Biden’s COVID-19 action plan toggles between hard, soft vaccine mandates

October 2021 employment law letter

Authors:

Grant T. Collins, Felhaber Larson

President Joe Biden’s new COVID-19 action plan is using his regulatory powers to try to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans, estimated to be more than 80 million people. The plan includes both “hard” mandates for certain healthcare workers and federal employees and “soft” mandates for private-sector workers in businesses with more than 100 employees. In addition, it will provide paid time off (PTO) for most workers to get vaccinated. Read on to learn more.

Soft mandate for private employers with 100+ employees

Under the first prong of President Biden’s plan, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to mandate they either:

Receive the COVID-19 vaccine; or
Submit to weekly testing.

To be clear, the new OSHA standard will apply to all employers with 100 or more employees. Here is a statement from the White House:

[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.

Hard mandate for federal employees, federal contractors

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