Led by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican-run states are already gearing up to challenge the legality of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private companies before the Labor Department has even published the rules.
President Joe Biden last month directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a tiny agency that polices workplace safety for Labor, to write rules requiring private companies with 100 or more employees to vaccinate their staff against Covid-19 or test those who aren’t at least once a week.
More than 130,000 businesses across the U.S. are bracing for the new rules, which will apply to roughly two-thirds of the private sector workforce. OSHA told CNBC it delivered its proposal to the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday night.
Deadline is Jan. 4: The first rule, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), covers companies with 100 or more employees and applies to an estimated 84 million workers. Companies must ensure either that their workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or that they test negative for the coronavirus at least once a week.
Workers must get paid time off to get vaccinated: Under the OSHA rule, employers must pay workers for the time it takes to get vaccinated and provide sick leave for workers to recover from any side effects.
Employers don’t need to pay for testing: In a move that appears designed to push workers to choose vaccinations over-testing, the rule does not require employers to pay for or provide testing to workers who decline the vaccine. However, collective bargaining agreements or other circumstances may dictate otherwise.
The mandate, which the White House says would cover 100 million U.S. workers and applies to about two-thirds of all U.S. employees, is being written in part by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Nearly three-quarters of eligible Americans have received at least one shot of the vaccine, and opinion polls have found that most support measures like barring the unvaccinated from public spaces and offices.
Within hours of the new measures being announced on Thursday, some lawmakers, state governors, and political party officials were threatening lawsuits or pledging to defy them.
“When this decree goes into effect, the (Republican National Committee) will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.
Reaction from powerful business lobbying groups has been muted. Some large companies have already imposed vaccine mandates of their own, while others have welcomed the move or wondered how they would implement it. More than half of U.S. companies are planning to impose mandates of their own by year-end, according to a recent survey.
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