Thursday 29 July 2021
When you return to the office
Google and Facebook impose compulsory vaccinations
Most of the employees at Google and Facebook are still working from home, but it shouldn’t stay that way in the long run. Both companies are preparing the return of their employees. One thing is already clear: If you want to go to the office, you have to get vaccinated.
The US Internet companies Google and Facebook have imposed a compulsory vaccination for employees who do not want to work in the home office. “Everyone who comes to work on our campus must be vaccinated,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog entry on Wednesday. Facebook made a similar statement. The home office regulation will be extended to October in both companies due to the renewed increase in the corona numbers.
“We’ll be rolling out this rule in the United States in the coming weeks and rolling it out to other regions in the coming months,” Pichai said. The provisions should therefore be adapted to the respective corona regulations of the individual countries and the availability of vaccines. Google gave its employees the opportunity to work from home early last year. The company has now extended the rule until October 18.
Facebook will also “require that everyone who visits one of our locations in the US be vaccinated,” said Vice President Lori Goler. The implementation will depend on “local conditions and regulations”. How to deal with locations outside the USA is still to be examined. Facebook plans to reopen its offices in September with a capacity of 50 percent. From October onwards, work will officially be back from the office.
Compulsory vaccination is not a form of discrimination
According to the US federal agency EEOC, which is responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, employers can require their employees to prove they have been vaccinated against Covid-19. Exceptions are medical or religious reasons.
Due to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, the number of cases in the USA is increasing again, most recently an average of around 60,000 new infections per day were reported. At the same time, the vaccination rate slows down. To date, almost half of the total US population is fully vaccinated. That is why a debate about compulsory vaccination has flared up. This will be “considered” for the more than two million federal employees in the country, said Biden last. Employees who do not want to or cannot be vaccinated would then have to be tested regularly.
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