Live Updates

By Antonia Noori Farzan, Teo Armus, Jennifer Hassan, John Wagner, Kim Bellware, Brittany Shammas, Lateshia Beachum, Hannah Denham and Adam Taylor
7/23/2020, 2:43:52 p.m.

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CBP, ICE and TSA employees join class-action lawsuit against Trump administration for coronavirus hazard pay

Employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration are among the latest federal employees suing the Trump administration for hazard pay they claim they’re entitled to for being exposed to the novel coronavirus on the job.

Lawyers representing the individual employees on Wednesday amended the class-action lawsuit to add new plaintiffs from at least nine federal agencies, including parts of the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department.

The lawsuit, first filed in federal claims court in March, was initially brought by federal employees in roles like a Bureau of Prisons supervisor, a commodity grader with the Agriculture Department and a radiographer with Department of Veterans Affairs.

The employees claim that under a federal labor statute, they’re entitled to hazard pay equal to at least 25 percent of their wages as they were exposed to “hazardous working conditions through the performance of their assigned duties and that the hazardous duty had not been taken into account in the classification of their position.” The lawsuit argues the coronavirus is a “virulent biological” that also qualifies them for environmental pay.

“This is hitting the federal workforce harder and harder. The federal government doesn’t seem to have learned from mistakes in the past or improved at all to save people’s lives,” attorney Heidi Burakiewicz, who is representing the plaintiffs, told The Washington Post on Thursday.

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