Ten million Americans who work in companies with 100 or more employees are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 4th, or weekly tested for the virus under government regulations enacted Thursday.
The new requirements are the Biden administration’s boldest move yet in convincing reluctant Americans to finally get a vaccine that has been widely used for months – or face financial consequences. If successful, government officials believe it will go a long way in ending a pandemic that killed more than 750,000 Americans.
The requirements were first introduced in September by President Joe Biden and apply to approximately 84 million workers in medium and large companies, although it is not clear how many of those workers are unvaccinated.
Occupational Safety and Health Agency regulations will force companies to require unvaccinated workers to test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week and to wear a mask in the workplace.
OSHA left the option to extend the requirement to smaller companies. She asked for public opinion on whether employers with fewer than 100 employees could run vaccination or testing programs.
Stricter rules apply to an additional 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities that receive money from Medicare and Medicaid. These workers have no way of testing – they need to be vaccinated.
Biden described the problem as an easy choice between vaccinating more people or extending the pandemic.
« Although I would have liked very much that requirements were not necessary, too many people remain unvaccinated for us to be able to leave this pandemic for good, » he said in a statement on Thursday.
Biden said his encouragement for companies to mandate and his own previous demands on the military and federal contractors have helped reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans from 100 million in late July to over 12 to about 60 million now.
These measures had not resulted in mass layoffs or labor shortages, adding that vaccines had previously been required to fight other diseases.
OSHA says companies that fail to comply face fines of nearly $ 14,000 per violation.
The agency will face enforcement problems. Even if you add state aid, OSHA only has 1,850 inspectors to oversee 130 million workers in 8 million workplaces. One administrative official said the agency would respond to whistleblower complaints and conduct limited sample checks.
The publication of the rules followed weeks of regulatory reviews and meetings with corporate groups, unions and others.
OSHA drafted the rules under the Emergency Agency designed to protect workers from an imminent health hazard. The agency estimates that the vaccination mandate will save more than 6,500 workers’ lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations over the next six months.
The rules create potential litigation along partisan lines between the states and the federal government. Several state and Republican governors threatened lawsuits, alleging the government was not empowered to give such extensive mandates under the emergency authority.
OSHA’s parent agency, the Department of Labor, says it has a solid legal footing. The division’s chief legal officer, Seema Nanda, said OSHA rules override conflicting federal laws or regulations, including those that discourage employers from requiring vaccinations, tests, or face masks.
The Senate Republicans immediately petitioned to force a vote to lift the vaccine mandate, but with the Democrats in control of the chamber, efforts are almost certain to fail.
Regulations require workers to receive either two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or be tested weekly by January 4. Employees who have tested positive must be removed from the workplace.
Corporations are not required to provide or pay for testing for unvaccinated workers, but they must give employees paid time off to get the vaccinations and sick leave to recover from side effects that prevent them from working. The mask requirement and the paid time off for recordings come into effect on December 5th.
Employers who are subject to the requirements must verify the vaccination status of their workers by checking documents such as CDC vaccination cards, doctor or pharmacy records, or even their own signed statement.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued a separate regulation requiring vaccination for workers in 76,000 health care facilities and general practitioners funded by government health programs. A senior administration official said several large private health organizations imposed their own mandates and achieved high vaccination rates – 96% or more – with no widespread layoffs.
A previously announced requirement on federal contractors to ensure workers are vaccinated was due to go into effect on December 8, but the government has postponed that action until January 4 to cater to requests from other large employers and health care providers. More than a dozen states have already sued to block the mandate for contractors.
For weeks, Biden has been encouraging companies not to wait for OSHA to act. He has touted companies that have announced their own vaccine requirements and urged others to follow suit.
Workplace vaccination regulations have become more common recently as hospitals, state and local governments, and some large corporations require COVID-19 vaccinations for employees. Mandates have resulted in overwhelming compliance – in some cases, 99% of workers – even though a small but noisy number have faced layoffs, filed lawsuits, or requested exemptions.
United Airlines demanded that 67,000 US employees be vaccinated or face dismissal. Only a few hundred refused, although around 2,000 request exemptions.
In August, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated by November 1. On Thursday, the company announced that more than 96% of its workforce had been vaccinated, including 60,500 people who received their vaccinations following the August announcement.
Walmart, the country’s largest private employer, said in late July that all workers at its Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters and managers traveling within the United States must be vaccinated by October 4th-line workers, however.
However, some companies have raised concerns that some vaccinated workers might quit, making their workforce even thinner in an already tight labor market.
Several corporate groups, including the Business Roundtable, endorsed the mandate. However, retail groups feared the requirement could disrupt their operations during the critical Christmas shopping season. Retailers and others also said it could make supply chain disruptions worse.
The National Retail Federation suggested that the new rules are unnecessary as the US moving average number of new daily cases has dropped more than half since September.
« Nonetheless, the Biden government decided to declare an ’emergency’ during the crucial Christmas shopping season and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers, » said David French, senior vice president of the retail group.
The number of new infections in the USA is still falling after a summer increase due to the highly contagious Delta variant, but the decline has slowed in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average is down 6% from two weeks ago to more than 76,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths per day.
Cole Stevenson, a 34-year-old auto worker at the Ford Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, said he was uncomfortable with a vaccine that was developed only a year ago.
He intends to have weekly COVID-19 tests and says he will not consider vaccination again even if the tests are a financial or logistical burden.
« It gets pretty gross how much the government thinks it can be involved in people’s lives, » he said. « If the whole thing cools down somehow and the falls go down, then get out – don’t force it on people. »
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