Compulsory vaccination in the US: impact on companies and employees

The order to be vaccinated against COVID-19 issued by the government of USA It encompasses 84 million employees in large and medium-sized companies.

President Joe Biden said it was vital to inoculate most of the population. While confirmed infections and deaths have dropped significantly since the beginning of the year, rates remain high, especially in certain regions and sectors. The daily average of infections stabilized at about 70,000 per day and deaths at 1,200 per day.

“Too many people remain unvaccinated for us to finally rid ourselves of this pandemic,” Biden said.

Several Republican governors have said they will resist the measure, saying it is unconstitutional.

Look at the new vaccination rules against COVID-19 and its impact on companies and their employees in the United States.

What do the new rules say?

Private sector companies with 100 or more employees should require their workers to be immunized against COVID-19 or undergo weekly tests and wear masks at work.

Separately, the vaccination of medical facility workers who collect money from state medical insurance Medicare and Medicaid was required (there are 76,000 medical centers serving 17 million people). Facilities with fewer than 100 employees will be exempted.

The government says these standards are mandatory, regardless of what state laws say. Some states have said they will go to court to prevent compliance.

Why did the government give this order?

About 70% of adults are immunized in the United States. But they have not been able to stop the infections, especially of the delta variant of the virus.

More than 750,000 people have died from the virus in the country and there are thousands of new infections every day.

“Exposure (to the virus) in the workplace plays a critical role in the spread of the virus,” said David Michaels, professor of public health at George Washington University. “People are exposed to the virus at work and take it home. They infect their children, their parents, their community ”.

How will this order be enforced?

The same as any other labor regulation, based on complaints from co-workers and inspections, according to the government. A company will be fined US $ 13,653 each time an employee is found to violate these standards.

Signatures should ask for proof of the vaccine and record it. They must also show that employees who have not been vaccinated take tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration, according to Allison Kahn, an attorney with the Carlton Fields study, of West Palm Beach, Florida, who specializes in employment issues.

“It’s not enough to take a test at home and tell your employer that you tested negative,” Kahn said.

There are exceptions?

The measure does not cover those who work alone, at home or outdoors. Exemptions can be requested for religious or medical reasons. Nicholas Hulse, an employment attorney for Fisher & Phillips LLC, noted that companies already demanding the vaccine have been inundated with requests for waivers.

He added that, normally, an exemption request for religious reasons is approved almost automatically, but that now “it will be difficult to know if the refusal to be vaccinated really responds to religious beliefs or simply religion is used as an excuse” to avoid the vaccine.

Does this measure cover only private sector employees?

It is a complex issue. In 28 states that comply with the provisions of OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is the one that issues these orders), it covers both public and private sector employees.

These states and territories are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North and South Carolina, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, the US Virgin Islands, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

In all other states and territories, public employees are exempt.

What do companies say?

Some express relief. They wanted to demand the vaccine, but they feared losing employees who went to firms that do not require it. Now they don’t have to take a measure that is unpopular with some people and can simply say that they are obliged to demand the vaccine.

“This measure, to some extent, evens out the workforce,” said Amanda Sonneborn, an employment attorney at the King & Spalding firm.

In any case, companies will continue to run the risk of seeing employees leave attracted by small firms that are not obliged to demand the vaccine, especially at times like this, when there is a lot of demand and companies find it difficult to find people.

A study last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that 37% of unvaccinated workers said they would leave their companies if they were forced to get vaccinated or tested. 70% said they would leave if the test option was not offered.

Will the order survive the demands that are coming?

Across the country, Republican governors will go to court to challenge the order.

“This is rubbish,” said South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who is a Republican, through a spokesman. “It is unconstitutional and we will resist it.”

A Wilson spokesman, Robert Kittle, said they have no problem with the vaccine itself, but rather question the government’s right to issue such an order.

Only ten times has OSHA issued these types of emergency orders, the last of them 38 years ago.

That’s not surprising: When called to intervene, the courts struck down four orders and blocked a fifth, according to the Congressional Research Service.

To take emergency action, avoiding rigorous procedures, OSHA must demonstrate that it is intervening to protect workers from “serious danger.”

The government estimates that it meets that requirement given that the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.