What About Vaccine Mandates?

We’ve been keeping our clients up to date on how the vaccine mandates might affect their workforce.

I’ll confess that we’re in a unique situation in Arizona, since our Governor is publicly said ‘no’ to mask mandates of any kind and we’ve had practically no deaths from COVID in months. And our state Attorney General is suing the Biden adminstration over mask mandates as being illegal, along with, I think, 16 other states.

But, we know we have readers outside Arizona whose governors aren’t as forward thinking as ours, or Texas, or Florida. We’re next door to California, and one of my licensees of Solutions Forum is in California.

He’s masking at entry, asking everyone if they’ve been vaccinated and then doing his groups unmasked in restaurants that are open. And he thinks it’s going to be awhile before the COVID cops get to him, since he operates under an associated name in Northern San Diego County.

This is one way to handle your employees and the need to be vaccinated.

Personally, we think it’s good, socially responsible policy to encourage your employees to take the jab. But they may have reasons they don’t such as antibodies, religiious or moral objections.

If it’s a moral ojection, you as the owner will have to insist, for the good of the rest of the team, that everyone be vaccinated, or have a medical doctor’s note of exemption.

You may want to start with a company-wide meeting on the subject, but make sure that those with moral objections don’t take over the meeting, and you don’t get too preachy.

You might want to deal with the moral objections offline, depending on how disruptive you think said person could be or has been. Update your folks with the latest info, such as the fact that the mask mandates may not even apply, because it’s not clear whether firms with less than 100 employees even have to comply (The average small business is about four people). Enforcement is apparently going to come through Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OHSA), so counsel your phone answerers to be alert to anyone calling from this agency to speak to your ‘owner’ whose name he or she might have.

If you do get a call from OHSA, or, say,  the  California equivalent, refer it to your owner, even if he or she isn’t there when the call is taken. Your owner will use probing questions for find out if the call is real (scammers could be about).

If the call is real, you might want to refer it to your lawyer, since the manadatory-ness of the vaccines is probably illegal under what the Fed guidelines are, and the US Constitution, and there’s a question of whether states have the right to decide vax policy at all. However, the vaxers might not be dissuaded, so let a lawyer handle it.

That’s about all the guidance we have at the moment.