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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowTo enforce President Joe Biden’s forthcoming COVID-19 mandate, the U.S. Labor Department is going to need a lot of help. Its Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors to do the job.
So the government will rely upon a corps of informers to identify violations of the order: Employees who will presumably be concerned enough to turn in their own employers if their co-workers go unvaccinated or fail to undergo weekly tests to show they’re virus-free.
What’s not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves—or their job security—for blowing the whistle on their own employers. Without them, though, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal of requiring tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.
“There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers door or even calling them,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff who is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. “They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law.’’
Jim Frederick, the acting chief of OSHA, told reporters that this agency will focus on job sites “where workers need assistance to have a safe and healthy workplace.”
“That typically comes through in the form of a complaint,” Frederick added.
Critics warn that whistleblowers have often faced retaliation from their employers and that OSHA has offered little protection when they do.
The new mandate, which Biden announced last week, is the administration’s most far-reaching step yet to prod more Americans to get a vaccine that has been widely available since early spring. The mandate will cover an estimated 84 million employees.
The president called the move necessary to combat an outbreak that has killed 750,000 Americans and that continues to spread. Companies that fail to comply will face fines of nearly $14,000 per “serious’’ violation. Employers found to be “willful’’ or repeat violators would be subject to fines of up to ten times that amount.
The mandate has run into furious opposition, though, from leaders of mainly Republican-led states who have condemned the plan as an unlawful case of federal overreach and who immediately challenged the vaccine-or-test requirements in court. On Saturday, the Biden administration endured a setback when a federal appeals court in New Orleans temporarily halted the mandate, saying it posed “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”
Should the mandate survive its legal challenges, though, the task of enforcing it would fall on OSHA, the small Labor Department agency that was established 50 years ago to police workplace safety and protect workers from such dangers as toxic chemicals, rickety ladders and cave-ins at construction sites.
OSHA has jurisdiction in 29 states. Other states, including California and Michigan, have their own federally approved workplace safety agencies. These states will have an additional month—until early February—to adopt their own version of the COVID mandate, equal to or tougher than OSHA’s.
For a task as enormous as enforcing the new vaccine mandate, OSHA and its state “partners’’ are stretched thin. Just 1,850 inspectors will oversee 130 million workers at 8 million job sites. So the agencies must rely on whistleblowers.
OSHA urges workers to first bring unsafe or unhealthy working conditions to the attention of their employers “if possible.’’ Employees could also file a confidential safety complaint with OSHA or have a case filed by a representative, such as a lawyer, a union representative or a member of the clergy. But they have no right to sue their employer in court for federal safety violations.
Typically, 20% to 25% of OSHA inspections originate with a complaint.
“You fill out a form or somebody fills out a form for you,” said Berkowitz, the former OSHA chief of staff. “And that’s all workers have. If OSHA decides not to inspect, that’s it. Or if OSHA inspects but decides not to cite the employer, that’s it. … So it’s a pretty weak law.’’
Only OSHA can bring cases over violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the law that is meant to provide safe workplaces. Going outside OSHA to sue employers for negligence is all but impossible, say Berkowitz and other worker advocates.
State worker compensation programs—which reimburse injured workers for medical costs and lost wages and provide death benefits to survivors of those killed—include no-fault provisions that block most lawsuits.
Even sounding the alarm can be risky.
“Technically,” Berkowitz said, “the law says that companies can’t retaliate against a worker for raising a health and safety issue or filing an OSHA complaint or even reporting an injury. But retaliation is rampant.’’
OSHA can pursue employers who punish workers for speaking out against unsafe working conditions. Last month, for example, the agency sued a luxury car dealer in Austin, Texas, that it said fired an employee who had warned co-workers about potential coronavirus hazards in the workplace.
But in a report co-written by Berkowitz, the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for worker rights, found that OSHA dismissed — without investigating — more than half the COVID-related complaints of retaliation it received from whistleblowers. Just 2% of complaints were resolved in the five-month period last year that the law project studied. Workers have just 30 days to file an OSHA complaint over retaliation.
“OSHA needs to improve its handling of whistleblower complaints,’’ the Labor Department’s Inspector General, its internal watchdog, concluded last year. “When OSHA fails to respond in a timely manner, it could leave workers to suffer emotionally and financially, and may also lead to the erosion of key evidence and witnesses.’’
Still, most companies are considered likely to comply with the COVID mandate, as they mostly do with other OSHA rules. Some employers were likely relieved: They may have wanted to require inoculations on their own but worried that they’d alienate anti-vax workers and possibly lose them to employers that didn’t require vaccinations.
“Most employers—they’re law abiding,’’ says David Michaels, a former OSHA chief who is an epidemiologist and professor of public health at George Washington University. “They’re trying to make sure that they meet the requirements of every law and regulation .. Now OSHA will follow up. They’ll respond to complaints. They’ll do spot checks. They’ll issue citations and fines, and they’ll make a big deal of those” to discourage other potential violators.
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The “citizen’s arrest” piece is a key component of the Texas abortion law which Democrats, correctly, are losing their mind about. So rat on an abortion Dr— Bad! Rat on a coworker who chose not to be vaccinated—Good!
The brain dead old man is quite the unifier.
