After a year of inaction by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), one of the Joe Biden administration’s first executive actions, on January 21, 2021, called for workplace rules that would protect workers against COVID-19. Under President Donald Trump, OSHA limited itself to issuing nonbinding employer guidance on COVID protections for workers; Biden’s administration promised to issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect workers from transmission on the job. The proposed rule was a long time coming: by one estimate, over 59,000 workers have fallen ill with COVID in the meatpacking industry alone.

Before the rule was actually implemented in November 2021, the proposed ETS was viewed as a move that would allow OSHA to reassert its rightful place as a guarantor of workplace rights. But that’s not what happened. As reported by Bloomberg, business representatives met with the administration last spring and tried to kill the rule altogether, arguing that widespread adoption of vaccination would make OSHA rulemaking unnecessary. In a May 2021 letter to Congress, the National Retail Federation criticized the forthcoming OSHA rule, writing, “Declaring an emergency fourteen months into a pandemic would convey the false notion that American workplaces are dangerous and would run counter to all Administration messaging regarding COVID-19.”

The Biden administration seems to have heard business leaders’ concerns loud and clear. The final rule issued by Biden’s secretary of labor, Marty Walsh, greatly reduces any costs to employers, instead passing major compliance costs to employees themselves. The regulation encourages employers to impose vaccine requirements as a condition of employment.