OSHA's vaccination rules are back in effect: Will your company be ready by January 10, 2022?
Back in November, we published a blog post explaining how employers can automate keeping track of employees’ vaccination status, and why you might want to make plans for doing so ahead of the proposed federal mandate for companies with over 100 employees, known as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS).
While the rule has faced multiple legal challenges, and a stay was issued on November 12 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that stay was dissolved in a new ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 17. To coincide with the decision, OSHA released new deadlines for employers: Covered employers must now comply with the majority of the provisions of the ETS by January 10, 2022. If an employer opts to permit employees to test in lieu of vaccination, then testing of unvaccinated employees must begin on or before February 9, 2022.
The ETS may still face a challenge in the Supreme Court, but as it stands, covered employers have only a few weeks to plan for compliance. To help companies do just that, our Legal Team hosted a webinar on December 16 explaining in further detail how employers who use Rippling can easily automate compliance with OSHA’s new requirements, saving HR staff hours of manual work. Because the webinar was held the day before the most recent legal ruling, compliance was framed in the discussion as voluntary—but now that it’s mandatory, companies have even more reason to make the process as painless as possible. Rippling can help.
