As private companies and government agencies adopted stringent vaccine requirements, one question loomed over American society: would vaccine hesitant workers walk away from their jobs, spurring labor shortages in key fields like health care, transportation, and food processing?
So far, the answer is no.
Consider, for example, Tyson Foods, the meat conglomerate. At the beginning of August, less than half of its workforce was inoculated. After a vaccine requirement was announced, that number has climbed to 91% and employees still have a month to get jabbed or face termination.
The New York Times adds:
One of the company’s poultry plants achieved a 100 percent vaccination rate, from 78 percent, after Covid hit close to home. A viral video about Caleb Reeves, a young Arkansas man who died of Covid, helped to highlight the risk of the virus to young people, “and we have many young frontline workers,” Dr. Coplein said. Mr. Reeves’s uncle worked at a Tyson plant, and the video “gave them a personal connection to say, ‘Hey, that could be my family, too,’” Dr. Coplein said.
Then there’s United Airlines, one of the first major companies to adopt a vaccine mandate. Of 67,000 employees, just 593 chose to defy the order. That’s a 98.5% compliance rate.
Fears about a worker shortage in the health care industry – already depleted by its 18-month battle with the coronavirus pandemic – also seem to be overwrought.
In New York, where a vaccine requirement for health care workers went into effect this week, zero health care facilities have been reported closed, according to Governor Kathy Hochul. Meanwhile, the vaccine rate among the state’s nursing home employees stands at 92%, up from 70% before the mandate was announced.
Vaccine hesitant workers fired from a hospital system in North Carolina made headlines earlier this week, but those jettisoned – 175 employees overall – represent a mere half percent of the system’s overall workforce.
That echoes the situation at Houston Methodist’s hospital system. 153 employees were axed for resisting the jab. Again, that’s just a half percent of 26,000 employees.
There will likely be isolated examples of companies, health care facilities, and schools that experience labor shortages because of inoculation requirements, but that possibility must be weighed against the risk of having unvaccinated workers who endanger their colleagues, patients, and students.
Some workers will be willing to walk away from their careers in order to avoid the life-saving vaccines. But the numbers make clear they are a shrinking minority, no matter the number of lawsuits they file or protests they launch.
And as more Americans get inoculated, COVID-19 infections are falling. New cases are down 26% from their two-week average.
