Your employer may ask you to get the COVID-19 vaccine

MADISON, Wisconsin – On Wednesday, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission released federal guidelines saying employers have the right to make obtaining a COVID-19 vaccine a requirement for employees.

There are two main exceptions, especially for people with disabilities and people with a religious objection. According to EEOC guidelines, employers should make reasonable accommodations for these employees. This could mean moving them to an area with fewer clients, allowing them to work from home, or requiring them to wear a mask.

But if the employee is still a threat, it could prevent the employee from going to the job site. According to EEOC guidelines, this does not mean they would be automatically fired.

But labor attorney Nick Fairweather said he believed there would be people whose jobs would end as a result of vaccination warrants.

“I see a very big potential, a big potential, for employees to have conflicts with employers and situations that could end a job and have a pretty big impact on an individual’s career,” said Fairweather.

Fairweather said his law firm expects a lot of employee calls in the coming months.

“Just based on my long experience with Dane County and Madison County employers, I anticipate that a lot of Madison employers will need vaccines to return (to work),” he says.

But Alta Charo, professor of law and bioethics at UW-Madison, said it was unusual for employers to mandate a vaccine. She thinks they should be based on voluntary compliance.

“There will be enough people who have a reason why they can’t necessarily take the vaccine that an employer who issues a warrant on pain of being fired from their job ends up essentially having to negotiate with many circumstances and have to dancing around these very confusing rules, ”said Charo. “In a lot of ways it’s a lot easier for an employer to just say, ‘I’m going to encourage him, I’m going to recommend him highly. I will make it easier for you ”.”

She said employers could even incentivize getting the vaccine by offering employees who comply with certain perks, such as being able to choose vacation days first.

“It helps you avoid the kind of emotional resentment that being told what to do leads even reasonable people to say ‘no’ sometimes,” Charo said.

Although she said voluntary compliance previously worked in public health, the political divide over whether or not people believe in the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown sometimes not.

Employers have time to decide whether they want to make the vaccine mandatory or not. The general public will no longer have access to the vaccine for a few months.

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