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| AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File |
To enforce President Biden’s forthcoming COVID-19 mandate, the U.S. Labor Department is going to need a lot of help. Its Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have nearly enough workplace safety inspectors to do the job.
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.
What’s not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves - or their job security - for blowing the whistle on their own employers. Without them, though, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal of requiring tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.
“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.’’
Jim Frederick, the acting chief of OSHA, told reporters that this 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. --->READ MORE HERE
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| MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images |
The Biden administration has said it will rely on whistleblowers to help enforce its COVID-19 vaccine mandate by ratting out businesses that fail to comply — because the federal government doesn’t have enough safety inspectors to do it.
The administration is betting that informants will be so outraged by their employer violating the mandate or not requiring weekly COVID-19 tests for their co-workers that they will turn them in.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has said there are not enough workplace safety inspectors to ensure that the millions of workers in US companies with 100 or more employees will be vaccinated or tested weekly by Jan. 4, when the controversial mandate is scheduled to take effect.
“There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers’ doors or even calling them,” Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff and fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, told the Associated Press.
“They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law,” she said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories and resources:
Time to unmask and other commentary
History As It Happens: Heading toward herd immunity
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
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