Minnesota State Senator John Jasinski (R-Faribault) today responded to President Joe Biden’s sweeping mandates on employers and employees with concern and outrage. The mandates require businesses to track vaccine status and require testing for unvaccinated workers, with significant fines for businesses that don’t comply.  

“President Biden’s vaccine mandates are outrageous and ridiculous,” said Senator Jasinski. “It is exceptionally cruel to make employees choose between keeping their job and a vaccine, and it’s just as cruel to put businesses in the position of collecting this confidential medical information — particularly after everything they have already been asked to sacrifice over the last year and a half. We are already facing a severe worker shortage; I’m deeply concerned about what adding additional punitive mandates will do to the economy. This is a terrible idea on every level.”

• 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.”