Biden officially withdraws workplace vaccine mandate

The Biden administration has officially conceded defeat and withdrawn its vaccine or test mandate for larger US companies.

In an announcement the Department of Labor wrote that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA) “is withdrawing the 5 November 2021 emergency temporary standard (ETS) which was issued to protect unvaccinated employees of large employers (100 or more employees) from the risk of contracting COVID–19 by strongly encouraging vaccination.”

In doing so, the Biden administration is recognizing the supreme court decision earlier in January that OHSA did not have enough authority to implement this type of vaccine or test mandate.

“At the same time, such unprecedented circumstances provide no grounds for limiting the exercise of authorities the agency has long been recognized to have,” wrote the justices in their decision.

This move by OHSA means that all other outstanding legal proceedings against the mandate will be dropped.

Is this the end of vaccine mandates?

Now that there is no federal backing to workplace vaccine mandates, US employers will have to figure out what they are going to do to keep their workers safe.

Some are continuing with vaccine requirements – notable examples include the Washington Post, Meta and Apple – while others, like Macy’s, are rethinking their strategies amid the labor shortages.

Employers are starting to look beyond vaccines and focusing more on measures like mandatory masking and developing a robust testing strategy, WTW tells UNLEASH.

WTW’s Patricia Toro states that the Biden administration can continue to support employers by communicating the benefits of vaccination and making vaccines easy to obtain for workers.

Finally, David Michaels, a former OSHA administrator, told the New York Times that this may not be the end for a federal mandate. It is possible that OHSA will try to move a version forward for specific at-risk sectors, like meatpacking.

Part of the supreme court decision’s criticism of OHSA’s original mandate was “it draws no distinction based on industry or risk of exposure to COVID-19”.

Therefore, a mandate that focuses on particular high-hazard sectors could hold up legally, like the healthcare worker mandate that the supreme court chose not to block.