Whistleblower Claims CDC Contractor’s Failure to Follow COVID-19 Rules Resulted in Worker Getting Sick

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Brianna Flores, a 22-year-old woman from Mississippi, began working at a Maximus call center this spring in a position where she would be giving callers coronavirus guidelines coming directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She had been unemployed, and was excited to find a place hiring in the middle of the pandemic. However, upon arriving for orientation on March 23 at the Hattiesburg, MS location, she immediately saw the company was not following the proper CDC social distancing and protection protocols.

Among her claims:

The training class was a class of 70 people, forced to stand in close quarters for a long time to even be able to enter the call center and get protective gear
There were no social distancing precautions in place while the new employees were waiting in lines
Trainees were forced to sit together for a presentation, and were then put into a room full of cubicles in close quarters for there training, with barely enough room for all the trainees even without social distancing measures
There were no assigned seats or headsets, and trainees were forced to share a single bottle of cleaner to spray their stations themselves
Days after the orientation, Flores had to enter a two-week quarantine because a trainee from her group tested positive

After the story went public, the company stated it would perform a sufficient cleanup and that no employees at Maximus would have to choose “between their health and coming to work during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

If the company you work at does not properly follow CDC precautions for social distancing and sanitation, you have the right to speak up about the poor working conditions you’ve experienced without penalty. For more information about how to proceed, contact an experienced whistleblower lawyer at Kardell Law Group.

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By Steve Kardell | Published August 24, 2020 | Posted in Employee Rights, Whistleblower Litigation | Tagged covid-19, social distancing, workplace safety

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