Vaccine or test: Biden advances sweeping new mandates for private sector
ABC News
Biden's new plan would expand vaccine mandates in the private sector and essentially label COVID as an occupational hazard in the workplace.
It’s likely to become President Joe Biden’s most hotly contested COVID policy yet: a sweeping new nationwide safety standard for the American workplace that demands large businesses require their employees to either get the vaccine or test regularly.
The temporary emergency rule would apply to every U.S. private business that employs 100 workers or more -- from grocery clerks to meatpacking plant employees -- impacting some 80 million Americans.
It would be the first time Washington has set a federal standard that regards a respiratory virus as an occupational hazard outside of the health care sector, essentially putting COVID in the same category as other workplace safety concerns as asbestos and dangerous machinery.
Details were expected to be released as early as Wednesday or Thursday on the rule, drafted by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.
