Biden’s latest foray into the workplace comes in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employers with 100+ employees. Under Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan, the President has directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop rules and penalties requiring employers to mandate employees show proof of vaccination, or conduct weekly testing for its employees, before employees are allowed to work.

Tone deaf. Detached from reality. Clueless. The Biden Administration demonstrates once again that it has little appreciation, or understanding, regarding how decisions made in Washington DC impact businesses around the country. President Biden talks about businesses and “big corporations paying their fair share” as if every business with 100 employees or more is riding tsunami waves of success while drowning the middle class and poor in debt and despair. 

In 2016, while speaking at the National Urban League’s Legislative Policy Conference, Biden said, “I’ve never been gainfully employed in my life”, adding “I’ve never cashed a paycheck in my entire life, you think I’m joking, I’m not.” President Biden’s off-script comments are often the most honest.  His never having a “real job”, or having the responsibility of managing or operating a restaurant, retail outlet, or manufacturing facility for example, is made all the more evident by his policies and proclamations.

Biden’s latest foray into the workplace comes in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employers with 100+ employees. Under Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan, the President has directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop rules and penalties requiring employers to mandate employees show proof of vaccination, or conduct weekly testing for its employees, before employees are allowed to work. As difficult as this will be for many employers to manage, Biden has added an additional financial burden onto businesses by requiring employers to provide paid time off for an employee to get the vaccine and recover from any vaccination-related symptoms and side effects. 

It is bewildering to imagine the foolish people within the Biden Administration that applaud the thought of businesses being forced to pay employees for the time it takes to go get vaccinated, plus for the time it takes for the employee to recover from any vaccination-related symptoms and side effects. If this totalitarian enactment becomes law, it will force businesses to pay for any less than honest employee’s two-week plus vacation, or even longer!  Millions of employees will milk this madness to the last drop – just like they did with the unemployment ++ benefit as well as the you can’t evict me plan. If liberals don’t actually despise businesses, they have the strangest ways of showing it.

Has anyone in the Biden Administration taken the time to pause and visualize how this burdensome policy will play out, particularly in the service industry, especially food and beverage, across America?  Obviously, nobody has been so prudent. For had anyone, with even the slightest inclination of what it’s like to staff and manage a restaurant in today’s labor market, taken the time to imagine the enormous burden it will put on thousands of businesses, they’d scrap this terrible plan and find another way to meet their vaccination goals.

 There are over 1 million restaurants in the United States. In 2020 there were nearly 200 thousand Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) franchise establishments. More commonly referred to as fast-food, this segment should be employing approximately 8 million people.  A staff of 40 employees to cover all the shifts of a 7-day per week operation that serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, along with a late-night drive-thru, is the goal.  Today, many of these locations are operating with less than half the employees they need. This means everyone that is showing up for work is having to work that much harder to meet rising customer demands. And customers have not become any more patient or compassionate! To the contrary, many restaurateurs report totally unacceptable rudeness and even hostility towards the employees behind the line. 

Being short-staffed while dealing with some brutal customers leads to more people quitting, including shift managers, assistant managers, and even the general managers. The best managers most often are those that were promoted from within, up from a crew position. But that pool of potential managers is below the drought line and has been for nearly 3 years. Desperate operators are resorting to glorified keyholders to cover shifts with a team of employees that don’t see the job as worth it, even if being paid $15 per hour to start. 

When 10:30 AM rolls around, the manager begins counting heads and call outs to see if he or she will be able to open the dining room today, or only be serving to drive-thru customers.  Having to make game time decisions regarding the dining room costs the business lunch time sales because of the inconsistency. If a group of customers are on their lunch break and want to sit down together to eat, they may decide to avoid the restaurant that has had its dining room closed the last time or two they paid it a visit.

And along comes Biden’s Burden Business Plan. Now the highly stressed, barely hanging on by a thread manager has to check Vaccination ID Cards at the employee entrance, or proof of a negative test result in the last 7 days. What could go wrong with that other than almost everything? It puts the manager in a position that was not part of the original job description when hired. There will be employees who will push back against the policy that requires them to provide proof of vaccination, or proof of a negative COVID-19 test result, in order to work. Some will simply quit.

Many QSR franchises across the United States are small limited liability companies (LLC) made up of less than 10 restaurants. They’re certainly not big businesses. Yet a small LLC with say 5 McDonalds restaurants in it for example, is an employer with 100+ employees, even while being extremely short staffed. For those locations in cities where labor is more abundant, 3 restaurants in an LLC could push them over the Biden 100+ employee limit.  Yet somehow the Biden Administration thinks this is the shot in the arm small restaurant franchisees need right now. It’s as if his staff is as absentminded as he appears nowadays!

Granted, businesses with 50 employees, desperate for help, will benefit by the rush of employees that will be quitting their jobs with the 100+ employee employers. Biden thinks his burdensome plan will compel workers to get vaccinated.  He’s ignoring the fact that most of the people that remain unvaccinated have such strong convictions against the vaccine for a wide range of reasons that no job will be worth compromising those deep-seated beliefs. All this plan will do is harden resolve and resentment towards the Biden Administration.

When that restaurant manager has to turn away his or her grill operator, sandwich maker, or cashier because it’s now Day 8 since their last negative COVID-19 test result, guess what’s going to happen? First, that employee is not coming back to work that day – especially if they know they’re being paid to go get tested! Second, the restaurant will not be operating at full capacity. The dining room will likely need to remain closed, or they’ll need to close the restaurant completely a few hours earlier than the normal hours of operation. Third, any new hire in his or her first week of training will see how frantic the pace is without enough crew members on the team. Unwilling to hang in there until the kitchen is properly staffed, they no-call, no-show for the next shift.

The Biden Administration could withhold tax returns, child tax credits, or any other benefit until the recipient can show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. They do not need to be placing the burden on the struggling franchise restaurant manager at Arby’s, Wendy’s McDonalds, Bojangles, Burger King, Taco Bell, and all the other QSR concepts across the country. It is a thoughtless scheme with outrageous fines possible for the owners that do not respect the federal government’s big, bad authority.  It’s a gut punch to many small businesses that have been fighting like hell to keep safe and open for business since the COVID-19 pandemic first reportedly came ashore on January 20, 2020 in Washington state.

And never forget – if this becomes law – it was the liberal democrats and the Biden / Harris Administration that thoughtlessly bombed businesses with this bureaucratic burden!