Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton have highest immigrant retention rates: StatsCan

Madeleine Cummings

© Supplied by the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers The Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers holds language instruction for immigrants to Canada. Edmonton and Calgary have immigrant retention rates above 80 per cent…

Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton have the highest immigrant retention rates in the country, according to data published by Statistics Canada.

The agency looked at immigrants who were admitted to Canada in 2014 and filed taxes in 2019.

Five years after being admitted to Canada, 86.1 per cent of immigrants who first settled there had stayed in Vancouver, which had the highest retention rate of any metropolitan area, followed by Toronto (85.5 per cent) and Edmonton (84.6 per cent).

Metropolitan areas, as defined by StatsCan, contain at least 100,000 residents, with at least 50,000 of them living in the core.

Vancouver also had the highest retention rate for family-sponsored immigrants and refugees while Edmonton had the highest for economic immigrants.

The data shows that most tax-filing immigrants stay in the province where they were admitted. More than 85 per cent of the immigrants who came to Canada in 2014 remained in the same province or territory of admission five years later.

Provincially, Ontario had the highest retention rate (93.7 per cent), followed by British Columbia (89.7 per cent) and Alberta (89 per cent). Provinces in Atlantic Canada had the lowest rates. Only 28.1 per cent of immigrants stayed in Prince Edward Island.

The cities with the highest overall retention saw high rates for all of three immigration categories, but some other cities' rates were less even.

Montreal had high retention for family-sponsored immigrants and refugees, but a much lower for economic immigrants, and though Winnipeg retained 82 per cent of family-sponsored immigrants, its retention rate for refugees was about 40 per cent.

Employment an important factor

Marshia Akbar, a researcher at Ryerson University in Toronto, says social, economic and cultural factors influence migrants' mobility decisions, but employment and work experience is considered the most important factor.

The data shows immigrants who were admitted in 2014 with work permits were more likely to stay in their province or territory than those with study permits.

"They work there, they create a sense of belonging and because they already have work experience, it helps them to get another job so they don't necessarily feel the push to go to another province," said Akbar, a senior research associate at Ryerson's Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration.

Nathan Po, an immigration lawyer with McCuaig Desrochers in Edmonton, said he was not surprised to see retention rates above 80 per cent for Edmonton and Calgary. Calgary's rate was 82.9 per cent.

"A vast majority of my clients are looking to build a home here, and for the most part, they're still here," he said.

He added that Alberta tends to have a higher percentage of foreign workers than some other provinces, which could be influencing retention rates.

Statistics Canada used data from the Longitudinal Immigration Database, which does not explain why people stay put. But Akbar and her colleagues are studying that question, examining why some migrants have stayed for more than 10 years in smaller cities and towns in Ontario and Saskatchewan.

This kind of data, Akbar said, can inform successful immigrant retention strategies.

"The friendliness of the community is one of the things that we would say is a way of keeping people to stay," said Josephine Allard, education program manager at Changing Together, a non-profit that helps immigrant women in Edmonton.

Allard, who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines more than 50 years ago, said some of the people she serves moved away, only to return to Edmonton after a few months, saying they feel more accepted in the city.

Though most immigrants stay put in Edmonton, she said the biggest reason for leaving is foreign credentials not being recognized in Alberta.

"That's the only barrier that we have noticed from the clients that come here," she said.

THE NEW COLD WAR

Whoever controls the spice, controls the universe

From missile guidance systems to electric car batteries, China’s domination of rare earths has global implications.

A worker at Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co Ltd, which 

makes lithium batteries, Nanjing, China, March 2021 

SAFE BECAUSE THEY ARE UNPLUGGED

(STR/AFP via Getty)
Published 14 Jan 2022 

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M WHINES ABOUT MONOPOLY STATE CAPITALI$M

In the science-fiction classic Dune, the natural resource of “spice” represents the most valuable commodity in the universe, found only on the desert planet of Arrakis. Spice serves various purposes in Dune, but in both movie adaptations of the novel, Baron Harkonnen, former ruler of Arrakis, summarises its importance with the line: “He who controls the spice, controls the universe.”

While Dune has its share of spice, Earth contains its own spice rack, stocked with resources and commodities offering opportunities for those who control them and threats for those who do not. One state that has perhaps taken the words of Baron Harkonnen as encouragement in its resource strategy is China.

Beijing has implemented a long-term strategic plan for maximising the nation’s control over exploration, production, pricing and exports of natural resources that began with the creation of its first Five-Year Plan in 1953 and has allowed the state to “win without fighting”. This strategy still guides Chinese actions in regard to exploiting natural resources, one example being the acquisition of rare earth elements in regions around the world.

Latest figures show the United States relies on China for at least 80 per cent of its rare earths.

China is estimated to mine more than 70 per cent of the world’s rare earths, and is responsible for over 90 per cent of its refining and production. These elements are essential components in myriad forms of technology, including military equipment such as jet engines, missile guidance systems, anti-missile defence systems and satellites. Latest figures show the United States relies on China for at least 80 per cent of its rare earths, with China supplying 81 per cent of the world with its rare earth elements in 2017. China further holds a dominant position in supplying the United States with 21 of the 35 mineral commodities that Washington deems critical for its national security and economy. The United States is still attempting to extricate itself from this dependence on Beijing for critical commodities, a reliance that has led to vulnerabilities for the country and others in the past.

Lithium mine at Bolivia’s Uyuni Salt Flat. Bolivia has been described as the “new Saudi Arabia” (Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/Flickr)

In 2010, Beijing halted rare earth exports to Japan for two months in response to Tokyo’s detainment of a Chinese fishing captain found near disputed East China Sea Islands. In 2021, China suggested halting exports to the United States as a test of how the country would produce fighter jets without rare earth supply and where the supply chain may shift as a result. Australia is relatively insulated from rare earth coercion, holding the sixth-largest reserves of rare earths in the world, much of which is untapped. That doesn’t mean that Australia’s military can’t be affected by poor quality Chinese metal or its reliance on other Beijing resources, such as the 2021 shortage of urea, another form of spice and an ingredient in the fluid needed by diesel trucks and agricultural machines.

China also has a history of creative forms of coercion, such as cutting tourism to certain countries, weaponising trade tariffs, and even halting trash processing. Attempts to diversify supply chains have run into further obstacles. Africa represents an opportunity for the supply of rare earth metals, but Beijing has already multiplied mining investment by Chinese entities on the continent 25 times in the period 2005–15. Much of this access to resources is tied to investment in infrastructure, which in turn links up with China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.

A Chinese firm has a 51 per cent stake in the world’s largest lithium mine in Australia, which is all on top of China’s own large lithium reserves.

As the world moves towards generating sources of renewable energy and combatting climate change, Beijing is one step ahead. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, China has gained access to the largest untapped reserves of the key metal cobalt, an essential component in electric car batteries. Chinese companies have taken ownership of eight of the 14 largest cobalt mines in the country. Similar moves have been made in South America in an area known as the “Lithium Triangle”. The region rests on the borders of three countries into which Beijing has invested billions for the rights to mine lithium: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, a nation described as the “new Saudi Arabia” for its potential in this component of electric car batteries.

Afghanistan offers a similar treasure trove of lithium, with Chinese firms seeking to take advantage of what may be the world’s largest lithium reserves worth an estimated $1 trillion or more. A Chinese firm has a 51 per cent stake in the world’s largest lithium mine in Australia, which is all on top of China’s own large lithium reserves. This domination of resources has come at the cost of the health of local workers, communities and environments around which their mining operations take place, as well as accusations of widespread graft.

Dependence on supply chains with Beijing at the on/off switch is a dangerous position and one that nations will need to adapt to in order to avoid the vulnerability of coercion. China has put itself ahead of the game in a natural resource strategy that brings to mind words from another classic of science fiction: “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” RACIST JINGOISM 

MARS IS THE RED PLANET

Alexander Bogdanov’s Secret History of Martian Socialism

Bogdanov’s Mars is an opportunity to create an outside from which to examine the givens that are taken for granted on Earth. On Earth, on the other hand, the division of the whole planet into component parts created an initial blissful ignorance; individual cultures could live without concern for one another.

It's not necessary to trash the environment to extract metals needed for renewable energy

John Steen, EY Distinguished Scholar in Global Mining Futures,

W. Scott Dunbar, Professor and Head of Department of Mining Engineering, 

Davide Elmo, Associate Professor, Rock Mechanics, 

University of British Columbia  

The use of renewable energy systems, such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells, will minimize greenhouse gas emissions and reduce global warming. But use of these systems has to increase — and they require a lot of metal.

© (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Off-road vehicles are driven on a property that will be mined for lithium along the Salton Sea, in Niland, Calif., in July 2021. Lithium is critical to rechargeable batteries.

The World Bank estimates that about three billion tonnes of metals like graphite, lithium and cobalt will be needed by 2050 to supply enough systems to keep the global temperature rise below 2 C, a goal of the 2016 Paris Climate agreement. In comparison, only about one billion tonnes of metals would be needed by 2050 to satisfy current usage of renewable energy systems.

Since Canada has abundant resources of most of the metals needed, can it become a global leader in the supply of materials needed for renewable energy systems?

It could, but the increase in the physical, energy and water footprints associated with extraction of these metals to meet the metal demand could negate any gains made by the use of renewable energy systems.

© (Shutterstock) A lithium processing plant in Australia.

Sustainability vs. fossil fuel alternatives

Some say it’s not possible to reconcile these two goals and we must make difficult choices and unfair decisions. The alternative is to find ways to adapt to global warming.

But this ignores a few things, such as the technology developments that could reduce the carbon footprint of extraction, the potential of a reorganization of the metal supply chain and the possibility of a closer relationship between society and the metals it uses.

Can we change mining technology to reduce its footprint? There is an active community of researchers that says yes. Here are some current avenues of investigation:
Bacteria have been interacting with minerals for more than two billion years, decomposing the minerals and allowing the metals to dissolve into water. As a result, a mineral microbiome has evolved that could be used to develop natural ways of extracting metals and to clean up mine waste.

Read more: How engineered bacteria could clean up oilsands pollution and mining waste

Greenhouse gas emissions at mining operations currently account for about 10 per cent of global emissions. That percentage will increase if we try to meet metals demands using current methods. Some operations are implementing renewable energy systems in efforts to further reduce this emission level.

Autonomous systems, some electrified, are in use at some mines, but there is more potential. One possibility is a large number of small machines — a swarm that behaves like an ant colony. This could enable targeted metal extraction with a far smaller footprint.

Metal extraction generates enormous amounts of information on the actual behaviour of a mining operation. Machine learning algorithms could find patterns in these data and use them to guide improvements to the operations and increase the recovery of mineral resources.

These are big ideas that will take time to fully develop. But we believe that a reorganization of the metal supply chain and better connections between society and the metals it uses can more quickly lead to sustainable metal supply. The first step is to unwrap the mineral resources industry to make it more transparent, visible and available to anyone.

Metal supply chains

The links in the metal value chain are suppliers who perform different services.

A mining company is one collection of suppliers. But an interesting alternative is a network consisting of several sources of metals such as mines, scrap metal, electronic waste, mine tailings and wastewater — all connected to processing plants, refineries, manufacturers and the related suppliers of materials and services.

Networks within networks are possible, and flexibility is required. One network might specialize in processing tailings to extract metals, another on processing mineral concentrates and another may be solely focused on recycling metals from scrap. Ownership and operation of any part of a network would be open to a company, group or community that has the knowledge and expertise.

© (Authors) This illustration of a metal supply network shows different sources of metals and different suppliers of services such as mining, energy, recycling and processing. Membership in the network is open to anyone or any group (represented by the people icon in the centre), and the interactions between members are flexible.

Most innovation in the mining industry takes place among suppliers, and the presence of different suppliers in a network would be advantageous. A combination of competition among suppliers to take part in a network, and collaboration among suppliers in those networks, would promote innovation.

Many opportunities exist for the public to contribute to a flexible open metal supply network. Barriers to entry do exist, but they aren’t insurmountable, and there are advantages to removing them.

For example, in Canada, many mineral deposits are located on Indigenous lands. Parts of a network related to these mineral deposits could be operated/financed by a mining company or group of companies owned by an Indigenous community.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz A girl walks along the streets as the sun rises in December 2012, on the Fort Hope First Nation in northern Ontario, in an area with rich mineral and metal deposits.

