Construction company VP: Vaccine mandate will cripple our industry

Business is booming for Vallencourt Construction in Jacksonville, Florida. But Vice President Daniel Vallencourt has a warning. He says his business will come to a standstill if he is required to vaccinate his 520 employees.

"Somebody with 50 employees would take my guys in a heartbeat and there's nothing I can do about that," he said.

Vallencourt estimates that he will loose up to 30% of his workforce, which will adversely affect his 30 ongoing projects.

"We can't meet the demand as it is. Literally we can't build lots fast enough for them to build houses on," Vallencourt said.

The problem is OSHA plans to enforce the mandate for companies with 100 or more employees. Smaller companies are exempt. "They have a real necessary function and what this is doing is diverting their attention from things that can actually help workplace safety to turning them into vaccine mandate police," Vallencourt said.

Vallencourt thinks a walkout may be inevitable. He hopes the current administration will hear and listen to his concerns about how vaccine mandates could be the nail in the coffin for medium and large scale construction companies.

"It's pretty basic. If you start reducing the size of your capacity, if you start limiting your capacity, which losing employees is the number one way to do that, you are not going to able to meet your obligations," Vallencourt said.