OSHA New Vaccine Mandate

The Biden Administration announced on September 9, 2021 that the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing an Emergency Temporary Standard that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to make sure that their staff is fully vaccinated or to require unvaccinated workers to provide a negative COVID-19 test result at least once per week before commuting.

The White House also stated that OSHA is working on an Emergency Temporary Standard that would compel companies with 100 or more employees to give paid time off for vaccination and recovery. As we previously noted, this obligation had been implemented for employers in the healthcare industry via the Emergency Temporary Standard, but it had not yet been extended to companies in other industries.

These new criteria were introduced alongside a slew of other initiatives spearheaded by the Biden administration to boost immunization, including:

• An Executive Order mandating that all government executive branch employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, with no option for weekly testing, as was previously provided in July;

• An Executive Order requiring federal government contractors’ workers to comply with the above-mentioned immunization requirements;

• COVID-19 vaccines are required for workers in most healthcare settings that accept Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement, notably hospitals, dialysis centers, ambulatory surgical settings, and home health agencies, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This expands on a previously discussed requirement that only applied to nursing homes;

• and Calling on big entertainment venues, such as sports arenas, large concert halls, and other venues in which large numbers of people gather, to require their attendees to be vaccinated or show a negative test for entry.