In Portland: Get vaccinated or get fired

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https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2021/08 ... r-job.html

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Good. Anti-vaxxers are almost always conspiracy nutters. Flush them out before people die because of them.

While I am liberal and pro-vaccine, I’m not entirely comfortable with this direction. I mostly accept it as the new reality we’re moving into, but it isn’t the solution they claim it is. I see many ways most work can accommodate those unwilling to be vaccinated, so I do feel some of these mandates have a larger messaging component than they do a pragmatic component. In pro-football I clearly see the pragmatic side of player mandate, but for office work? It concerns me because every time messaging gets mixed into the pandemic policies, it eventually backfires to some level. I personally believe we need to stay strictly with the science.

How do people know who to stay 6' away from in the office if being an anti-vaxxer is an invisible disability?

And why suggest viruses don't get spread around office work environments? It happens all the time.

I agree that we should go with the science.. and the fact that this is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated should go to show that the science says get vaccinated.



Here where I live, nearly everything is about to open to the vaccinated - but not the unvaccinated. So, people who've been hesitant to get vaccinated are starting the process now so they don't get denied access to large parts of public society.

The entire country needs to follow Portland's lead.

I'd feel more comfortable if the vaccine actually prevented Covid altogether, rather than merely makes symptoms less severe if you get it after vaccination. The vaccines for smallpox eradicated that eventually, while polio and several other illnesses were very nearly wiped out.

Perhaps with time they will develop a vaccine that actually kills Covid or stops it in its tracks?

I recently saw a video where Israeli scientists have developed a nasal spray that is more than 99% effective against the virus. Which makes good sense, since nasal passage is the main point of entry for the killer.

I never said office workers can't get infected. I said there are other ways to protect office workers from each other, vaccinated or not.

Most office work can successfully be done remotely, exactly the way most of us have been doing it for over a year now. There is no reason to require people to return to the office. It would be more logical to require those who are um-vaccinated to work remotely than to fire them. Firing is needlessly punitive given that remote options are available. Employers have already invested in the laptops and cameras and remote meeting software; employees have already created a home work space.

Those that do need to be in the office can be masked.

I don't physically go into my office often, but we do have air filters to help disinfect the air in areas we worry about the circulation.

The science is also telling us that the vaccinated CAN carry and spread the delta variant, so this assumption that everyone can go back to normal if they are vaccinated is just wrong. Your odds of getting ill and needing hospitalization have gone down 100 to 1 if you are vaccinated, but we do not know that you aren't going to spread the disease.

I think governments were too quick to drop masking and other cautions solely based on vaccination status. They wanted people to feel rewarded for getting the vaccine, so used the extra freedoms as encouragement to get vaccinated, but the pandemic is constantly changing and break through infections do occur.

Again, I say this as a HUGE proponent of vaccination. But firing people over a personal medical decision, IF there are other options available, does not seem right.

Most professionals seem to believe COVID-19 is eventually going to play out like the flu does, always with us, with annual vaccines mitigating the toll.

Time will tell, I guess.

Our Australian prime minister keeps threatening this but then realises he bungled vaccine rollout and doesn't have enough to force people to vaccinate. When you log onto the government COVID website there are no bookings avaiable.

New York City workers must get fully vaccinated by mid-September, or get tested weekly.

The college where I work absolutely requires full vaccination right now.

People, and office teams, are social creatures. Teamwork suffers when everything is remote. It's just different. Productivity can suffer, too. There are many reasons companies, big and small, may want their employees to return to the workplace asap vs. continue with remote work forever.

Why should the vaccinated have to carry on living under pandemic like conditions of social distancing and masks because others refuse to help end the pandemic via vaccinations?

Why shouldn't those who choose not to get vaccinated be dismissed from jobs at workplaces where employers require vaccinations? They're free to choose, but they're not free from the consequences of their decisions & actions.

I’m from a disappearing school of thought where employers have some level of loyalty to employees, and employees have some level of loyalty to employers back. If someone has been a productive member of your team, successfully navigating all the changes of this past year, why would you draw any line in the sand that has little to do with their ability to do their job? Employers who do always ending up getting burned by their own decision, and I have little sympathy for it.

There isn’t a single answer in workplaces on which is better, remote or not. It varies significantly by employee and team. Smart employers aren’t making single, company wide mandates; they are taking it employee by employee and team by team. Work changed in the past year. We all were supposed to learn from it.

Work changed to accommodate safety during a viral pandemic. There's nothing to say it must remain that way. Much the same as school children are required to have their vaccinations in order to attend public school, it's not unreasonable to expect adults to get vaccinated in order to work in their workplaces.

I realize that I have now left the realm of what applies to Portland and it's mandate, but employees are often demanding that many of the new systems developed over the past year continue. Now that the genie is out of the bottle and employees are aware that some employer demands are more arbitrary than necessary, employees are showing less patience than ever for unreasonable and arrogant employers.

Employers will adapt or be left behind.

My work puts me directly in touch with the financial information and the decision makers of dozens of different businesses. I see how it plays out.

Employees that must be in the office, sure, require vaccination (and masking). But if they can do their work remotely, allow that rather than fire them. Any other policy reeks of politics.

I've never said a city cannot make purely political decisions, even when it comes to pandemic policy. I've said I do not believe they SHOULD. It will, inevitably, backfire if they do.

I'm native to Portland and IMO, Portland has become a bit of a joke since the beginning of the 2010s especially with the ongoing homeless situation, gun violence, and of course incompetent city leaders who think the first two aren't city problems, just problems that the people of Portland need to take care of ourselves.

Yup, it's already starting in tech, where the competition for top employees is fierce, and I'll be interested to see if there's any trickle down effect as more and more workers realize who actually has the power in the relationship. Same with these mandates, if a critical mass just says no, what are they going to do, shut the government down while they train new hires?