Recently, the White House ordered all federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Now, the government is imposing a similar requirement on private employers. The move is estimated to affect over 80 million private-sector workers. Some large companies like McDonalds, Anthem, and Google have already initiated the process to vaccinate all workers.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been tasked with drafting an emergency temporary
standard (ETS) and will announce more specifics in the coming weeks. Soon, employers with 100 or more employees will need to adapt their vaccine policies to comply with these new rules or be subjected to potential costly fines.
Soon, employers with 100 or more employees (measured companywide, not by location) will need to enforce one of the following:
- Require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19
- Require unvaccinated employees to produce evidence of a negative COVID-19 test each week
Is your business impacted? Are you prepared to ask, document your employee’s vaccination status and, if necessary, enforce the mandate? How will you maintain the privacy of your employee’s health information? Do you have an established process for reasonable accommodation or exemption requests? Call me to develop a comprehensive plan in time for OSHA’s regulatory announcement expected soon.
