New fed vaccine mandate issued: What CFOs need to know now — NEW UPDATE

UPDATE: On Jan. 13, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for large private employers. That’s three days after it took effect. Note: The Court did let the order stand for medical facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid payments.

UPDATE: The employer vaccine mandate is back again! A federal appeals court just dissolved the stay on the rule, so if you have 100 or more employees, you now must comply. One bit of good news: OSHA has announced it won’t start issuing citations for noncompliance until Feb. 9, 2022.

UPDATE: Late last week the Biden administration set Jan. 4, 2022 as the deadline for private employers to comply with the new vaccine mandate. However, on Nov. 6 a U.S. Court of Appeals put the rule temporarily on hold. Stay tuned … we will update you as new developments occur.

Employers with 100 or more employees, get ready: You just got hit with a new vaccine mandate for COVID-19.

Soon your entire workforce will need to be vaccinated (and you must offer paid time off to get vaccinated). And if they opt out due to religious or health reasons, those individuals must be tested weekly.

That’s the upshot of President Biden’s new executive order.

If you fit the bill, you’ll want to start preparing now to comply. The order comes with some costly consequences.

Fines can run as high as $14,000 per incident for failing to follow the new mandate.

However, several questions remain on your part to control the pandemic. Here’s the scoop.

What we still don’t know about the mandate

Hopefully more information on the new vaccine manndate will come out in the coming weeks, but these are the big question marks at the moment:

• When will we have to start complying? The good news: Not immediately. The executive order didn’t take effect right away. The Department of Labor will need to create a rule through OSHA. The less-good news: It will only take a few weeks for them to do that. From there employers will likely have between 50 and 90 days to comply.
• What will count as employees for the eligibility headcount? Are only staffers who go into the office considered in that 100-employee or more threshold? No word on whether remote workers count at this point. If you’re close to the threshold, start scenario planning different counts to find out if there are certain ways you won’t be impacted.
• How will testing work? Besides the fact that testing should occur weekly for unvaccinated no other details emerged on specific types of test required, who foots the bill, etc.

We’ll update you on answers to all of these as soon as the feds release more information. Stay tuned.

Need more information?

The Biden administration’s just-released vaccine and testing mandates sent employers scrambling.

And with the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) developing an emergency temporary standard (ETS) targeting companies with 100+ employees, it impacts over 80 million workers and their employers.

Premier Learning Solutions is offering a workshop, New COVID Vaccination Mandates for Employees: What Employers Need to Know.

Available on-demand

It covers:

• OSHA’s new vaccine and testing requirements for federal and large employers
• the role ADA and Title VII play in employer vaccination mandates
• key considerations when creating mandatory vaccination or testing protocols
• addressing employees who object to vaccinations on religious grounds, and
• using incentive programs to encourage employees to get vaccinated.

Click here for registration and more information.