Some of the metals needed for renewable energy systems reside in small deposits that are geographically dispersed. Rare earth metals used in the magnets of motors in electric cars are one example. It’s too expensive to develop a mine for these deposits, but a flexible open network that uses services only as needed might be able to do economically.

Tough to separate metals

Recycling is another source of metals, but the combinations of materials in some products makes it difficult to separate the metals in them.

This calls for some innovation in processing. But the logistics of recycling are cumbersome, especially for clunky items containing metals such as an aircraft engine, an electric car or a few thousand disk drives. An open network that includes communities and logistics specialists in partnership with advanced recycling operations could be a sustainable source of metals.

Reuse or refurbishment of devices that contain metals is also possible as part of the circular economy. Co-ordination between device users and manufacturers would be required. But an open network of partnerships can accomplish this.

If we want to use renewable energy to keep the atmosphere cool, then mining processes and our current relationship with metals must change. Governments should implement policies that encourage those changes. Industry can also contribute by encouraging business partnerships and engagement with communities and other interested parties.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:

4 steps to teacher recovery from compassion fatigue and burnout during COVID-19 and beyond

Tackling burnout: How to deal with stress and safety in the workplace

Scott Dunbar receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under a Discovery Grant and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under an Insight Grant.

delmo@mining.ubc.ca receives funding from NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) and MITACS

John Steen owns shares in various mining companies as part of a personal investment portfolio. He currently receives research funding from a wide range of industry and government sources including NSERC, MITACS, Canadian Digital Technology Supercluster, EY, Vale, Rio Tinto, Teck, Allonia, FL Smidth and the Project Management Institute

CORPORATE COURT FUCKS OVER WORKERS
US Supreme Court Blocks OSHA Vaccine Mandate


By Elizabeth Redden
January 14, 2022

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule mandating that large employers require employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

The court allowed a separate rule mandating vaccination for employees of health-care facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding to go into effect.

In blocking the OSHA rule, which would have applied to colleges and other workplaces with 100 or more employees, and which would have affected an estimated 84 million workers, a six-member majority of the court found that the states, businesses and nonprofit groups that sued were likely to prevail in their arguments that OSHA exceeded its authority as set out in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

The majority said in an unsigned opinion that the act empowers the secretary of labor “to set workplace safety standards, not broad public health measures.”

“Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most,” the court’s opinion states. “COVID-19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases. Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.”

The three liberal justices on the court dissented, arguing the court acted “outside of its competence and without legal basis” in displacing the judgments of OSHA officials.

“In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed,” Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion. “As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible. Without legal basis, the Court usurps a decision that rightfully belongs to others. It undercuts the capacity of the responsible federal officials, acting well within the scope of their authority, to protect American workers from grave danger.”

 Businesses are whipsawed again as the Supreme Court blocks OSHA’s vaccine mandate.

Image

Walmart has yet to issue broad requirements for its staff.Credit...Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

By Emma Goldberg and Lauren Hirsch

A requirement that large companies mandate vaccines or weekly testing for workers was blocked by the Supreme Court on Thursday, leaving the often fraught choice up to employers.

Parts of the rule, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued in November, had been scheduled to take effect on Monday.

Vaccine mandates have been a controversial approach to battling the pandemic. United Airlines and Tyson Foods are among the major companies that already have such requirements, but many others are waiting for legal battles to be resolved.

Walmart, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase, three of the largest private employers in the United States, have yet to issue broad requirements for their staff. A spokesman for Macy’s, which began to request the vaccination status of its employees this month, said the retailer was “evaluating this late breaking development.”

Some companies with vaccine mandates said keeping those policies might become more difficult in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Franz Spielvogel, who owns Laughing Planet, a chain of fast casual restaurants with more than 200 employees, required his employees to be fully vaccinated or submit to weekly testing by mid-January and does not plan to change that rule. But the Supreme Court’s decision frustrated him, he said, because he no longer has federal cover to justify his policy.

