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STICK IT, Damn It!
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2021-11-02 at 8:23 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 "Pot" meet "Kettle".
How do you feel about America going from a petroleum exporter in January to Joe begging OPEC to produce more and sell to us in just 10 months.
I'll wait for you to consult Time or Newsweek before you reply. Maybe you can write a letter to the editor and let them tell how to feel. -
2021-11-03 at 9:19 AM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 3:17 PM UTCMandate
All
Get
A jab
ABC News
Vaccine or test: Biden advances sweeping new mandates for private sector
It’s likely to become President Joe Biden’s most hotly contested COVID policy yet: a sweeping nationwide safety standard for the American workplace that demands large businesses require their employees to either get the vaccine or test regularly.
The temporary emergency rule would apply to every U.S. private business that employs 100 workers or more -- from grocery clerks to meatpacking plant employees -- impacting some 80 million Americans.
It would be the first time Washington has set a federal standard that regards a respiratory virus as an occupational hazard outside of the health care sector, essentially putting COVID in the same category as other workplace safety concerns as asbestos and dangerous machinery.
Details were expected to be released as early as Thursday on the rule, drafted by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.
"It’s the biggest thing OSHA has ever done in terms of the number of workers it will cover," said Jordan Barab, a longtime top official at the agency during the Obama administration.
Union and industry groups say they have yet to see a draft of the new rule. Among the most pressing questions is when employers would have to comply, with Republicans warning that mandates ahead of the holidays might exacerbate the nation’s worker shortage.
It’s also unclear how long the temporary standard would be in place and if it would apply to short-term "gig" workers, like freelancers and Uber drivers, or smaller franchises that are part of nationwide chains, like small restaurants or gyms.
How employers will be expected to enforce the standard is another question mark.
"We don’t know what they’re looking it. It’s a black box," said one industry official involved in recent discussions with the administration.
Since taking office, the Biden administration had avoided imposing nationwide vaccine mandates, focusing instead on incentives for businesses and individuals. But with the arrival of the delta variant, a surge in pediatric cases and pockets of the country remaining hesitant to get a shot, Biden’s COVID strategy shifted in recent weeks.
"We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us," Biden said of unvaccinated Americans on Sept. 9 when announcing his plan to draft the rule.
Federal contractors now have until Nov. 22 to become fully vaccinated, while contractors that work with the government have until Dec. 8.
Testing for these workers is not an option.
Biden also has required that health facilities like hospitals and nursing homes that accept federal dollars mandate vaccines for their workers, a total estimated at 17 million workers.
The latest OSHA rule would significantly expand that pool of Americans, putting two-thirds of the nation’s workforce under a kind of mandate.
Once divided on how to address the pandemic, Republican governors have united against the plan, insisting it represents dangerous federal overreach and would cripple business owners already dealing with worker shortages.
"Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian," tweeted the South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster last September following Biden's announcement.
Supporters counter that many large businesses have already embraced vaccine mandates to both entice employees who want a safe workplace and end a pandemic that has hobbled the economy. They argue too that whenever employees have enacted mandates, the vast majority of workers comply.
"This is not a vaccine mandate. It’s a safe workplace mandate -- getting vaccinated or tested," said Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.
"You want to do it as soon as you can to protect as many people as you can," he added.
A Labor Department spokesperson and the White House declined to discuss the specifics of the rule ahead of its release, other than to confirm that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget completed its regulatory review on Monday.
"The Federal Register will publish the emergency temporary standard in the coming days," a Labor Department spokesperson said.
As an emergency standard, the rule would take effect immediately. But the administration was widely expected to give businesses at least some time to comply, although it’s not clear how long. Several industry groups were pushing for a 60-day implementation period that would push any enforcement into 2022.
The rule was expected to call on employers to give workers time off to get the shot and recover from any side effects.
