The Department of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration sent a draft of preliminary language to the White House Tuesday regarding the forthcoming emergency temporary standard for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations or testing in certain settings.
“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working expeditiously to develop an emergency temporary standard that covers employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or undergo weekly testing to protect employees from the spread of coronavirus in the workplace,” a Labor Department spokesman told the McKnight’s Business Daily via email.
“The details of what the ETS will include are scarce at this point, leaving many questions unanswered,” according to experts from law firm Fisher Phillips.
The draft is not available to the public at this time. The language is under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and some language could change as a result. Once the OMB concludes its review, the Labor Department will publish the emergency temporary standard in the Federal Register, after which time it will become final. Fisher Phillips speculated that the standard will be approved sometime today and then published by the end of the month.
Some states already are poised to challenge the emergency temporary standard. Monday evening, Lone Star State Gov. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order prohibiting “any entity in Texas” from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for an employee or consumer “who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.”
Abbot characterized the coming national requirement as “bullying” of private entities. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, however, on Tuesday said that Abbott’s executive order is “putting politics ahead of public health.”
