The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last week released requirements for the “vaccine mandate” President Joe Biden announced in September. The “emergency temporary standard” (ETS) has since been halted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. But if the standard ultimately comes into force on January 4, it will apply to employers with at least 100 employees, requiring them:
to develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy
or else
enforce a policy allowing employees who are not fully vaccinated to elect to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at the workplace.
The OSHA regulations will require that businesses implement procedures to obtain proof of vaccination among employees, grant workers up to four hours of paid time off for each vaccination dose, facilitate sick leave for recoveries from vaccination side effects, and introduce systems for weekly testing of still unvaccinated employees.
The standard does not expressly require employers to front the cost of the testing requirement, though they note that other state and federal laws or collective bargaining agreement terms may require that. Even if employers do not have to cover testing costs, compliance costs are estimated at $2.9 billion for covered entities overall.
What happens if this standard proceeds and companies are found to violate it?
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