Vaccine Mandates – the Latest

On September 9th, The White House announced a COVID-19 Action Plan including a directive to OSHA: “The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement. This requirement will impact over 80 million workers in private sector businesses with 100+ employees.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan/

OSHA is expected to issue its ETS within the next few weeks.

The requirements around COVID vaccination and testing have not been finalized, and there are multiple lawsuits in the works from State Governments and private entities.

Also, what has not been included in any initial information, is what constitutes 100 employees. Typical labor laws surrounding a number of employees vary, but generally include more than XX employees within a 75 mile radius, or between commonly owned companies that have some level of common management or purpose.

This mandate may affect your ability to find, hire and retain employees if you are subject to this mandate. A significant portion of the population has demonstrated they do not want the vaccine. Its possible some, or many will proceed with vaccination to stay employed, but others will likely move on and find employment with smaller companies, of which are hiring right now.

At this point, it’s impossible to fully prepare for the outcome of the final rules, should they go into effect, but here are a few steps you can take:

1. Inform your employees about the new mandate, as they will learn of it from other sources.
2. Let them know that the mandate has not been put into effect yet and the company is not making changes at this time.
3. Also prepare for the worst. What happens if 10, 20 or 30% of your workforce decides they are not willing to get vaccinated and decide to resign?

Again, nothing is in stone, and with the volatile political environment surrounding vaccines, no one can predict an outcome. Best practice it to consider the various scenarios and be prepared the best you can.

We will keep you updated but if you have any questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact the HR pros at Infinium HR at hrsupport@infiniumhr.com.