Continued leftist demands for vaccine mandates might be pushing the country toward economic disaster, especially if truckers are forced to decide between getting the jab or not working, according to Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association.
During a House Transportation Committee hearing that focused on supply chain issues, Spear revealed the shocking, highly worrisome, and important results of an internal survey: 37% of truckers would quit if forced to decide between taking the vaccine and quitting. Watch him describe that here:
Giving perspective on that number, Spear notes that were only a tenth of that number, 3.7%, to quit, the results would be disastrous as that small percentage alone would mean that about a quarter of a million truckers would quit. Supply chains would be snarled, goods wouldn’t reach their destinations, and shelves would remain empty.
And that’s just 3.7%. Were the full 37% to quit, as Spear notes, the result would be an economic catastrophe. Millions of truckers would be off the roads and companies would be unable to sell, order, or move products.
Spear, in a letter to OMB on Tuesday, added that “Now placing vaccination mandates on employers, which in turn force employees to be vaccinated, will create a workforce crisis for our industry and the communities, families and businesses we serve.”
Adding to his warnings, the Truckload Carriers Association said, in a letter, “TCA repeatedly called on the Administration to heed our warnings regarding this mandate’s impact on the already constrained supply chain , yet they chose to proceed with a disastrous mandate which will undoubtedly ensure the trucking industry loses a substantial number of drivers.”
As the Conservative Treehouse notes, resistance to the vaccine is growing and might be one of the reasons for many people quitting their jobs in the past few months:
It is important to note the recent NBC poll on this issue amid the outlook of the vaccine mandates. A majority of the country do not support the vaccine mandates, and worse still, the number of unvaccinated workers is essentially unwavering in the past six weeks {poll data}. Remember, the number of Americans who willingly quit their jobs increased to 4.3 million in August {link}, and then increased again to 4.4 million in September {link}. People are not f**king around now.
Yet worse, the potential for mass quittings and retirements could hardly come at a worse time for the trucking companies. Not only are the supply chains already in disarray, but, as CNBC recently reported, the industry already has 80,000 fewer drivers than it needs:
The American Trucking Associations…warned the administration last week that many drivers will likely quit rather than get vaccinated, further disrupting the national supply chain at time when the industry is already short 80,000 drivers.
So, to summarize, in a time when the industry is already facing issues and lacking personnel, it might lose almost 40% of its workforce and losing only a tenth of that number would mean economic disaster. Thanks, Brandon!
Fortunately, appellate court resistance to the OSHA vaccine mandate forced that agency to roll back its mandate plans. As OSHA’s website states:
On November 12, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, published on November 5, 2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 61402) (“ETS”). The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the ETS “until further court order.” While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.
So, while the 80,000 driver shortfall can’t be fixed overnight, at least it is now less likely that two and a half million truckers will quit over Brandon’s jab mandate and take down the economy. Still, OSHA’s not that the mandate is only suspended “pending future developments” is a worrisome sign, as it means that a mandate, and thus a trucker revolt, is still on the table.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.