Big businesses have increasingly required employees to get COVID-19 vaccines in the wake of President Joe Biden’s announcement for a nationwide mandate, even though the federal government has not yet released the rules.
While several large companies already began issuing forms of vaccination or testing requirements over the summer, Biden’s announcement of forthcoming nationwide rules governing large businesses was followed by a number of companies announcing their own mandates.
Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 9 directing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop an Emergency Temporary Standard that would require employees to be vaccinated or be tested once a week. Businesses could face fines up to $14,000 per violation.
It has now been weeks, and OSHA still hasn’t given further details. The agency did not respond to a request for comment. Some companies, though, are getting a jump on the edict.
Just days after the announcement, Raytheon, which employs about 125,000 people in the United States, ordered its employees to get fully vaccinated “to further protect employees and communities from the risks and uncertainty of Covid-19 and its variants.” The company gave its workers until the end of the year to do so.
BIDEN’S VACCINE MANDATE SPELLS CONFUSION AND WORRY FOR SOME EMPLOYERS
Likewise, consumer products giant Procter & Gamble announced last week that it would also start requiring its employees to show proof of vaccination or provide the company with weekly negative COVID-19 tests. It said the policy was undertaken because of the “the anticipated standard” that will be set by OSHA when it finally crafts its rules.
Brian Marks, a senior lecturer at the University of New Haven who teaches courses in law and public health, told the Washington Examiner that companies are taking heed of the pending directive and developments with the federal government.
Marks said two big events recently occurred that spurred companies to implement their own mandates. The first is the Pfizer vaccine, now being marketed as Comirnaty, gaining full Food and Drug Administration approval in August, and the other is the announcement of Biden’s executive order.
He said he thinks some businesses are using the pretext of OSHA’s pending Emergency Temporary Standard as their “air cover” to go ahead and begin implementing companywide vaccine mandates. He said it’s a bit of “a game of taking credit and ducking blame.”
Business Roundtable, which comprises hundreds of CEOs from the country’s largest companies, addressed the federal mandate during a call with reporters on Tuesday. Business Roundtable CEO and President Joshua Bolten, former President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, said all his group’s members have been actively promoting vaccination among their employees.
“Many of them either have or are moving toward what the administration is now planning to impose,” he said in response to a reporter’s question about the rollout of the vaccine mandate during a news conference. He noted that many companies are waiting until OSHA reveals details of the plan before they pull the trigger on imposing a vaccine mandate.
Bolten said Business Roundtable has been working with OSHA on addressing concerns from some members about how the new guidelines will work. He said it’s important that OSHA take input from the business community seriously and move quickly on issuing the new strictures so that companies aren’t left in limbo waiting as they have been.
Chris Haynes, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Haven, said a lot of companies are waiting until the regulations from OSHA come down the pipe before they fully implement vaccine mandates, but he added that in the meantime, those businesses of over 100 employees have been readying for what is to come.
“Those that don’t already have a vaccine mandate in place, they’re all preparing for it,” Haynes told the Washington Examiner.
There are some serious obstacles that OSHA is facing in rolling out the new regulations. While the U.S. already has a robust vaccination infrastructure in place and getting inoculated is fairly straightforward, the testing clause of the provision may prove more difficult to implement and enforce.
Some questions that remain to be answered are: Who will pay for workers who opt to get tested regularly rather than vaccinated, the government or the employer? What type of test is applicable — rapid antigen tests, at-home tests, or PCR tests? Does the U.S. have the testing infrastructure in place to screen millions of more people per week as part of the mandate? How will the results of each test be accounted for?
The reaction to the vaccine mandate announcement has been mixed among businesses. On one hand, many larger corporations may be thankful for the federal guidance so that they can blame the government for forcing their employees into a mandate, but on the other hand, some business owners fear that the requirements could create logistical and staffing problems.
Eric Lawrence is the owner of Lawrence Transportation Company, a Minnesota-based refrigerated truckload carrier based in southeastern Minnesota with just under 150 employees. He told the Washington Examiner that he feared some of his truck drivers will just skirt the mandate by finding employment at trucking companies with fewer than 100 employees.
“I’m afraid we’ll lose drivers because they’re just not going to do it. And they’re not going to want to comply with the weekly testing either,” Lawrence said, adding that his company is already short on labor.
Businesses are holding their breath waiting for the OSHA guidance. While logistical issues are likely partly to blame for the delay between Biden’s announcement and OSHA’s regulations, legal factors are also at play.
Marks said a factor in what is taking OSHA some time to develop the regulations is that it could face a challenge in court, and the administration wants to ensure that the mandate will hold up against any constitutional arguments against it.
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OSHA will also need to consider exemptions to the mandates. While there are expected to be religious, medical, and objection of conscience exemptions, how those will be approved and enforced is something the agency is likely looking at closely.
While new infections nationwide are starting to trend downward after a summer spike caused by the delta variant, daily cases are still trending above 100,000 — about 10 times what they were in late June.
