Vax Mandate Adds Wrinkle in Shutdown Prep for Contractors
The possibility of a government shutdown if congressional budget talks fail will require government contractors to come up with different mitigation strategies from previous years, with new wrinkles such as the COVID-19 vaccination mandate and a surging job market factoring into the equation.
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Federal employees and contractors have faced four shutdowns since 2013, and each came with its own unique circumstances. New issues that contractors would need to mitigate this time around include the pending federal vaccine mandate that could make some workers particularly eager to jump ship if furloughed, said Blank Rome LLP government contracts practice group chair Justin Chiarodo.
"The one big difference we have swirling from some prior [shutdowns] is the vaccine mandate that's recently been rolled out and is hanging out there," he said. "That's something industry is concerned about; it's something where employees may be thinking about other options where they don't need to go get a vaccine."
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"There's tremendous demand for people with the types of skills that contractors are trying to employ in a lot of segments where you don't necessarily have to deal with these types of shutdowns," Chiarodo said.
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Also, although the current funding dispute comes amid a highly partisan atmosphere in Congress, it is also not driven by the specific acrimony of the type that led to a 16-day shutdown in October 2013, which was a "massive battle royale over the Affordable Care Act," Chiarodo said.
"I think ... if we were to have [a shutdown], it would be a much shorter shutdown; you're not going to see what we saw in 2013," he said.
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“Vax Mandate Adds Wrinkle in Shutdown Prep for Contractors,” by Daniel Wilson was published in Law360 on September 29, 2021.