Dallas County is the latest organization to begin implementing strict regulations for unvaccinated employees, requiring either weekly tests for COVID-19 or vaccination.
As an incentive to get the vaccine, vaccinated workers will receive an extra six days of paid leave, FOX 4 reports. In addition, Dallas County is offering a bonus of $200 to those employees who choose to get vaccinated between now and the end of March.
According to the Dallas County HR department, two thousand employees have been registered as vaccinated for COVID-19 through their insurance provider.
The mandate, which will affect around 6,500 county employees, was decided upon by Dallas commissioners with a 4-1 vote. The only opposition to the rule came from Commissioner J.J. Koch, who believes that unvaccinated and vaccinated should be treated the same due to the new strain of the virus, Omicron.
Koch caught COVID-19 this month, despite being vaccinated. “It’s merely a punitive measure. That’s the stick rather than the carrot,” he adds.
Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins justified the decision by saying that not being vaccinated is a risk that people willingly take. “So, I want to take that risk, and I take that risk [in refusing the vaccine], and I get COVID; we’re not saying you’re not getting your sick days. We’re just saying you’re using the sick days that you always had. You’re not getting an additional 48 hours of taxpayer paid leave because you decided that was a risk you wanted to take,” he reasoned.
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley shared Jenkins’ sentiment, as Tarrant County recently imposed a similar mandate for its county employees. “I still just felt like it was time for some people to exercise some responsibility, and if I’m going to give them an extra five days…I felt like it was appropriate to require that they get the vaccine,” says Whitley.
Developments in requirements for county employees comes as health workers across the country have reached their deadline to get vaccinated.
Beginning on January 27, healthcare workers now face possible termination if they are not vaccinated, according to David Lieb from NBC.
Some individuals in the field, like spokeswoman for the Missouri Health Department Lisa Cox, fear the mandate could make staffing shortages worse. “Throughout all of this, we knew that mandating it would be a negative impact really on our healthcare system … just because of crippling staffing levels,” she remarked.
Others, such as Ezekiel Emanuel, Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, disagree. “We’ve seen over and over that employer vaccine mandates work to raise vaccination rates, and they don’t cause workforce shortages. It’s time for the business community to step up and show the leadership our nation needs now,” he said in a November statement from the American Medical Association (AMA).