![]() ![]() Employers can require employees to supply proof of vaccination because employers must verify and document workers’ vaccination status.Īmong some of the other changes, employers must make COVID-19 testing available to unvaccinated employees who have symptoms, as well as vaccinated workers who have symptoms after close contact with a COVID-19 case. New Standards AdoptedĪfter all the controversy and back and forth positioning on the matter, the board voted 5-1 on June 17 that employees who have been vaccinated no longer need to wear facemasks in the workplace. This generated a heated response from the public and business owners, which caused the agency to backtrack and take another look at its ETS policy. The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board-Cal/OSHA’s supervisory body-initially proposed keeping unchanged its workplace requirements, which were stricter than the CDC’s. Those state bureaucrats have been doing their own version of a one-step-forward, two-steps-back dance in recent weeks, and came up with a result that fails to make everyone happy, but which advances the return to normalcy.įollowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) loosening of its mask and social distancing guidelines, most jurisdictions across the country have chosen to leave it to individual employers and owners of businesses that deal with the public to decide whether they would continue to apply mask and distancing rules. It also was evident in California, which maintains its own workplace safety agency called Cal/OSHA. Under Biden, they thought they would finally get what they wanted.īiden Administration officials backed away from more extensive ETS requirements because of the waning of the pandemic and widespread vaccinations had eliminated much of the “emergency” circumstances that would be needed to legally justify adopting these rules in the absence of the usual notice and comment period and other time-consuming requirements demanded by federal law for imposing new agency regulations.Ĭonfusion over rules development was not confined to the federal level. The limited nature of the standards left unhappy some of the labor unions who had asked OSHA to produce the ETS a year earlier, only to be rebuffed by the Trump Administration Department of Labor and disappointed by a subsequent court rejection of their arguments. After months of behind-the-scenes and public discussion about proposed rules that had been ordered by President Biden on his first day in office, the federal ETS was pretty much confined to the hospital and healthcare industry. The state’s action follows issuance of a national ETS by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). ![]() The central change in the COVID-19 standards allows that workers no longer will be required to wear facemasks if they have been vaccinated, but they will need to continue wearing them if they cannot show that they have been vaccinated. California is the latest state to back away from extensive facemask requirements for workplaces, deciding to scale back its Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) that had previously gone into effect for employers on Jan. ![]()
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