Michele Harmon
How will businesses survive this pandemic? How will businesses stay healthy, wealthy, and wise?
There seem to be many different schools of thought concerning how best to keep employees well enough to work during this pandemic. Americans enjoy a degree of freedom of choice, but some limits and opportunities tip the scales and allow employers to take direct action in times of crisis.
The vaccine model represents a straightforward choice for the employer. If employees get the vaccine, the employer may financially reward them. This makes particular sense for the employer. Why? Because it may keep the lights on and allow businesses to thrive. Businesses need people to be at work to serve customers. Being healthy, wealthy, and wise ain’t bad.
Around the Permian, companies have offered financial rewards to get employees vaccinated and additional cash if 80 percent of the staff are fully vaccinated by a specific date. Others have made hiring contingent on the vaccine. Some employers extend offer letters contingent on employees getting the vaccine by a specific date to remain employed. The employer also may want to reward employees with healthcare credits for getting the vaccine. Indirectly, employers are punishing the employee who does not want to take the vaccine.
A foundation recently donated money to local public school districts to incentivize employee vaccination rates. Schools need employees in attendance and children in their seats. Schools receive funding based on student attendance. If Permian area public schools do not maximize attendance, we will send more Robin Hood money back to Texas, and it will be more challenging to keep employees who have children safe and on the job. We live in an interconnected society, whether we like it or not.
There are other costs to the employer when an employee is hospitalized for a severe case of Covid. Employers are concerned about how much reimbursement will come from the federal government if the employee was unvaccinated and then hospitalized?
Unpaid sick leave represents another issue to consider. Some employers suggest that unvaccinated employees who miss work due to Covid exposure or illness should not be eligible for sick leave. Remember, if this policy is initiated, add it to the employee handbook and policies.
What major companies require Covid vaccination as of late August 2021? Cisco requires employees working in the office to be vaccinated, but not employees who remain at home. CVS requires corporate staff and those interacting with patients to be vaccinated. DoorDash requires corporate workers to be vaccinated. Frontier Airlines will require all employees to be vaccinated by October 1, 2021, and Delta Airlines will impose a $200 per month surcharge on unvaccinated employees as of November 1, 2021.
Facebook will require all U.S.-based employees to be vaccinated when the company reopens nationally. Goldman Sachs requires all employees and clients that enter their offices to be vaccinated.
More examples include United Airlines, with their date of October 25, 2021, and Walgreens, with their date of September 30, 2021.
Governors cannot tell private companies what to do concerning vaccine mandates. According to the Equal Employment Commission (EEOC), employers may implement a mandatory vaccination policy as long as the policy is job-related and consistent with business necessity and provides for exemptions based on an employee’s covered disability (according to the Americans with Disabilities Act); or an employee’s sincerely held religious belief (according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act). If either of these apply, the employer must provide a reasonable accommodation (not getting the vaccine) unless doing so would impose an undue burden on the employer, or the employer cannot otherwise eliminate the direct threat the unvaccinated worker poses to your workplace.
Recently, medical staff at a Houston hospital were terminated because they refused the vaccine. Now that the Pfizer vaccine has full approval from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), more and more employers require employees to be vaccinated. If an employee is terminated due to refusal to be vaccinated, they may forfeit unemployment benefits. Why? Because unemployment is generally available to employees who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. If an employee is fired for violating company policy, including not following what might be considered safety protocols, then that will probably be deemed misconduct and thus no unemployment benefits.
If an employer requires vaccinations, a policy should be in place before initiating the requirement, and remember that an employee cannot be terminated if they have a recognized need for an accommodation. Employers must consider the Americans with Disabilities Act in developing job descriptions and policies. Get with Human Resources (HR) and the legal staff if there are plans to require vaccines. Protect employees, clients, and bottom line with a good policy.
Notably, employers have required medical tests and vaccinations for decades. Vaccine requirements are not new nor rocket science. Schools have been requiring vaccines for students as well. Texas required the vaccine for meningitis around eight years ago for college students, and other than it being a pain, no one complained.
Yes, we live in Texas but we do business with a large number of businesses in other states. Remember when the HR Department removed the criminal history boxes from job applications because that was illegal in New Mexico? We live in a global society, and business relationships exist outside of Texas.
Some employees will simply not take the vaccine for no reason at all. No one will win or lose this argument, but who minds their smallpox vaccine scar and most ate the sugar cube vaccine for polio. Gladly most of us over 55 take shingles, pneumonia, and flu vaccines as well. It may be a personal choice, but personal responsibility where disease prevention is concerned is also good business.
Who has not lost friends to Covid and watched too many people walk away from decades of friendship over the topic of vaccines and treatment options? It is a tough one for sure, but employers have businesses to run of all sizes. Do the best for the employees while considering business operations, liability, and the growing insurance costs.
Social media has exploded with a quote that Carl Sagan wrote in 1995 that I find disturbing in today’s world. The old paperback is going for $60 on Amazon at this writing. Sagan talks about Beavis and Butthead and Dumb and Dumber being the top-rated movies at the time. In The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark, Sagan wrote, Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hand of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.