The White House released new guidelines for President Joe Biden’s COVID19 vaccine mandate. Under the new guidelines, federal contractors will have the freedom how they enforce the vaccine requirement.
According to the latest guidelines “A covered contractor should determine the appropriate means of enforcement with respect to its employee at a covered contractor workplace who refuses to be vaccinated and has not been provided, or does not have a pending request for, an accommodation”.
Biden’s Vaccine Mandate
The Biden administration issued an executive order on September 9. The executive order forces large businesses and federal contractors to require a vaccine mandate among employees. For large businesses, they can offer regular testing as an alternative for COVID19 vaccination. However, that’s not the case with federal contractors.
Following the announcement, major US airlines announced that their employees will need to get the COVID19 vaccine. United, American, Alaska, and JetBlue already require employees to get the COVID19 vaccine.
What Can Federal Contractors Expect from the New Guidelines
Aside from having the flexibility to implement the vaccine mandate, senior administration officials clarified that December 8 is not a hard deadline. Instead, the federal contractor will only have to prove that it is putting an effort in requiring workers to get the vaccine.
Under the new guidelines, the federal contractor also doesn’t have to show its vaccination rate even at the December 8 deadline. However, non-compliance to the vaccine mandate could result in losing their contract with the federal government.
Companies can prevent their employees who refuse to get the vaccine from entering the workplace. Also, the federal contractor will also have the final say who gets medical or religious exemptions. Plus, unvaccinated employees will have to continue wearing masks in the workplace.
Some airline employees opposed Biden’s vaccine mandate. This includes pilots’ unions from American and Southwest Airlines. Airline executives from both companies have softened their tones saying that they won’t terminate employees who won’t get vaccinated. Also, Southwest dropped its plan to put employees with pending accommodation requests on unpaid leave.
