Workplaces: Get vaccinated
More employers requiring staffers to get inoculated after Pfizer gets full FDA approval
From Walt Disney World and Chevron to CVS and a Michigan university, a flurry of private and public employers are requiring workers to get vaccinated against COVID19 after the federal government gave full approval to the Pfizer shot.
And the number is certain to grow higher. For the past eight months, coronavirus shots were dispensed in the U.S. under emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Some workers and unions objected to getting the vaccine — and some employers were reluctant to require it — because it had yet to receive FDA full approval.
That happened Monday.
“The FDA decision takes that off the table,” said Devjani Mishra, a New Yorkbased attorney with the firm Littler Mendelson, which specializes in workplace matters. She and others in the worlds of business, law and health predicted more companies will mandate vaccines for their workforces.
Shortly after the FDA acted, Walt Disney World reached a deal with its unions to require all workers at its Florida theme park to be vaccinated.
Drugstore chain CVS said pharmacists, nurses and other workers who have contact with patients will have to be inoculated.
Oil giant Chevron Corp. said it will require some of its workers — such as those who travel internationally, live abroad or work on its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico — to get their COVID-19 shots.
“We pushed ‘go’ when the FDA made that decision,” said Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, which announced Monday that its 800 faculty members, 1,500 staff members and 18,000 students will have to be vaccinated. Before that, only students living on campus had to get the shot.
She said the university could have legally mandated vaccines before the FDA decision but waited for it because Pescovitz, a pediatrician, believes the authorization will help persuade those still on the fence. Other universities are following suit. This week, health experts expressed hope that the FDA’S action would boost the
U.S. vaccination rate, which bottomed out at a half-million shots a day in July — down from a peak of 3.4 million a day on average in April. The number of shots dispensed has since climbed to about 850,000 a day amid growing alarm over the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent deaths, cases and hospitalizations soaring, wiping out months of progress.
Littler Mendelson released a survey Monday showing that 9% of employers are already mandating vaccines for at least some of their workers, and an additional 12% are planning to impose some sort of mandate in the near future. In January, just 1% of firms Littler Mendelson surveyed had issued vaccine requirements.
There is a risk for employers at a time when many are struggling to fill openings and workers are confident of finding better jobs: Faced with a vaccine requirement, an employee might “say, ‘OK, fine. I’m leaving,’ ”Mishra said. But Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said he doesn’t foresee a large backlash.
“People will see that mandates can open their businesses and save their paychecks. They will see the effects and they will welcome it,” he said.