Kern employers take lenient approach to vaccine policies
Employees’ gradual return to traditional workplaces around Kern is raising thorny questions about how — or in some cases, whether — to accommodate workers who resist getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
In a county where the latest state data shows about 41 percent of eligible residents have been at least partially inoculated against the virus, some companies say they are working with employees reticent to get vaccinated. Even local hospitals report encouraging but not requiring their staff to get shots.
Although no major conflicts have surfaced publicly, there is some concern that push could eventually come to shove as employers try to protect themselves from workplace liabilities and workers who don’t want the vaccine press their limited legal right to reasonable accommodation.
The county’s position is clear: Getting vaccinated is the quickest and safest path to immunity, and people who refuse to get inoculated raise the community’s risk of outbreaks.
“People who remain unvaccinated remain at risk for severe illness and death from COVID-19,” Michelle Corson, spokeswoman for Kern’s public health department, said by email. She referred employers to government guidelines posted online at https://saferatwork.covid19.ca.gov/ employer-vaccination-toolkit/.
While some local business owners are offering incentives for their workers to get vaccinated, others have refrained from asking their workers to get their shots. Both approaches are permissible, Bakersfield labor lawyer Karl Gerber
said, though he emphasized the latter could come with financial risks.
He said employees who contract the virus and file a workers compensation claim would likely prevail because of a presumption they were exposed at work. Likewise, customers who come into contact with an unvaccinated worker could make a successful case the business was at fault, he added.
Rules vary for government employers, he said, but generally speaking employers can require their employees to be vaccinated except in the case of sincere religious belief or disability making inoculations medically dangerous. In those cases, employers must make reasonable accommodations.
But there may be cases in which making exceptions presents an undue burden on the business, Gerber said. He added that healthcare facilities are largely within their rights to insist their staff members get vaccinated.
A spokeswoman for Adventist Health Bakersfield said the hospital hasn’t required its employees get the shot but that it “strongly encourages it” because of the vaccine’s potential to help end the pandemic. As of February, she added, 65 percent of the company’s local employees have been inoculated.
Bakersfield Heart Hospital CEO Michelle Oxford said employees are “highly encouraged” to get vaccinated. She said the medical center is using the same protocol as it uses with the annual flu vaccine.
“Any employee who declines the vaccine for religious, medical or personal reasons must sign a declination form that outlines the importance of vaccination,” she said in an emailed statement.
The office of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools got a sense of how its staff feels about the issue from an anonymous survey in January. Fifty-five percent indicated they wanted to get vaccinated immediately, while 32 percent said they might but not immediately. Thirteen percent responded that they did not intend to be vaccinated.
The office has since taken what spokesman Robert Meszaros called an educational approach. It posted information about the vaccine online and, for a while, made shots available to employees who wanted them. He said the office has not tracked whether individual employees get inoculated.
A spokeswoman for Bakersfield-based oil producer Aera Energy LLC said the company has told its employees there is currently no requirement that they get the vaccination. But she said the company continues to monitor workplaces to ensure compliance with state and local guidelines during the pandemic.
“We know that there are a number of personal reasons that influence an individual’s decision on whether or not to get a vaccine,” spokeswoman Cindy Pollard said in an email. “Given this reality, Aera’s goal is to treat employees with respect while we maintain a safe workplace and outstanding employee experience so that we can responsibly produce the energy California needs.”