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The labor minister of Germany recently said that companies cannot force employees to disclose their immunization status. There is a conflict between health on

by mc32 5y ago

The labor minister of Germany recently said that companies cannot force employees to disclose their immunization status. There is a conflict between health on the one side and civil liberties/privacy on the other. We need to achieve a reasonable balance. Draconian ‘thou shalt’ demands are not the solutions but more and more companies are starting to require evidence of vaccination whether you’re going to the office or not. I hope this gets settled by the labor board or the Supreme Court rather than companies takin that mantle to impose a mandate themselves.

xadhominemx 5y ago
Immunization status has never really been considered private. It’s been the norm for 100 years for immunizations to be disclosed to schools, to foreign governments for international travel, to certain types of employers, etc.
- mc32 5y ago
  And yet it’s never been required for most types of jobs. And here the labor minister is coming down on the side of employees. And it’s important to note, companies are requiring vaccination status whether you’re hybrid or fully remote. Fully remote offering no exposure risk to the company.
  - da_chicken 5y ago
    Kind of. He's not exactly helping employees who can't receive the vaccine.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    It’s never been required for jobs because historically the most virulent transmissible diseases were spread by children and adolescents. And in Germany of course the Labor Minister is going to push back on anything demanded by any employer - there is no information in his position.
    - da_big_ghey 5y ago
      Flu was spread a lot in many workplace where I've been, among adults. No flu shot requirement. Anybody who want a requirement for coronavirus vaccine should had flu shot requirement these past years or at least should make one now.
      - xadhominemx 5y ago
        COVID is much more deadly than the flu, though. While I guess it makes sense to draw the line somewhere, I could see more employers mandating flu shot in the future.
  - jasonpeacock 5y ago
    Those remote workers are still on the company healthcare plan, and their un-vaxxed status and higher risk of illness/higher cost of treatment definitely creates risk for the company. Some companies are already charging un-vaxxed employees higher health insurance premiums just for this reason.
tester34 5y ago
privacy? how about yellow/vaccination book that you need when travel to fancy places?
- Chris2048 5y ago
  In most cases, immigration/passport-control is not your employer.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  You never have any level of reasonable expectation that you’ll be admitted to a country you don’t have citizenship or a visa for. It’s a substantially different scenario.
da_chicken 5y ago
That's interesting. I wonder how Germany handles child immunization records and public schools. This really isn't appreciably different.
londons_explore 5y ago
Companies are potentially putting themselves in quite a lot of legal risk... For example, imagine a worker infects and kills another worker, and there is evidence of that (for example an office air filter is tested and finds high COVID-19 levels). Now the company has opened itself up to corporate manslaughter charges because they didn't do enough to keep their office disease free. Cases of 'long covid' could also be very expensive if people start claiming they have sufficient brain fog they can no longer work, so they deserve a payout of a lifetimes salary with some multiplier.
- mc32 5y ago
  Does that mean there is standing to sue companies for not mitigating other transmissible diseases that could be mitigated by screening and other methods employers don’t currently carry out?
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    I suspect there is. The reason we don't see more cases is because it's very hard to prove that you got the disease from a workplace rather than from some other source. Also, there aren't many workplace-transmissible diseases in the first world that are too deadly. Workplace injuries like getting injured by machines are far easier to prove.
fy20 5y ago
In Lithuania there is the "opportunity passport" which was designed to show you are safe. You can get it if you are fully vaccinated, have recovered (identified by a positive PCR test or have antibodies), or have had a negative PCR test in the last 48 hours. This allows you to show you are 'safe' without disclosing whether you have been vaccinated or not, so it solves the privacy issue. There is of course controversy even with this, as the government is saying unvaccinated people will have to pay for PCR tests to get this (before it was free) and it appears with the Delta variant there is a much higher risk of breakthrough infections. Personally I think what the UK is doing and giving out rapid antigen tests for free and encouraging people - even those fully vaccinated - to do them often (twice weekly) is a much better way of approaching this, but of course it's expensive and you need to trust people to actually do it.
chadash 5y ago
> I hope this gets settled by the labor board or the Supreme Court rather than companies takin that mantle to impose a mandate themselves. Generally, the default is that private companies can discriminate however they please. In certain cases we've decided that that's not good for a society (race, religion, ethnicity), so we restrict their ability to do that. But why shouldn't private companies be allowed to make their own decisions about things that they perceive (whether they are right or wrong) will improve worker safety? In this case, vaccination status affects other people (in terms of increased risk of transmission + psychological perception), so how is different than my company's current rule that I'm not allowed to smoke at my desk?
- mc32 5y ago
  That could possibly be permissible for new employees signing a new agreement. However, “legacy” employees never signed any document of employment stating they were required to disclose vaccination status the way you are told you will have provide proof of identity and so on prior to onboardung.
  - chadash 5y ago
    It seems like it is permissible. The question is whether it is right. In the US at least, employment is generally at-will, meaning they can fire you for basically any reason as long as it isn't discrimination of a protected class. If my employer decided tomorrow to fire anyone who doesn't vote Republican, they can do that. I think it would be unreasonable, but it would be permissable, regardless of whether i had to disclose this going in. But this isn't quite that extreme. Presumably, this is them making a decision based on what they believe is in the best interests for the safety of their overall workforce. Why shouldn't employers be allowed to make decisions that they believe keep employees safe?
    - mc32 5y ago
      A company could tell everyone they hired for finance they now are being transferred to research and development and vice versa. Nothing against the law. But people in finance were not hired to do R&D and people in R&D were not hired to do financials. The company could then of course fire the above for not performing --but HR usually never takes this approach to layoffs. They may eliminate departments or redefine things and then you re-apply and so on with new roles and duties but it's all formal. Companies could require employees to re-apply, but you'd see quite some pushback especially from people who have been there a while and may interpret the move as a threat to their job security.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Many countries have compulsory immunization for a set of diseases with disclosure mandated to enrol, for example, in a nursery or primary school. This is a question of coherency and political courage: Either Covid immunization is of critical importance for public health, which is essentially what we're told, and governments must have the courage to act accordingly, or it is "nice to have" if a person so decides and governments should equally act accordingly.
GlennS 5y ago
I would argue that rather than trying to find a balance, we just need to make sure all these measures are temporary. In normal times an unwavering commitment to freedom in its citizens is a great strength for a country. In normal times, the people who stand up for freedom provide herd immunity against authoritarians. Let's not adjust the default settings because of a couple of years of abnormal, just because some of those folks wouldn't adjust their ideas to a new situation.
Gibbon1 5y ago
> There is a conflict between health on the one side and civil liberties/privacy on the other. That's utterly inane no matter how many people believe it. Where I'm from it's illegal to drive drunk, drive faster than the speed limit, shoot guns in the air. Why is you walking around spreading a virus to defenseless people any different? It isn't.

