Brief

Hearing set for three bills to soften employer vaccine mandates

By: Erik Gunn - January 10, 2022 5:47 pm

Photo contains a COVID19 face mask, needs, shots and vials of the vaccine

Nataliya Vaitkevich | Pexels

A state Senate public hearing will take up a trio of bills Tuesday aimed at undercutting COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

The Senate Labor and Regulatory Reform Committee hearing was postponed from December. According to a published report, the original hearing was canceled in response to a report of COVID-19 in the office of state Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), the committee chair.

The bills include SB-547, which would qualify a person for unemployment compensation who loses a job for refusing to follow an employer’s requirement to get a COVID-19 vaccine; SB-721, which would require employers to provide workers compensation to employees injured by a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine; and SB-662, which would require employers to waive a mandatory vaccine for a worker who has been previously infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) reported Monday that confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state had reached 1,075,971, with an average of more than 9,000 new cases of the illness per day over the last seven days.

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Erik Gunn

Deputy Editor Erik Gunn reports and writes on work and the economy, health policy and related subjects, for the Wisconsin Examiner. He spent 24 years as a freelance writer for Milwaukee Magazine, Isthmus, The Progressive, BNA Inc., and other publications, winning awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, beat coverage, business writing, and commentary. An East Coast native, he previously covered labor for The Milwaukee Journal after reporting for newspapers in upstate New York and northern Illinois. He's a graduate of Beloit College (English Comp.) and the Columbia School of Journalism. Off hours he is the Examiner's resident Springsteen and Jackson Browne fanboy and model railroad nerd.