From the Office of Emergency Services: On June 17, 2021, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is expected to approve revisions to the Emergency Temporary Standards for COVID-19 prevention. To see the proposed ETS language, please CLICK HERE.
Among other things, this new language would require employers to provide respirators/N95 masks for unvaccinated workers UPON REQUEST.
While we think that the number of employees who will request to wear an N95, rather than a 3ply face covering, will be relatively low, this could place a burden on some of our businesses. Because of this, Governor Newsom announced that the State would be providing these N95s to businesses to get them started with the new ETS language. THESE are the masks the OES has in stock.
This program will be similar to the mask/sanitizer program last summer. We are opening up our salesforce portal for ordering. Justification provided should be based off of the number of employees x the county vaccination rate. So for example, Butte County has a 35% vaccination rate. So we know that 65% are unvaccinated. It would be for that group of employees that we would provide masks for. We recommend employers taking an informal poll of how many of their employees would actually utilize this option before they order.
For our small business community, we would like to have a location (or two) in each county that has masks. We are asking our Regional Small Business network, the local chambers of commerce, as well as some of our local government colleagues, to partner with us and host this program. This should work for most of our requests, we wanted to offer this same option to some of our larger employers as well as the ones that cross county lines. This is where we would like your help.
Included with this email are instructions to set up an account on our salesforce platform. We ask the associations have one account, requesting multiple orders through that one pipeline. The information we need for each order is captured in the attached resource document. Once the order is submitted, Cal OES will assess that the request is valid by checking for two things only: the order came through a trusted partner and the order amount and justification are accurate.
When the order is approved, you will receive an email stating that the order is being processed for your member. We will then ship the order direct from our warehouses.
Here are some basic details:
1. This is a free resource
2. This is for the voluntary use of N95s by unvaccinated employees.
3. This is a one month supply
4. Ordering will be available through July 31.
5. Minimum order is 960 (one carton is 960 masks; 48 boxes w/ 20 masks each)
6. This is only for employees within CA.
7. The State is paying for the shipping
8. The order must be placed through the trusted partner.
9. We also have surgical masks and hand sanitizer – if you are interested in these, let OES know.
Finally, www.govdeals.com will soon be utilized for the marked down sale of N95s, but that is not active yet.
