Don’t come back to work until you’ve had jabs, top US firms say
Some of America’s largest employers are telling staff to have both Covid-19 jabs before they return to the office as infections rise.
Some of America’s largest employers are telling staff to have both Covid-19 jabs before they return to the office as infections rise.
McDonald’s, the fast food chain, and NBCUniversal, the television and film business, are among them. Companies are also delaying plans to get their staff back into the office. NBC has delayed its planned full office return until late October at the earliest.
Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange will be required to be inoculated against Covid-19. It closed for two months in the spring of last year and only fully reopened in May this year.
Half of the US is now fully vaccinated. The rapid spread of the Delta variant has driven daily nationwide coronavirus cases back above 120,000 for the first time since February.
The latest wave of infections has prompted a string of prominent companies to both push back planned office reopenings and re-evaluate their stance on vaccinations.
As America’s biggest burger chain, McDonald’s has hundreds of thousands of employees in the US. It is implementing different rules for staff based in its offices, who will be required to be fully inoculated, and those working in its restaurants, who face no such mandate.
Workers at restaurants owned by McDonald’s, rather than franchisees, have been granted up to four hours of paid leave to get a jab. Its planned office reopening has been postponed, from September to October, to enable staff to become vaccinated.
Heidi Capozzi, the group’s global chief people officer, wrote in an internal memo seen by The Wall Street Journal: “A resurgence of infections caused by Covid-19 variants has many of us uneasy. We’ve heard from many of you that you would feel more comfortable returning to the office if you had more certainty your colleagues were vaccinated.”
Adam Miller, executive vice-president at NBCUniversal, told staff that rising infection rates and guidance from medical experts and officials had persuaded the company of the need to “alter our approach”.
The companies follow in the footsteps of some of corporate America’s biggest names, such as Facebook, Google and Uber, which are all introducing vaccine mandates for office staff. Walmart, the retailer, is also doing so for corporate staff, as is Netflix for the cast and crew members of its US productions. This week Amazon, which swiftly increased the size of its workforce during the pandemic, instructed all US warehouse staff to start wearing masks again.
Amazon does not have an inoculation requirement in place, and previously only unvaccinated workers were required to wear face coverings. The date upon which many of its office staff are expected back at their desks has been postponed until January.
Activity in the private sector is mirroring that in the public sphere as President Biden’s administration races to persuade more Americans to get vaccinated.
Yesterday the US Department of Health and Human Services became the latest government agency to announce a mandate for inoculation for its workers. Members of the military have also been ordered to get their vaccinations.
The Times
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