US employers are scrambling to come up with Covid-19 policies for their workers as the country is experiencing a rise in infections, primarily among unvaccinated Americans, leading to a chaotic patchwork of requirements that varies by company and location.
The rapid spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which has caused Covid cases to rise in the majority of states, has led many companies to announce vaccine mandates and mask requirements and to delay plans to return to the office.
On Wall Street, confusion has loomed as the largest banks have issued different rules.
Some firms, including Morgan Stanley, Jeffries and BlackRock, have required employees to be vaccinated in order to return to the office.
Others, such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are so far staying away from such mandates. Masks were largely optional for vaccinated employees until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its guidance to encourage more indoor masking. Since the update, Citigroup and JPMorgan are requiring all employees to wear masks in the office.
Companies in the finance industry have been the staunchest proponents of getting workers back at their desks. Earlier in the summer, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said he would be “very disappointed” if employees were not back in the office by Labor Day, September 6.
“If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this ‘I’m in Colorado, working in New York and getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City,” Gorman said in June. “Sorry, that doesn’t work.”
The spread of the Delta variant is on the radar of bank executives, some of whom are reportedly reconsidering when to require employees to return to the office. On Thursday, BlackRock and Wells Fargo announced they are delaying plans to have employees return to the office, citing the rise in Covid-19 cases.
Tech giants like Google, Facebook and retail chain Walmart – which are requiring employees to be vaccinated to return to the workplace – have also stalled their office return plans until October. Amazon postponed its return to the office to January 2022.
Other large companies have started to announce vaccine mandates for their workers. On Friday, United Airlines became the first major US airline to require vaccines of all its domestic US employees by October 25, or five weeks after the vaccines being used in the US receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, whichever comes first.
“We know some of you will disagree with this decision to require the vaccine for all United employees,” United CEO Scott Kirby and president Brett Hart said in a note to employees Friday. “But we have no greater responsibility to you and your colleagues than to ensure your safety when you’re at work, and the facts are crystal clear: everyone is safe when everyone is vaccinated.”
In light of the Delta variant and Joe Biden’s missed target of vaccinating 70% of the American adult population with at least one dose by 4 July – a goal that was reached instead on 2 August – the White House appears poised to use its executive power to encourage vaccine mandates where possible.
The federal government announced last week that vaccinations will be required for all federal workers and contractors, and the department of defense is considering a mandate for active duty troops in the US military.
The White House is also discussing whether Biden could use regulatory power or withhold federal funds to encourage employee vaccine mandates. Such executive action could affect institutions as varied as nursing and long-term care facilities, cruise ships and universities, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the Washington Post about the deliberations.
Guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency that oversees workplace protections, says that federal laws do not prevent employers from mandating Covid-19 vaccines for employees.
But some Republican states such as Florida and Utah have banned employers from implementing vaccine requirements, making it more difficult for Biden to use federal power to establish mandates.
“It’s still a question whether the federal government can mandate the whole country,” Biden said at a press conference last week. “I don’t know yet.”
While mandates will probably push more people to get vaccinated, the increased spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant has led to a rise in vaccinations in recent weeks.
States with the highest Covid-19 case rates are seeing upticks in administered doses. Tennessee saw a 90% increase in vaccinations and Oklahoma an 82% increase over the previous weeks, Jeffrey Zients, coordinator of the White House’s Covid-19 task force, said at a press briefing on Thursday.
Alabama – which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country – is also seeing a slight uptick in vaccinations.
“[Those who were hesitant] told us that before they were pretty healthy and they never got sick, and now they’re seeing people that they know and love getting sick and hospitalized and sometimes dying,” Vanessa Davis, supervisor of the injection clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, told CNN. “And it scares them enough. It’s that tipping point where they’re finally more scared of the virus than they are the vaccine.”