The company will have to decide whether to accept the weekly test label and how to deal with issues such as religious exemptions.
For months, Molly Moon Neitzel, the founder and CEO of Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream in Seattle, has been debating whether to require her 180 employees to be vaccinated. On Thursday, when President Biden announced the enforcement of such required rules, she was relieved.
“We have 6 to 10 people who choose not to get vaccinated,” she said. “I know it will make people on their team nervous.”
Mr. Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement new regulations by drafting emergency interim standards that will require companies with more than 100 employees to mandate full vaccinations or weekly tests for their employees. This move will push the U.S. government and companies into a partnership with almost no precedent and no scripts, which will affect approximately 80 million workers.
Ms. Neitzel said that she plans to comply with the order, but is waiting for more details and discussions with her team before deciding what this will bring. Like many businessmen, she wants her employees to be vaccinated, but is not sure what impact the new requirements will have on the company’s procedures, workers, and bottom line.
Before Mr. Biden’s announcement, the company had already begun to move towards authorization. In a recent survey by Willis Towers Watson, 52% of respondents said they plan to be vaccinated before the end of the year, and 21% said they have already done so.
But the way they vaccinate employees varies, and new federal requirements may exacerbate the challenges they already face.
Religious immunity is an example. In a recent poll of 583 global companies conducted by insurance company Aon, only 48% of companies with vaccine authorizations said they allow religious exemptions.
“Determining whether someone has genuine religious beliefs, practices, or precepts is really tricky, because it requires an employer to understand the employee’s heart,” Tracey Diamond, a partner at Troutman Pepper Law Firm who specializes in labor issues. ) Say.
She said that if the federal mandate allows religious exceptions at the time of writing, then such requests “will proliferate.” “For large employers with a lot of requirements, this kind of personalized case-by-case analysis can be very time-consuming.”
Some companies, including Wal-Mart, Citigroup, and UPS, have focused their vaccine requirements on office workers, whose vaccination rates are often higher than those of frontline employees. Companies in industries facing labor shortages generally avoid performing tasks, worrying about the loss of personnel. Some employers said they were worried that the new federal regulations might cause employees to resign.
“We can’t lose anyone right now,” said Polly Lawrence, owner of the Lawrence Construction Company in Littleton, Colorado.
Gireesh Sonnad, chief executive of software consulting firm Silverline, said he hopes the Biden administration can provide guidance on how the new rules will apply to his approximately 200 employees, most of whom work remotely.
“If this is the choice people want, if I have people in almost all 50 states, how should we conduct weekly tests?” Mr. Sonard asked.
Testing is the subject of many questions raised by executives. If an employee chooses not to be vaccinated, who will bear the cost of the test? What types of tests are required for authorization? What are the appropriate documents for a negative Covid-19 test? Given the supply chain challenges, are there enough tests available?
Employers are also not sure what they need to do to record, track, and store information about employees’ vaccination status. The company has adopted different verification methods-some require digital proof, and some only require the date and brand of the filming.
At the tire manufacturer Bridgestone Americas, a subsidiary of Nashville, office employees have been using internal software to record their vaccination status. The company’s spokesperson Steve Kincaid said the company hopes to create a better system for employees who can’t use laptops or smartphones.
“Have we set up kiosks in manufacturing locations and public areas for people to log in to this information?” Mr. Kincaid asked rhetorically. “These are logistical issues that we still need to solve.”
The Biden administration did not provide many details of the new rule, including when it will take effect or how it will be enforced.
Experts say that it may take at least three to four weeks for OSHA to write a new standard. Once the rule is published in the Federal Register, employers are likely to have at least a few weeks to comply.
OSHA can choose to enforce this rule in a variety of ways. It can focus inspections on industries that it believes are problematic. It can also check news reports of the epidemic or worker complaints, or require inspectors to follow up on irrelevant issues to check whether the records comply with vaccination rules.
But relative to the size of the workforce, OSHA has only a few inspectors. A recent report by the advocacy organization’s National Employment Law Project found that it would take more than 150 years for the agency to conduct an inspection of every workplace under its jurisdiction.
Although the Covid-19 relief plan signed by Mr. Biden in March provided funds for additional inspectors, few personnel will be hired and deployed by the end of this year.
This means that law enforcement may be of strategic importance—focusing on a few high-profile cases in which large fines can attract people’s attention and convey a message to other employers. Workplaces that fail to implement vaccination or testing requirements can in principle pay a fine for each affected worker, although OSHA rarely raises such aggressive fines.
When implementing the new rules, the government did clarify the meaning of “fully vaccinated.”
“Completely receive two doses of Pfizer, Moderna, or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson,” Dr. Rochelle Varensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press conference on Friday.
“I expect it may be updated over time, but we will leave it to our consultants to give us some suggestions.”
Post time: Sep-14-2021