It’s unlikely that workers would be required to get booster shots -- at least as of now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a person "fully immunized" as one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine or two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. CDC officials warn, however, that definition could change as new research develops.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the rule also would allow employers to force workers who refuse to get the COVID shot to pay for any weekly tests and masks. -
2021-11-04 at 3:23 PM UTClets go brandom
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2021-11-04 at 3:27 PM UTCpeople become less afraid of pointing out that the emperor has no clothes when he shamelessly flops his cock about like this
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2021-11-04 at 3:32 PM UTCPOLITICO
Biden vaccine mandates will hit after holiday season, offering relief to businesses
By Rebecca Rainey
|
The Biden administration’s forthcoming vaccine mandates for millions of private employers, certain health care workers and federal contractors will not be enforced until after the holiday season, following weeks of pressure from business leaders who complained the rules would wreak havoc on the supply chain and aggravate worker shortages.
Officials said the administration is pushing back the Dec. 8 deadline for federal contractors to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated, so that all three mandates will go into effect on Jan. 4.
The administration released two new rules on Thursday that will be enforced starting Jan. 4 — one setting up new vaccination-or-test requirements for businesses with more than 100 workers and another implementing a vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid. Together, the rules are expected to affect over 1 million workers.
“Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on workers, and we continue to see dangerous levels of cases,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said. “Many businesses understand the benefits of having their workers vaccinated against Covid-19, and we expect many will be pleased to see this OSHA rule go into effect.”
Officials also said the administration is pushing back the Dec. 8 deadline for federal contractors to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated, so that all three mandates will go into force on Jan. 4.
While employers were given a brief reprieve from immediately implementing the test and vaccine verification piece of the rule, the administration clarified that businesses must be in compliance on Dec. 5 with all other requirements, such as providing paid time off for employees to get vaccinated and requiring unvaccinated workers to wear a mask in the workplace.
Under the rules, workers at private businesses with more than 100 employees will have the option to wear a mask at work and submit to weekly Covid-19 testing in lieu of getting vaccinated. Health care workers and government contractors do not have the testing option.
Unvaccinated workers who claim they have a legally protected exception to getting the vaccine could be fired if their employer says it would be an “undue hardship” to offer remote work or some other accommodation.
Companies that fail to follow the vaccine-or-test rules can be fined up to $14,000 per infraction.
The temporary rules for private employers go into effect immediately and stay in place for six months, but can be directly challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Private employers will not be required to pay for weekly Covid-19 tests for employees who refuse to get vaccinated, according to the new emergency temporary standard released by the Labor Department on Thursday. Whether insurers will cover the cost of testing for unvaccinated workers is up to individual insurance plans, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Jim Frederick.
Private employers subject to the emergency standard must also provide paid time off for workers to receive and recover from the Covid-19 vaccine, according to the rule.
'They work' - Biden touts vaccine mandates
Senior administration officials told reporters Wednesday that the vaccine-or-test requirement for private businesses alone “will protect more than 84 million workers from the spread of the Coronavirus” on the job and estimate that it will prevent over 250,000 hospitalizations.
The requirements, which President Joe Biden announced in September as part of his latest campaign to combat Covid-19, have already ignited a legal battle with conservative states over the government’s authority to impose such directives.
Nineteen states, including Florida and Texas, sued the Biden administration last month over the vaccine mandate for federal contractors, arguing the requirement was an unlawful overreach. And 24 state attorneys general and various business groups have warned the administration that it would face legal challenges if it moved forward with the vaccine-or-test rules for private employers.
Some Republican governors, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Alabama’s Kay Ivey, have tried to preemptively block private businesses from imposing mandates of any kind via executive order, although legal experts and the administration say those state rules are preempted by the new federal requirements.
“I expect to see battle royale in Texas, in Florida or anywhere else that wants to try to stop these” rules, David Miller of Bryant Miller Olive P.A., said. States are likely to argue the federal mandate violates the First Amendment, as applied to states through the 14th Amendment, Miller said.
“I really think that's where it's finally going to come to the nub in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. That's the only way this is getting settled,” he added.
