Washington Alert: Biden Announces New Vaccination Requirements

Today, President Biden announced strict new mandates from the federal government requiring more than 100 million Americans to be vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19. These requirements will impact ESOP companies with more than 100 employees, health care ESOP companies including but not limited to hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings, and home health agencies, and ESOPs with government contracts.

Employers with more than 100 Employees

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement. This requirement will impact over 80 million workers in private sector businesses with 100+ employees.

Federal Workers and Contractors

Building on the President’s announcement in July to strengthen safety requirements for unvaccinated federal workers, the President has signed an Executive Order to take those actions a step further and require all federal executive branch workers to be vaccinated. The President also signed an Executive Order directing that this standard be extended to employees of contractors that do business with the federal government. As part of this effort, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institute of Health will complete implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people.

Required Paid Time off For Vaccinations

To continue efforts to ensure that no worker loses a dollar of pay because they get vaccinated, OSHA is developing a rule that will require employers with more than 100 employees to provide paid time off for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they are under the weather post-vaccination. This requirement will be implemented through the ETS.

To learn more please visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan/