Will NJ follow NYC with COVID vaccine mandates for businesses? 'They're just not budging'

With winter on the way and a new COVID variant emerging, Gov. Phil Murphy faces a decision of whether to follow New York City and make vaccines mandatory for employees at private companies.

A new mandate would face no shortage of legal, political and logistical challenges, experts said. But it also would help expand vaccinations to New Jerseyans who have refused to get inoculated, and, health officials say, save lives.

"They're just not budging," John Sarno, president of the Employers Association of New Jersey, a trade group, said of vaccine holdouts. "It could be that we'll never get back to anything that looks like normal. So I think at some point when you ask, 'Should we have a mandate,' the answer is, 'It's got to be on the table.'"

Murphy wouldn't have to look far to see how such a mandate plays out. New York City became the first local government to take that step when Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday announced plans to impose a vaccine mandate for most private businesses beginning Dec. 27.

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The goal: Get ahead of the omicron variant that was detected in New York and New Jersey last week and prevent a repeat of the spring of 2020, when the two states were at the epicenter of the pandemic.

As families have holiday parties and spend more time indoors, health officials say COVID cases are rising again. New Jersey reported 1,227 hospitalizations on Sunday, a third of what they were a year ago at this time, but 80% higher than they were a month ago.

New Jersey health officials don't expected cases to reach levels seen last year since the state is one of the nation's most widely vaccinated, with nearly 68% of the total population considered fully vaccinated.

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But for all of the pushing and prodding, the public service messaging and outreach campaigns, millions of New Jerseyans remain unvaccinated, putting themselves at higher risk of hospitalization and death, experts say.

"With the prevalence of new, potentially dangerous variants and the winter months upon us, we endorse vigilance to ensure that our population is as protected as possible," said Cathy Bennett, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Hospital Association, a trade group. "Vaccines are our best option to truly safeguard the health of our communities.”

It leaves elected officials with a dilemma. How far should the government go — and how far can it go — to vaccinate its population?

A bid by President Joe Biden to require vaccinations for workers at private-sector employers with at least 100 employees has been held up in court.

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In New York City, de Blasio said Monday that he thinks he is on firmer legal footing. He announced a plan to require employees working at private companies in New York City to have at least one shot. The mandate would apply to in-person workers at companies with more than one employee.

Guidelines are expected to be released Dec. 15.

"The most important thing that has to be done going forward is getting the unvaccinated vaccinated," Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania professor, said during de Blasio's press conference. "We know that that will not happen voluntarily."

"It would be wonderful if everyone voluntarily stood up and said, 'Yes, I'll get vaccinated. I'll get two shots and then the third shot,'" he said. "But that's just not going to happen. It never does on a voluntary basis for all Americans. That's where our mandates come in."

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Murphy in the past has ordered health care, child care and state employees to get vaccinated, but he has stopped short of de Blasio's stricter measures, offering the option of getting a weekly COVID test instead.

Asked if Murphy would follow de Blasio's lead and extend the vaccine mandate to private employers, a spokesperson on Monday said the governor "had nothing new to add at this time."

It leaves employers to develop vaccine policies, weighing workplace safety with the risk that they could lose valuable employees.

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The policy can put employers in a tough spot. Workers can be exempted from the vaccine for medical reasons or religious beliefs, said Frank Custode, chair of the employment practice at Curcio Mirzaian Sirot, a law firm based in Roseland.

"There's obviously a gray area because you're essentially trying to determine from an employer standpoint whether or not the employee's religious beliefs are sincere," he said.

How would a private-employer vaccine mandate be received in New Jersey?

Two of the largest hospital networks in the state — RWJBarnabas Health and Virtua Health — said more than 99% of their work force got vaccinated after they instituted a mandate.

But Murphy throughout the pandemic has run into backlash, from restaurants wanting to stay open in the summer of 2020 to parents protesting school masking requirements in the fall of 2021.

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And a spokesman for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, a lobbying group, said its position was that "it should be up to the employer to determine whether to mandate vaccines, as every business has different levels of protection, different levels of interactions, employees with different points of views, and different situations relating to staffing needed to stay in business."

Few think a vaccine mandate would go over with ease. The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce has required its own employees to be vaccinated, noting the state's economic health is tied to how quickly New Jersey can get the virus under control.

But it stopped short of calling on New Jersey to make vaccines mandatory for other businesses.

"I think if people followed the facts and dug into the benefits of it, they would come to a different decision than not being vaccinated," said Tom Bracken, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.

Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: COVID vaccine mandates for private businesses: Will NJ follow NYC?