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On October 12, 2021, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) sent the COVID Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to the White House’s regulatory office for review and approval. This is the next step of the process to advance President Biden’s COVID vaccine emergency rule that would require employers with more than 100 workers to either mandate vaccination or test employees on a weekly basis.
Industry insiders are hoping to see White House approval before October 15 and OSHA announcement of the ETS the week of October 18. Once the ETS is published in the Federal Register, it will become effective immediately. In states where federal OSHA does not have primary jurisdiction, it is expected that state and local occupational safety and health departments will amend their standards to be at least as effective as the federal OSHA standard.
Details remain to be seen, but compliance at a federal level is expected to be enforced as early as December 2021 and on a state level in January 2022.
For a more in-depth explanation of the ETS and expected timelines, review OSHA’s Mandate-or-Test Emergency Rule Gets Sent to White House posted on Fisher Phillips’ Insights page.
