[ad_1]
“When one of us can’t be fully protected, we all remain at risk,” said Paul Wesson, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The risk is even higher, he said, when “there is a gap, especially between socio-economic lines, for a communicable disease like Covid.”
A growing list of public and private employers, from tech giants to healthcare systems to the federal government, have put in place vaccine requirements in recent days as the number of cases skyrockets and hospitalizations increase. California and New York last month announced vaccination or testing policies for millions of healthcare workers and public sector employees.
But threatening layoffs – or running testing programs – is less feasible when a large chunk of the workforce is unvaccinated. And unlike offices, employers cannot give employees of warehouses, farms and grocery stores the ability to work remotely until they are vaccinated against Covid-19.
The divide is playing out even within the ranks of companies. Walmart, Uber and Lyft have imposed vaccination warrants for their head offices, but not for their warehouse workers, store clerks or drivers, which the companies have classified as contractors.
The question divided the unions Across the country. Many worker groups in California have spoken out in favor of the state’s new vaccine or testing requirements, although the largest public sector union, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, says the new order of the state is violating its contract.
Union leaders say a tenure could create economic hardship for low-wage workers, who constitute a disproportionate number of unvaccinated workers, if they are not compensated for the time they need to get vaccinated.
“You’re talking about a change that makes the difference between paying rent or missing out,” said Steve Smith, communications director for the California Labor Federation.
The Biden administration has called on employers to give workers paid time off for Covid-19 vaccinations, but the Labor Department has yet to issue guidelines on whether they should do so if they require workers to be vaccinated. employees receive vaccines.
“Inequalities are a huge concern; they always have been, ”said Smith. “We can urge people to get vaccinated, we can get people to get vaccinated, but if we don’t provide equal access to vaccinations, we will never reach the finish line.”
Vaccine uptake in California varies greatly by income. Almost 77% of Californians living in the wealthiest communities have been fully immunized, compared to about 53% of those living in poorer parts of the state, according to state data reported on August 4.
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the Delta variant is transmissible among fully vaccinated people, but vaccinated people are much less likely to be hospitalized or die if they contract the disease.
“The unvaccinated are more likely to be low-paid workers, front-line workers, and low-paid in-person work has remained a risk factor for infection throughout the pandemic,” said Kirsten Bibbins -Domingo, Associate Dean for Population Health and Health Equity at the University of California, San Francisco. “If these mandates are intended to protect the health and safety of workers, they should extend to all workers. “
Legally, public and private employers who require people to get vaccinated as a condition of employment have a solid foundation, said Michelle Strowhiro, employment lawyer with McDermott Will & Emery in Southern California, who co-leads the company’s Covid-19 employment task force. .
Those with a unionized workforce may need to take a few extra steps to ensure they honor their contracts. But Strowhiro expects they will eventually be able to impose a vaccination requirement.
“Employers make a business decision, a workforce decision, which is very personal for each employer,” she said, “… understanding that they can lose some of their workforce. work if these workers refuse to be vaccinated. “
The tight job market is making retailers reluctant to create new barriers to employment, said Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association.
“We’re just trying to fill these jobs, and we can’t fill them,” she said.
Industry executives have started discussing the possibility of mandates, Michelin said, although they generally favor softer approaches like education and incentives. “It’s constantly changing,” she says. “When you think about this whole notion of making the vaccine mandatory, we’ve only really had this discussion for maybe a week, a week and a half.”
Meat processor Tyson Foods became one of the first major employers of essential workers on Tuesday to announce it would require its 120,000 U.S. workers to get vaccinated, setting a Sept. 24 deadline for executives and a deadline of October 1 for office staff. The company is offering a $ 200 incentive for its frontline workers to get vaccinated by November 1, but noted that the requirement was “subject to ongoing discussions with locations represented by unions. “.
The move could mark a major shift in the meat packaging industry, which has been hit hard by the pandemic, seeing temporary plant closures and worker deaths. It also promises to be a major endeavor: Despite months of workplace vaccination clinics, less than half of Tyson’s workforce has been vaccinated.
Tyson CEO and Chairman Donnie King wrote in a note to his employees that the company “did not take this decision lightly.”
“It is quite clear that getting vaccinated is the most effective thing we can do to protect ourselves, our families and our communities,” King said.
Such demands are “simply not achievable” in California’s agriculture industry, which has lost about 25% of its workforce since the start of the pandemic, said Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the California Farmworker Foundation. . He said workers are likely to flee to a neighboring employer if such conditions are imposed.
“We’re stuck in a situation where we have two completely different worlds,” Hernandez said of the vaccine divide, “and I don’t think we have public policy quick enough to solve some of the current problems that we have. . “
About half of the state’s farm workers have been vaccinated, with another 15% undecided and 35% refusing, Hernandez said. He said approaches other than mandates from employers have the potential to raise rates, such as policies that tie travel to Mexico or require children to be vaccinated to attend universities and schools.
Expect the next few weeks to be complicated as companies assess whether to implement vaccination mandates, said Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5. Araby suggested that the companies are first considering incentives for workers to be vaccinated, including paid. holidays and gift cards, as Walmart did on July 30 for its store and warehouse staff.
Some industry groups are calling for a similar approach, arguing that employee benefits could increase vaccination rates while avoiding the legal and political headaches that can accompany the requirements. “Rewarding good behavior and offering incentives tend to work quite remarkably, and don’t have the same effect as mandates,” said Lucy Dunn, president of the Orange County Business Council in Southern California.
Businesses are likely to face more resistance in places like Alabama or Georgia, where the percentage of fully vaccinated adults is still below 40%, than in liberal areas like San Francisco or New York.
In San Francisco, which has some of the highest vaccination rates in the country, nearly 58% of restaurant owners already require their staff to be vaccinated, according to a survey by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. When asked if they would support an indoor vaccination mandate, 63 percent said yes.
But the city’s restaurateurs would prefer a government mandate, said Laurie Thomas, executive director of the San Francisco Restaurant Association.
“It should be a government business, and then people would have more ways to put it in place,” said Thomas, owner of two restaurants in San Francisco. “No one wants to do it alone. “
Rebecca Rainey contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link