Legal scrutiny of OSHA’s pending vaccine mandate is ramping up, as Arizona’s attorney general has filed what appears to be the first suit to block the rule while unions that challenged the agency’s earlier COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector are suspending that suit to consider how the agency’s new policy will affect it.
OSHA’s forthcoming COVID-19 vaccination rule is getting a cautious reception from labor and work-safety groups, with several saying “the devil is in the details” and urging officials to carefully balance concerns for worker safety and privacy while maintaining calls for a broader workplace health rule.
Republican governors are vowing to oppose President Joe Biden’s newly announced plan for OSHA to mandate strict COVID-19 vaccination requirements for private-sector employers, threatening court challenges and executive orders aimed at blocking any workplace vaccine requirement.
OSHA’s deputy regulatory chief told an Aug. 31 conference the agency plans to let its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) expire after a six-month window, noting that while future developments could lead officials to reverse course, its plan “at this point” is to allow the rule to sunset before proposing a permanent disease rule.
Labor groups are urging OSHA to rework and make permanent its temporary COVID-19 standard, including calls from nurses to mandate vaccination for health workers while general-industry unions hope to extend the rule to all sectors and decouple it from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.
Health care employers say OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) conflicts with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance and say recent findings supports loosening key provisions in the rule, alongside calls to delay implementation by up to six months and scrap plans to enact a permanent version of the ETS.
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is facing competing pressures on how to rework its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) into what is expected to become a permanent rule, including from some of its standards board members and labor unions who want more stringent protections, and from employers seeking more flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.
OSHA’s new general-industry guidance tightening recommendations for face coverings in the workplace is drawing a mixed response from employers’ attorneys, with some praising the agency for aligning its policy with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while others say the precise scope of the guide is still unclear.
OSHA has updated its COVID-19 guidance to recommend face coverings for workers at indoor work sites in areas with “substantial or high transmission” of the disease regardless of vaccination status, based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new guide aimed at stemming the more-contagious “Delta” coronavirus variant.
Employers’ attorneys say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new move to tighten its COVID-19 guidance following a wave of infections by the “Delta” virus variant has created fresh uncertainty on whether vaccinated workers should be required to wear face coverings, and are pushing OSHA to provide an answer.