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NEW YORK (AP) – Companies that have announced vaccination warrants say some workers who had been on the fence have since been vaccinated against COVID-19. But many refractories remain – a likely sign of what will happen once a federal mandate takes effect.
Even before President Joe Biden’s September 9 announcement that companies with more than 100 workers should demand vaccinations, dozens of companies, including Amtrak, Microsoft, United Airlines and Disney, issued ultimatums to most workers. And small businesses in New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans have been forced to implement mandates for clients and workers.
Some mandates seem to have converted hesitant workers. United Airlines said 97% of its workers had been vaccinated even before its deadline went into effect on Monday. But employers are still grappling with holdouts. Alternatives for these employees include weekly testing, working remotely or away from other staff, or ultimately termination.
The federal mandate will cover up to 100 million Americans – private sector employees as well as health care workers and federal contractors. It’s a high-stakes bet by the president to increase the vaccination rate in the United States. About 77% of American adults have received a dose of the vaccine, according to the CDC.
Akash Kapoor, founder of Indian restaurant chain Curry Up Now, implemented a vaccination requirement for employees and customers at his downtown San Francisco establishment in August. Kapoor said more than 90% of its employees were vaccinated, with one or two refusing per store. He has unvaccinated workers tested twice a week.
“It makes vaccinated employees feel safe,” he said.
Alejandra Segura, 28, senior learning and development coordinator at Curry Up Now, said she worried she was having a bad reaction to the vaccine, so she stopped. But the chain’s vaccination mandate spurred her to action, and she received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on September 20.
“It’s a good thing that we have to get vaccinated, to keep people safe,” Segura said.
“Experience shows that these mandates make a big difference in employee willingness to get vaccinated,” said Laura Boudreau, an assistant professor at Columbia University who studies labor issues. She believes only a tiny fraction of employees will quit – likely those who are already close to retirement and highly suspicious of vaccines.
The Biden administration said businesses would face fines of $ 13,600 per violation and that mandatory weekly testing would be the alternative to vaccination.
Whether employers or the government will pay for mandatory testing has yet to be resolved. Bylaws for the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the office responsible for implementing the mandate, will be drafted in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases are on the rise in the United States The seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths crossed the 2,000 threshold last week for the first time since March. And this week, a number of state-set deadlines arrive for healthcare workers to get vaccinated, raising fears of worsening staff shortages in hospitals and nursing homes if some choose to. resign or be fired or suspended.
A poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 59% of remote workers support vaccine requirements at their own workplace, compared to 47% of those who currently work in person. About a quarter of workers – in person and remotely – opposed it.
United’s vice president of human resources Kirk Limacher said more than half of employees who were not vaccinated when the company announced the requirement on August 6 have since been vaccinated. Workers must receive a full vaccination by October 31, but can request an exemption for medical or religious reasons. If the request is denied, they have five weeks to comply with the vaccination mandate.
The American and Southwest pilot unions are asking the Biden administration and Congress for the option of weekly testing or showing immunity by previously contracting COVID-19. The president of the American Airlines union has warned that “mass layoffs” of unvaccinated pilots could lead to a pilot shortage during the December vacation. Neither American nor Southwest has indicated whether they will require vaccination or offer testing as an alternative.
Delta Air Lines did not request the vaccination, but said that starting in November, unvaccinated workers on the company’s health plan will pay a monthly supplement of $ 200.
Delta’s director of health, Dr Henry Ting, said about 20,000 employees were unvaccinated when the company announced plans for the surcharge. In the past month, nearly 9,000 of them received at least one injection. About 82.5% of Delta’s 75,000 employees are fully immunized. Fewer than five workers requested a medical exemption and no one requested a religious exemption, Ting said.
“The first 20,000 were very impatient, and we got to about 70% (vaccinated) pretty quickly,” Ting said, but the remaining unvaccinated workers “are a very different group.”
Ting said the holdouts are more likely to be black, brown or younger than the first group. “A lot of them are not anti-vaccine,” he said. “They were on the fence, they are scared, they want to make their own decision on their own schedule.”
Other big companies that have announced rules requiring office workers to be vaccinated now or in the coming weeks include Google, McDonald’s (US-based office workers), Microsoft, and Goldman Sachs, among others.
Last week, Amtrak extended the deadline for vaccinating all workers by three weeks to Nov. 22. Currently, around 60% of its workers have received at least one injection.
Meat packaging giant Tyson Foods, whose workforce has been hit hard by the coronavirus, is demanding that all of its employees be vaccinated by November 1. About 80% of Tyson’s more than 100,000 employees have received at least one dose of the vaccine, up from 50% when the tenure was announced on August 3.
The company has put in place incentives for workers to get vaccinated. Its poultry division is holding a lottery, once a week for five weeks, for $ 10,000 each week for workers who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
New York began enforcing a vaccination mandate for certain businesses on September 13. Art Depol said about 16 of its 24 employees at Mooyah Burgers, Fries & Shakes in Times Square were already vaccinated, three received the vaccine when needed and five refused.
Depol is working on setting up weekly tests for unvaccinated workers so that it can keep them on schedule.
“It’s so hard to find good people right now, I don’t want to lose the good people I have because of this.”
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Koenig reported from Dallas. AP writer Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this report.
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