The Biden administration proposed a bill that would require companies with at least 100 employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or have weekly test results. Immediately after the bill, many Republican governors and other lawmakers made their stance against it, claiming that it was against the constitution.
Although this new rule wasn’t going to take into effect right away as the starting date of it is January 4, a US federal appeals court has decided for a Saturday freezing on the matter.
Protecting the health of workers in every company, including federal and state agencies, has always been the top priority over the course of the pandemic. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, also known as OSHA, has the jurisdiction to act if employees are subject to danger and new precautions need to be taken to protect them.
For the time being, the agency doesn’t see the vaccine mandates as a must to ensure the protection of American workers. That could change, though. There is a significant drop in COVID-19 cases in European countries where the vaccine was mandatory to enter the workplace or with a PCR test done 72 hours prior; we might also need to take a similar approach.
Is vaccine mandatory for work?
At the time of writing this article, there isn’t a vaccine mandate for workers to be present at their workplace. However, that could change if 100 or more employees are working for the company. The vaccine mandate is likely to happen for companies this size, and we expect it to happen to start from January 4, 2021.
When we say vaccine mandate, we need to take the test mandates also into consideration. Though the vaccine is going to be mandatory, you may not have to get vaccinated after all if you’re willing to present a weekly PCR test.