Recently in the past year, the unemployment rate has been rising due to the implementation of COVID-19 policies and many unvaccinated employees refusing to adhere to them. As a result, many are being let go Some of those employees are eligible for unemployment benefits due to their status as an unvaccinated individual, depending on the state.
Many companies, especially airlines, are giving their employees a deadline to receive their vaccines. If they do not meet this requirement by that deadline, then the company can fire them or compel them to work from home. But, most companies want all their employees to work in person which leads to them firing the workers and telling them that if you are not vaccinated, you are not allowed to work with us.
Northwell Health, the largest healthcare provider in New York, recently terminated 1,400 unvaccinated workers. Some Northwell workers have protested against being vaccinated due to many reasons, even though the state of New York is requiring all hospitals and nursing homes to be vaccinated. This impacted many employees, such as “John Trinchino, a registered nurse, said he was fired last week from his job at Staten Island University Hospital, a Northwell facility. Mr. Trinchino said that he had Covid-19 earlier in the pandemic and that he thought the antibodies from his infection would protect against further illness. [He then added] that requiring vaccination violated his civil liberties, and he did not plan on getting vaccinated.”, according to the New York Times.
The Biden administration made the vaccine requirements strict as a central focus in their plan to vaccinate the entire country. They are also requiring more than 100 million employees to either get vaccinated by January 4 or submit a negative Covid-19 test weekly to their employer. This only applies to private companies with 100 or more employees.
The United Airlines has forced vaccine mandates on all of their employees which caused around 600 to leave since they didn’t want to be involved. This has only been one instance of many. The result is that many flights are being canceled or postponed due to low numbers of employees. Both flight attendants and staff on the flight have been impacted by those mandates. Employees are not looking forward to being fired from their jobs but they are forced to be vaccinated and many believe it should be their own choice of what to put in their bodies.
This affected many people getting fired and having to stay at home from work. There is a huge impact the vaccine had on people’s lives. Many employees had to find another job due to the vaccine mandates and because they were unvaccinated. “Where my dad worked, [he] had to either work from home or receive the vaccine in order for them to be allowed to work back in person” as mentioned by Luke Salvador, a Mayfair student whose family was affected by the vaccine mandates in their work. Luke adds, “The government should not punish us if we choose not to take the vaccine since we have the right to do whatever we want with our body.” This might not be the case for other employees because some did not even have the choice to work from home or in person. Those employees got fired from their jobs because they were unvaccinated.
Many employees believe that it should be their choice to be vaccinated or not since it is their own body. Some people who did not take the vaccine do not trust it because of how quickly it was developed, while others are not allowed to take the vaccine because of their health conditions. Many health conditions are severe and there have not been many studies on the effects the vaccine might have on those people with different types of health conditions. Unemployment rates will continue to rise as people are not willing to take the COVID-19 vaccines. As more research and studies are done with the vaccine, many people might consider taking the vaccine and therefore unemployment rates might go down with more people being vaccinated.
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