Vaccine mandate for Amtrak employees

Lower courts have ruled against Masks. However SCOTUS has ruled in favor of masks and some vaccinations. It really remains to be seen. My trust is SCOTUS has gone down this past year with its inconsistencies also with the taking away of some hard won rights.

Lower courts have ruled against Masks. However SCOTUS has ruled in favor of masks and some vaccinations. It really remains to be seen. My trust is SCOTUS has gone down this past year with its inconsistencies also with the taking away of some hard won rights.

The question remains will it rule for individual rights to not wear masks or will it rule for the rights of persons not to be exposed by possible carriers.?

west point wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:52 pm Lower courts have ruled against Masks. However SCOTUS has ruled in favor of masks and some vaccinations. It really remains to be seen. My trust is SCOTUS has gone down this past year with its inconsistencies also with the taking away of some hard won rights.

The question remains will it rule for individual rights to not wear masks or will it rule for the rights of persons not to be exposed by possible carriers.?

Remember the latest statistics have almost 75% of the nearly 800k deaths are over 65 years old.

Also the passenger loads especially on LD are oldsters.

Let's be clear about what SCOTUS has actually done.... so far with regard to COVID, they've refused to intervene in two cases (ME, NY) where state health departments have refused to allow religious exemptions for vaccination of health care workers.

Refusing to intervene is technically not a ruling -- it's a decision that kicks it back to let the lower courts to resolve. Until there's a ruling from one of the district courts, they won't touch it.

This came in over the weekend.

OSHA vaccine-or-test rule stay lifted

A Biden administration rule that requires workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against Covid or undergo weekly testing is back on.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay on the rule Friday evening. The rule was blocked on Nov. 6, just one day after it was formally issued by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
...
A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit found these injuries asserted by the petitioners to be "entirely speculative," and the costs of delaying implementation of the rule to be comparatively high.

Would Amtrak fall under this mandate vs the federal worker mandate?

Potentially both. Most restrictive would take precedence.

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Apparently SCOTUS is already involved... An emergency appeal has been requested.

No halt yet, but my money is on a stay being issued because you can't undue the mandate if it's already in effect and people or businesses have been harmed.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/su ... en-respond

Fair Use:

The Supreme Court is not considering the full validity of the OSHA ETS on vaccines. It is only considering whether to temporarily halt the implementation of the rule while litigation in lower courts decides the issue on the merits. If the rule goes into effect when the Biden administration wants it to, tens of millions of workers in businesses across the country will be subject to the mandate and forced to either get a vaccination or submit to a weekly COVID testing regime. 

Kavanaugh set a deadline of 4 p.m. Dec. 30 for the Biden administration to respond to the appeals. It is possible the court will then take action on the case early in 2022. 

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The lack of efficacy is definitely causing some to lose trust in the vaccines.

If the data out of South Africa is to be believed, only 1.7% of those infected needed medical care beyond bed rest, and they're apparently mostly unvaccinated.

If that holds up here, the need for mandates goes way down compared to what might have been justified with Delta and Alpha, and the courts may be the ones to actually apply data driven science vs. whatever Dr. Fauci says and believes is right that day.

As an employer, if I'm seeing equal numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated employees getting sick, I really don't look credible in saying getting the vaccine is going to make you safer.

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Given current hospitalization data, most of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated... and most hospitals are already overflowing. Looking at it from the broad national lens, it's ether mandates or lock-downs.

That said... lets not get too off the rails with this. No matter what mandates there are, if one's active, Amtrak's screwed.

Are hospitals overflowing or is bed availability down because they are understaffed after firing unvaccinated staff? I suspect the latter.

The hospital my daughter-in-law works at had to close down entire floors because of the number of nurses let go. That is a staffing issue induced directly because of vaccine mandates.

Companies making these decisions now are creating artificial issues in the marketplace, and where Healthcare is concerned, it's especially troubling that you would have a nursing shortage induced by policy.

