In this episode of the Employee Survival Guide, Mark discusses the September 9, 2021 Vaccine Mandate by President Biden.
Similar to a declaration of war, President Biden today announced that all federal employees, federal contractors, all healthcare workers and employers with over a 100 employees must get vaccinated. This is unprecedented and likely to cause a great deal of chaos among employees nationwide. Typically, vaccination requirements were left to the states to decide if, how and when to implement vaccination orders. The Executive Order comes at a time when the Delta Variant is wreaking havoc on the unvaccinated population and Biden’s approval rating regarding Covid-19 is very low.
Now, with just one Executive Order to the U.S. Department of Labor, the battle is on. The DOL can now institute enforcement actions and levy fines up to $14,000 per violation. As we already know, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance to employers that they can mandate vaccination without threat of lawsuits by employees.
What does this mean for you if you have not received a Covid-19 vaccination? You must either assert a medical disability accommodation to your employer to avoid the vaccine or be fired. You must also assert a religious exemption to the vaccination or be fired. Yes, this also means that employment attorneys will be very busy fielding endless telephone inquiries about this issue.
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Transcript:
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Hey, it’s Mark here and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide podcast. Today we’re talking about the Biden mandate of the COVID-19 vaccination for all federal private employers nationwide. Similar to a declaration of war, President Biden on September 9 2021, announced that all federal employees, federal contractors, all health care workers and employers with over 100 employees must get vaccinated. This is unprecedented and likely to cause a great deal of chaos among employees nationwide. Typically, vaccination requirements were left to the states to decide if how and when to implement vaccination orders. The executive order comes at a time when the Delta variant is wreaking havoc on the unvaccinated population. And Biden’s approval rating regarding COVID-19 is very low. Now, with just one executive order to the US Department of Labor, the battle is on the DL can now Institute enforcement actions and levy fines of up to$14,000 per violation. This may result in a possible bankruptcy situation for some employers, given this situation of how many violations that may occur. As we already know the US, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance earlier this year to employers that they can mandate vaccination requirements on their employees without threat of lawsuits by from employees. What does this mean for you if you have not received the COVID-19 vaccination, you must either assert a medical disability accommodation to your employer with documentation from your physician to avoid the vaccine or before you do have the exception of testing each week. But I will assure you that that issue will eventually that remedy will be removed at a later point in time as the vaccination process mandate continues on. You can also assert a religious exemption to the vaccination or be fired. And again, you can use the weekly testing to to remove your requirement of vaccination for this as well. So what have we seen since the September 9 mandate? in our office, what we’ve seen is what was predicted that you would have employees who still resisted the vaccine vaccine. And without any religious conviction or medical basis, it just simply was, they weren’t ready for it. It’s too early to tell the excuse that the emergency authorization explanation that now has gone by the wayside. And so you have is a population of individuals out there who are not vaccinated, really don’t know why they’re doing it. We try to give them at least the two avenues they can pursue. But it really boils down to unfactual or lack of factual basis for reasoning by the employee to to remain on vaccinated versus the job, Jeopardy they put themselves in financially. It’s a really wild scenario to watch people go through where their convictions about this issue are as important as their financial means, meaning that earning income is important, obviously for all of us, and they put that ahead of it and doesn’t seem like a rational choice. So it’s it’s we don’t see the cases that are going to prompt any type of news worthiness a situation or a court filing of a complaint, given the very limited scenario that individuals can pursue litigation against employers regarding this issue. Again, it has to be on the religious conviction issue, where or the issue that you have a medical situation that prevents you from getting the vaccine, the one that will be most successful be the medical, because that can be documented by medical documentation from a treating provider. The Some states have moved to actually eliminate the religious conviction issue from the vaccine requirement. And so that’s really where the current battle lies. Fast forward, the eventual resolution of all this will be a mandatory vaccination nationwide and implemented, we’re all employers are in the process of providing our mandate and employees get it. So you will eventually have a fuller herd immunity so to speak by the vaccination, whatever the new drug will be, or the vaccination for me, the maternal Pfizer, whoever does matter, you’ll see a rate of vaccination approach, close to 90% or higher. And that will be a year or two from now. It won’t happen right now. We’re still in the political fray of this, this social issue, so that I predict well, it’ll take some time for Eventually, the full and actually full vaccination will take place. The politics will subside, and maybe we’ll find some normalcy, then But as a legal standpoint, from employment issues, we are not seeing the types of claims that you would imagine given such strong mandates from the federal government and here the executive branch issued in the mandate from us from President Biden. So until we learn more, we will share and look for the next podcast regarding the religious conviction issue, having to do with the COVID vaccination mandate. Until then, be well and talk to you soon. Thanks.