Transportation Workers are Essential Support Functions
As the Nation comes together to slow the spread of COVID-19, on March 16th, the President issued updated Coronavirus Guidance for America. This guidance states that: “If you work in a critical infrastructure industry, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, such as healthcare services and pharmaceutical and food supply, you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule.”
Please find guidance on the essential critical infrastructure workforce: Ensuring Community and National Resilience in COVID-19 Response:
The document identifies workers who conduct a range of operations and services that are essential to continued critical infrastructure viability, including staffing operations centers, maintaining and repairing critical infrastructure, operating call centers, working construction, and performing management functions, among others. The industries they support represent, but are not necessarily limited to, medical and healthcare, telecommunications, information technology systems, defense, food and agriculture, transportation and logistics, energy, water and wastewater, law enforcement, and public works.
TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS
- Employees supporting or enabling transportation functions, including dispatchers, maintenance and repair technicians, warehouse workers, truck stop and rest area workers, and workers that maintain and inspect infrastructure (including those that require cross-border travel)
- Employees of firms providing services that enable logistics operations, including cooling, storing, packaging, and distributing products for wholesale or retail sale or use.
- Mass transit workers
- Workers responsible for operating dispatching passenger, commuter and freight trains and maintaining rail infrastructure and equipment
- Maritime transportation workers - port workers, mariners, equipment operators
- Truck drivers who haul hazardous and waste materials to support critical infrastructure, capabilities, functions, and services
- Automotive repair and maintenance facilities
- Manufacturers and distributors (to include service centers and related operations) of packaging materials, pallets, crates, containers, and other supplies needed to support manufacturing, packaging staging and distribution operations
- Postal and shipping workers, to include private companies
- Employees who repair and maintain vehicles, aircraft, rail equipment, marine vessels, and the equipment and infrastructure that enables operations that encompass movement of cargo and passengers
- Air transportation employees, including air traffic controllers, ramp personnel, aviation security, and aviation management
- Workers who support the maintenance and operation of cargo by air transportation, including flight crews, maintenance, airport operations, and other on- and off- airport facilities workers
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and more specifically, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response has defined Emergency Support Functions (ESFs). EFSs are the grouping of governmental and certain private sector capabilities into an organizational structure to provide support, resources, program implementation, and services that are most likely needed to save lives, protect property and the environment, restore essential services and critical infrastructure, and help victims and communities return to normal following domestic incidents.
Emergency Support Functions include Transportation:
https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/support/esf8/Pages/default.aspx