The reason for such a plea is obvious, companies simply want to stop the chaotic disruptions these federal mandates are having on their supply chain and workforce. When companies are spending money defending lawsuits, negotiating with employees, or just trying to fill empty positions, they’re not making money. If they’re not making money, they could go broke. The best time of year for almost every retail business is the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That’s why “Black Friday” is aptly named since it used to be the day that companies entered the black on their accounting sheets after operating in the red all year.
Thanks to Biden’s tone-deaf moves on vaccine mandates set to bomb the economy in early December, some businesses and trade groups are now pleading with the administration to delay the mandate past the holidays to avoid even more disruption and costly federal rules:
The Business Roundtable told CNBC it supports the White House’s vaccination efforts, but the administration “should allow the time necessary for employers to comply, and that includes taking into account employee retention issues, supply chain challenges and the upcoming holiday season.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which met with OMB on Oct. 15, also asked the administration to delay implementing the rule until after the holiday season. Officials at OMB declined to comment.
If you need proof of the disruption, look no further than the supply chains issues we’re dealing with right now, an issue that’s expected to get worse as Biden’s vaccine mandate takes hold on the trucking industry:
The American Trucking Associations, which will meet with OMB on Tuesday, warned the administration last week that many drivers will likely quit rather than get vaccinated, further disrupting the national supply chain at time when the industry is already short 80,000 drivers.
The trucking association estimates trucking companies covered by the mandate could lose 37% of drivers through retirements, resignations and workers switching to smaller companies not covered by the requirements.
The unmitigated disaster caused by losing 37% of truck drivers due to Biden’s vaccine mandate at a time when our supply chain is already buckling seems unthinkable. It can’t be understated that this would be a crushing blow to retailers, consumers, and the entire global economy more than a third of truck drivers walk off the job in December.
Truckers aside, retailers are also begging for the Biden administration to rethink its strategy at a time when many companies are trying to fill seasonal positions but can’t even fill their full-time non-seasonal positions:
Retailers are also particularly concerned the mandate could trigger a spike in resignations that would exacerbate staffing problems at businesses already short on people, said Evan Armstrong, a lobbyist at the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
“It has been a hectic holiday season already, as you know, with supply chain struggles,” Armstrong told CNBC after meeting the White House last Monday. “This is a difficult policy to implement. It would be even more difficult during the holiday season.”
Unfortunately, with Joe Biden at the helm having zero business experience, zero created jobs to his credit, and never knowing how to manage a payroll or hire a workforce, these pleas may fall on deaf ears. Big government liberals tend to think that businesses will absorb whatever the government tells them to absorb, and they’ll afford it because they have secret tax-dodging money hidden all over the place.
Biden wouldn’t understand this, but retailers are staring at some grim possibilities:
Thirty percent of workers said they would leave their jobs rather than comply with a vaccine or testing mandate, according to a KFF poll published last month. Goldman Sachs, in an analysis published in September, said the mandate could hurt the already tight labor market.
Maybe thirty percent is high. Maybe it’s twenty percent or ten percent. Whatever the number is, it’ll hurt retailers at their busiest time of the year and likely cost millions of dollars in lost productivity at the same time.
It seems entirely illogical to depress the economy with a vaccine mandate at a time when the supply chain is causing prices to skyrocket and inflation is running rampant. The Biden economy can be summed up as chaos wrapped in incompetence from a White House that pledged to end the supposed chaos of the last administration. Democrats are slowly coming to terms with the fact that Biden is a dud, and their prospects for the 2022 midterm elections are in the toilet thanks to his mismanagement of the country’s supply chain and economy.
Some industries are calling for extremely reasonable and logical exemptions from Biden’s mandate:
The American Trucking Associations, in its letter last week, also asked the administration to consider exempting truckers from the mandate, arguing that drivers are similar to remote workers because they do not interact with another employee for days or weeks at a time.
If a trucker driving cross country by him or herself is isolated and alone 99% of the time, who cares if they’re vaccinated? It would seem logical to dial back Biden’s onerous and uncalled-for vaccine mandate overreach and start from scratch. Then, let some competent people take over and write some rules that actually make logical sense.
Keep this in mind this holiday shopping season. When things are out of stock, shipments are delayed, and prices are rising, Joe Biden is directly contributing to the problems with his misguided and ill-conceived vaccine mandate.
