Vaccine rule for larger employers, federal contractors and certain health care workers to take effect January 4

“I’m calling on employers to act. Businesses have more power than ever before to accelerate our path out of this pandemic, save lives, and protect our economic recovery,” he said.

Eighty-four million employees working at large employers and 17 million health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid will be covered by the rules implemented by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“Together the OSHA and CMS rules, along with the other policies the administration has previously implemented means that over two thirds of all workers in the United States are now covered by vaccination policies,” a senior administration official said, discussing the new rules.

“Higher vaccination rates protect our workers, reduce hospitalizations and deaths. It’s good for workers and importantly, this is good for the economy,” the official continued.

The January 4 deadline also means that the deadline for the federal contractor vaccine requirement is getting pushed back. It had previously been scheduled to take effect on December 8.

The administration had been facing calls from some business groups to delay or be flexible with that deadline, as it could have put even more stress on supply chain issues ahead of the holidays. Officials, however, insisted that the new date was chosen in order to streamline implementation and make it easier for business and employees to comply with the requirements.

“In order to make it easier for businesses to comply and workers to comply, we’ve decided to align the contractor deadline with the deadlines for both CMS and OSHA,” the official said.

“Both OSHA and CMS are making clear that their new rules preempt any inconsistent state or local laws, including laws that ban or limit an employer’s authority to require vaccination, masks, or testing,” a fact sheet outlining the rule said in part.

A second senior administration official, discussing the rules legal authority, said that “the OSH Act gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are projected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them.”

“A virus that has killed more than 745,000 Americans, with more than 70,000 new cases per day currently, is clearly a health hazard that poses a grave danger to workers. The new emergency temporary standard is well within OSHA’s authority under the law and consistent with OSHA’s requirements to protect workers from health and safety hazards, including infectious diseases,” the official continued.

The OSHA rule does allow for employees to remain unvaccinated if they so choose, but the employee must provide a verified negative test to their employer on at least a weekly basis and must wear face masks in the workplace. The rule from CMS does not provide a testing option for workers to remain unvaccinated as there is “a higher bar for health care workers given their critical role in ensuring the health and safety of their patients,” according to one of the officials discussing the rules.

That official said the agency will have planned inspections of some workplaces to ensure they are in compliance with the rule but will also rely on complaints from workers in order to best enfore the new rule.

Enforcement and penalties for health care facilities that do not come into compliance with the rule could range from monetary penalties, denying the facilities payments and possible termination from the Medicare and Medicaid program.