The first deadline for the Biden Administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for companies with more than 100 employees is next week, but the mandate will be at the center of a special U.S. Supreme Court hearing Friday. Various states, businesses, and religious organizations contested OSHA’s authority to create the rule. A group of business groups representing retail, wholesale, warehousing, transportation, travel, and logistics filed one of the first petitions with the high court, raising among other issues the potential for workers to quit rather than take the shot.
While no one knows at this point whether the ETS will survive the legal challenges, compliance deadlines are coming quickly. Waiting for clarity from the courts may leave little time for employers to prepare policies and practices if the ETS is upheld. Companies have until Jan. 10 to develop compliant policies, and OSHA stated it will wait until February 9, 2022, to start enforcing the optional testing component of the ETS.
NUCA has been closely tracking this issue, issuing a notice to all members on Dec. 29 about coming compliance deadlines. We will report on this story in the next NUCA@Work, and via our social media channels. Find out more at nuca.com/vaxmandate. Read more hereand see our most recent updates to this story here.