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Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated?
HughPickens.com writes According to Joanna Rothkopf Disneyland is already a huge petri dish of disease with tired children wiping their snot faces on Goofy and then riding log flumes through mechanized rivers filled with the backwash of thousands of other sweaty, unwashed, weeping toddlers. Now John Tozzi reports at Businessweek that five workers at Disneyland have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that California officials trace to visitors at the theme park in mid-December. The measles outbreak is a publicity nightmare for Disney and the company is urging its 27,000 workers at the park to verify that they're inoculated against the virus, and the company is offering tests and shots on site for workers who are unvaccinated. One thing Disney won't do, however, is require workers to get routine vaccinations as a condition of employment. Almost no companies outside the health-care industry do. "To make things mandatory just raises a lot of legal concerns and legal issues," says Rob Niccolini. Disney has been working with public health officials, and they've already put some employees on paid leave until medically cleared. "They recognized that they were just a meeting place for measles," says Gilberto Chávez. "And they are quite concerned about doing what they can to help control the outbreak."
Employers should not be put in a position where they are giving medical advice or direction. If there is a reason that large, public centered facilities or parks should have required vaccinations, then that needs to be public policy, not corporate policy.
because I am not anti vax, but i am pro choice. in that people should be free to do as they wish with their own bodies
As long as these bodies are kept out of civilization, i.e. basically hermits, then I'm fine with that. If you want to participate in society, though, you have to get vaccinated. It is part of the social contract you make with the rest of humanity. It is analogous to you waving around your hands (your body) being free, as long as you don't hit someone in the face (someone else's body).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Would this be mitigated by Disney *always* providing paid sick leave? The quote in TFS suggests that this might be the exception rather than the rule. If you encourage employees to come in to work while they're sick, or even hide their symptoms, then I guess you're more likely to see illnesses spread...
Rule of thumb: It's not a free choice, if there is a big "or else...." attached.
bickerdyke
because I am not anti vax, but i am pro choice. in that people should be free to do as they wish with their own bodies
That is my baseline as well. But while I lean libertarian, the measles virus has no such ideology. As such, I am pragmatic and realize that this probably crosses the line of "your rights end where mine begin". You are infringing on other people's rights by knowingly and voluntarily making yourself vulnerable to deadly disease. I suppose that just like the right to free speech, people should have a right to not be vaccinated - but they do not have a right to be free from the consequences. Long and short - employers should be able to discriminate against people who voluntarily refuse vaccinations.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You have a choice. You can always leave society. I didn't have any choice of where I was born or what civilization I was born into, either. I got over it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Absolutely it is. Your have freedom to live your life as you choose. If you are forcing others to accommodate your choices, now you're infringing on THEIR rights.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
With your own body, yes, in the same way that we have a basic right in this country to own guns. But if you showed up at work brandishing your weapon and randomly firing it into the air over the heads of crowds, then your employer would say that this right of yours ends where other bodies begin. It's the same way with your right to walk around unvaccinated.
Sounds like you feel entitled to that job...
Innocent until proven guilty is for specific parts of the legal system only - the police and prosecutors have to believe you are guilty to bring a case against you, so its obvious it doesn't apply to everyone, everywhere, for all things. So a company doesn't have to assume you are innocent at all, as neither does your friends, family or random person in the street.
A drug test isn't an assumption of guilt in a court of law. The entire guilty until proven innocent is for criminal and civil trials, not for employment. Mandatory drug tests are pragmatically stupid for many reasons in many industries (they are much less likely to catch the hard drugs like cocaine which go out of the system fast than marijuana which lingers, they cost a lot of money), but in the case of Disney where the employees are working on and maintaining rides with many passengers and where people could easily be killed if something goes wrong, drug tests aren't as unreasonable. In general, the real silliness of drug tests is when they are used by things like fast food restaurants or worse when they are used as a condition of welfare (where the evidence is that they cost far far more than they save the state).
Sure, over an evolutionary timespan. Assuming that the disease in question kill before you can give birth, and that they kill enough of the population to be impactful in an evolutionary sense.
Call me soft though, I'd prefer we solve this problem in something less then an evolutionary timescale. I kinda care about the kids who'd die otherwise.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
so where do we draw the line? should we allow an employer to have access to our bank records? to ensure we arent funding terrorists? Should we give them our passwords to all our accounts online? to ensure we are not bad mouthing the company?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
i consider myself a libertarian, but at the same point i believe that what one does on their own time is of no concern to an employer. as such, one should be judged on the merits of their work, not their recreation
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Draw the line wherever you like, you don't have to work for them. I don't work for companies that want to pay me less than I want to be paid - it doesn't take any laws or rules for that to work.
