Shelter In Place
On March 29, 2020, Governor Newsom issued executive order N-33-20.
This order directs all Californians to shelter in place. It states, in part:
To protect public health, I as State Public Health Officer and Director of the California Department of Public Health order all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors, as outlined at https://www.cisa.gov/identifying-critical-infrastructure-during-covid-19. In addition, and in consultation with the Director of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, I may designate additional sectors as critical in order to protect the health and well-being of all Californians
A number of sections of the Health and Safety Code provides the Director of the California Department of Public Health with authority to issue such orders: 120125, 120140, 131080, 120130(c), 120135, 120145, and 120150.
This order does 4 things:
Orders all residents to stay at home except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of one of the 16 infrastructure sectors designated as "critical" by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subdivision of the Department of Homeland Security.
Orders the healthcare delivery system to prioritize provision of healthcare to those who are the sickest, and to prioritize PPE for those providing direct care to patients.
Directs the Office of Emergency Services to "take necessary steps" to ensure compliance.
States it is enforceable pursuant to CA law including, but not limited to, Government Code section 8665.
The consequences of being deemed an Essential Employee
Before we get into the list of jobs, it is absolutely important to understand what it means to be included in this list. There's two sides to this: the labor, and the ethical.
From the labor perspective: If you're an essential employee, you're required to report to work and perform your duties as usual, for whatever value of "usual" applies during a pandemic.
From the ethical perspective: If you're an essential employee, you'll be out in the world sharing air with the coronavirus. If anyone gets sick with COVID-19, it'll be you. Your mortality rate is going to be higher than everyone else staying at home. You will become an infection vector for the virus to spread to those around you. You could be bringing home the virus to your family and neighbors every day. In a normal and just world, you'd be receiving hazard pay for this sacrifice. Unfortunately, as you may already know, capitalism.
Designating new jobs as essential is not a thing to be taken lightly. We are sending people into a war zone with minimal preparation and hoping for the best. When in doubt, play it safe and stay home. If you're an employer, you should be scheduling the bare minimum number of employees needed to maintain operations, and make sure to minimize any single person's exposure. It is your ethical and moral obligation to provide PPE to these front-line people keeping the world alive in a time of crisis.
Unfortunately, we do not currently have any documentation as to an employee's rights in this situation.
Critical Infrastructure Sectors
When the order first came out, there was much confusion as to what jobs are covered under one of these 16 extremely broad sectors:
Chemical
Communications
Commercial Facilities
Critical Manufacturing
Dams
Defense Industrial Base
Emergency Services
Energy
Financial Services
Food and Agriculture
Government Facilities
Healthcare and Public Health
Information Technology
Nuclear Reactors, Materials, and Waste
Transportation Systems
Water and Wastewater Systems
CISA does provide more details on each sector, but it is easy to conceive that nearly any job might fall into one of these with enough debate. The State Public Health Officer is maintaining an official list of jobs that are designated critical infrastructure. It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge list. This list is updated from time to time and this page might not be keeping pace; the most up to date version is on the state's COVID-19 response website.
Please read it for complete knowledge. Here's a short summary:
Healthcare
Workers who provide COVID-19 testing and research
All healthcare providers and caregivers
Hospital and lab personnel, including accounting, administrative, discharge, admissions, engineering, food service, housekeeping, information technology, and more.
Workers in other non-hospital facilities, including community clinics, government health departments, hospices, and cannabis retailers.
Yes, cannabis retailers.
Manufacturers of medical supplies, including the supply chain. This means manufacturers, technicians, warehouse operators, and distributors.
Blood and plasma donors. We're interpreting this to mean that you're permitted to go out and donate blood or plasma without violating the order.
Pharmacy employees needed for filling prescriptions
Mortuary services, like funeral homes, crematoriums, and cemetary workers.
Veterinary hospitals including those who support them.
Emergency Services
Unsurprisingly, anyone involved with Law Enforcement, Public Safety, or First Responders is deemed essential.
Law enforcement personnel, including frontline and management positions.
EMTs
911 call center employees
Hazmat teams
Contracted vendors who maintain (but not develop) digital infrastructure to support emergency services. If you keep the servers alive, you're essential. If you design pretty looking buttons and UIs, you're essential too, but only in our hearts. You must stay home.
Animal Control
County workers dealing with abuse and neglect of children, elders, and dependent adults.
Workers who maintain dams, locks, and levees.
Anyone who supports the operation, inspection, and maintenance of essential public works such as: bridges, water and sewer main breaks, fleet maintenance, construction material suppliers, traffic signals, buried utility locators, and "other emergent issues"
Plumbers, electricians, exterminators, and others who provide services necessary to maintaining safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences. Presumably this includes locksmiths and their dispatchers, but it doesn't include the locksmiths' marketing department.
Support to ensure the availability of facilities, such as road and powerline clearing
Sanitation workers and other jobs that support the removal, storage, and disposal of residential and commercial waste, including hazardous waste. This probably means your county's local hazardous waste drop-off site is open.
Food and Agriculture
Workers who support groceries, pharmacies, and other retail that sells food and beverage, including corner stores, convenience stores, liquor stores that sell food, farmer's markets, food banks, supermarkets, and big box stores that sell food.
Food manufacturer employees and their suppliers. Meat processing, meatpacking, slaughterhouses, bottling plants, and those who produce packaging for food. This also includes farmworkers in the fields.
The same list as above, but for those who produce animal feed and veterinary drugs.
More sectors and jobs TBD. Its a very huge list to transcribe to this page. - V, 3/25
Last updated
Was this helpful?