White House announces extension of deadline for government contractors to implement vaccine mandate

When it announced the release of OSHA’s ETS implementing the President’s vaccine mandate for employers of 100 or more, the White House announced the deadline for government contractors to mandate that employees would need to be vaccinated would be extended from December 8, 2021 to January 18, 2022. Note: That will the deadline for employees to be “fully vaccinated,” meaning the deadline to actually receive their full-final vaccine injection will be 14 days earlier January 4, 2022.

Because the extension of this deadline was implemented by way of an announcement from the White House, not through OSHA’s ETS itself, the Fifth Circuit’s freezing of the ETS would not seem to affect this extension.

However, it is noted that the Federal Safer Work Place Task Force has yet to update its own documentation to reflect this new extension, and it was announced only in that relatively informal announcement from the White House; therefore, it is arguably possible that the White House may, especially after the ETS was frozen, wish to pull back on this delay. Employers should stay tuned to developments at the federal level.