by mc32 5y ago

xadhominemx 5y ago

Immunization status has never really been considered private. It’s been the norm for 100 years for immunizations to be disclosed to schools, to foreign governments for international travel, to certain types of employers, etc.

mc32 5y ago
And yet it’s never been required for most types of jobs. And here the labor minister is coming down on the side of employees. And it’s important to note, companies are requiring vaccination status whether you’re hybrid or fully remote. Fully remote offering no exposure risk to the company.
- da_chicken 5y ago
  Kind of. He's not exactly helping employees who can't receive the vaccine.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  It’s never been required for jobs because historically the most virulent transmissible diseases were spread by children and adolescents. And in Germany of course the Labor Minister is going to push back on anything demanded by any employer - there is no information in his position.
  - da_big_ghey 5y ago
    Flu was spread a lot in many workplace where I've been, among adults. No flu shot requirement. Anybody who want a requirement for coronavirus vaccine should had flu shot requirement these past years or at least should make one now.
    - xadhominemx 5y ago
      COVID is much more deadly than the flu, though. While I guess it makes sense to draw the line somewhere, I could see more employers mandating flu shot in the future.
- jasonpeacock 5y ago
  Those remote workers are still on the company healthcare plan, and their un-vaxxed status and higher risk of illness/higher cost of treatment definitely creates risk for the company. Some companies are already charging un-vaxxed employees higher health insurance premiums just for this reason.

tester34 5y ago

privacy? how about yellow/vaccination book that you need when travel to fancy places?

