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Half a century after Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, labor advocates say the agency in charge of enforcing the landmark law is failing to protect American workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, affecting more than 7.4 million Americans, with more than 210,000 deaths in the United States, the national AFL-CIO released its annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect

“The AFL-CIO is joining this lawsuit to force the Trump administration to do what it should have done months ago — protect American workers by dramatically increasing the supply of the PPE they need to work safely during this pandemic,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a news release.

The GOP Trump administration’s massive job safety and health deregulation and its lack of enforcement have worsened the toll of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., the AFL-CIO says.

The complaint is another sign of the frustration over the treatment of workers under the Trump administration, and it places the United States in the realm of potential wrongdoing typically occupied by less-developed and less-democratic countries.

When the Supreme Court’s new term opens today, public attention will be focused on the furious and hypocritical effort of President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to ram through Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the v