On July 9, President Biden unveiled his Path Out of the Pandemic Plan, which implements a six-pronged national strategy to combat the surge of the Delta variant. One of the key aspects of the plan is a requirement that OSHA issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS)—reportedly within a matter of weeks—that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. While there are few details to make a completely informed decision on the potential impacts of the ETS on the construction industry, AGC has communicated concerns to OSHA as it relates to the practical impacts such a mandate may have on the industry amidst a workforce shortage, issues relating to controlling contractor responsibilities and recordkeeping obligations, availability of test kits, and laboratory capacity for analyzing the anticipated increase in testing that may result from such a mandate, among other things.
In addition to the vaccine or testing mandate, the ETS will also require employers who meet this threshold to provide paid time off for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they experience adverse reactions post-vaccination.
AGC of America has gathered resources that members can use in their educational efforts and provided resources to assist with employer vaccine policies. Click HERE to find the AGC COVID-19 Vaccine Toolkit. There are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered. AGC will continue its outreach to OSHA and will update AGC members as we learn more.
For more information, please contact Kevin Cannon at (703)837-5410 or kevin.cannon@agc.org or Nazia Shah at (703)837-5409 or nazia.shah@agc.org.