Rule of thumb: It's not a free choice, if there is a big "or else...." attached.
Free choice does not mean choice without consequences. I am free to speak my mind but that does not mean I shouldn't expect consequences for doing so. I can choose not to vaccinate my children or myself but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to endanger other people by making that choice. I can choose not to be tested for drugs for philosophical reasons but that might mean that certain jobs are closed to me.
Choice almost never comes without consequence.
How could anyone work in a place like Disney without being heavily drugged?
Because finding out the dude was high when he forgot to check the safety harness on Space Mountain after someone flies out and dies makes it all better. Suuurrre, he's the one they are going to sue for millions of dollars over negligence and Disney has no right, reason, or interest in ensuring the safety of their customers..
Look, ganjadude, it's FINE that you want to toast your brain. Rock on, dude. Just don't do it at a time or place where your impaired state is likely to affect me in any way whatsoever. In exchange I promise not get wasted on single malt and drive around in your neighborhood.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Give me a fucking break. Remember that there are other people in the world besides you, and they are just as important as you are. Society as a concept may not have rights, but the individuals do; one of the rights that is given to individuals by society is protection from the malicious and incompetent.
Your right to swing your fist (or associate with people you know you may kill through exposure to the disease you currently have) ends at the tip of my nose. Society has decided that this is an appropriate compromise between your rights and the rights of others. There's only so much of an asshole you can be before you get sanctioned by the will of the people.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Look, ganjadude, it's FINE that you want to toast your brain. Rock on, dude. Just don't do it at a time or place where your impaired state is likely to affect me in any way whatsoever
This times 100 is what I am saying. What one does in their off time is not of any concern to others
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
All that "hippy stuff" may well have some relevance to flu, but vitamins won't do anything to stop you catching measles if you are exposed and not immune.
There are good arguments against flu vaccine, but measles should be a no-brainer. It is safe and effective. Nothing else is.
We can disagree over the rights of herd immunity, but those who maintain that refusal to vaccinate hurts only the one who refuses, as the OP argued, are just plain ignorant of the facts.
Requiring employees who have extensive contact with the public, especially the young and elderly, to have vaccinations for highly infectious diseases is also common sense.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Were you out sick from school when the immune system was taught?
Nothing (NOTHING) has a 100% infection rate on exposure, largely because your immune system fights off most of the crap that you are exposed to, often without you even noticing. Having a well functioning immune system will indeed improve your odds when you are exposed.
Vaccines work by boosting your immune system. They aren't a magic shield that turns away pathogens before they land on you; they help your immune system respond faster and stronger by teaching it, in advance, how to deal with a pathogen it hasn't seen previously. And they aren't 100% effective either. If they were, no one would give a shit if other people were vaccinated or not. If that last part isn't obvious to you, think about it for a minute or two.
So, in summary, vaccines are one thing, out of many, that help your immune system and reduce your chances of infection. If you assign liability, or worse, criminality, to not boosting your immune system in one way, why not the others too? Or why not to people that do things intentionally that reduce their immunity? (Keep in mind that there exists in the west a protected class of people, membership depending on choosing behavior that has astonishingly powerful negative effects on the immune system.)
See that "Preview" button?
Great. Let's "get IT work elsewhere" shall we?
- oops, nothing available in my immediate area
- something available in the next town over, but I cannot afford the commute
- something available across the country but I cannot afford to sell my house
- something available across the country but I cannot afford the move
- something available across the country but that means wifey has to quit her job
- something available across the country but I can't move the ailing family member in my care
- I'd love that job in California but I'm putting my child through University and had to start bicycling to work to cut expenses
- I tried self-employment but I'm a horrible entrepreneur and lost my savings in my last, and only, venture
etc.
etc.
etc.
To be clear, I have been gainfully employed for 25 years and have never had problems finding work or moving from one job to the next. But I am not so naive as to think that the right work is available to anyone who wants it at any time.
Personal and/or religious preferences as exemptions.
I don't really give a shit about your personal or religious preferences if it affects public health.
I don't want the government mandating what we stick into our bodies.
The government isn't mandating what you put in your body. It is however telling you that if you want a government funded education then you need to be vaccinated so you do not present a risk to others. You do have the right to opt out but there are (and should be) consequences.
However, with schools, it's best to allow unvaccinated children to attend with the understanding they won't be able to attend in an outbreak.
I could not disagree more. If you want to home school your children or send them to a private school, then that is your right. If they want to attend a public school then they should be vaccinated against common illnesses or provide that they cannot get the vaccine for provable medical conditions. I do not care at all about personal or religious preferences in this matter. Viruses do not notify people ahead of time when there will be an outbreak so by the time there is an outbreak it is already too late. The entire point of vaccines is prevent the outbreak in the first place.