Private SC businesses could face financial penalties over COVID vaccine mandates
Fed up with companies that mandate COVID-19 vaccines for their workers, South Carolina senators are pushing a plan that expands the scope of an existing anti-vaccine mandate bill by making private employers pay for carrying out such requirements.
A Senate panel Thursday amended a House bill that prohibits public employer mandates to include steep surcharges for private companies that terminate workers who fail to roll up their sleeves. The Senate Finance Committee is set to take up the bill Tuesday.
The Senate’s amendment to the bill, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, would make private employers pay a surcharge for each of the next four years equal to 10 times the highest unemployment insurance tax rate, or $7,644, per employee they terminate or suspend for failing to comply with a company mandate.
“This is not a comfortable position for me. This is not somewhere that I would normally be, it’s not somewhere that I really enjoy being,” Massey said of proposing to legislate the operations of private businesses. “But I feel like I’ve been backed into a corner.”
Many Republican-led states last year proposed legislation banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates after the Biden administration announced it would require shots for federal employees and contractors, health care workers and large public and private employers. The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the vaccine requirement for health care workers, but blocked the presidential directive that businesses with 100 or more employees ensure workers are fully vaccinated or otherwise subject to weekly testing.
Prior to those rulings, the South Carolina House and Senate separately adopted bills that banned employer vaccine mandates, but neither bill passed both chambers.
Massey said when he reluctantly voted for the Senate’s anti-vaccine mandate bill last year he didn’t think South Carolina’s business community would actually mandate vaccinations, but supported the legislation “just in case.”
In recent months, he said he’s come to realize he was wrong to think such legislation would be unnecessary and is hoping to revive it.
North Charleston’s decision to terminate police and fire department employees who declined vaccination and the Medical University of South Carolina’s removal of unvaccinated people from its organ transplant list were a tipping point for him, Massey said.
“I feel like I’ve gotten to the point that I’m forced to do something,” he said. “If we don’t do something, there’s nobody else.”
SC Chamber says COVID bill sends wrong message
Massey’s proposal includes virtually all the same provisions the House passed last year, including a ban on public employer vaccine mandates, a prohibition on student vaccination requirements, a vaccine exemption for unvaccinated people who are pregnant or can prove they’ve had COVID-19 and a requirement that vaccine refusers terminated by private businesses are entitled to unemployment.
It expands on the House’s bill by taxing private companies that terminate unvaccinated employees and prohibiting businesses, such as hotels, restaurants, medical facilities, retail stores and entertainment venues, from denying access to unvaccinated people.
Massey’s proposal originally sought to claw back tax credits, tax deductions and any other tax inducements offending businesses had received to set up shop in South Carolina, but a Senate panel removed that provision.
“I think this is a bridge too far for me personally,” state Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Dorchester, said of the proposed forfeiture of corporate tax benefits, which he called punitive.
“We made commitments, companies made commitments based on certain things to inject capital into this state, to invest in this state,” he said. “I think it also sends a different message long-term that your capital may be at risk if you operate in South Carolina, and I don’t feel comfortable with that position.”
The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce denounced the new Senate proposal, saying it sent the wrong message to businesses operating or seeking to operate in the state.
“South Carolina has a long and proud tradition of allowing private sector employers to run their businesses without excessive government interference, which has been a strong competitive advantage for the state’s job creators,” Chamber President and CEO Bob Morgan said in a statement. “Imposing a major tax increase on employers that are attempting to make decisions that they believe is in the best interest of their businesses would run directly counter to that principle.”
Massey said he didn’t know how many South Carolina businesses had imposed vaccine mandates on employees, but believes it’s likely confined to a small number of large, multistate or multinational employers.
He defended his proposal, saying it didn’t prohibit those businesses from firing employees who refuse vaccines, it just makes them pay a price to do so.
“(Businesses) are putting the employees in a difficult position, and all this does is it puts the employer in a difficult decision-process, too,” Massey said.
Among public employers, only three cities — Columbia, Charleston and North Charleston — and Charleston County are known to have imposed employee vaccine mandates, the Edgefield senator said.
While he strongly opposes employee vaccine mandates, Massey said he has no problem with businesses encouraging workers or even incentivizing workers to get vaccinated and is himself vaccinated against COVID-19.
He said he has no regrets about getting the shots, but said people should not have to choose between a COVID-19 shot and their livelihood.
“For many of these people, they’ve been doing these jobs for 15, 20 years,” Massey said. “This is what they do. This is what their skills are. This is what they’ve been trained to do. This is all they know. And if you take that from them they’re completely out of it.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.