As the economic and social fall out from the growing novel coronavirus pandemic continues to take shape, The Architecture Lobby (TAL) has published a letter calling on employers to protect the health and welfare of their workers. 

The statement, published on the TAL website, implores architecture firms to “prioritize the health and financial security” of their employees during the COVID-19 crisis, while also pushing them to offer paid sick leave, “full healthcare coverage,” and employment flexibility in this time of social distaning and remote work. In addition, the letter argues that firms will need to adopt “new models of interaction and practice” to survive this crisis while warning that the impacts of the pandemic are “predicted to be far worse than the Great Recession of 2008.” 

As Archinect recently reported, analysts have already indicated that the American economy is dipping into a recession, a fact that has not fully borne out in the industry’s recent economic analyses, but will surely be felt by firms and employees swiftly over the coming days and weeks as construction stoppages take hold and financial markets recoil amid the growing crisis. 

The full TAL statement has been published in full below. 

T-A-L COVID-19 Statement

As we navigate the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Architecture Lobby continues to advocate for improved labor practices and to organize architectural workers towards a more equitable profession. The coming months will require new models of interaction and practice, challenging us to cope with financial uncertainty while doing what we can to slow the spread of the outbreak. We face a new normal of working from home, co-workers falling ill, and project schedules being upended, set against an economic crisis predicted to be far worse than the Great Recession of 2008. In the absence of social safety nets or robust legislative and executive action to support working people, it is incumbent upon all of us to guide our field towards a humane response to the difficulties that lie ahead.

The Architecture Lobby calls on all employers to prioritize the health and financial security of architectural workers: to provide all employees with paid sick leave, full healthcare coverage, flexible hours, and remote work capabilities regardless of their immigration, citizenship, or contract status. The risks posed by the pandemic to already-precarious architectural workers demand a total rejection of abusive labor practices and opportunistic layoffs. These standards should form a baseline for fair architectural employment, and they should be recognized as a moral and pragmatic imperative for accommodating the needs of our profession. In light of federal economic relief that will be primarily aimed at businesses, rather than employees, their widespread adoption will be instrumental in ensuring these benefits reach those who will be most impacted. As we find that the well-being of our society is only as secure as that of its most precarious members, we must meet this crisis and normalize the fair labor practices that could minimize its most detrimental consequences.

We ask workers already feeling the effects of the pandemic to share your experiences and know your rights. We offer The Architecture Lobby as a space of collective organizing and conversation, and will be maintaining a solidarity network in the coming months to facilitate communications about the crisis. Above all, we encourage workers to practice solidarity within and beyond the workplace: check in on your friends and colleagues, make plans to help and be helped, and engage with the support systems that will see us through the pandemic. Social distancing should not mean social alienation or detachment, but can be taken as a chance to build alternative forms of association, infrastructures that can organize resources for immediate relief, as well as fight for transformative change over the longer term: for Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, and the unionization of all architectural workers. 

Sadly, the crisis facing our profession is not an exception to the usual state of affairs, but an extreme case that will exacerbate inequalities and compromises that already exist. It shows the need for just labor practices that have long been missing from architecture, as well as a professional organization that can support all members of the architectural community. Reach out to info@architecture-lobby.org or @Arch_Lobby on Twitter to connect to local chapters, andjoin us to confront these challenges together