The administration’s move to delay the federal contractor mandate comes after trade groups, businesses and Republicans complained that the requirements will force employers to fire workers who refuse to get the vaccine or lead to mass resignations among workers who don’t want to comply, leading to more disruption in the labor market and the supply chain ahead of the crucial holiday season.
"In response to similar state and federal mandates, many private companies have begun firing workers who refuse the Covid-19 vaccine,” said Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), during a labor subcommittee hearing on the mandate for private employers last month. "This federal vaccine mandate will worsen the supply chain crisis, almost guaranteeing Americans will go without this Christmas.”
But unions, labor advocates, health officials and even some businesses have lauded the effort from the administration, calling the vaccine-or-test rules for private companies long-overdue and finally unifying a state-by-state patchwork of requirements.
“One of the biggest struggles of the last two years is that we are dealing with an ever-changing patchwork of health and safety regulations that, in many cases, have differed not just state to state, but county by county,” Richelle Luther, chief human resources officer at Columbia Sportswear Company, told lawmakers during a hearing in October.
“A federal mandate is needed,” she added. “We do not believe it is more regulation for business, but rather, less. A quilt of local laws and approaches created vastly more regulation of business, more uncertainty, risk and inefficiency.”
Some economists predict the federal vaccine mandates could have a positive effect on the labor force. Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in September that “an increase in vaccination and almost full vaccination at workplaces should encourage many of the 5 [million] workers that have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic to return.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is the federal agency that polices employment discrimination, has given employers the greenlight to mandate Covid-19 vaccination in their workplace, so long as they provide accommodations for workers who say they can’t get the shot because of their religious beliefs or a disability.
Last month, the EEOC clarified that “social, political, or personal preferences” are not considered protected religious beliefs under federal anti-discrimination law.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency tasked with policing worker safety, has the authority to issue emergency temporary safety rules that go into effect immediately if it determines that workers are “in grave danger” due to exposure to something “determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards.”
Emergency temporary standards are rarely issued by OSHA. Before an emergency Covid-19 workplace safety rule went into place for health care workers earlier this year, the agency hadn’t released an emergency standard since the 1980s.
OSHA has issued 10 emergency temporary standards in its five-decade history. Of those, at least five were stayed or blocked by the courts, according to the Congressional Research Service. -
2021-11-04 at 3:43 PM UTCgo bramcondm lets guuuu braond
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2021-11-04 at 3:44 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Mandate
All
Get
A jab
ABC News
Vaccine or test: Biden advances sweeping new mandates for private sector
It’s likely to become President Joe Biden’s most hotly contested COVID policy yet: a sweeping nationwide safety standard for the American workplace that demands large businesses require their employees to either get the vaccine or test regularly.
The temporary emergency rule would apply to every U.S. private business that employs 100 workers or more – from grocery clerks to meatpacking plant employees – impacting some 80 million Americans.
It would be the first time Washington has set a federal standard that regards a respiratory virus as an occupational hazard outside of the health care sector, essentially putting COVID in the same category as other workplace safety concerns as asbestos and dangerous machinery.
Details were expected to be released as early as Thursday on the rule, drafted by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.
"It’s the biggest thing OSHA has ever done in terms of the number of workers it will cover," said Jordan Barab, a longtime top official at the agency during the Obama administration.
Union and industry groups say they have yet to see a draft of the new rule. Among the most pressing questions is when employers would have to comply, with Republicans warning that mandates ahead of the holidays might exacerbate the nation’s worker shortage.
It’s also unclear how long the temporary standard would be in place and if it would apply to short-term "gig" workers, like freelancers and Uber drivers, or smaller franchises that are part of nationwide chains, like small restaurants or gyms.
How employers will be expected to enforce the standard is another question mark.
"We don’t know what they’re looking it. It’s a black box," said one industry official involved in recent discussions with the administration.
