired with a "rapid saliva" tests could be the key to send residential construction workers back to job sites if Gov. Jay Inslee approves a demonstration proposed by U.S. Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler and Vancouver Mayor Ann McEnerny-Ogle.
"Home builders are already working largely outdoors and are typically spaced out from each other, and they've been deemed as essential businesses in other states. So Washington home builders have been uniformly pressing their case that they're a 'safe' industry," Herrera Beutler's spokesman Craig Wheeler said Wednesday. "Testing could be the additional safeguard they need to convince the governor and his team that they're ready to go back to work."
WestRock last week implemented a COVID-19 screening test administered to employees as they arrive to work on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, said Scott Tift, president of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers Local 153. The company also will pay $800 "hazard bonuses" to all of its employees who have worked through the pandemic, Tift said. Payments are set to arrive in May or June.
"To help further minimize possible exposure to COVID-19, WestRock has enhanced our screening process to include temperature checks," company spokesman John Pensac said WestRock said. "The temperature checks are in addition to other measures that we have implemented, including social distancing and asking employees to answer questions to assess possible exposure to the virus."
The screening requires employees to drive through a tent to answer a short set of questions, including whether they've traveled lately or if they have shortness of breath or a cough. If the answers indicate that the worker could have been exposed to the virus, screeners "stick a temperature scanner through the window and scan their forehead," Tift said.
Anyone with a fever above 100.4 degrees is sent to an on-site nurse for a second round of screening, he said.
Late in March the paper union criticized the company for being too lax in its coronavirus saftey precautions and refusing to work with the union to develop a health policy for COVID-19.
Communication with the company has not improved since then, Tift said, but the union does support the screenings.
"There is always that handful of people that are against anything like that, or they don't think it's that big of a deal. But all in all I think most people are pretty receptive to more precaution," Tift said.
Jim Anderson, a representative for the AWPPW unions at Nippon Dynawave Packaging, said that Longview paper mill has not started similar screenings, though he said members of Local 580 and Local 633 would likely welcome such measures.
"These are tough times. You're glad you have your job, but you're going out, and unfortunately in the paper facilities, on some jobs it's extremely difficult to do social distancing," Anderson said. "But the job of the union is to ensure the safety of our membership. We are not opposed. Anywhere that we've had in the AWPPW where this has been instituted has not been met with any resistance from the union."
Paper mills like WestRock and Nippon Dynawave continued work as "essential businesses" under Gov. Inslee's statewide stay-at-home order, given that they adopted safety measures such as social distancing on the work floor. But several other industries were forced to stop work, including most construction operations.
The work restrictions Inslee put in place to slow the spread of the virus will be lifted gradually, he said, and rollbacks will depend on more testing for the virus, among other precautions.
In a letter to Inslee Monday, Congresswoman Herrera Beulter and the City of Vancouver mayor asked the governor to consider the "potentially life-saving and job-preserving work being conducted in Clark County" at Molecular Testing Labs in Vancouver.
The company is "days away" from developing a COVID-19 saliva test, which could deliver results within two days. The tests also require "minimal contact from health care professionals" and requires less use of personal protection equipment than current tests methods, according to the letter.
"These tests have the potential to jumpstart our efforts to safely reopen our economy and return our citizens to their regular lives," Herrera Beutler and McEnerny-Ogle wrote the letter. "Should they gain FDA approval in the coming days, we encourage you to strongly consider a demonstration project using this technology and strict social distancing guidelines to re-authorize work in a segment of the economy in Southwest Washington."
And if the back-to-work demonstration with construction workers is successful, it could provide a blueprint for reopening other segments of the economy, they wrote.
"We would expect public health experts to work with industry to develop the social distancing and screening policies that would accompany robust testing, and the steps being taken by the Longview paper mill seem like a good example," Wheeler said.
