Whereas some gig economic system corporations have already taken steps to strive to stop the unfold of COVID-19 amongst its workers, Sen. Mark Warner (VA) is encouraging them to go additional and take into account guaranteeing workers don’t face financial penalties in consequence of the virus.

“I strongly urge that you just try to deal with the potential financial hardship on your workers if they’re sick or have to self-quarantine throughout this time,” he wrote. “So as to restrict the unfold of COVID-19, it’s vital that platform corporations lead by instance by committing that financial uncertainty is not going to be deterrents to their workers following public well being steerage in the course of the response.”

In separate letters to Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates, GrubHub and DoorDash, Sen. Warner laid out a pair of concepts. The primary entails making a particular coronavirus well being fund that will be out there to gig workers in the event that they want to take time without work to get examined or self-quarantine. The opposite concept is to pay workers their common common pay, even when they’ll’t work their regular common hours.

“A well being emergency for which they bear no accountability shouldn’t place an undue financial burden on workers and their households,” he wrote.

Corporations like Microsoft and Fb have been proactive in this regard. Microsoft, for instance, has dedicated to paying hourly workers their common wages even when they’re unable to work in consequence of COVID-19 concerns. Fb, shortly after Microsoft’s announcement, dedicated to paying its contingent workers who can’t work throughout this time of concern.

TechCrunch has reached out to DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, GrubHub and Instacart. We’ll replace this story if we hear again.