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New bill could mandate California businesses to require COVID-19 vaccines

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – A new bill could mandate all California businesses to require employees and independent contractors to be vaccinated against COVID-19. East Bay assembly member Buffy Wicks introduced the bill Friday afternoon with the support of some business and public health leaders. Wicks says she doesn’t want people, including business owners, to live in constant fear of the next variant and how it could affect our lives. She says getting more people vaccinated will help protect the effort to return to normalcy. “Workers deserve to be safe,” Wicks said. “The theory behind this is that we know that the pathway to endemic is through vaccines.” This would be a first-in-the-nation bill. It would mandate all businesses in the state of California to require their employees and independent contractor to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. State senate health committee chair Dr. Richard Pan says this needs to happen. “Having a safe workplace is essential to keeping the businesses going, it’s essential to being sure that workers are going to be at work and keeping our economy going,” Wicks said.  The bill would require that workplaces and employers of all sizes verify their workers are fully immunized against COVID-19. If signed into law and passed by Gov. Newsom, it would take effect Jan. 1, 2023. Dr. Pan says people shouldn’t downplay the significance of this virus. “Each day, more people have died than died during 911,” Wicks said.  Infectious disease expert Dr. John Swartzberg says vaccines have been mandated for more than 100 years. He says that because they save lives. “Almost everyone who is in the ICU because of COVID is bit vaccinated. Almost everybody,” Wicks said.  He believes the state needs this type of legislation. “We’re 4 percent of the world’s population, we have 21 percent of the world’s cases and we have 15 percent of the world’s deaths. The United States has not done a good job in terms of controlling this pandemic, keeping people safe and protecting people from dying,” Wicks said. “When people are vaccinated, the world is safer.” John Arensemeyer is the CEO of small business majority, a national small business organizations that advocates on their behalf. He says a bill like this would make it easier on small businesses. “This is the bottom line, small businesses don’t want to be traffic cops in debates about public safety. They’re looking for a common, statewide standard that disentangles them from politics.” The bill also says there is a fee that would be assessed on a business if they don’t follow the vaccine mandate. Legislators want to work with business owners to determine how much that fee would be.
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Written by: Amanda Hari