Last week, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published its long-awaited COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), an action that has been in the works since President Biden issued an Executive Order calling for consideration of such a standard on his first day in office. And although there has been a general assumption that the ETS would apply to all OSHA-covered businesses, the rule’s mandates are in fact limited to employers in the healthcare sector only, where according to OSHA, employees have the greatest risk of exposure to the virus.
In lieu of applying the ETS to a broader range of industries, as was expected, OSHA instead has issued an updated version of its nonbinding “Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace” originally published in late January 2021 to now focus on “protecting unvaccinated or otherwise at-risk workers” and better aligning the agency’s guidance with the latest recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for fully vaccinated individuals.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.