The holiday season’s usual safety and health concerns for seasonal workers are worsened by myriad COVID-19 safety protocols, safety professionals and labor attorneys say.

“New or seasonal workers represent some of the biggest safety risks and largest numbers of occupational injuries as a general principle,” said Adam Young, partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago.

COVID-19 transmission was already a top holiday safety and health concern before the omicron variant emerged, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration updated its guidance on mitigating the spread of the disease in the workplace earlier this year in anticipation of a surge in cases as social gatherings and holiday travel ramped up. The updates were also due, in part, to the increased hiring of seasonal workers, according to James Curtis, partner at Seyfarth Shaw.

The updated guidance aligned with OSHA’s emergency temporary standard that called for employee vaccinations or weekly testing. The ETS has since been stayed by the courts, leaving employers without clear guidance amid the mandate whiplash, according to experts.

“One thing you really don't want to do, because it's confusing for your employees, is to be constantly changing your policies,” Mr. Curtis said.

“Irrespective of what's happening with the Biden ETS and the courts, the best way to protect your employees from safety hazards — and to limit your potential liability in the event of a COVID outbreak in one of your facilities — is to continue to follow the CDC recommendations,” he said.

By industry, seasonal retail workers are among the most at-risk short-term employees as far as COVID-19 exposure and societal fallout from the pandemic, Mr. Young said. Workplace violence is “one of the big areas of concern,” he said.

“This isn’t the happiest time in the history of America,” said Gregory Grinberg, a workers compensation defense attorney at Gale, Sutow & Associates and managing partner of its San Mateo, California office.

“It's unfortunately very common that someone might take out their stress from this year on some poor retail worker that they're coming into contact with.”

“I think the pandemic is just exacerbating people's stress levels, and we're seeing lots of instances of workplace violence resulting from customers initiating conflict,” Mr. Curtis said.

Potentially alleviating some degree of this threat, Mr. Grinberg noted, is the surge in online shopping.  

“There's not as much person-to-person contact, which helps with both workplace violence and with the spread of COVID,” he said.

On the other hand, the surge in online shopping, amid supply chain disruptions and a labor shortage, has increased seasonal hiring in warehousing and trucking, which may elevate the existing safety risk in those industries.

“Some of those are pretty safety-sensitive positions where a seasonal worker may operate machinery,” Mr. Young said. “A large percentage of our cases involve accidents with powered industrial trucks, so it's a real risk and they have to be trained just like a regular employee would be.”