The Business-Unfriendly "Divisive" Vaccine Mandate

Nearly nine out of ten (89%) large employers believe some of their employees will quit their jobs due to President Biden's vaccine mandate.  Most employers, 90 percent, believe it will be challenging to implement the mandate that organizations with 100 or more employees require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

These are the topline findings of a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey of 1,289 members taken between Sept. 27-30.

The other key findings from the SHRM surveys include:

• Four out of five organizations (82 percent) that meet the mandate criteria said the requirements would make maintaining the morale and engagement of their workforce more difficult.
• Seventy-two percent of those organizations said the requirements would make maintaining regular business operations more difficult.
• Of organizations that did not mandate the vaccine before the announcement and do not meet the new criteria for the vaccine requirements, 86 percent said they are unlikely to require their employees to get the vaccine.
• Sixty percent of U.S. workers are supportive of the requirements, while 40 percent are unsupportive.
• Nearly 60 percent of U.S. workers who are not fully vaccinated yet (59 percent) said they still are unlikely to get vaccinated (definitely/probably won't get vaccinated) even after the mandate.

Another study by Gartner released earlier this month said companies expected to lose between 2% and 8% of their employees due to vaccine mandates, either because they quit or their employers terminate them for noncompliance. Any significant exodus of workers in the country will likely intensify labor shortage, boost labor costs for businesses, and worsen inflation.

Aside from the economy, the picture gets nastier and nastier every day.  For example, unvaccinated Chicago cops face termination under the city's mandate, which could result in the loss of up to half of the city's 13,000 officers. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot accused the police union boss of attempting to "incite an insurrection" by opposing the city's COVID vaccine mandate. The police chief had warned that defiant officers could lose their retirement benefits.

Everywhere you look, there is a heated debate about the mandate, whether it's from the governors of Texas or Florida or the travel industry or the military.

The country cannot afford to lose trained military personnel, which would pose a national security risk and endanger our allies who face numerous geopolitical threats. Furthermore, it has been difficult to recruit personnel for the military.

There are positive stories of achieving success without resorting to the divisiveness of a mandate.  Take for example Delta Airlines.

"By the time we’re done, we’ll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate," said Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines. "We’re proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions, and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs."