BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - The U.S. Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule requiring vaccinations at workplaces with 100 or more employees.
"This is going to have an impact," said Amherst Chamber of Commerce President A.J. Baynes. He started calling HR directors on Friday and found many were anxiously awaiting the guidelines. "This is going to affect several hundred companies around Western New York," he said.
He notes that Buffalo has over 30 companies with more than 1,000 employees - and several hundred with over 500 employees.
The biggest question employers have, does not concern vaccinations, but instead, it concerns testing. Under the Biden plan, if workers are not vaccinated they would have to undergo weekly testing. Who would pay for that?
"That is a big concern of many employers," said Baynes. "If you take a company that has a thousand employees and 90% are fully vaccinated, that leaves 100 employees who are unvaccinated. Let's say testing is $100 dollars per employee, that's ten thousand dollars a week, or $500-thousand dollars over the course of a year. Who's playing for that?," he asked.
Baynes said many employers who were planning to bring back employees, were going to require vaccines, before the Biden mandate was announced.
Others were going to have employees stay remote. Now, with vaccinations being mandated, employers are looking for a lot more clarity.
One gray area concerns remote employees. "If they continue to work from home, do they have to undergo weekly testing or not? We don't have the language as of yet," said Baynes.
The next question, he said, are employers going to terminate employees who do not get vaccinated? There are a lot of unknowns right now, including when does this start?
This comes on top of companies already reeling from staff shortages. "The hospitality industry was decimated during the pandemic," said Baynes. "Restaurants had to move to take-out only. Then as they tried to ramp up, employees chose to stay home, as enhanced unemployment was more attractive and offered bigger pay than their job."
Baynes said these are challenging times for everybody. "We're trying our best to navigate through this right now, it's a balancing act."
