U.S. employers could force COVID-19 vaccine, but unlikely – experts

(Reuters) – U.S. private companies have the right under law to require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but this is unlikely due to the risks of legal and cultural backlash , said experts.

Companies are still in the early stages of accessing and distributing vaccines against the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but inoculation is seen as the key to safely resuming operations in crowded warehouses, lines factories and sales areas.

“Companies have every good reason to have all their employees vaccinated and also have an obligation to ensure the safety of all employees and customers,” said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at the University of Georgetown.

Gostin and five other health law experts said private companies in the United States had wide freedom to set health and safety standards, which would allow them to prescribe vaccination as a condition of employment with few exceptions. near.

In May, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission said employers were allowed to require employees to take a coronavirus test before allowing them to return to work, a move that some experts say could be extended to immunization mandates.

But Robert Field, professor of law and public health at Drexel University, said companies considering warrants should wait until vaccines go through a full-fledged regulatory review process.

“Employers are on a more precarious footing due to the emergency use authorization,” Field said, adding that there was no precedent for vaccination mandates during this phase.

U.S. courts that have ruled on lawsuits by healthcare workers opposing employer-mandated influenza vaccines have largely sided with hospitals as long as they provided reasonable exemption policies, according to court records.

REGULATORY PATCHWORK

In Europe, companies face a patchwork of national vaccine regulations, with some countries making childhood vaccines mandatory, but European employers as a whole are unlikely to be able to mandate staff vaccination, have said experts.

In France, which began in 2018 to make certain childhood vaccines compulsory, certain vaccinations are compulsory for professionals in the social and health sector. President Emmanuel Macron has said that a coronavirus vaccine will not be mandatory.

In Germany currently, only measles vaccines are mandatory for some employees and companies do not have a sufficient legal basis to order COVID-19 vaccination, said Pauline Moritz, a Frankfurt-based labor lawyer.

And in the UK, the government does not have the legal power to compel vaccination and employers trying to impose vaccines would likely face human rights concerns, Morgan’s labor lawyers wrote. Lewis in a blog post. bit.ly/3lDbG9W

To date, US agencies have not weighed in on the mandates of COVID-19 vaccines, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said in the past that employers have the right to impose vaccines.

OSHA returned a request for comment to the US Department of Health and Human Services, which did not respond.

IMPROBABLE VACCINE MANDATES

Until now, US companies have been reluctant to discuss vaccine mandates, before formal approval of a vaccine by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Ford Motor Co, which has ordered a dozen ultra-cold freezers to distribute vaccines to employees, said they would be made available on a voluntary basis.

A spokeswoman for Kellogg Co said the company is working with a medical expert and industry trade associations to make vaccines available to employees on a voluntary basis, in accordance with local and regional regulations.

“Businesses could theoretically issue a warrant, but in the current political climate, it’s highly unlikely that they will,” said Peter Meyers, professor of law at George Washington University Law School. “Americans tend to avoid warrants.”

Surveys have shown that many Americans have concerns about the safety of a COVID vaccine, with nearly half of 10,000 respondents polled in a September Pew research survey saying they definitely would not or likely not get the vaccine.

Some experts have said any vaccine warrant will lead to litigation. Cases alleging infringement of religious freedom could end up with a more conservative US Supreme Court.

Vaccination warrants are common in the healthcare industry in the United States, where many hospitals require staff to be vaccinated annually and all states in the United States require schoolchildren to be vaccinated.

Employees and parents can object to vaccines in large part for two reasons: medical conditions that contraindicate vaccination or – according to the US state – religious or personal beliefs.

Some union contracts with individual employers, especially in the health sector, also prevent compulsory vaccinations.

If an employee rejects the vaccination on religious grounds, an employer should make a reasonable effort to accommodate the worker, such as offering a transfer to another department with less personal interactions or imposing masks, said Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, professor of right at UC Hastings. .

So far, two companies, Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc, have applied to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization for their candidate vaccines.

The U.S. government’s chief COVID-19 immunization program adviser said on Tuesday that 20 million people could be vaccinated by the end of 2020 and that by mid-2021, most Americans will have access to very effective vaccines.

(This story repeats itself to correct the typo and read “or personal beliefs” not “personal beliefs” from fifth to last paragraph)