President Biden has announced a vaccination mandate or regular COVID-19 testing for businesses with 100 or more employees and operators are working to implement the new requirements.
"We’re balancing the needs of our employees with the needs the government now has," said Woodstock's Pizza co-owner Laura Ambrose.
Ambrose said it will add a new dynamic as they work to fill many open positions.
"For us the challenge is that we are desperately trying to hire enough team members for all our restaurants and it’s been an ongoing challenge for the last several months," she said.
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Woodstock’s has eight locations with more than 400 employees. Ambrose said they are encouraging vaccinations and more than 75% of staff have already gotten them, but that means if the order went into effect right now about 100 employees would need to do weekly COVID-19 testing.
"We’ll have to decide how we’re going to handle the requirement that we have to test those employees and I’m sure that will be required because we’re not intending to let go of people that are part of my team now," she said.
Woodstock’s human resources manager Jerel Tolentino said they are implementing the requirements, but still have some questions.
"What do we have to do in terms of what we collect: Can we do self-attestation verbal? Can we do e-signature?" he asked. "Do we have to do anything specifically and then where do we house it — how do we house it make to sure we are very very compliant?"
President Biden said the vaccination and testing requirement applies to businesses with 100 or more employees and those employers must give paid time for workers to get vaccinated.
"We want to make sure that employers aren’t going to be spending an enormous amount of money especially during a pandemic where they have been hurting," said San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Jerry Sanders.
The chamber works with more than 2,500 businesses.
"I think that there’s a frustration that people can get vaccinated — it’s safe it’s effective and people aren’t doing it and it’s starting to affect a lot of others," he said. "So you know I think it was a reasonable choice. Companies can choose to allow their employees to test weekly but companies shouldn't have to pay for that either employees should or the federal government should."
Sanders said until the requirement goes into effect we will not know what the impact will be on an already strained labor force.
The new requirements will come down from the department of U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA, expecting to impact more than 80 million workers.
