Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Elise Stefanik joined her colleagues in writing a letter to the Department of Labor condemning their abuse of workplace laws by rushing to impose vaccine mandates that would exacerbate the national workforce shortage.
“Joe Biden has already created a job crisis in our country, and now his authoritarian vaccine mandates are only pushing more Americans out of the workforce,” Stefanik said. “It is unbelievable that President Biden would weaponize the federal bureaucracy to crush American business, putting the burden to enforce his power grab on our small businesses. I will continue to take a stand against Biden’s authoritarian vaccine mandate on behalf of workers and job creators in the North Country.”
On September 9, President Biden released a COVID-19 plan, which included a directive for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to quickly issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS). This standard would require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or produce a negative COVID-19 test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work.
The New York State vaccine mandate is already exacerbating these healthcare workforce issues, especially in the North Country. Recently, a North Country Hospital temporarily closed its maternity ward because of staffing shortages due to vaccine mandates.
“Following the adoption of a similar state order in New York, a hospital was forced to pause maternity services because dozens of staff members quit due to the mandate. This reality is not an isolated incident. When applied to the broader private-sector workforce, the ETS will have a devastating impact on the ability of businesses to retain workers and on the economic recovery at large,” the lawmakers wrote.
