Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement of vaccination requirement will require employees reporting their peers for noncompliance.
Fri Nov 12, 2021 - 3:05 pm EST
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will likely rely on employees at each of the companies that falls under the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to ensure co-workers are getting jabbed.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the administration could use a “corps of informers” to enforce the Emergency Temporary Standard (EST). Employees would file complaints with OSHA, which could then prompt a formal investigation.
The jab mandate covers employers with 100 or more employees and is expected to affect 84 million total American workers. But the AP said that a lack of buy-in from employees to snitch on their peers could make the mandate ineffective.
“What’s not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves — or their job security — for blowing the whistle on their own employers,” the report said. “Without them, though, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal of requiring tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.”
A Georgetown University labor researcher and former chief of staff at OSHA told the AP that the Department of Labor agency lacks the personnel to enforce the mandate on all the companies.
“There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers’ door or even calling them,” Debbie Berkowitz said. “They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law.”
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