Employers have the legal right to require that their workers get the COVID-19 vaccine, with some exceptions, according to experts.
The article mentions various companies/countries but this does not make any sense to me. Obviously I'm not an expert.
The article mentions various companies/countries but this does not make any sense to me. Obviously I'm not an expert.
I would not be surprised if this becomes a contentious topic once vaccines are widespread and workplaces, airlines, etc. require proof of vaccination.
“I think it’s an interesting idea but I think it is also fraught with challenges — we are certainly encouraging and motivating people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible but we always know there are people who won’t get vaccinated and not necessarily through a personal or political choice,” Trudeau said during an interview at the Reuters Next Conference.
“There are medical reasons, there are a broad range of reasons why someone might not get vaccinated and I’m worried about creating knock-on, undesirable effects in our community.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passp...
The honor system will not work!
Whatever institution performed the vaccination could do it.
Of course, if you want it to be forge proof, there are some non trivial issues.
The incentive to forge proof of a COVID vaccine is way higher, and in some jurisdictions there may even be political and/or media cover for doing so (because it's about your "freedom").
These payments to take it might be a form of risk reduction from the companies perspective, as you can get a waiver in return for the payment.
Once they're FDA approved, sure, but none of the vaccines currently being distributed are approved yet so I doubt this will be enforceable for another two or three years.
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
> Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions[1]
The difference is that something pushed out under EUA is _not_ FDA approved. So any laws related to approved medicine, devices, vaccines, etc do not apply automatically to EUA products.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emerge...
In the specific case of the COVID-19 vaccines, they are explicitly NOT covered by VICP, but rather the CICP.
[Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) | Official web site of the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration](https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp)
The Wikipedia page does not clarify either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
I’m not commenting about whether or not business should or shouldn’t be shielded from covid liability. I just wanted to make it known that liability of legal costs, from low paid and high paid employees, and poor and rich customers, is a material risk to a business, especially ones that don’t already have lawyers on staff.
If the worker takes fewer overall sick days because they've been vaccinated against the virus, the company benefits by having a more stable workforce than if employees were taking time off to naturally recover from infection.
There's also a legal liability question here -- could an employee sue their employer if they contract COVID-19 at the workplace? I don't think that's been decided conclusively yet.
And for what it's worth, scientists are trying to figure out what kind of vaccine we have -- we just don't know yet, because of how fast this vaccine was developed.
Do we have a "reduce symptoms so people survive the disease" vaccine or do we have a "completely block infection" vaccine? The latter would indeed hamper infection.
This article discusses more: https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/12/covid-...
But my amateur understanding is that while there are vaccines that don't fully eliminate transmission, they all do it to some degree, and on average the numbers are quite good.
Happy to be corrected by someone with actual knowledge!
Seems like a pretty easy distinction to me.
And in construction if you refuse PPE your fired
However, the kind of people who do safety for unreasonable employers (usually process driven BigCos, mines and shipyards are good examples) and the kinds of people who's only exposure to industrial environments is the mandatory safety training they took once upon a time for their internship tend to dominate internet discussions about PPE and safety. This results in some real gems of insanity.
Safety culture is super hard to build, taking years of collaboration between management, workers, and unions if applicable. Every group wants nothing more than for the employees to go home the same way they went to work.
Any one time you do a task with less than required PPE, probably nothing will happen. But over the course of a career, those "this one time" instances add up and eventually will cause an injury or death.
The largest demographic experiencing heat issues in the shipyard are younger than 40.
Sure, there can and will always be one-in-a-million outliers. But that's true about anything, including wearing a helmet.
But more importantly, Covid is not the flu, and comparisons start failing pretty quickly. Not only do more people die of Covid, but more people have long-lasting symptoms, life-altering, after their infection.
If you don't want to, don't work for someone that requires it. It might severely limit your employment prospects, but that is your choice (obviously, exceptions should be made for those that cannot get it for medical reasons. They do not have choice).
And there are employers that require flu shots, especially in the healthcare/long term care industries. Hell, many (most?) public schools and universities require certain vaccinations to be allowed to attend.
It's absolutely how it works, because the labor laws we have don't generally prohibit requiring vaccinations, especially where that mitigates danger to yourself, other employees, or the public that come from you doing your job. Lots of jobs require certain vaccinations now.
> If vaccines can be mandated by companies where to draw the line?
Typically, at conditions which unreasonably endanger workers or the public, not ones that protect them.
- require routine drug testing, even for drugs that are legal in your state
- require routine credit checks
- mandate attire standards
- dictate grooming standards
- require employees to routinely expose themselves to hazardous materials
- require travel to hazardous locations
- perform duties that are known to result in serious injury or loss of life
- require vaccines for things like the flu
- require employees to sit still in front of a computer for 8+ hours at a time, for months on end.
The remedy in the US for people who do not like these factors is to not work for employers that have different tolerances for physical safety than does the employee. I don't see how conditioning employment on receiving a vaccination for Covid is materially more dangerous than requiring an employee to work on sea-based drilling rig or in a coal mine.
That said, I do not think that vaccination is an unreasonable requirement.
"Something like Covid" is exactly the sort of disease that should be vaccinated against. The only reason why this is being done at an employer level rather than at a government level is because the federal government under the previous administration plugged its ears and refused to acknowledge the severity of the disease.
I assume they could if they felt it was important enough. And, for all I know, some hospitals may.
We regard our bodies as our own possessions, and something like a vaccination is a potentially irreversible change to our body (etc.).
This is not an argument to say bodily sovereignty shouldn't be "ignored" here, only that it is a different case.
EDIT: anyone want to explain the downvote?
Forced medication is not the same as forced clothing choice so your argument is technically a strawman.
So if your employer wants to require of the people in your team that they know C++, speak Swahili or carry photo ID, that's allowed because not forbidden. But the law does have provisions for religious discrimination (in most countries, perhaps all) so requiring your team to be Pastafarians is out (if that's what the law says, the law might make an exception for the Pastafarian Church).
Requiring vaccines might also be forbidden by your employment contract. But is it? I doubt it.
Your contract also could say "the employer cannot permit you to take paid sick leave if you're ill on the day after a vaccine" or "the employer cannot permit you to get a vaccine on company time" but both sound far-fetched to me.
What about “pep-pills”? Can they require that?
Can they coerce anti-psychotic drugs to those who need this medication to stay balanced?
In a fully remote company, where you never meet customers, vendors or other employees, requiring vaccination might be viewed by a court as unrelated to the work. If you're supposed to meet customers or other employees and there's a pandemic going on, though...
They can't require things that have unknown medical impact, so random pills out.
(However, some food items can be mandatory. For example if you're a sporter, you can be required by your employer to take certain supplements.)
Military pilots are also issued "go pills" (dextroamphetamine) for long combat and long single-pilot transit sorties.
There isn’t much you can say ‘No’ to without risking a discharge or courts martial.
I'm sure you could, if you paid the employee for it.
> fluorinated water
How would anyone verify that? Seems like the kind of thing you'd have to go to court to find out if it's legal.