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Planned federal vaccine mandates are set to impact Onondaga County’s over 220,000 workers, as well as the businesses that employ them.

President Joe Biden has announced plans to tie employment status to COVID-19 vaccination at private companies with 100 or more workers as part of nationwide mandates.

Edward Shepard, a professor of economics at Le Moyne College, said resistance to the mandates and uncertainty about their scope may harm the Syracuse economy in the short term. But the promise of safety for customers wary of COVID-19, as well as workers returning to the labor force, are likely to supersede those in the long run. 

“There’s substantial support for going in that direction, simply because it would make people feel safer working at places, and (for) customers going to retail places or restaurants,” Shepard said of the mandates. “It does add to the perceived and real safety, to know that everybody there is vaccinated.” 

Above all, any decrease in COVID-19 transmission, hospitalizations or deaths as a result of the mandate would have a positive impact on the economy, he said. 

Though Biden made his plans for the mandates clear in a Sept. 9 press conference, the responsibility of implementing and enforcing them will fall to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Labor. 

For Lynn Fraas, chief people officer for Syracuse-based marketing firm Terakeet, two of the biggest uncertainties are how the mandates will apply to remote employees and how the company can arrange testing for employees who choose not to get the vaccine.

“The administrative end of it is also a burden for the employer,” Fraas said. Terakeet has begun reaching out to employees to confirm their vaccination status in anticipation of the mandate, she said. “I don’t have staff that can spend their time worrying about, has someone tested themselves every week.”

At the same time, Fraas believes the mandates will compel some workers who have put off getting the vaccine to get the shot. Others, she said, may be beyond convincing. 

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Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO, echoed Fraas’ concerns over the mandates’ administrative costs. Centerstate CEO functions as a business leadership organization and chamber of commerce for central New York

“The complexity of the new mandates from state and federal governments is hard for small businesses to follow,” Simpson said in a statement to The Daily Orange. “But we are doing everything in our power to help companies understand the rules, stay compliant, and keep their customers and employees safe.”

The mandates will take an even stronger stance on health care workers and federal contractors, who don’t have the option for weekly testing and must instead receive the vaccine. That’s particularly important for Onondaga County, where three of the top five largest employers are hospital systems — Upstate University Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Crouse Hospital. 

Tops Friendly Markets, one of the region’s largest supermarket chains, also plans to comply with any mandates OSHA hands down, Tops spokesperson Kathleen Sautter said in a statement. 

“At this time, President Biden’s ideas remain a proposal,” Sautter said. “Until it becomes an official governmental mandate, and OSHA comes forward with mandates, we will continue to monitor the guidance and comply accordingly.”

Biden’s announcement came as the U.S. continued to battle a resurgence of COVID-19 infections and deaths, driven by the highly contagious delta variant. In Syracuse, 95 people were hospitalized as of Friday, the county’s highest total since February. 

Biden and other health officials have called this latest wave a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” with these mandates marking the president’s most decisive attempt yet to increase vaccine uptake and curb the virus’s spread. But they’ve also received backlash from critics who believe Biden has overstepped his authority in issuing them, or who argue that they’ll place a burden on businesses still recovering from the pandemic. 

Shepard, however, is skeptical of claims that the mandates will be harmful to businesses. When it comes to COVID-19, what’s good for public health is good for the economy, he said. 

“Nobody can really predict with that much certainty, but it does look like it’s going in the right direction,” Shepard said. “In my view, implementing these mandates was a good idea.”

Published on September 20, 2021 at 11:20 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu