Page 6 - BusinessWest October 27, 2021
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 A New Kind of Challenge
Vaccine Mandates Present a Unique Test for Employers
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested area employers in every way imaginable. And soon, it will test many in a way that probably couldn’t have been imagined even a few months ago — vaccine mandates put in place by the Biden administration and set to take effect probably before the end of the year. The mandates are prompting lawsuits, generating questions that are often hard to answer, and creating high levels of anxiety for employers who are already dealing with a host of problems, especially an ongoing workforce crisis.
BAy George O’Brien
my Royal says she’s seen all manner of new regulations — state, federal, and local — that employers and their HR departments must contend with as they carry out business day to day.
But she speaks for all employ- ment-law specialists — and those HR profession-
als as well — when she says she’s never seen anything quite like the COVID-19 vaccine mandates either already in effect or soon to be.
The mandates are far-reaching in their impact, in terms of everything from the number of businesses affected to the costs they will have to absorb to the very real possibility of losing more valued employees, said Royal, a principal with the Indian Orchard-based Royal Law Firm, which specializes in employment law, specifically representing employ- ers. She summed up the measures and their bearing on employers with a single word. “It’s exhausting for companies.”
That would be an understatement.
Already, vaccine mandates enacted by states, individual cities and towns, health- care providers, and private companies are resulting in thousands of people being fired
or simply walking off the job. That list includes the football coach and several assistants at Washington State University,
more than 100 state troopers in
 6 OCTOBER 27, 2021
FEATURE
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