If your employer hasn’t done so already, a COVID-19 vaccine mandate could be coming down the pike.
If so, do you have any legal recourse against your employer’s vaccine mandate? 7News' Adrianna Hopkins talked with Georgetown University Professor Lawrence Gostin, who’s well versed in the topic.
He’s the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. He’s been at the center of public policy and law through multiple epidemics from AIDS and SARS, to Ebola, MERS, and Zika. He’s written several books on public health, law and ethics, including his most recent book: Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future."
Here’s his take on whether you can sue an employer over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate:
Adrianna: In a situation where a company says, “you need to get the vaccine or be tested or wear a mask all the time,” does an employee have any recourse?
Gostin: The employee has no recourse whatsoever. A business is fully entitled to set reasonable health and safety conditions in the workplace and if the employee does not want to agree to it, the employee can be let go.
Adrianna: Are there any responsibilities or requirements on the employer side? If they’re going to create a new policy, what responsibility do they have to the employee?
Gostin: Well I think, first of all, they should provide the test and vaccine for free and make it accessible. They should provide PTO to get the vaccine and PTO if there are any adverse reactions.
Adrianna: Let’s say a company says we don’t care one way or the other if you’re vaccinated, we won’t provide testing, and an employee comes to work, is positive and they spread COVID-19. Those employees who went to work and got COVID-19, do they have any legal recourse against the companies that did not mandate a vaccine or protect health and safety?
Gostin: They might because the public health guidelines are to be vaccinated.
Gostin also said he doesn’t foresee successful lawsuits from unions against employers’ COVID vaccine mandates. And he points out, vaccine mandates work. For instance, he says at Georgetown University, 99% of students, faculty and staff are fully vaccinated because it’s required.
Watch the full interview with Gostin below:
He says, companies that enact vaccine mandates “will boost productivity, will make most employees very happy because most people will feel better going into a fully vaccinated workforce. And they have the benefit of getting our economy back on track.”