I suspect that companies needing larger numbers of manual/skilled laborers (especially in rural/suburban areas) are going to slow walk mandate actions. That includes railroads, airlines, manufacturing and retailers.

Big tech companies and banks will move ahead full speed because they know there are people waiting to go work for them.

Amtrak specifically was concerned enough to issue public releases stating they would need to reduce services "out there" due to staffing issues. I don't think they are going to back towards a mandate knowing that they will then again have to reduce services.

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eolesen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:23 pm Are hospitals overflowing or is bed availability down because they are understaffed after firing unvaccinated staff? I suspect the latter.

The hospital my daughter-in-law works at had to close down entire floors because of the number of nurses let go. That is a staffing issue induced directly because of vaccine mandates.

It's a mix of both and depends on where you are. Here in Maryland, a hospital was reactivated due to the pandemic... and hasn't shut back down yet. Hearing the metrics here tells me hospitals are fully staffed (there's no mandate for health care workers here as far as I know).

Companies making these decisions now are creating artificial issues in the marketplace, and where Healthcare is concerned, it's especially troubling that you would have a nursing shortage induced by policy.

I suspect that companies needing larger numbers of manual/skilled laborers (especially in rural/suburban areas) are going to slow walk mandate actions. That includes railroads, airlines, manufacturing and retailers.

Big tech companies and banks will move ahead full speed because they know there are people waiting to go work for them.

Some of the issues are decades in the making. It'll take a few more years for it to shake out. By then the participation rate will be back up.

Amtrak specifically was concerned enough to issue public releases stating they would need to reduce services "out there" due to staffing issues. I don't think they are going to back towards a mandate knowing that they will then again have to reduce services.

They for sure won't go willingly, but from actions taken, they won't put up much of a fight ether.

Oral arguments on the OSHA mandate are now set for Friday, January 7th, which is interesting because the Court wasn't expected to return until the 10th.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/us/p ... court.html

Fair use:

The last time the Supreme Court considered a Biden administration program addressing the pandemic — a moratorium on evictions — the justices shut it down.

“Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” the court said in August in an unsigned opinion, over the dissents of the three liberal justices.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the Biden administration vowed to vigorously defend the initiatives.

“Especially as the U.S. faces the highly transmissible Omicron variant, it is critical to protect workers with vaccination requirements and testing protocols that are urgently needed,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, adding: “We are confident in the legal authority for both policies.”

It'll be interesting to see how much data about Omicron mortality/hospitalization rates comes into play here.

By most accounts, hospitalization rates for Omicron appear very low, and fatalities are even rarer. Can OSHA present a "clear and present danger" argument if the data says pretty much the opposite?

eolesen wrote: ↑Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:23 am It'll be interesting to see how much data about Omicron mortality/hospitalization rates comes into play here.

By most accounts, hospitalization rates for Omicron appear very low, and fatalities are even rarer. Can OSHA present a "clear and present danger" argument if the data says pretty much the opposite?

Specific to this variant? No, the data isn't there. Including all variants (remember, Delta's still around) and considering current vaccination rates? Yes, the data is there to say there is.

Also, with the Supreme Court, there has to be over-welming evidence to overcome precedence. The court ruled in 1905 that the government CAN mandate vaccinations, and it had a later decision affirming that. So petitioners have an up-hill battle.

That 1905 ruling (Jacobson v. Mass.) upheld the Constitutionality of a state legislature passing a law requiring vaccinations.

Since this is about a wide sweeping administrative action being taken by OSHA as opposed to a law or an action being taken by a state or by a legislative body, the argument for precedence from Jacobson is pretty weak.

If anything can be considered precedence, it will be Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, which is what ruled eviction moratoriums as administrative overreach.

Also interesting is that they seem to be backtracking on the decision in Does v. Maine, which was the ruling in favor of mandates issued a few months back that said healthcare workers weren't entitled to a religious exemption.

By including it in the Jan 7th arguments, SCOTUS seem to be willing to revisit precedence from less than six months ago.