Since taking office, the Biden administration had avoided imposing nationwide vaccine mandates, focusing instead on incentives for businesses and individuals. But with the arrival of the delta variant, a surge in pediatric cases and pockets of the country remaining hesitant to get a shot, Biden’s COVID strategy shifted in recent weeks.
"We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us," Biden said of unvaccinated Americans on Sept. 9 when announcing his plan to draft the rule.
Federal contractors now have until Nov. 22 to become fully vaccinated, while contractors that work with the government have until Dec. 8.
Testing for these workers is not an option.
Biden also has required that health facilities like hospitals and nursing homes that accept federal dollars mandate vaccines for their workers, a total estimated at 17 million workers.
The latest OSHA rule would significantly expand that pool of Americans, putting two-thirds of the nation’s workforce under a kind of mandate.
Once divided on how to address the pandemic, Republican governors have united against the plan, insisting it represents dangerous federal overreach and would cripple business owners already dealing with worker shortages.
"Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian," tweeted the South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster last September following Biden's announcement.
Supporters counter that many large businesses have already embraced vaccine mandates to both entice employees who want a safe workplace and end a pandemic that has hobbled the economy. They argue too that whenever employees have enacted mandates, the vast majority of workers comply.
"This is not a vaccine mandate. It’s a safe workplace mandate – getting vaccinated or tested," said Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.
"You want to do it as soon as you can to protect as many people as you can," he added.
A Labor Department spokesperson and the White House declined to discuss the specifics of the rule ahead of its release, other than to confirm that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget completed its regulatory review on Monday.
"The Federal Register will publish the emergency temporary standard in the coming days," a Labor Department spokesperson said.
As an emergency standard, the rule would take effect immediately. But the administration was widely expected to give businesses at least some time to comply, although it’s not clear how long. Several industry groups were pushing for a 60-day implementation period that would push any enforcement into 2022.
The rule was expected to call on employers to give workers time off to get the shot and recover from any side effects.
It’s unlikely that workers would be required to get booster shots – at least as of now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a person "fully immunized" as one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine or two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. CDC officials warn, however, that definition could change as new research develops.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the rule also would allow employers to force workers who refuse to get the COVID shot to pay for any weekly tests and masks.
Nobody is even paying attention to anything Biden wants or demands. And all he's doing is digging himself in deeper. -
2021-11-04 at 9:41 PM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 9:53 PM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 10:02 PM UTC
Originally posted by Speedy Parker How do you feel about America going from a petroleum exporter in January to Joe begging OPEC to produce more and sell to us in just 10 months.
I'll wait for you to consult Time or Newsweek before you reply. Maybe you can write a letter to the editor and let them tell how to feel.
Nobody was driving then and were sitting at home in their comfy sweats, dumbass. Everyone drove a lot less. Simple enough even for you? -
2021-11-04 at 10:11 PM UTCno, shale output is much lower output long-term than advertised. the entire 'fracking' industry is a scam; I predicted this when they were shitposting about turning the US into a net energy exporter
even if that was the primary cause, don't you think the government should've predicted that lockdowns would end and to prepare for that eventuation? -
2021-11-04 at 10:12 PM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 10:18 PM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 10:51 PM UTC
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2021-11-04 at 11:24 PM UTC
Originally posted by aldra no, shale output is much lower output long-term than advertised. the entire 'fracking' industry is a scam; I predicted this when they were shitposting about turning the US into a net energy exporter
even if that was the primary cause, don't you think the government should've predicted that lockdowns would end and to prepare for that eventuation?
governments dont have to predick whwn lockdowns would end because they control it. -
2021-11-04 at 11:58 PM UTC
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2021-11-05 at 12:20 AM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-11-05 at 10:41 AM UTC
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2021-11-05 at 11:33 AM UTC
Originally posted by Donald Trump Sometimes it seems like shitlibs get off on acting like cartoon villains.
Vaccines have been mandated for years and years. This is no different. Just because people wanna whine, cry, kick and scream, doesn’t change anything. Damn babies need to quit being snowflakes. Not changing the game because they don’t like the rules.
