Air-Cargo Industry Seeking Vaccine Mandate Delay Until After Holidays

The commercialized relation representing air-cargo companies, specified arsenic UPS and FedEx, has written a missive to the Biden medication asking it to postpone its vaccine request for national declaration workers.

A hold was necessary, the relation said,  to debar adding to supply-chain issues up of the vacation season.

The letter, obtained by Politico, and addressed to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) manager Shalanda Young, came from Cargo Airline Association president Stephen Alterman.

It read: “We person important concerns with the leader mandates announced connected Sept. 9, 2021, and the quality of manufacture members to instrumentality the required worker vaccinations by Dec. 8, 2021.”

The missive went connected to accidental it would beryllium “virtually impossible” to afloat vaccinate the hundreds of thousands of impermanent workers expected to beryllium hired during the upcoming highest shipping play and asked the White House to descent its Dec. 8 deadline for vaccines to the archetypal fractional of 2022.

“That is not really what we’ve seen astatine companies that person implemented these vaccine requirements that are not adjacent portion of national instrumentality yet,” said White House property caput Jen Psaki, erstwhile asked Oct. 22 by Fox News whether vaccine mandates were much important than fixing the supply chain arsenic accelerated arsenic possible.

Psaki said CEOs astatine Southwest and American Airlines had made wide determination would not beryllium a labour shortage arsenic a effect of vaccine requirements. The airlines are among companies that enactment mandates successful spot up of Biden’s enforcement bid requiring galore private-sector workers to get vaccinated takes effect.

“As we enactment to instrumentality these federal-employee requirements, the archetypal measurement is not firings. It’s really acquisition and counselling,” said Psaki. “So we don’t expect these disruptions.”

Psaki besides pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fears surrounding it arsenic an “enormous labour destructor” justifying companies that instrumentality vaccine mandates.

On Oct. 12, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finalized the archetypal draught of the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) acceptable to instrumentality Biden’s bid and sent it to OMB for review. The finished regularisation is expected successful the coming weeks.

In summation to labour challenges, the U.S. proviso concatenation is being affected by bottlenecks astatine shipping ports and shortages of motortruck drivers.

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced moves to a 24/7 work to code shipping backlogs. A database of businesses including Walmart, UPS, and FedEx person besides made pledges to summation enactment during disconnected hours—as has the Union Pacific Railroad.

Biden plans to motion an enforcement bid to temporarily assistance value limits truthful trucks tin transportation much cargo, Psaki told reporters connected Oct. 20.

At a CNN statesmanlike municipality hallway connected Oct. 22, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Biden if helium would see the National Guard to assistance thrust trucks.

“Yes, absolutely, positively, I would bash that,” the president responded.

Psaki added it was wrong the president’s powerfulness to activate the National Guard connected a national level, oregon inquire governors to enact the Guard astatine authorities level, but “that is not thing nether progressive consideration.”