COLUMBIA, S.C. _ Customers should be required to wear masks when they go into a business. Employers should be required to provide their employees with protective equipment. And sick workers should be guaranteed time off without losing their jobs.
Those are some recommendations made by a Columbia city task force looking into business reopenings after the coronavirus pandemic. The public policy committee unveiled the recommendations on a Friday conference call of Columbia's economic recovery task force.
The committee recommended Columbia City Council adopt a resolution asking Gov. Henry McMaster's accelerateSC task force to adopt the standards statewide as the governor allows more businesses to reopen.
"Some of our committee's recommendations were things we felt needed to be on a broader level and beyond just the city limits, because they're really things that need to be handled throughout the community," said Columbia budget director Missy Caughman.
Among the group's recommendations are that customers entering any business open to the public be required to wear a mask, and providing personal protective equipment to all workers.
At least 6 feet of distance between workers and customers would be mandated, and if that isn't possible, then plastic barriers should separate workers from customers and from each other.
Any workers who test positive or show symptoms of COVID-19 will be isolated, and the information will be shared with all employees and the appropriate agencies when cases have been identified.
All workers should have access to hand-washing stations, and employees should have the right to stay home if they or a family member is ill, with a guarantee they will have a job to return to. No workers should experience repercussions or retaliation, either from their workplace or immigration enforcement, if they report violations.
Columbia City Councilman Howard Duvall, who serves on the policy committee, said its members agreed any requirements for reopening businesses should be enforced evenly statewide.
"Our committee's sense was that this is not something that should just be done within the city limits," Duvall said. "We're looking to accelerateSC to put some teeth into these requirements."
Mayor Steve Benjamin said the city council would have to "digest" the request for a resolution, but that he was "pleasantly surprised" by the recommendations from a group that includes several representatives of the local business community.
"Those are some of my more conservative folks," the mayor said.
But Benjamin agreed any business requirements would best be applied statewide. "We don't want one standard for Columbia versus Lexington versus West Columbia versus Charleston or Greenville," he said. "We need as much guidance as possible."
The mayor emphasized that despite calls for the city to take one action or another in response to the pandemic, local activity has mostly been superseded by McMaster's office.
"Except for the curfew and parks and issues with the public right-of-way, we're now exclusively enforcing the governor's executive orders," Benjamin said.
Duvall said he expects the council will adopt a resolution, and added he'd also like to see some kind of coordinated state purchasing of the PPE localities will need.
"It doesn't make sense for 46 counties to be competing with 271 cities plus the state for all this stuff," he said.
