UBS CEO: Those who don’t want the vaccine can work from home
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There is a conflict between health on the one side and civil liberties/privacy on the other.
We need to achieve a reasonable balance. Draconian ‘thou shalt’ demands are not the solutions but more and more companies are starting to require evidence of vaccination whether you’re going to the office or not.
I hope this gets settled by the labor board or the Supreme Court rather than companies takin that mantle to impose a mandate themselves.
And it’s important to note, companies are requiring vaccination status whether you’re hybrid or fully remote. Fully remote offering no exposure risk to the company.
Some companies are already charging un-vaxxed employees higher health insurance premiums just for this reason.
how about yellow/vaccination book that you need when travel to fancy places?
For example, imagine a worker infects and kills another worker, and there is evidence of that (for example an office air filter is tested and finds high COVID-19 levels). Now the company has opened itself up to corporate manslaughter charges because they didn't do enough to keep their office disease free.
Cases of 'long covid' could also be very expensive if people start claiming they have sufficient brain fog they can no longer work, so they deserve a payout of a lifetimes salary with some multiplier.
The reason we don't see more cases is because it's very hard to prove that you got the disease from a workplace rather than from some other source.
Also, there aren't many workplace-transmissible diseases in the first world that are too deadly.
Workplace injuries like getting injured by machines are far easier to prove.
There is of course controversy even with this, as the government is saying unvaccinated people will have to pay for PCR tests to get this (before it was free) and it appears with the Delta variant there is a much higher risk of breakthrough infections.
Personally I think what the UK is doing and giving out rapid antigen tests for free and encouraging people - even those fully vaccinated - to do them often (twice weekly) is a much better way of approaching this, but of course it's expensive and you need to trust people to actually do it.
Generally, the default is that private companies can discriminate however they please. In certain cases we've decided that that's not good for a society (race, religion, ethnicity), so we restrict their ability to do that. But why shouldn't private companies be allowed to make their own decisions about things that they perceive (whether they are right or wrong) will improve worker safety? In this case, vaccination status affects other people (in terms of increased risk of transmission + psychological perception), so how is different than my company's current rule that I'm not allowed to smoke at my desk?
However, “legacy” employees never signed any document of employment stating they were required to disclose vaccination status the way you are told you will have provide proof of identity and so on prior to onboardung.
In this situation, you have three groups of employees. Group A doesn't want the vaccine. Group B gets the vaccine but doesn't care whether Group A does or doesn't. Group C gets the vaccine and also doesn't want to work around people in Group A out of concern for their own safety. The company has to choose to accommodate either Group A or Group C. In this case, they chose the latter. Many companies will choose the former. But I don't see what's unfair about this? Group A might have started with the company with the expectation that vaccine status is private. But Group C might have started with the expectation that the company will take measures for their safety should situations change.
Note: I think it's debatable as to how many restrictions we should have in place because of Covid. But there's no denying that many people want to reduce their exposure to the virus and I don't think it's unreasonable for a private company to accommodate that.
Many U.S. states have labor law that cover this. And any company that I have seen do anything similar to this has lost money to both the state and the claimant.
Typically, at least for at-will states, the employer simply terminates you without stating any reason. Very simple for the company and the employee at least gets unemployment pay.
Which answers your question: companies should not be able to discriminate in this way for the same reason they aren't allowed to discriminate based on gender, sexuality, etc, even though some surely would. Because it would be irrational and wrong.
I don't believe that. The science clearly isn't 100% settled, but I believe that when the dust settles, we'll find that vaccinated people are less likely to get ill and therefore less likely to spread Covid. I could be wrong, but until the science is settled, I don't see what's wrong with discriminating on this basis.
This is a question of coherency and political courage: Either Covid immunization is of critical importance for public health, which is essentially what we're told, and governments must have the courage to act accordingly, or it is "nice to have" if a person so decides and governments should equally act accordingly.
In normal times an unwavering commitment to freedom in its citizens is a great strength for a country. In normal times, the people who stand up for freedom provide herd immunity against authoritarians.
Let's not adjust the default settings because of a couple of years of abnormal, just because some of those folks wouldn't adjust their ideas to a new situation.
That's utterly inane no matter how many people believe it. Where I'm from it's illegal to drive drunk, drive faster than the speed limit, shoot guns in the air. Why is you walking around spreading a virus to defenseless people any different?
It isn't.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-02/ubs-ceo-s...
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/our-firm/governance/ubs-group-...
I wonder if companies overestimate how much their employees like working fully on-site.
Of course, this was how things were in the past for most people. But it's not like work from home is inferior across the board and we're all eager to ditch it once we can. "Tying" vaccination with the possibility to get back to the office sounds like they think that's the case.
That's literally the definition of freedom.
The government exists to provide a safe framework to protect property and to provide for the common defense for people to live free and make thier own choices.
Politics is the allocation of scarce resources; so by definition it exhibits preferences in those allocations, whether the whim of a tyrant, an iron law of utility, or a social contract.
Guns versus butter is the toy example from macroeconomics 101, but absolutely government is the net sum of its opportunity costs.
As sennight said, that is a lie. The one person who died violently was one of the rioters, an unarmed woman who was shot by Capitol Police. Four other rioters died of natural causes around the time of the riot.
(And before you mention him, Officer Sicknick did not die from being hit by a fire extinguisher because that never happened (<https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-exting...>). He died of a stroke which the autopsy found no connection with the riot (<https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/19/brian-sickn...>). And yes, the autopsy also specifically checked—and did not find evidence—for a connection between the stroke and pepper spray.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick#D.C._m...
