"You mean the places Californians are fleeing to?"
Indeed.
Biden’s vaccine push wins cautious business support
WASHINGTON Bob Harvey’s phone did not ring.
In Washington, a political furor had erupted over President Joe Biden’s new coronavirus vaccine and testing mandate for businesses, with Republicans howling about an unconstitutional power grab and vowing to challenge him in the courts.
But in Houston, where Harvey heads the city’s largest business group, employers took the news in stride.
“I have not heard from my members today, which is interesting. I think the reason is what he announced is so in line with the conversations we’ve been having,” Harvey, the chief executive officer of the Greater Houston Partnership, said Friday. “This will come as a relief to the business community, to have an order that requires all of them to move together.”
The president’s decision to require medium and large companies to subject their employees to mandated vaccination or weekly coronavirus testing represents a sharp expansion of the federal government’s workplace powers, according to political scientists and legal experts.
For a leader who has said he is committed to reviving Washington’s bipartisan impulse, it amounted to an unapologetic offensive in the culture wars that have divided the country and inflamed its politics.
Instead of directly mandating Americans take the vaccine, Biden effectively outsourced the job to the business community. But unlike previous White House interventions in the market – notably including President Barack Obama’s 2010 health insurance mandate – Biden’s action was welcomed by many bosses.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called Biden’s move “an assault on private businesses,” but businesses in his state’s largest city did not see it that way.
“The context in which this is occurring really matters,” said Harvey, a former energy industry executive. “We’ve been hit hard by this fourth wave [of the virus] … and employers simply must play a role in addressing this problem. We’ve tried it every other way.”
In a recent survey, 23% of partnership members already required coronavirus vaccines for some or all employees and an additional 30% were considering doing so. Of the remaining 46% that were not, most said they feared that some workers would quit rather than submit.
The president’s blanket order, applying to all companies with at least 100 employees, eliminated that worry, Harvey said.
Texas is a hotbed of resistance to pandemic health measures. Its vaccination performance – 58.6% of those 12 and older are fully vaccinated – trails the national average, according to state and federal data.
Employers in the Houston area have been talking for weeks about what to do in response to the virulent delta strain of the coronavirus, which has emptied workplaces and filled hospitals, Harvey said. Now, they can get down to it.
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