MANDATE FAIL: Major Corporations Continue to Cancel Biden Vaccine Requirement
Americans have always been a bit ungovernable…it’s in our nature. We are a country born out of disobedience and dissent, in which the decisions we make for ourselves will always supersede the intents of our elected officials, whose motives may be somewhat skewed from those of the average American.
This is no different today than it was when we were chucking British tea into Boston Harbor, only now, it’s Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate that’s getting the boot.
A growing number of health care systems and other companies, including Amtrak and General Electric, are suspending mandates that require employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Advertisement - story continues belowThe move follows court rulings in recent weeks that paused such requirements from the Biden administration for health care workers and federal contractors. Still, the decision about whether to require vaccinations remained up to individual employers.
The mandates are being suspended at a precarious time: Many employers face labor shortages, while Covid cases are surging and the highly mutated omicron variant is spreading.
The situation was especially dire in the healthcare industry, where a loss of employees can create a self-fulfilling nightmare of COVID resurgence.
Sufficient staffing has been hard to maintain in hospitals, which were already contending with a dearth of nurses and other workers before the pandemic. Burnout has further exacerbated shortages.
Advertisement - story continues belowThat most likely factored into some health care systems’ choices to reverse vaccination mandates, said David Barron, a Houston-based employment attorney.
“Most employers do not have the luxury of losing 5 percent or 10 percent or whatever percent of their workforce doesn’t want to get vaccinated,” said Barron, who works with the law firm Cozen O’Connor. “In this environment, it’s very tough, especially in jobs like health care or other industries where it’s a very tight labor market.”
The White House has consistently attempted to usurp the court rulings via the DOJ, but to no avail.
