From Walt Disney World and Chevron to CVS and a University of Michigan, a group of public and private employers are demanding that workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 after the federal government fully approves Pfizer’s firing. And the number is likely to grow a lot more.
For the past eight months, coronavirus shots have been dispensed in the United States under the emergency authorization of the Food and Drug Administration. Some workers and unions were opposed to getting the vaccine, and some employers are reluctant to demand it, because it had not yet received full FDA approval. This happened on Monday.
“The FDA’s decision makes it off the table,” said Devjani Mishra, a New York-based lawyer for the Littler Mendelson firm, which specializes in labor matters. She and other people in the business, legal and healthcare world predicted that more companies will demand vaccines for their workforce.
Shortly after the FDA acted, Walt Disney World reached an agreement with its unions to require vaccination of all workers at its theme park in Orlando, Florida.
The CVS pharmacy chain said employees who had contact with customers would have to be inoculated. Oil giant Chevron Corp. he said it will require some of its workers, such as those traveling internationally, to live abroad or work on its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, to obtain its COVID-19 features.
“We pushed‘ go ’when the FDA made that decision,” said Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, who announced Monday that its 800 professors, 1,500 staff members and 18,000 students they will have to be vaccinated. Previously, only students living on campus had to receive the shot.
He said the university could have legally prescribed the vaccines before the FDA decision, but had waited for it because Pescovitz, who is a pediatrician, believes the authorization will help persuade those still on the fence.
On Monday, health experts expressed hope that FDA action would increase the U.S. vaccination rate, which reached half a million shots a day in July, which dropped from a high of 3, 4 million daily in April.
The number of shots fired has risen to about 850,000 a day amid a growing alarm over the highly contagious delta variant, which has led to increased deaths, cases and hospitalizations, ending months of progress.
Littler Mendelson released a poll on Monday showing that 9% of employers already require at least some of their workers to be vaccinated and an additional 12% plan to impose some sort of mandate in the near future. In January, only 1% of companies surveyed by Littler Mendelson had issued vaccine requirements.
There is a risk for employers at a time when many have difficulty filling openings and workers are confident of finding better jobs: in the face of a vaccine requirement, an employee may say “okay, okay. I’m leaving, “Mishra said.” It’s not a fact that you can do this job with someone vaccinated. “
But Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle, said he doesn’t expect a big reaction.
“People will see that mandates can open their businesses and save their salaries. They will see the effects and welcome them, ”he said.
Earlier this summer, President Joe Biden announced that federal workers will need to be vaccinated or will have to take weekly tests and other measures.
The nation’s two largest private entrepreneurs don’t seem to be on the move. Walmart said Tuesday that there is no change in its policy, which requires vaccines for office workers, but not for store employees. And Amazon, which does not require vaccines for any of its employees, did not respond to any requests for comment.
As for the automotive industry, Ford Motor Co. he said he doesn’t need the vaccine, and General Motors has said it doesn’t either, though CEO Mary Barra has kept the possibility open.
The professional advice website Ladders Inc. published last week a study showing an increase of more than 50 times since January in job vacancies requiring candidates to be vaccinated.
Ladders spokeswoman Laurie Monteforte predicted that vaccine requirements will only increase after the FDA decision. He said many employers have exhausted vaccine incentives, such as bonuses or other benefits.
Employers who require vaccines have a solid legal basis. Private companies and government employers often require inoculation of workers as a condition of working there, although in some cases they have to offer exemptions or accommodations.
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Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson, Anne D’Innocenzio, Tom Krisher, and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this story.