>Diaz told the Washington Post that there was no evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to chemicals or was otherwise injured, but stated that "all that transpired played a role in his condition."
>Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist, said that Sicknick's manner of death could have been classified as accidental, a homicide, or undetermined.
It sure would be a strange coincidence if his stroke was entirely unrelated as you say.
Since we've asked you many times not to do this on HN and you've continued to do it repeatedly, I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
We carefully place limits for things like race. However those are narrow things.
> That maternity leave... I wonder how much work gets done.
That is one reason companies don't mandate everything (although it is mandated): companies with good maternity leave policies are more attractive to potential employees. This is more valuable than the time lost.
Oof, that isn't even close to what the civil rights act was designed to address. Conflating this with that would not go the way you'd likely want.
> This is more valuable than the time lost.
Something so true that it has to be compelled by law!
Just because it is compelled by law doesn't mean it has to be. My company gives me paternity leave which isn't compelled by law, so I'm sure they would give maternity leave even without the law.
Of course, legislative solutions are increasingly impossible in some parts of the world. This is the reason we're relying on companies to make this call.
It's your choice to leave quarantine or not. It's your choice to get a vaccine or not.
This is a personal responsibility issue.
Not a society wide issue.
It's never been anyone's responsibility to wear a bubble suit to protect immuno-compromised people, or stop eating meat because of people with high cholesterol.. and it's not anyone's responsibility to get a vaccine to protect other people from covid.
Personally Im a hurricane evacuee and we are grateful for the help we don't demand you help us at risk to your livelihood.
Permitting individuals to choose to be vaccinated and building owners to choose to forbid vaccinated people seems reasonable to me. Sacrificing individual freedoms for the mutual benefit of the larger group is the very core concept of society.
To a large number of people.... a survivability of 99.99% is an acceptable risk for people to go out in society freely, like you have with most age groups in Covid.
To some people ONE death is too many because the value of a human life is priceless.
What's the correct, scientifically determined, objective scale of people dying, to allow the government to turn things into a medical fascist state?
My argument is that there is no objectively correct 'scale' because it's not a scientific measure therefore doesn't matter.
It's just the news and government yelling scary death numbers until enough kind-hearted but ignorant people are scared enough to sacrifice their freedoms.
2) There are middle grounds between fascist states and passing some regulations
3) The news being a fearmongering whore doesn't invalidate the fact that some of what it reports may be a genuine threat
4) The right of america has historically fond of "if you don't like it, you can go to another country". Surely it's strictly less impactful to say "if you don't like it, you can work from home".
How about driving drunk? Fuck everyone else am I right?
So stop whining and putting everyone at risk only because something is mildly inconvenient to you. Grow up already
yes yes it does.
You need to grow up and accept that other people aren't out there to protect you like Mommy and Daddy.
The world does not exist to hold your hand.
Never had been.
Your life, your responsibility, your choices.
That is the essence of freedom and it's beautiful.
It's too bad you would sacrifice freedom for safety.
Rothbard, and I doubt you can find anyone much more libertarian than him, wrote that if you knowingly cause suffering or death of another human being, you must be punished "an eye for an eye". In this case, if you spread covid and somebody dies or gets injured because of it, you should fully restitute the victim, even being executed if the heirs decide so.
From a philosophical point of view, freedom or libertarianism doesn't help you here. I would like to read any libertarian serious author that supports your views.
that doesn't make sense - why would you eating meat harm people with high cholesterol?
> It's never been anyone's responsibility to wear a bubble suit to protect immuno-compromised people
if you're a doctor treating them (or a friend visiting) it is
Once people have been identified they will have the list of people to let go.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1938-nazi-law-forced-...
Read this and substitute Jew for Antivaxer:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_p...
Using the term antivaxer is the first step to dehumanizing people.
Next, comes "the antivaxers have a choice" conversations and some of them do, some have a mental block ( could be called mental illness), some may have what they perceive as a healthy fear of the government, which is justified as the government has done some pretty shady things like giving people Syphilis under the guise of medical care.
The worst possible imaginable thing would be forcible vaccination.
Which amounts to a needle prick (that you honestly can't even feel) followed by dramatically reduced incidence of disease and a bunch of people will live a lot longer than they would otherwise.
But, yeah, that totally sounds like genocide to me.
If anything, employees who get the vaccine should be the ones allowed to work from home, not the contrary, though this creates a health risk by concentrating all the unvaccinated employees together at the office.
If only unvaccinated can work from home, yeah, bass-ackwards incentivization.
Maybe it is the same perception for UBS employees. Maybe those at home miss out on some perks or even get neglected by their managers. Personally I doubt it, and I expect there's probably a sinister undertone to this message along the lines of "Those who work at home will be treated as less willing" or something.
They do more than most to avoid negative publicity, especially any that might come from legal action. Related to that (or not) and very much on the plus side, they are (or at least were) a good employer.
What’s not clear from this is whether those taking advantage will suffer any downsides. My guess is that they will as far as possible make that job-specific.
Then working from home would be better no matter vacinnation and the right thing to do is to enforce working from home.
I think that the threat posed by covid, and the necessity of the vax, has been exaggerated.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/28/9909860...
You speak from prepared news products delivered remotely by strangers.
Grasp the epistemological difference here.
I offer that firsthand observation makes for better knowledge than secondhand.
I live in a state with a lot of flooding. I've personally witnessed several floods in the past 30 years, including those described as 100 year and 500 year flood levels. I've never seen anyone die in a flood, and nobody died due to flood waters in the two events above. Should I then conclude that flood waters, though very damaging to property, are safe?
You think wrong. Please stop spreading misinformation.