To enforce President Joe Biden’s new COVID-19 vaccine regulation, the Labor Department is going to need a lot of help. Yet its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) doesn’t have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors to do the job.
The 490-page regulation will cover American businesses with at least 100 workers, or about 84 million employees in all. So the government will rely upon a corps of informers to identify violations of the order: Employees who will presumably be concerned enough to turn in their own employers if their co-workers go unvaccinated or fail to undergo weekly tests to show they’re virus-free.
“No army” of inspectors
“There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers door or even calling them,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff who is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. “They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law.”
Under the regulation, businesses must maintain records on workers’ vaccination statuses. But for workplaces where employees aren’t required to be vaccinated, workers will need to get weekly tests and wear masks.
OSHA said it plans to check on compliance with the latter by doing spot-checks of businesses, and will also rely on complaints the agency receives about businesses that aren’t following the regulation.
“We will have our staff available and responsive to complaints, which is a No. 1 way we hear about problems in a workplace,” said Jim Frederick, the acting chief of OSHA, on a conference call with reporters. He also said the agency will focus on job sites “where workers need assistance to have a safe and healthy workplace.”
“That typically comes through in the form of a complaint,” Frederick added.
Critics warn that whistleblowers have often faced retaliation from their employers and that OSHA has offered little protection when they do.