By Emma Goldberg and Lauren Hirsch January 13, 2022
Source: The New York Times
Photo Source: Unsplash, Cuttersnap
A requirement that large companies mandate vaccines or weekly testing for workers was blocked by the Supreme Court on Thursday, leaving the often fraught choice up to employers.
Parts of the rule, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued in November, had been scheduled to take effect on Monday.
Vaccine mandates have been a controversial approach to battling the pandemic. United Airlines and Tyson Foods are among the major companies that already have such requirements, but many others are waiting for legal battles to be resolved.
Walmart, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase, three of the largest private employers in the United States, have yet to issue broad requirements for their staff. A spokesman for Macy’s, which began to request the vaccination status of its employees this month, said the retailer was “evaluating this late breaking development.”
Some companies with vaccine mandates said keeping those policies might become more difficult in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Franz Spielvogel, who owns Laughing Planet, a chain of fast casual restaurants with more than 200 employees, required his employees to be fully vaccinated or submit to weekly testing by mid-January and does not plan to change that rule. But the Supreme Court’s decision frustrated him, he said, because he no longer has federal cover to justify his policy.
“It turns into a bit of a head scratcher for us,” Mr. Spielvogel said, though the recent surge of Covid-19 cases has made him feel more strongly about the need for a mandate. “As a business owner and as an employer and as someone dealing with the public, I want my customers to know they’re walking into a safe place.”
In a November poll of 543 companies by the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, 57 percent said they either required or planned to require Covid-19 vaccinations. That included 32 percent that planned to mandate vaccines only if the OSHA rule takes effect. Seven percent said they planned to carry it out regardless of the outcome. A little more than 70 percent of the adult U.S. population is fully vaccinated.
“Our recent survey suggests that many more employers would have pursued vaccine mandates if the rule was left in place,” Dr. Jeffrey Levin-Scherz, who leads the consulting firm’s clinical response to the coronavirus, said in a statement.
Some companies have been concerned about losing employees when workers are already scarce, and although firms with mandates have said those concerns have largely not come to fruition, a national requirement could have further eased those concerns.
The National Retail Federation, which was one of several trade groups to sue the administration over the mandate, called the Supreme Court’s action a “significant victory for employers.” The organization said it “urges the Biden administration to discard this unlawful mandate and instead work with employers, employees and public health experts on practical ways to increase vaccination rates and mitigate the spread of the virus in 2022.”
Some local and state laws still require employers to mandate vaccines or weekly testing. New York City, for example, has a more stringent rule than the federal government’s, requiring all on-site workers to be vaccinated. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state vaccine mandates, and it did not limit the ability of employers to create their own requirements.
But other states have laws blocking mask and vaccine mandates, which the federal rule would have pre-empted. With the Biden administration’s rule blocked, many employers in those states will be unable to require vaccines, said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and a professor at George Washington University and a former OSHA administrator.
Have you been required or mandated to take the COVID vaccine? By whom? How has it impacted your health? Did you catch COVID 19 after being vaccinated?
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