Chris2048 5y ago
In most cases, immigration/passport-control is not your employer.
AmericanChopper 5y ago
You never have any level of reasonable expectation that you’ll be admitted to a country you don’t have citizenship or a visa for. It’s a substantially different scenario.

da_chicken 5y ago

That's interesting. I wonder how Germany handles child immunization records and public schools. This really isn't appreciably different.

londons_explore 5y ago

Companies are potentially putting themselves in quite a lot of legal risk... For example, imagine a worker infects and kills another worker, and there is evidence of that (for example an office air filter is tested and finds high COVID-19 levels). Now the company has opened itself up to corporate manslaughter charges because they didn't do enough to keep their office disease free. Cases of 'long covid' could also be very expensive if people start claiming they have sufficient brain fog they can no longer work, so they deserve a payout of a lifetimes salary with some multiplier.

mc32 5y ago
Does that mean there is standing to sue companies for not mitigating other transmissible diseases that could be mitigated by screening and other methods employers don’t currently carry out?
- londons_explore 5y ago
  I suspect there is. The reason we don't see more cases is because it's very hard to prove that you got the disease from a workplace rather than from some other source. Also, there aren't many workplace-transmissible diseases in the first world that are too deadly. Workplace injuries like getting injured by machines are far easier to prove.

fy20 5y ago

In Lithuania there is the "opportunity passport" which was designed to show you are safe. You can get it if you are fully vaccinated, have recovered (identified by a positive PCR test or have antibodies), or have had a negative PCR test in the last 48 hours. This allows you to show you are 'safe' without disclosing whether you have been vaccinated or not, so it solves the privacy issue. There is of course controversy even with this, as the government is saying unvaccinated people will have to pay for PCR tests to get this (before it was free) and it appears with the Delta variant there is a much higher risk of breakthrough infections. Personally I think what the UK is doing and giving out rapid antigen tests for free and encouraging people - even those fully vaccinated - to do them often (twice weekly) is a much better way of approaching this, but of course it's expensive and you need to trust people to actually do it.

chadash 5y ago

> I hope this gets settled by the labor board or the Supreme Court rather than companies takin that mantle to impose a mandate themselves. Generally, the default is that private companies can discriminate however they please. In certain cases we've decided that that's not good for a society (race, religion, ethnicity), so we restrict their ability to do that. But why shouldn't private companies be allowed to make their own decisions about things that they perceive (whether they are right or wrong) will improve worker safety? In this case, vaccination status affects other people (in terms of increased risk of transmission + psychological perception), so how is different than my company's current rule that I'm not allowed to smoke at my desk?

mc32 5y ago
That could possibly be permissible for new employees signing a new agreement. However, “legacy” employees never signed any document of employment stating they were required to disclose vaccination status the way you are told you will have provide proof of identity and so on prior to onboardung.
- chadash 5y ago
  It seems like it is permissible. The question is whether it is right. In the US at least, employment is generally at-will, meaning they can fire you for basically any reason as long as it isn't discrimination of a protected class. If my employer decided tomorrow to fire anyone who doesn't vote Republican, they can do that. I think it would be unreasonable, but it would be permissable, regardless of whether i had to disclose this going in. But this isn't quite that extreme. Presumably, this is them making a decision based on what they believe is in the best interests for the safety of their overall workforce. Why shouldn't employers be allowed to make decisions that they believe keep employees safe?
  - mc32 5y ago
    A company could tell everyone they hired for finance they now are being transferred to research and development and vice versa. Nothing against the law. But people in finance were not hired to do R&D and people in R&D were not hired to do financials. The company could then of course fire the above for not performing --but HR usually never takes this approach to layoffs. They may eliminate departments or redefine things and then you re-apply and so on with new roles and duties but it's all formal. Companies could require employees to re-apply, but you'd see quite some pushback especially from people who have been there a while and may interpret the move as a threat to their job security.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Many countries have compulsory immunization for a set of diseases with disclosure mandated to enrol, for example, in a nursery or primary school. This is a question of coherency and political courage: Either Covid immunization is of critical importance for public health, which is essentially what we're told, and governments must have the courage to act accordingly, or it is "nice to have" if a person so decides and governments should equally act accordingly.

GlennS 5y ago

I would argue that rather than trying to find a balance, we just need to make sure all these measures are temporary. In normal times an unwavering commitment to freedom in its citizens is a great strength for a country. In normal times, the people who stand up for freedom provide herd immunity against authoritarians. Let's not adjust the default settings because of a couple of years of abnormal, just because some of those folks wouldn't adjust their ideas to a new situation.

Gibbon1 5y ago

> There is a conflict between health on the one side and civil liberties/privacy on the other. That's utterly inane no matter how many people believe it. Where I'm from it's illegal to drive drunk, drive faster than the speed limit, shoot guns in the air. Why is you walking around spreading a virus to defenseless people any different? It isn't.