What to expect from businesses, states after Biden’s vaccine mandate
Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman, Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Brian Cheung discuss President Biden’s vaccine mandate and what it means for businesses.
Video Transcript
- But we've got to move on, folks, to now what is going on today. And again, the unprecedented crisis that continues to face our nation and the world. That, of course, is the coronavirus. We got some new tools from the administration in that fight yesterday with President Joe Biden announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates that would be announced from OSHA for any company with at least 100 employees or more. This could affect an estimated 80 million workers. Here's what the President said last night.
JOE BIDEN: What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see? We've made vaccinations free, safe, and convenient. The vaccine has FDA approval. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot. We've been patient. But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.
- The administration had said it was not going to impose mandates. But apparently, Biden and his other officials' patience is running out. Rick Newman is here with us now to talk us through all of this. Rick, you've been covering this whole mandate vaccination kind of back and forth pretty closely here. What do you make of this latest mandate and how it's being received by the business community?
RICK NEWMAN: Well there's definitely a political element to it. Biden is not going to persuade many vaccine resisters or many conservative opponents of things such as government mandates that this is a good idea. But he is being more forceful than he has been before. And frankly, he sounded pissed off yesterday. I mean, he really had a scathing tone toward people not getting vaccinated and some of the governors who are basically backing that up. So the new rule we should point out applies to employers that have more than 100 workers. And there's some wiggle room here because it's not entirely a mandate.
So they have to assure to the government if asked, I guess, that all of their workers are either vaccinated or make available weekly COVID testing. So that's the way to wiggle out of this. You can choose not to be vaccinated if you work for one of these companies as long as you get that weekly COVID test. And I think the idea there is there's a real nuisance factor to the weekly testing. So maybe that will persuade people who are on the fence to get vaccinated. But then there's this whole question of enforcement.
Is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration really going to go around checking to make sure companies are doing this? And if it finds that they are not doing this, is it actually going to start imposing fines? A senior administration official told reporters yesterday that OSHA can fine companies up to $14,000 per violation. I have a little trouble seeing the government actually doing that. So I think my guess is this is meant to compel people to get vaccinated, and it's a threat, but that the enforcement will be pretty lax.
- Hey, Rick. Brian here. I guess one question naturally is whether or not states can get in the way because there might be some state governors that will be vehemently opposed to this particular measure. Is there any possible barricades that some of these state governments could put in place to stop some of these OSHA violations here. Or because of the federal nature of all of this, they should just expect to get in line here?
RICK NEWMAN: You betcha. There sure are. And we've already heard some Republican governors-- I think Kristi Noem of South Dakota-- say see you in court. I think this is pretty unsettled as a legal matter. So, you know, what's going to happen here-- and by the way, none of this is going into effect overnight. The Department of Labor is going to write a rule. It's going to take a few weeks to do that. And then there will be a period of time for everybody to comply, such as maybe 60 days or something like that. So this may not actually go into effect until late this year or even 2022. But it's not clear that the government has the authority to do this.
You know, you've started to hear Biden administration officials saying there is a catastrophic risk to people who might be exposed to COVID in the workplace. Well, is there? Is it really catastrophic? That's the basis that the Labor Department would use for saying we have the right to impose this emergency rule. But for sure, that is going to be challenged. So it's going to take some time for this to go into place. They're going to be legal challenges. So in two or three months when this actually starts to happen, this could look different than it seems right now.
- Well, and Rick, the other two points I would make is, one, a lot of people are still working at home. So is this only applying to people who have to physically go to an office or other kind of workplace? And two, a lot of workplaces have already enacted this. Some of the largest employers have enacted this. I think we have a long list of various employers. There you have it. Walmart, Disney, Google. Most of these have either partial or complete vaccine mandates. That is, they're saying if you come to an office, you have to vaccinate. Or if you're in an office but maybe not in another part of the business, you have to vaccinate. So that also complicates-- I mean, you know, it might be moot for that reason as well.
RICK NEWMAN: And Biden actually named some of those companies yesterday. And the administration has been doing that. Basically, they're pointing out that this is already underway in the workforce among some of the bigger companies. As to your question, exactly whom will this apply to? We don't know yet. Again, the administration has announced that they plan to do this. But this rule-- the detailed rule that spells everything out-- is not written yet. And that itself is going to take a couple of weeks at least. And then again, there will be a grace period for people to get the vaccines and comply before this actually goes into effect.
I think the issue here is not the big employers, which I think they are doing what the Biden administration basically wants them to do. I think it's a lot of second tier or sort of smaller employers. I mean, think of some companies in the South that might have a couple employees. They may be very reluctant to require vaccines among their workers because the workers may say, no way, we're not doing it. So that's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out. Are we going to see sort of a rebellion among some companies to say, I'm just not doing this. And if we do have a rebellion, what is the government going to do about it?
Or it could go the other way. It can provide top cover for some companies to say, look, we'd rather not require vaccines for all of our workers. But the government is making us do it. So why don't you please get vaccinated? I think if you're Biden, you're sitting there thinking, well, it's better to do something than to do nothing because we've got a problem with the Delta variant raging as it is.
- Indeed. It's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. Rick Newman, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