“It turns into a bit of a head scratcher for us,” Mr. Spielvogel said, though the recent surge of Covid-19 cases has made him feel more strongly about the need for a mandate. “As a business owner and as an employer and as someone dealing with the public, I want my customers to know they’re walking into a safe place.”

In a November poll of 543 companies by the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, 57 percent said they either required or planned to require Covid-19 vaccinations. That included 32 percent that planned to mandate vaccines only if the OSHA rule takes effect. Seven percent said they planned to carry it out regardless of the outcome. A little more than 70 percent of the adult U.S. population is fully vaccinated.

“Our recent survey suggests that many more employers would have pursued vaccine mandates if the rule was left in place,” Dr. Jeffrey Levin-Scherz, who leads the consulting firm’s clinical response to the coronavirus, said in a statement.

Some companies have been concerned about losing employees when workers are already scarce, and although firms with mandates have said those concerns have largely not come to fruition, a national requirement could have further eased those concerns.

The National Retail Federation, which was one of several trade groups to sue the administration over the mandate, called the Supreme Court’s action a “significant victory for employers.” The organization said it “urges the Biden administration to discard this unlawful mandate and instead work with employers, employees and public health experts on practical ways to increase vaccination rates and mitigate the spread of the virus in 2022.”

Companies have been preparing for months for the mandate, and many may still go forward with their policies, said Douglas Brayley, an employment lawyer at Ropes & Gray. He noted that the Supreme Court did not say anything against employer vaccination mandates.

Some local and state laws still require employers to mandate vaccines or weekly testing. New York City, for example, has a more stringent rule than the federal government’s, requiring all on-site workers to be vaccinated. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state vaccine mandates, and it did not limit the ability of employers to create their own requirements.

But other states have laws blocking mask and vaccine mandates, which the federal rule would have pre-empted. With the Biden administration’s rule blocked, many employers in those states will be unable to require vaccines, said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and a professor at George Washington University and a former OSHA administrator.

“This decision will be an excuse for those employers who care less about their employees to return to business as usual,” Dr. Michaels said. He added that the decision could exacerbate the divide between white-collar workers who can remain at home and workers who have to conduct business in person as Covid cases surge.

The Supreme Court’s decision, which described OSHA’s rule as “a blunt instrument,” left open the possibility that the agency could issue a revised rule that is targeted at certain types of workplaces or is more clearly within its purview, such as requiring improved ventilation and personal protective equipment, Dr. Michaels said. It could also follow a more traditional rule-making process rather than the emergency one it used, though that could take years.

In the meantime, the court’s ruling could encourage states and local governments to go forward with their own requirements. That could create further complications for national employers.

“Local jurisdictions are going to look more carefully at the OSHA mandate and determine whether to adopt something similar,” said Domenique Camacho Moran, a partner in the labor and employment practice at the law firm Farrell Fritz.

United Airlines said this week that while 3,000 of its employees had Covid-19, none of its vaccinated employees were currently hospitalized. Since its vaccine policy went into effect, the airline said, its employee hospitalization rate had dropped significantly below the rate for the U.S. population.

Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and the associate dean at Brown University’s School of Public Health, called the ruling a “tremendous blow” to national efforts to battle the pandemic.

“There is 30 percent of the movable adult population” that isn’t vaccinated for which a mandate may have made a difference, she said. “Now, the mandates are not going to be in place, and so I worry that those folks are going to continue to not get vaccinated — unless an awful lot of employers decide that this is in their best interest to put in place.”

Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting.

Businesses react to ruling against Biden vaccine mandate
By DAVID KOENIG

President Joe Biden speaks about the government's COVID-19 response, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

For companies that were waiting to hear from the U.S. Supreme Court before deciding whether to require vaccinations or regular coronavirus testing for workers, the next move is up to them.

Many large corporations were silent on Thursday’s ruling by the high court to block a requirement that workers at businesses with at least 100 employees be fully vaccinated or else test regularly for COVID-19 and wear a mask on the job.

Target’s response was typical: The big retailer said it wanted to review the decision and “how it will impact our team and business.”

The Biden administration argues that nothing in federal law prevents private businesses from imposing their own vaccine requirements. However, companies could run into state bans on vaccine mandates in Republican-controlled states. And relatively few businesses enacted their own rules ahead of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement, raising doubt that there will be rush for them now.

In legal terms, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said the OSHA lacked authority to impose such a mandate on big companies. The court, however, let stand a vaccination requirement for most health care workers.

The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade organization and one of the groups that challenged the OSHA action, called the court’s decision “a significant victory for employers.” It complained that OSHA acted without first allowing public comments, although administration officials met with many business and labor groups before issuing the rule.

Chris Spear, the president of the American Trucking Associations, another of the groups that fought the OSHA rule, said it “would interfere with individuals’ private health care decisions.”

Karen Harned, an official with the National Federation of Independent Business, said that as small businesses try to recover from nearly two years of pandemic, “the last thing they need is a mandate that would cause more business challenges.”

But mandate supporters called it a matter of safety for employees and customers.

Dan Simons, co-owner of the Founding Farmers chain of restaurants in the Washington area, said vaccine mandates are “common sense.” He requires his 1,000 employees to be fully vaccinated; those who request an exemption must wear a mask and submit weekly COVID test results.

“If your priority is the economy, or your own health, or the health of others, you would agree with my approach,” Simons said.

Administration officials believe that even though the OSHA rule has been blocked, it drove millions of people to get vaccinated. But companies that used mandates to achieve relatively high vaccination rates may decide that they have accomplished enough.

Ford Motor Co. said it was “encouraged by the 88% of U.S. salaried employees who are already vaccinated.” The car maker said it would review the court decision to see if it needs to change a requirement that most U.S. salaried workers get the shots.

Labor advocates were dismayed by the ruling.

“This decision will have no impact on most professional and white collar workers, but it will endanger millions of frontline workers who risk their lives daily and who are least able to protect themselves,” said David Michaels, who led OSHA during the Obama administration and now teaches at the George Washington University’s School of Public Health.

For their part, labor unions had been divided all along about Biden’s attempt to create a vaccine mandate, with many nurses and teachers groups in favor, but many police and fire unions opposed. Some unions wanted the right to bargain over the issue with companies.

The United Auto Workers, which encourages workers to get vaccinated, said the decision won’t change safety protocols such as face masks, temperature checks and distancing when possible for more than 150,000 union members at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis factories.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 2 million service industry workers, said the Supreme Court’s decision is a relief for health care workers but leaves others without critical protections.

“In blocking the vaccine-or-test rule for large employers, the court has placed millions of other essential workers further at risk, caving to corporations that are trying to rig the rules against workers permanently,” the union said.

The union called on Congress and states to pass laws requiring vaccinations, masks and paid sick leave. Workers also need better access to testing and protective equipment, the union said.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the largest union for grocery workers and meatpacking plants, said that the Supreme Court decision fails to recognize the “extreme health risks” America’s front-line food and retail workers face on the job.

“Frontline workers need to be protected and this decision needlessly ignores that there was a better way to address this issue without negating this mandate,” said Marc Perrone, president of the UFCW International in a statement.

Meanwhile, employers have been split on what to do with their unvaccinated workers. Among 543 U.S. companies surveyed in November by insurance broker and consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, fewer than one in five required vaccination. Two-thirds had no plans to require the shots unless the courts upheld the OSHA requirement.

Jeff Levin-Scherz, an executive in the firm’s health practice, said most companies with mandates will keep them because they are working. He said nothing short of a mandate can get vaccination rates to 90%, and “you really need a very high level of vaccination to prevent community outbreaks.”

United Airlines was one of the first major employers to announce a mandate, back in August. CEO Scott Kirby has said that 99% of United employees either got vaccinated or submitted a request for exemption on medical or religious grounds.

United declined to comment Thursday, but in earlier comments Kirby has sounded committed to the mandate for his employees because “it was the right thing to do for safety.”

Airlines fall under a separate Biden order that required federal contractors to get their workers vaccinated. That requirement was not part of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, but it has been tied up separately since early December, when a federal district judge in Georgia issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the mandate.

___

AP Staff Writers Anne D’Innocenzio in New York, Paul Wiseman in Washington and Dee-Ann Durbin and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

___

US Supreme Court strikes down Biden large employer vaccine mandate

Kevin Reed
WSWS.ORG

On Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Biden administration’s policy requiring large employers to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory among workers. While every region of the country is facing an unprecedented surge of the Omicron variant, the decision impacts approximately 84 million workers, more than 20 million of whom are unvaccinated.

