On November 4, 2021, OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) announced the details of the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for Covid regulations in businesses of 100 employees or more. Two weeks later, after a court ruling by the 5th Circuit rejecting the ETS, OSHA announced that they would not be enforcing the ETS.
Whew! It’s like whiplash for business owners, but it’s not over.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals won a “lottery,” which means that they will hear the additional challenges to the ETS. Ultimately, though, it’s likely to end up on the Supreme Court’s doorstep. Most likely, the ETS will not come through unscathed, especially considering the harsh words the 5th Circuit had:
[T]he Mandate is a one-size fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers’ varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly ‘grave danger’ [that] the Mandate purports to address.”
To keep reading, click here: OSHA Won’t Enforce Covid Rules, Pending Court. Prepare Anyway
It’s a good idea to have a plan in place regardless. With climate change causing animal migrations and melting of permafrost, and our continued encroachment of and destruction of habitat (not to mention factory farming), more zoonotic and/or dormant pathogens are likely to emerge into the human population. They’re easily spread around the world in our global society. There WILL be more large-scale pandemics. In fact, I’m surprised we didn’t have one sooner. We can’t afford to forget about it—in terms of preparation, anyway. Businesses should keep what we’ve all been through in mind and incorporate it into their general safety plan to help protect workers.
I have coworkers that I think will be in for a shock when the Dec 6 deadline rolls around. They do not think that they have to comply with the vaccine mandates because OSHA isn’t going to enforce the ETS. But, our employer doesn’t need OSHA to back them, do they? My employer (large government contractor) stated that we all have to be completely vaccinated by Dec 6 or we would go on unpaid leave. The OSHA ruling doesn’t change this, right?
No, it doesn’t – federal contractors are covered under a different policy, although I’m not sure about the dates/deadline:
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/coronavirus-federal-contractor-employees-must-be-fully-vaccinated.aspx
Also, the OSHA ruling doesn’t prevent private companies from instituting their OWN vaccine mandates.
Look at Disney cruise lines as an example of what a private company can do to ensure safety protocols for both passengers and crew. OSHA rules are merely a guideline for safety precautions. But the workers better understand that what the employer puts a standard in place for employment does mean either comply or not continue working. There’s no infringement of personal rights merely choosing to stay or go if the requirements at work are not agreeable to personal desires. OSHA requirements are standard in all workplaces for safety and rest assuredly that OSHA will proceed with getting formal procedures in place. Blame the present administration for jumping the gun on this, but prepare by having safety protocols in place now.
I don’t blame the Administration for “jumping the gun” on the vaccine mandates. To the contrary, the reason America has had such an excessive number of COVID-19 cases and deaths is because our Government has been far too slow in coming up with a National process for testing, contact tracing and vaccinations, all of which are, still, far behind what other advanced countries are doing. The US currently has, approximately, 1,100 COVID deaths per day, the vast majority of which are totally unnecessary. This remains a genuine public health emergency. Who wants to be the last American to die a preventable COVID-19 death?