Well, the Supreme Court didn’t prevent the Texas law from taking effect. So it must be okay with them to do things this way? It’s actually a masterful stroke by the president, to force the right wingnuts to argue against the abortion law’s mechanism in order to get rid of the vaccine and mask mandates they despise.
My GF has two brothers in the military and each were required to get at least 5 different vaccines when they jointed yet you never hear a word about it. So much complaining about 1 with people willing to lose a good paying job over it. It blows my mind.
Bingo. Same goes for public schools and virtually every college and university.
Jaron – that was voluntary. they did not have to do it – they could have chosen a different profession. apples and oranges
Those shots that soldiers and children take are Proven safe vaccines for serious diseases that are 100% deadly. Covid is scientifically proven to be little more than the flu for 99% of us. Don’t be so quick to follow politicians. Think clearly for yourself.
If vaccines are so great and safe, why are vaccinated people worried about getting it from unvaccinated people? And if the vaccines are not enough to protect vaccinated people, then what is the y require them?
The story Washington is giving us makes zero sense. The contradictions alone from Fauci make my head spin. Sorry for all you guys who have not thought this through.
No, I’ve thought this all through. The conclusion I’ve come to is that you might need to consider that you’re just not smart enough to understand as much as the experts and you should really just trust what they say. I mean, I know I’m not smart enough. I’m pretty certain most all of us on this thread don’t know as much as scientists who’ve studied this stuff for decades, who are learning (and changing their guidance) as they learn more about the virus. That shouldn’t make your head spin, it’s an accepted part of science. There’s a reason they still don’t use leeches on people…
Questioning Fauci for most of us makes us much sense as wandering up to Peyton Manning and trying to tell him he doesn’t know that much about being a quarterback, or making commercials.
Speaking as someone who is boostered, I’m worried because those who are unvaccinated are taking up space in hospitals at higher rates. So when someone I love needs emergency care and needs care fast, I don’t want them to deal with substandard care because nurses and doctors are dealing with a bunch of entirely preventable COVID cases taking up beds and clinical capacity.
Also, I’d rather my kids, neither of which can get boostered (yet), get sick as their immunity wanes. Yes, their vaccines (and mine) have dramatically reduced the chances of getting super sick, going to the hospital, going to the ICU, or dying, But I’d still rather not deal with any of it, if possible.
Finally, death is bad, whether it’s an unborn child or a 95 year old man. Anything that can help reduce death is good, especially a simple shot that can save many.
Also, the concern about the vaccine not being safe, why is the virus not held to the same standard? it’s not as simple as “99% survive”, what about the folks still on oxygen weeks later or dealing with long COVID symptoms months later? I guess they’ve “survived”, but it seems silly to risk all that because of vaccine concerns that simply aren’t supported in the data.
All very well thought out comments about the vaccine’s Joe B and I agree with you wholeheartedly, however the idea of turning employers and employees in to the government for prosecution and fines just sends the wrong message. I’m sure their are times when it’s appropriate, like criminality for example, but this just doesn’t pass the smell test because it will never stop with just this.
We already encourage workers to do the same when it comes to unsafe working conditions. Why is this any different?
No one is being forced to get vaccinated. You can test weekly and wear a mask.
We are becoming more like our “enemies” every day. Or the same countries that have limited freedoms and oppressed their citizens and those people want to come here. The changes are subtle at first and happen gradually enough that people do not even realize what is happening … Then one day they wake up and realize the freedoms they had taken for granted are gone … Sad.
+1 this is a terrible idea. Turn in your employers and fellow employees to the federal government!! BTW, since when does one branch of government seemingly control everything. We are so headed towards being like China and Russia and I never would have believed it myself a year ago, but it is happening. I’m not even sure electing people with a different perspective can change anything at this point.
+100 We live in scary times, if people like Biden and Pelosi can get the majority of people to act like the democrat lemmings in the house and senate and just blindly do whatever they want you to do. Forget socialism, its communism. The democrats in Washington are whack.
Sounds like 1936 and Nazi Germany to me. Turn in the undesirables. They are bad for the race. I would have hoped we would have learned a lesson then….
Uhhh, yea so I second this notion…
Hopefully all of this will backfire on the democrats who have lost their minds. People are waking up to this nonsense. It’s political suicide to continue acting as if we are still in an emergency pandemic and to continue eliminating freedoms that Americans have enjoyed since our founding.
They’re not waking up. They’re dying off.
“Americans in counties that voted mostly for Trump were more than three times as likely to die from COVID in October than those in counties that voted mostly for Biden.”
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/580607-the-death-rates-from-covid-in-red-america-and
Joe needs better propaganda than the Hill.
Yes, those woke liberal media hacks at The Hill. Can’t trust anything they have to say.
Of course, if they didn’t like the news story from the NYTimes, don’t you think they would have just failed to mention it?
Dr. Robert Malone inventor of the mRNA delivery has stated that we are working with Gene Therapy not a vaccine. The CDC which is funded by the pharmaceutical industry, changed the definition of “vaccine ” in September. Coincidence?
Hope none of you on this thread have to work with “Joe B.” Or Joe b type co-workers.
Steve R, Rebecca W. & others, are wise critical thinkers. We all need to dig our heels in against the tyranny taking hold of our brainwashed “leadership”.
Yawn. Another day of Joe B. propaganda.
Slippery slope and Joe B. loves to throw the KY Jelly down as fast as Slick Willy.