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(LifeSiteNews) – The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will likely rely on employees at each of the companies that falls under the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to ensure co-workers are getting jabbed.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the administration could use a “corps of informers” to enforce the Emergency Temporary Standard (EST). Employees would file complaints with OSHA, which could then prompt a formal investigation.

The jab mandate covers employers with 100 or more employees and is expected to affect 84 million total American workers. But the AP said that a lack of buy-in from employees to snitch on their peers could make the mandate ineffective.

“What’s not known is just how many employees will be willing to accept some risk to themselves — or their job security — for blowing the whistle on their own employers,” the report said. “Without them, though, experts say the government would find it harder to achieve its goal of requiring tens of millions of workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job.”

A Georgetown University labor researcher and former chief of staff at OSHA told the AP that the Department of Labor agency lacks the personnel to enforce the mandate on all the companies.

“There is no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers’ door or even calling them,” Debbie Berkowitz said. “They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law.”

“Just 1,850 inspectors will oversee 130 million workers at 8 million job sites,” the AP reported. “So the agencies must rely on whistleblowers.”

This is not the first time that the enforcement mechanism issue has been raised.

In October, Bloomberg Law spoke to experts on labor law and occupational safety who said “worker complaints will be the primary driver of enforcement.”

Attorney Amanda Flanagan told Bloomberg she expects a “rash of informants and complaints by employees.”

Denisha Braxton, a spokesperson for OSHA, did not directly answer questions from LifeSiteNews about enforcement or the veracity of the claims.

“Across industries, OSHA compliance efforts focus on hazard prevention and control, training, and resources to help employers develop safety and health programs to proactively prevent fatalities, injuries and illnesses and control hazards,” Braxton said. “OSHA has several compliance resources to help employers develop vaccine or testing requirement programs and understand their responsibilities under the new emergency temporary standard including fact sheets, template plans for employers and other online resources, stakeholder briefings, and a general webinar that walks through the obligations employers and information to help them come into compliance at osha.gov/vaxETS.”

Legal challenges continue against the ETS

Whether OSHA even retains the legal ability to enforce a mandate remains to be seen. While judges have upheld some state and private jab requirements, a federal court recently issued a temporary stay against the mandate.

“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on November 6.

States have also filed a federal lawsuit against a separate Biden administration vaccine mandate which applies to medical facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding.

“The CMS vaccine mandate threatens with job loss millions of healthcare workers who risked their lives in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to care for strangers and friends in their communities,” the November 10 lawsuit said.

The federal complaint warned of healthcare crises.

“Critically, the CMS vaccine mandate also threatens to exacerbate an alarming shortage of healthcare workers, particularly in rural communities, that has already reached a boiling point,” the plaintiffs said. “Indeed, the circumstances in the Plaintiff States—facts that CMS, which skipped notice-and comment rulemaking, did not fully consider—foreshadow an impending disaster in the healthcare industry.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with comments from Denisha Braxton.