On September 10, President Biden announced a new six-point plan to continue to combat COVID-19. As part of this plan, 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.
Additionally, Department of Labor 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.
The President also announced the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking action to require COVID-19 vaccinations for workers in most health care settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement, including but not limited to hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings, and home health agencies.
Additionally, the plan requires federal employees to get vaccinated within 75 days or risk termination (which would remove the option for weekly testing in lieu of vaccination), extends the federal employee vaccination requirement to federal contractors, urges schools to set up regular testing based on community spread and expands free COVID testing.
Should you have any questions, please contact Hilary Chebra, Manager of Government Affairs at hchebra@chambersnj.com.
