AT&T ramps up employee COVID vaccine mandate

Gone are the days you'd get on your bike to get a job. Now, get a vaccine instead.

AT&T – already on the growing list of employers requiring some workers to be fully vaccinated – has expanded the remit from management to include union staff. Its union-represented employees will need to be fully vaccinated before entering their work location starting in February 2022, the company announced yesterday.

Figure 1: Hobson's choice: AT&T is among a raft of US companies mandating COVID-19 vaccination to ensure business as usual.
(Source: Steven Cornfield on Unsplash)

AT&T, which is now the largest private company in the US to mandate vaccines for workers, is joining Facebook, Google, and Microsoft in requiring that employees receive the vaccine before going back to the physical workplace.

Other companies have offered other benefits. John Stankey's company had said on August 12 its management employees would need to be vaccinated, amid growing concerns about the Delta variant. The company said at the time it will make exceptions for employees who could not receive the vaccine for medical or other reasons. The US carrier has one of the country's most unionized workplaces, with 150,000 out of its 230,000 employees belonging to the Communication Workers of America.

Employees who are not vaccinated by the deadline will have a 60-day unpaid "reconsideration period" during which to change their mind, and CWA workers can request exemptions for religious or medical reasons, union spokesperson Beth Allen said.

Arm yourself

Meanwhile, US government employees will all need to be vaccinated starting November 23. Federal contractors and staff at healthcare facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding will join this group and receive guidance sometime in October. And at some point in the next two months, US workers at businesses with 100 or more employees will also need to be vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID tests. This group makes up about two thirds of the US workforce.

Legal experts say that the mandates for government workers and federally funded healthcare facilities seem on fairly uncontested ground. There may, though, be more room for legal challenges for the "vaccine or test" mandate for private businesses, which would come in the form of temporary emergency rules by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Montana has a law banning companies from imposing vaccine mandates, setting up a possibly interesting courtroom battle requiring judges to choose between conflicting state and federal laws. And attorneys general, mainly Republicans, in about 20 states have pledged to challenge the OSHA emergency rules in court, when they are issued.

Court challenges have successfully halted emergency OSHA rules five of the six times they have been issued, most recently in 1983 for asbestos. Part of the reason is that federal courts have traditionally taken a dim view of temporary emergency rulemaking, as it bypasses much of what is normally a lengthy rulemaking process.

Pfizer and pfeeling pfine

Meanwhile tech players have raced to market promising to help companies manage processes and data relating to these new vaccination mandates. Cleared4, a firm based in Dallas and Long Island which currently issues over 10 million "safe access passes" a month, says it can simplify monitoring and verification amid changing COVID workplace protocols. The platform was created by a New York emergency room physician, Dr. Soumi Eachempati.

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Currently, 77% of US adults have had at least one vaccine dose, says the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the first large companies to announce a worker vaccine mandate, United Airlines, said 98.5% of its workers were vaccinated after its September 27 deadline passed this week. Only 593 out of the airline's 67,000 workers chose to leave their jobs rather than receive a vaccine.

United's rival, Delta, chose a slightly different path: it will charge a $200 monthly health insurance surcharge for unvaccinated workers, starting on November 1.

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— Pádraig Belton, contributing editor special to Light Reading