Skip to main content

Breaking: U.S. Senate Votes to Repeal President Biden’s Vaccine Mandate For Large Employers


Here we are, yet again, with another late breaking development in the evening.  At this rate, breaking news is becoming a pattern, at least two days in a row.

Earlier this evening, the U.S. Senate voted 52 - 48 to repeal President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for large scale employers (those with at least 100 employees.)  As readers might recall, Democrats have a slim majority control of the Senate.  While the Senate is split 50 - 50, Vice President Kamala Harris serves as the tie breaking vote. Therefore, as readers might have guessed by this point, two Democratic Senators joined with Republicans and voted to repeal the mandate.  Those two Senators?  Joe Manchin from West Virginia and Jon Tester from Montana. 

Now for those who live and breath these coronavirus vaccine mandates, I caution you that tonight’s vote likely does not mean much in the long run.  Even though the Senate voted to repeal this mandate, the House would still need to approve the legislation (which likely will not happen as Democrats, who have majority control of the House, should have enough votes to defeat it...if it ever even made it to a vote.)  Assuming the House somehow voted to repeal the mandate, President Biden would likely veto the legislation.  If/when that happened, there are not enough votes to override the veto.

As a result, tonight’s vote might all be for naught.  If readers recall, this vaccine mandate has already been stayed in court.  Assuming that works its way through the court system (and maybe gets to the U.S. Supreme Court), the courts themselves might end this (and other) vaccine mandates without Congress needing to do anything.

Regardless, this is a breaking story worth highlighting...and yet another thorn in the side of the Biden Administration’s attempts to have the vaccine mandates remain in place.


For additional information:  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxbusiness.com/politics/senate-votes-repeal-biden-federal-vaccine-mandate-businesses.amp

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa