ST. PAUL, MN –Senate Republicans responded to President Joe Biden’s sweeping
“President Biden’s mandates are simply ridiculous and unreasonable,”Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller (R- Winona) said.“As businesses continue to bounce back from the pandemic, there is already a struggle to find enough workers and these mandates will make it even more difficult for businesses and the economy to fully recover.”
Senator Eric Pratt (R- Prior Lake), Chair of the Senate Jobs Committee said,“Businesses have been through enough since COVID sent employees home and closed some doors for good. Vaccines are an important tool in our fight against COVID, but no employee should have to make the choice to be vaccinated or keep their job, and no businesses should be forced to keep confidential medical information to stay open. Reopening our economy and getting people back to work needs fewer mandates, not more.”
- According to a tweet from Minnesota DEED Commissioner Steve Grove, the changes would affect 4,800 businesses and 1.4 million workers in Minnesota.
- The Minnesota Nurses Union responded to the mandate saying, “We question the timing of the impending vaccine mandates and believe these mandates will continue to exacerbate staffing shortages.”
- KSTP reported Patti Cullen, President
and CEO of Care Providers, a statewide association for nursing homes, said, “We are totally vaccine supportive, but we already have a chronic workforce crisis in our communities. I think the repercussions are really serious for us,” after Biden imposed a federal mandate for nursing home employees to be vaccinated in August. - Education Minnesota, the teacher’s union, asked for policy decisions on vaccination be made at a local
level in August in a statement that said, “vaccination policies with the goal of persuading nearly all adults in schools to get vaccinated while accommodating the small number of educators who have valid medical or religious reasons for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.”