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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The labor minister of Germany recently said that companies cannot force employees to disclose their immunization status.

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.

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> I hope this gets settled by the labor board or the Supreme Court rather than companies takin that mantle to impose a mandate themselves.

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?

That could possibly be permissible for new employees signing a new agreement.

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.

It seems like it is permissible. The question is whether it is right. In the US at least, employment is generally at-will, meaning they can fire you for basically any reason as long as it isn't discrimination of a protected class. If my employer decided tomorrow to fire anyone who doesn't vote Republican, they can do that. I think it would be unreasonable, but it would be permissable, regardless of whether i had to disclose this going in. But this isn't quite that extreme. Presumably, this is them making a decision based on what they believe is in the best interests for the safety of their overall workforce. Why shouldn't employers be allowed to make decisions that they believe keep employees safe?

A company could tell everyone they hired for finance they now are being transferred to research and development and vice versa. Nothing against the law. But people in finance were not hired to do R&D and people in R&D were not hired to do financials. The company could then of course fire the above for not performing --but HR usually never takes this approach to layoffs. They may eliminate departments or redefine things and then you re-apply and so on with new roles and duties but it's all formal. Companies could require employees to re-apply, but you'd see quite some pushback especially from people who have been there a while and may interpret the move as a threat to their job security.

Yeah that's entirely permissible. My company can move me from engineering to toilet cleaning if they want. I would probably quit because I would think it's unreasonable, but I doubt I'd win any lawsuits. But I'd argue that this bank's decision is both permissible and reasonable.

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.

'Constructive Dismissal'.

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.

People not taking a vaccine does not change the risk faced by their coworkers. I don't think you really believe that, hence the "psychological perception" hedge.

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.

> People not taking a vaccine does not change the risk faced by their coworkers. I don't think you really believe that, hence the "psychological perception" hedge.

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.

Immunization status has never really been considered private. It’s been the norm for 100 years for immunizations to be disclosed to schools, to foreign governments for international travel, to certain types of employers, etc.

And yet it’s never been required for most types of jobs. And here the labor minister is coming down on the side of employees.

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.

Kind of. He's not exactly helping employees who can't receive the vaccine.

It’s never been required for jobs because historically the most virulent transmissible diseases were spread by children and adolescents. And in Germany of course the Labor Minister is going to push back on anything demanded by any employer - there is no information in his position.

Flu was spread a lot in many workplace where I've been, among adults. No flu shot requirement. Anybody who want a requirement for coronavirus vaccine should had flu shot requirement these past years or at least should make one now.

COVID is much more deadly than the flu, though. While I guess it makes sense to draw the line somewhere, I could see more employers mandating flu shot in the future.

Those remote workers are still on the company healthcare plan, and their un-vaxxed status and higher risk of illness/higher cost of treatment definitely creates risk for the company.

Some companies are already charging un-vaxxed employees higher health insurance premiums just for this reason.

Many countries have compulsory immunization for a set of diseases with disclosure mandated to enrol, for example, in a nursery or primary school.

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.

I would argue that rather than trying to find a balance, we just need to make sure all these measures are temporary.

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 interesting. I wonder how Germany handles child immunization records and public schools. This really isn't appreciably different.

In Lithuania there is the "opportunity passport" which was designed to show you are safe. You can get it if you are fully vaccinated, have recovered (identified by a positive PCR test or have antibodies), or have had a negative PCR test in the last 48 hours. This allows you to show you are 'safe' without disclosing whether you have been vaccinated or not, so it solves the privacy issue.

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.

> There is a conflict between health on the one side and civil liberties/privacy on the other.

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.

privacy?

how about yellow/vaccination book that you need when travel to fancy places?

In most cases, immigration/passport-control is not your employer.

You never have any level of reasonable expectation that you’ll be admitted to a country you don’t have citizenship or a visa for. It’s a substantially different scenario.

Companies are potentially putting themselves in quite a lot of legal risk...

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.

Does that mean there is standing to sue companies for not mitigating other transmissible diseases that could be mitigated by screening and other methods employers don’t currently carry out?

I suspect there is.

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.

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