As businesses wait for guidance from federal agencies on when and how to implement requirements for COVID-19 vaccinations and testing, groups that represent various industries are weighing the potential costs.
For the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union — representing workers in places such as supermarkets, nursing homes and food processing plants — guaranteeing an environment that lowers the risk of catching the virus is a high priority, says president Wendell Young.
Meanwhile, in the construction industry, concerns about losing workers who would rather leave their jobs than get the vaccine — and the resulting impact on business and revenue — is enough reason to oppose a vaccine requirement, according to the national trade association, the Associated General Contractors of America.
Both groups are pro-vaccine, leaders say. But they split on how far regulations should go.
“This is not an issue of should people be getting vaccinated,” said Brian Turmail, the vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives at the contractors organization. “This is an issue of how much responsibility and ownership and investment the federal government takes on a mandate it put in place.”
Mr. Young, with the UFCW, said he doesn’t want to force people to get a vaccine either. But because that decision impacts the health and safety of coworkers, he thinks a shot should be a condition of employment.
“I don’t think you have the right to force yourself — a risk to public health and safety to other co-workers — on those who are doing the right thing,” he said.
Preparing to challenge the rule
In September, President Joe Biden took steps to make vaccinations a condition of employment, part of a larger effort to increase vaccination rates overall.
The administration mandated all employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government must be vaccinated. For businesses with more than 100 employees, Mr. Biden offered more flexibility — those employees must either get their shots or undergo weekly testing.
Since then, businesses have been waiting for guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency in charge of writing and enforcing the rule.
While measuring arguments for and against the vaccine, some businesses are laying the groundwork for policies while others are expecting the federal rule won’t go into effect. Individual businesses, unions and advocacy organizations are preparing to challenge the federal rule and, in Pittsburgh, some have already set up legal battles against state and local mandates.
The Allegheny County Police Association filed a lawsuit against the county for requiring employees to be fully vaccinated by December. And, in September, the union that represents corrections officers in Pennsylvania prisons asked a state court to intervene over Gov. Tom Wolf’s vaccine and testing mandate.
For many, the arguments for and against the vaccine requirement fall along the same lines: the health risk, the financial impact and the government’s role.
In places like grocery stores and nursing homes, Mr. Young said, workers would be more inclined to take a job knowing their co-workers had also been vaccinated.
Federal officials and employers have a responsibility to make sure that happens, just like enforcing speed limits and smoking restrictions, he said.
Nationally, the Associated General Contractors of America has sent letters to federal officials arguing against the requirement for vaccines and lobbying for an exemption for the industry.
Mr. Turmail pointed to an OSHA assessment that most construction worksites posed a “low exposure risk,” unless the job was indoors and filled with other workers, customers or residents. In this case, the contractors group argues, vaccines shouldn’t have to be required.
Mr. Turmail didn’t have an estimate of how many people would leave their role rather than get the shot or what the financial impact of those departures might be, but said a mandate could exacerbate increased costs and delays in projects that the industry is already struggling with.
“There are a lot of questions about what could be in the new mandate that we don’t yet know the answers to,” he said. “And depending on those answers, this could be somewhere between yet another onerous mandate the industry will have to comply with or something that places an unreasonable and inappropriate burden on the industry.”
In southwestern Pennsylvania, about 7% of workers said they would quit their job if employers mandated vaccines, according to a September report from the Pennsylvania Economy League of Greater Pittsburgh, an affiliate of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
However, far more — about half of respondents — supported the use of proof of vaccination to remain employed.
That matches national trends. Roughly 48% of people said they believed employers should require vaccinations in a September survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, based in San Francisco. About 60% of respondents said vaccines should be required for workers at hospitals and other health care facilities as well as K-12 schools.
Just like opening a bank account
Despite the legal challenges, many businesses and advocacy organizations plan to move forward with their own policies. In many cases, they’re waiting for more guidance from federal officials on how to make such a mandate work.
Some questions are policy-based: Who will pay for all this testing? Will workers get paid time off if they are not vaccinated and show a positive test result? Other questions are more basic: How do we keep track of vaccination status? How do we keep track of test results?
“Most of the questions that businesses have right now are technical and capacity related,” said Susie Puskar, the chief program officer at Partner4Work, a workforce development organization based in Downtown.
“When businesses have called us or when talking to businesses about the mandates and regulations that are coming down, that’s their largest concern: How do we actually operationalize something like this?” she said.
So far, it seems to be a full-time job.
Of the businesses that have already opted to put policies in place, Partner4Work has found that companies are most successful if they have a person devoted to keeping up with protocol, paperwork and enforcement.
Since the mandate applies to businesses with more than 100 workers, Ms. Puskar said there usually is someone already on staff to take over the responsibility or companies are able to hire someone to take on the role.
“It’s a mixed bag,” she said. “Those that have the capacity to act are doing so now … Others I think maybe have other, more pressing concerns so right now it’s just a matter of waiting — just like some people always wait until the last minute on Christmas shopping.”
An August survey from Willis Towers Watson, a global financial services company based in London and with offices around the U.S., found that 52% of roughly 1,000 participating U.S. companies said they could implement vaccine requirements by the fourth quarter of this year.
That would be a jump from the 21% of businesses that already had vaccine requirements in place in August, at the time of the survey.
Among those companies, some were considering a vaccine requirement to gain access to common areas at the workplace, like the lunchroom, while a similar percentage of businesses were planning to require the shot as a condition of employment.
At Partner4Work, Ms. Puskar has heard many companies have opted to require vaccines for new hires but not current employees.
Existing employees would have the option to choose weekly testing instead, potentially to safeguard against losing dedicated workers at a time when it’s tricky to fill gaps in the workforce, she said.
Doris Carson Williams, president of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania, has found most of the chamber’s member businesses are proactively determining their own policies — even if they won’t be covered by the federal rule once it is enforced.
Of the businesses the chamber represents, most have fewer than 100 workers, she said.
“You’re hoping you’re making the right decisions but you’re waiting to see what happens,” Ms. Carson Williams said. “They’re not saying there’s things they want more guidance on; they’re just trying to be careful with everything.”
Acknowledging that there are still questions the federal government needs to answer, Mr. Young from the UFCW said businesses already have some things they can start to prepare.
For example, determining a chain of communication for what to do if a worker does test positive. Or, how to use health insurance information to determine which workers have been vaccinated. The union is also starting negotiations with some employers to implement surcharges for workers who are not vaccinated.
And, they are acting on lessons learned from programs they put in place earlier to incentivize vaccines with things like prizes or financial bonuses. Running those programs, it was clear the businesses had to set up a system to collect and verify vaccine status — and keep an eye out for any cards that had been altered with Wite-Out.
“It’s a matter of tweaking that when the final rule comes out in the days or weeks ahead,” Mr. Young said. “And any employer that says, ‘Oh, it’s too burdensome, they can’t do it,’ that’s nonsense.
“If you go to open a bank account or apply for anything, you have to upload documents. … This is not rocket science.”
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1565.
First Published: November 2, 2021, 9:45 a.m.
Updated: November 2, 2021, 9:46 a.m.
