By August Barham 

Sept. 27, 2021

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WASHINGTON — As larger businesses prepare for President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to take effect, Washington-area small businesses disagree on the mandate and the role that required immunization should play in the reopening of the economy.

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In early September, Biden announced a new rule from The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandating that private businesses with 100 or more employees require their staff to either provide proof of vaccination or to comply with weekly COVID testing.

While the vaccine mandate for federal employees goes into effect Nov. 22, it is unclear when the rule will apply to private businesses. The mandate has been met with mixed reactions from the Washington area small-business community. 

 

“It’s just such a tough topic,” Tim Clark, owner of Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse in Virginia, said in a phone interview. “I understand why some people are adamantly for it; I understand why some people are adamantly against it.”

 

During a virtual State of the District and Region Conference, hosted by the DC Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 1, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said vaccination was the best way to rebuild understaffed businesses.

 

“As I am out and about and I am visiting businesses, they are very concerned about being able to get their workers back into their businesses,” Alsobrooks said. “We all know that the best way to do that is to ensure that it is both safe for their workers and that it is also safe for their customers to be able to come back into the business. The way to do that is through vaccination.”

 

Some small-business owners say that mandating vaccines could have an adverse effect on employment. Duke Marshall, owner of Drum Point Market, located on Smith Island in Maryland, says that he could lose the majority of his three-person staff if Biden’s vaccine mandate applied to smaller businesses

 

“I think that they (the Biden Administration) should not have that mandate on the bigger business nor on the small ones,” Marshall said in a phone interview. “I think if you have it on the small ones it’s going to pretty much shut everything down.”

 

Two other small-business owners interviewed said that mandating vaccines among staff has not been an issue or question.

 

“Myself and my co-owner, Alisha Edmonson, are vaccinated and so is everybody else on staff, to the very best of my knowledge,” Joe Lapan, co-owner and marketing director of Songbyrd Music House and Record Café in DC, said in a Zoom interview. “That’s more just driven by what they’ve all wanted to do more so than us mandating it.”

 

Autumn Clayton, owner of Covet, a boutique gift shop in Arlington, Virginia, says that her staff is also vaccinated by choice. Clayton supports staff-wide immunization for economic reasons as well as health and safety reasons.

 

“If COVID got into my business I would have to shut down for two weeks, at least, to quarantine and track and see what was going on,” Clayton said. “It would not be great for my business to do that. So yes, everybody that can get vaccinated, please get vaccinated.”

 

When it comes to customers, vaccination policies vary business-to-business. The Songbyrd owners require patrons to provide proof of vaccination in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and to return to a pre-pandemic lifestyle.

 

“Scientific organizations tell us that these (vaccines) are recommended and safe,” Lapan said. “As citizens, we believe in that and believe that that is the recommended pathway toward living our lives.”

 

Clark does not require proof of vaccination and worries that such a mandate could alienate customers if it applied to them.

 

“I don’t know if I would like to see the mandate because I don’t want to shun customers who are maybe voicing their opinion one way or another,” Clark said. “It becomes very difficult because you have to deny probably long-term customers who have been very supportive of us through this process.”

 

During the Oct. 1 District and Region Conference, Wayne Turnage, the Deputy Mayor for the District of Columbia Health and Human Services and the Director of the District of Columbia Department of Health Care Finance, addressed a question on the continued efforts to increase vaccination rates among vaccine-hesitant populations. In his answer, Turnage suggested that not allowing unvaccinated people to participate in certain activities could be an incentive.

 

“At the end of the day, the reality of it is we cannot force people to take the shot,” Turnage said. “We can make it very consequential if you don’t take it. People say, ‘It’s my right, my body, I don’t want to take the shot.’ We are not talking about something that only affects you, however. This is an infectious disease.”

 

Turnage said some of the consequences of not receiving a vaccination could include losing your job or being unable to attend social events. “If people want to take that risk and curtail their daily function based on the fact that they are not going to get the vaccine, that is a choice that they certainly have to make,” Turnage said.

 

Small businesses that do not require proof of vaccination for patrons or staff have a variety of rationale, including, the still constantly evolving science around the novel virus and vaccine.

 

“I think it should be voluntary,” Marshall said. “I think to penalize or punish somebody is wrong. There are so many unknowns out there right now that it shouldn’t be mandatory.”

 

Joseph Oh, former-owner of Coffee Nature in North West Washington, suggests that the government increase education efforts before enforcing further mandates.

 

“I think Americans, they don’t really do as ordered,” Oh said. “I grew up in Korea and if some older person says to do something, then we just do it without thinking. But here you need knowledge to be vaccinated … they need to be fully informed.”

 The ongoing debate concerning the role that required immunization should play in the reopening of the economy presents a host of health and economic concerns for a business community that is still hurting from the financial woes of the pandemic.

 

“We know that those industries that really were a part of our draw, pre-pandemic—our hospitality industry, tourism, restaurants—a are still challenged by the conditions of the pandemic,” said Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, chairperson on the Committee on Business and Economic Development, during the State of the District and Region Conference.