As we watch more and more places requiring employees be covid vaccinated, the reality is that if you want to keep your job, you will need to get the jab. The federal and state employment agency and DOJ guidance on legality of employers mandating vaccines shows that workers have few rights.
Without a bona fide medical or religious exemption, employers don’t have to accommodate worker preferences. Most states provide ways around a valid exemption. There is also the peer pressure thing, where the boss can shame you with special tags and masks. They can make so not taking the vaccine is, well, not career enhancing.
In reality, employers want this to be mandatory. It takes the burden off them to accommodate the individual healthcare choices of their workers. Your fertility concerns, or your natural immunity is your problem, not theirs.
As a worker, you don’t really have a choice. In the military it’s soon to be get it, or get out. Governor Kristi Noem suggested find another job. Governors could make vaccination status a protected category for employment purposes, but they won’t.
You would think the Unions, who are there to protect worker’s rights, would step in, but no, fuhgeddaboudit. Unions could provide relief with objections, but in real life those objections are mainly used to get leverage for other concessions.
The Courts? You could file a lawsuit, but with all the agencies against you and no case law on your side, you will lose. Don’t expect relief from the Federalist Society judicial cavalry. They were usually big law partners before representing — big corporations.
Slightly Off-Topic Note: Mandatory vaccines will be a thing. But if you have a family, or you are married, taking the vax to not avoid homelessness is what most will do. On the upside, the vaccine is not as dangerous as being a buoy tender on the high seas, or a logger in the Northwest, or even a cab driver. Neither is Covid, really. Others have taken great risks to keep their jobs. But if you’re young and single, you may have the option to do what you believe, and not be coerced into giving up your principles. However, as a note: Per the CDC, 45 million Americans got sick from the flu in 2017–2018, and 61,000 Americans died. We didn’t mandate flu shots to protect every American. We accepted the known risk. So too must we accept the existence and risk of COVID-19. Also, the 2009-10 swine flu was five times deadlier to kids than COVID. But it didn’t hurt boomers, so it didn’t stoke an irrational fear/panic that disrupted kids’ lives indefinitely.
If you terrified about taking an experimental drug, or losing your job, and being barred from unemployment benefits because fired “for cause”, there are few options. Government works with Big tech and big pharma and big banks and big corporations to override individual liberties. They are too big to fail, and most are too small to fight back. They use their size and power to crush you into submission
In the end, you are really left without recourse.
But, how many of those experimental shots are people going to have to take so they don’t lose their jobs? 1? 2? 3? What about next year?
Will people be mandated to take boosters for the rest of our lives?
Sara says
BS..the vaccine has not been FDA approved. Gates was involved and can’t trust him. Fauci, a liar, scam artist. A little man …no, vaccines no.
Stuart Bell says
No More Mask…
No Vaccines….
https://twitter.com/i/status/1424399282447298563