Is it? Why is that so important that it's worth not aiding millions of people who are dropping into poverty?

I can't tell if this is a question posed in earnest, because I wouldn't expect a reaction like that to "corporations are designing and feeding Congress a liability shield so that they don't have to spend money protecting their workers."

The "aid" is a red herring if you are setting up those same people for dangerous situations with zero accountability from the people who are forcing them to put themselves in hazard's way.

It is myopic to think that a smaller stimulus bill (that would barely cover 1 month's expenses for the average American -- recall that it's been 8 months since the first stimulus) would be proposed for anything except to stave off the fervor of mass civil unrest for a short while longer.

The standard is OSHA writing rules that govern workplace safety. What we have now is a bunch of soft "when feasible" and "if possible" recommendations and no rules save for what each state/county give on their own, which are usually also pretty squishy.

Absent a written standard from the government body in charge of these things, it's a free-for-all of liability. So I open my restaurant following local standards and a customer gets COVID and sues me because I used disinfectant X when I should have used Y, or the staff was wearing mask A instead of mask B, or whatever.

I don't think its unreasonable whatsoever to - again, absent the proper rules - ask for protection in this case. Folks like to characterize this as "protecting big corporations" but if you read the proposal it protects school, universities, hospitals, and so forth as well.

It shifts the risk from business to employees without commiserate compensation. For an economy built around risk-reward, why should employees have to assume more risk while their reward remains the same?