OSHA Delivers Biden’s Vaccine Mandate
“Large” private companies will soon be forced to require employees to get a COVID vaccine or weekly tests to maintain employment.
This week, a month after Joe Biden announced his COVID vaccine mandate on all business with 100 or more employees, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted its proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review.
The Labor Department stated, “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working expeditiously to develop an emergency temporary standard that covers employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or undergo weekly testing to protect employees from the spread of coronavirus in the workplace.”
A “feature” of the new OSHA rule will require employers to give paid time off for their employees to get the COVID vaccine and for recovery if needed. Those companies caught not complying would face “substantial fines” upwards of $14,000 per violation.
It will be interesting to see how the new OSHA regulation will handle another issue — thus far only one of the vaccines, the Pfizer/BioNTech version, has received FDA approval. Will employees who have already received the Moderna or Johnson&Johnson vaccines still be considered in compliance under OSHA’s rule despite the fact that neither has received FDA approval?
Meanwhile, 24 states’ Republican attorneys general have been waiting for OSHA to produce the finalized rule so they can follow through on their threat to sue the Biden administration over this “disastrous and counterproductive” mandate. Biden lectured when announcing his mandate, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.” Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual.
The final observation is the fact that many individuals have decided not to get a COVID vaccine because they have already contracted and recovered from the coronavirus and therefore have natural immunity. Nevertheless, because the Biden administration, companies, and other entities are still ignoring the science of natural immunity, these employees will be ostracized and forced out of their jobs. Indeed, a record 4.3 million workers recently quit their jobs, often because of such mandates. As we noted earlier this week, that has affected everything from police departments to airline flights.
In Boston, 812 city employees — equivalent to 4% of the city’s workforce — were just suspended without pay for failure to meet the city’s vaccine mandate. Now, thanks to Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate, what’s happening in Boston will be repeated across the entire country. Let’s go, Brandon.
(Edited.)