To encourage vaccinations, US firms turn to incentives, threats

NEW YORK: In the wake of full US approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech anti-Covid vaccine this week, more and more American companies are looking at mandatory vaccinations for employees -- and customers.

CVS Health, Chevron, Disney and Goldman Sachs are among the firms who have since told some or all of their workers that inoculations will no longer be optional, requiring proof of shots within a certain time period.

On social media, some of those firms are coming under attack from users who say requiring vaccinations is a violation of personal freedoms, a value near and dear to most Americans. One Republican state lawmaker from Florida, Anthony Sabatini, even filed a proposal that would prevent the state’s surgeon general from requiring any vaccinations, ever.

But at least so far, amid a surge in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, no public figure is specifically hitting out at corporate America -- at least not yet.

For Mark Hass, a professor who specializes in marketing at Arizona State University, even though the crisis is both medical and political it is impossible for companies to thread the needle between liberals and conservatives on the issue.

"The right way to think about this is what’s the right thing for our employees, rather than worrying about the safety of our reputation," Hass told AFP. "Almost every company is going with some sort of mandate or requirement or incentive," he said.

"I think the lack of criticism of corporations is because most of them have acted responsibly in dealing with the pandemic," Hass added, noting the rise of telework. Since June, when banking giant Morgan Stanley and asset manager BlackRock said employees wishing to come into the office would have to provide proof of vaccination, other major companies had made the leap to requiring shots.

Google, Facebook and Uber all joined the vaccination mandate bandwagon. But the Food and Drug Administration’s full approval of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen opened the floodgates, and seemed to cancel out the argument made by some skeptics that full authorization was needed.