President Biden recently put out a statement “calling on employers to meet their obligations to frontline essential workers and provide back hazard pay.” While the idea of “back” hazard pay is somewhat counterintuitive, as back pay would not encourage essential workers to stay at their jobs amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this is not the first time that policymakers have floated the idea of mandating national hazard pay. Congressional Democrats included hazard pay in their Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act in May, while Senator Mitt Romney introduced his own proposal the same month. READ MORE