Will airlines force employees get vaccine??
 

Any thoughts??

How would that be legal?

Force, no...highly encourage to the point of providing at work for very little or no cost? Yes.

Yes it's legal, already been resolved WRT to other vaccines (notably flu).

ADA and religious exemptions already exist for that, so a pre-existing condition might get you out of it. However... even for those exemptions, the employer only has to make "reasonable" accommodations. In the covid context that might mean providing such a person with a separate workspace away from others, but that's not an option for crew.

I suspect that most employers will be initially reluctant to require vaccinations, but at some point if things are bad enough they will. So depends on known herd immunity and what percentage of folks voluntarily get vaccinated. An employer may perceive liability risk if they allow non-vaccinated employees to have contact with other workers and customers.

All that could be up in the air if specific laws are passed relevant to covid.

Do you have a legal citation with that?

As an example, I get why requiring certain vaccines are BFOQs for medical professionals...but its going to be a very tall stretch IMO to apply that to air crew. I'm certainly not all-knowing but am not aware of any airline REQUIRING its flight crews to get an influenza vaccine, and that past practice would be difficult to justify away in court.

If it puts people on our metal, I’ll take two, injected into the eyeballs if that’s what it takes.

Au contraire. Big Blue has required it for decades, backed up by Article 15s.


https://i.ibb.co/Hzt5nJh/E93-DE05-A-...BC0-CE7-AC.jpg

If course, barring actual government intervention - which is unlikely to happen - your management can’t exceed what’s in your contract without negotiating it...

And HIPPA becomes an issue as well.

The United States Armed Services aren't an airline.

For RECENT and I do mean recent guidance..
 

Refer to this article:


https://i.ibb.co/v3C103s/9-C9-E76-CA...-E764-BBED.jpg

an excerpt:

Establishing a Legally Compliant “Mandatory” Vaccination Program

Absent further guidance from the EEOC, employers considering a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination program once the vaccine is considered safe and widely available as a condition to permitting employees to return to the physical office, for terminating employees from employment for refusing to be vaccinated, or for job applicants to begin employment, should consider some fundamental precepts prior to adopting such a program:

• Vaccine costs, if not fully health insurance-funded, should be borne entirely by the employer to avoid financial barriers to employment;
  
• The program should allow employees to opt out entirely if they have medical or religious objections to vaccination;
  
• In the event of a medical or religious objection, an interactive dialog should be established with the objector to determine whether the individual’s objections can be accommodated in light of the positon for which the individual is applying or currently holds;
  
• Fully trained human resources professionals should be responsible for this process, versus line managers who may lack such training;
  
• Job descriptions should be updated to provide for essential functions, which may include travel, customer-facing positions, close interaction with other employees, or other factors that might compel mandatory vaccination;
  
• Employers should pay particular attention to recordkeeping given the ADA mandate that medical records be kept separate from general personnel files and the importance of data integrity and limited internal access to medical information.
  
• Employers should keep in mind that a vaccine is not a fail-safe for an employer’s general obligation to provide a safe working environment, and COVID-19 has taught some hard workplace lessons regarding the prevention against and mitigation of easily transmittable but hard to discern dangers such as viruses and bacteria in the workplace.
  

yet even they struggle to get compliance with legal orders to get a flu shot, and flu shots have been around since 1933.

Aren’t some vaccinations a requirement at Delta? I thought I remembered a box on airlineapps about yellow fever.