Following a year of fear and uncertainty, the huge progress made in vaccine development has impacted many businesses and the people they employ. Working from home could soon be replaced with a return to the office and employers may be wondering if they can insist on “vaccine passports” from their workers. Could implementing a compulsory vaccine passport policy infringe privacy and even present ethical risks for employers?
The demand for a vaccine passport in order to return to the office could be legal in accordance with the legislation in force in various countries.
“Under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), the Secretary of Health and Human Services allowed the use of the vaccines, but taking them remains a matter of personal choice,” says Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. “It’s unclear where it all goes because nothing has been interpreted by the courts yet.”
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), employees can be required to show proof of vaccination before returning to work but with several exceptions. Employers that require the employees to have had the COVID-19 vaccine must find a way to appropriately accommodate employees with disabilities. The same rule applies to those who are unable to receive the vaccine for religious or medical reasons.
Furthermore, recently Quebec’s Ministry of Health issued a decree stating that healthcare workers would need to have proof of COVID-19 vaccination and those failing to comply would be reassigned or placed on leave without pay.
“The word ‘mandatory’ kind of sets people off, you know, because you envisage someone being held down and forcibly injected against their will,” said University of Ottawa professor, Colleen Flood, in an interview with a Canadian magazine.
A recent survey from the Netherlands involving 1,640 Dutch people revealed that the population would not be against a “light” vaccination certificate with 71% percent saying they were in favor of a vaccination certificate.
According to Ivo van der Helm, assistant professor of Employment Law and Social Policy at Utrecht University, “in principle, every person has the fundamental right to the inviolability of his body. No one, neither employer nor government, should violate your physical integrity by forcing you to take a vaccine. Unless the law says otherwise.”
Yet even without such a “corona passport”, there are ways in which an employer can promote employee vaccination.
“Employment law has a general standard of good employment practices. Based on this standard, but also on the basis of the working conditions regulations, the employer must ensure a safe and healthy working environment. Isn’t it dangerous if too few colleagues are vaccinated against corona? Yes, but not specifically for you if you have already been vaccinated or for work,” says Van der Helm. “But getting yourself vaccinated or tested as an employee if asked to do so also stems from being a good employee.”
Vaccine passports, also called digital health passports, are platforms for smartphones that allow access to an individual’s health data such as COVID-19 test results or vaccination status. At present, more than 1.62 billion doses of vaccines have been administered throughout the world.
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