I lost my remote job for being unvaccinated | Hacker News Reader

I lost my remote job for being unvaccinated

bbc.co.uk

15 pointsbananapear14 comments

I see this as pretty cut and dry. It's none of the employers business to ensure that you're taking drugs, or that you're not taking drugs, if there isn't a legitimate workplace safety reason to do so. It's an unwarranted privacy violation to even ask.

The article cites the risk of sick leave and health costs. There's no end to the amount of personal information on employees health you can gather or ultimatums you can dictate in the name of reducing sick leave and health costs.

Requiring all employees to be vaccinated means that any meeting or get-together can ignore any special rules for the unvaccinated. If the organisation sends people off for a course or workshop, the organisers don't need to consider the issue. That's nice organisational simplicity.

Nice organisational simplicity would be to simply not have any special rules for the unvaccinated in the first place

That's a matter for a different organisation. For many different organisations, if the organisation is a large one.

If you organise a departmental meeting where n people travel to meet, perhaps once every month or year, the organisations that set the rules for that locale matters, not just your own. If you send some people to take part in a course at a vendor, the vendor sets rules. If you send people to a customer, the customer's rules apply.

Each large company has basically three options:

1. Apply any unvaccinated-only rules to everyone, always. This is simple in principle, but can be bothersome in execution.

2. Require that everyone be vaccinated and don't bother about unvaccinated-only rules. This is also simple in principle, but hard on those who won't get a vaccine.

3. Keep track of who's who and what rules apply to each employee on an individual level.

Other options exist in theory, e.g. "we'll close the shop in any jurisdictions that introduce any rules that apply only to the unvaccinated" but I dare say that this isn't realistic for even a medium-sized company, far less for one as large as this bank. Large companies have to accept that different rules apply depending on jurisdiction. Ditto for e.g. hotels when finding meeting space for a departmental get-together.

How about a rule like: Don't bring Covid to work/work events. Seems a lot more aligned with the presumed goals.

I've heard about such rules (e.g. hygiene rules in medical establishments).

If you're not vaccinated and you infect someone, and they die or are seriously affected by long covid, they can say that your lack of vaccination is a lack of the precaution required by the rule, and sue you for that person's expected lifetime earnings plus quintuple damages for negligence. Is that what you want?

> Is that what you want?

No, but I don't expect that to be my only option. I'm suggesting a good faith effort by all to generally reduce infectious transmission. The reality now is that a vaccine gives license to spread.

If banks simply refused to implement stupid and ineffective rules, no government is going to shut them down.

Considering how often vaccinated people spread Omicron, wouldn't it be unwise to let them act differently? Almost everyone I know who has gotten Covid in the last couple months has been vaccinated. Doesn't seem like there should be special rules since they're only spreading it more by thinking they're safe.

Same, but almost everyone I know has been vaccinated. Also, none of the breakthrough Omicron cases I’m aware of were severe. I would rather see data on whether unvaccinated omicron cases are more severe or not, or more or less transmissible.

"Danielle, who worked remotely for Citigroup from Missouri"

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