Due to immense pressure from businesses, the final deadline for President Biden’s vaccine mandate on companies with 100 or more employees will be pushed to Jan 4, 2022. Part of the reason, despite claims to the contrary from the President, is because businesses are already having a difficult time finding and retaining employees, particularly seasonal holiday help. The final results will see businesses fined up to $14,000 for fist-time violations and up to $136,000 for more serious violations of the mandate testing policies.
With the OSHA rules now released for public viewing, businesses can begin planning how to implement and comply with these rules. Employees who decide not to be vaccinated will be subject to weekly testing with no way to fully opt-out through religious to medical exemption:
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emergency temporary standard issued on Thursday, businesses with at least 100 employees can choose to require their employees all be vaccinated against COVID-19 or remain unvaccinated and undergo weekly testing and wear a mask. The responsibility for enforcing the standard falls on businesses, and Department of Labor officials said they’ll be investigating claims and potentially doing programmed checks to ensure compliance.
The failure to comply could find the business on the receiving end of a nearly $14,000 fine for a first-time or non-serious violation. A more serious breach could prompt the issuance of up to a $136,000 fine for a willful violation, according to Department of Labor officials.
Either get vaccinated, or wear a mask and submit to weekly testing for the foreseeable future if your employer decides to allow the testing option. What this means is that some employers will simply scrap the testing, which is likely the intention due to the burden of implementing it, and simply require vaccination and start firing non-compliant employees in January:
The Department of Labor left the decision to offer a testing option to employees up to individual businesses, so some may choose to require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Biden’s mandate is designed to make life difficult for employees choosing not to be vaccinated. Sure, you can opt-out, if your employer allows it, and then you’ll be tested and masked for however long the government decides. Sounds like a recipe for a fun and fulfilling work life.
The rule does allow the option for businesses to forgo a vaccine requirement, however, and let all employees submit to weekly testing instead of providing proof of vaccination:
That also means some businesses could operate in full compliance with the mandate without having a single employee vaccinated. If they let unvaccinated employees get tested weekly, businesses will not have to cover the cost of testing, according to the Department of Labor.
If the costs of testing come from the government, then some businesses may opt for that route rather than risk confrontations and losing employees over the issue. That still doesn’t mean it will be easy.
However, Biden is delusional if he truly believes the mandate isn’t exacerbating problems like the supply chain crisis and the tight labor market in general:
“As we’ve seen with businesses – large and small – across all sectors of our economy, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose to get vaccinated,” Biden said in a statement. “There have been no ‘mass firings’ and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.”
That statement is demonstrably wrong as all over the country, businesses and local governments attempting to implement a Covid mandate have been met with stiff opposition and threatened employee strikes.
In New York City alone, fire stations are being closed, trash isn’t being collected, and 9-1-1 calls are taking long to respond to as the City sent home workers last week who had not provided vaccination status by last Friday. That included police, firefighters, and sanitation workers.
Biden’s attempt to downplay the issues is the White House simply trying to run block for a policy that is hurting the economy and hurting workers at a time when the country is entering a busy holiday shopping season. Despite Biden’s claims, his vaccine mandate is hurting industries across the board:
The top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), issued a statement on Thursday, saying “job creators should not be forced to become the vaccine-and-testing police for [Biden].”
She said businesses are already dealing with worker shortages, rampant inflation and a broken supply chain.
As for any examples of how poorly this model translates into reality, take a look at California where state workers are already being subjected to a similar burden with mixed results and low compliance:
Nearly 60,000 of California’s unvaccinated state workers are supposed to be tested weekly under a statewide requirement. However, The Los Angeles Times reported that only about half of those employees were being tested during the first week of October. Only 411 of the 3,600 unvaccinated workers at the Department of Motor Vehicles were tested, and Cal Fire reported only 75 of the agency’s 6,700 employees were tested.
The real goal of Biden’s vaccine mandate is to simply beat businesses and employees down until they throw in the towel and comply. The testing burden will get difficult and annoying for employees that opt-out and employers trying to accommodate. The real goal is to pretend there is some way out but make that option hard to achieve.
Then, unlike in California where the state can let its own agencies slide without complying, private companies will be threatened with fines if they don’t tighten up their policies, a move which will eventually lead them to scrap the testing option and just straight-up require vaccination to keep your job.