In a 6-3 vote, the high court overturned the decision of a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that ruled in December that the Biden administration’s large employer vaccine mandate was lawful. The original lawsuit was filed by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, an organization that claimed the vaccine mandate “restricts the freedom small business owners depend on to run their businesses and is a clear example of administrative overreach.”

The judges in the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Those in opposition to the ruling were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk

 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Joe Ravi)

In its nine-page decision, the right-wing majority ruled that the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)—the federal agency that published the new rules for large businesses in November and is responsible for enforcing the policy—does not have authorization from Congress to impose the mandate.

The specifics of the Biden proposal entitled “COVID–19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard” would have mandated employers to require employees to get vaccinated or wear masks each day and get tested for COVID-19 weekly at their own expense. The rules had provisions for exceptions based on employee religious objections and for workers who do not have indoor close contact with other employees.

The six justices stated that the OSHA rules are not “everyday exercise of federal power” but instead are “a significant encroachment into the lives—and health—of a vast number of employees.” In siding with business owners and against the public health interest, the court argued that COVID-19 does not qualify as an occupational hazard and therefore falls outside the responsibility of OSHA to regulate “work-related dangers.”

Significantly, the court majority brief states, “COVID-19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable dis­eases. Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life—simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock—would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization.”

By blocking the Biden administration’s vaccine policy—even after 63 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 and more than 843,000 have died from the virus—the Supreme Court has endorsed in legal terms the standpoint of the corporations and Wall Street that the pandemic must be allowed to spread among the working population without restrictions and that the public must “learn to live” with the pandemic.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision barely even refers to the devastating impact of the pandemic on society as a whole. With its narrow focus on Congressional authorization and jurisdiction, the court expresses indifference to the OSHA projection that the mandate “will save over 6,500 lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitaliza­tions.” The court majority responded to these life-and-death matters with, “It is not our role to weigh such tradeoffs.”

The court also justified its decision by arguing that OSHA lacked a historical precedent for “a broad public health regulation of this kind—addressing a threat that is untethered, in any causal sense, from the workplace.” For the Supreme Court majority, it matters little that OSHA was established by Congress in 1971 and that the COVID-19 virus represents an unprecedented global public health crisis with no historical parallel, with the possible exception of the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918-20 that killed an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide.

In contrast to the reactionary Supreme Court ruling, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision of December 17 upholding Biden’s OSHA rules begins with the following, “The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across America, leading to the loss of over 800,000 lives, shutting down workplaces and jobs across the country, and threatening our economy.”

The claim by the Supreme Court majority that the coronavirus is not an occupational hazard is blatantly false. Transmission of COVID-19 in the workplace is a primary cause of the spread of the virus and has been the subject of significant studies and research. For example, a study conducted in May 2020 by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health showed that workplace transmission played a substantial role in the spread of the disease during the early stages of outbreaks in six Asian countries. Meanwhile, it showed that the majority of work-related cases occurred in occupations other than health care.

In October 2020, a report by the Century Foundation entitled “Halting Workplace COVID-19 Transmission: An Urgent Proposal to Protect American Workers” said that, while the initial wave of the pandemic hit health care and nursing home staff, “tens of thousands of other workers—emergency responders, corrections officers, transit workers, meat and poultry processing workers, farm workers, grocery store and warehouse workers, and many others—have been sickened and hundreds more of them have died.”

In addition to its decision on the large business vaccine mandate, the Supreme Court upheld the OSHA rules requiring health care workers at medical facilities that participate in the federally funded Medicare and Medicaid programs to be vaccinated. The implementation of this aspect of Biden’s policy will affect more than 17 million health care workers and would “save hundreds or even thousands of lives each month.”

In responding to the legal defeat, Biden appealed to the very same businesses which were behind the campaign to block the vaccine mandate. “The Court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure. … I call on business leaders to immediately join those who have already stepped up—including one-third of Fortune 100 companies—and institute vaccination requirements to protect their workers, customers, and communities.”