But government regulations are the only way, and the safety of employees or their benefits depends on what other employers offer you. Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says employers work with their own governments, regardless of how they run their business. Covid revealed “a limited amount of power that the government can use to employ other employers,” said Ajunwa. “The epidemic has really revealed this, especially when it comes to 19 preventative measures or 19 effective interventions.”
This means especially for workers to research and understand their rights.
Justin Feldman, a Harvard pathologist who wrote about this: “If you belong to the 94% non-public sector workforce, you probably don’t know that benefits exist. covid-19 is a workplace. “And even if you know it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to practice without retaliation.”
In a statement, the New York Department of Labor told me it was receiving “various complaints” about violations of the covid-19 rule and that it was “trying to collect unpaid wages, or reimburse those who did not receive a vacation as required.”
But even with the existing rules, on paper, support workers can ignore those who are in the most dangerous jobs. The New York Department of Labor has said that every worker who refuses to be vaccinated should file a complaint but declined to comment, especially if the so-called gig is protected. (A comment from Chapel Hill states that because the law uses the word “employee,” it does not refer to gig workers, who also do not receive work insurance through work.)
“Emergency”
Health experts stress that there is no single standard of living for vaccines. The government can make a number of paid days for workers in various sectors to be shot, but we still need to combine this with other health measures such as door-to-door visits, says Feldman.
Misconceptions about covid-19 need to be addressed, too: Young workers may believe that they will not be infected, Feldman says, especially if they have already worked with people very carefully and never got sick. It can be especially difficult to change their mind as soon as they hear peer pressure, journalists, or commentators expressing a risk.
“We need to make sure that people get vaccinated as a matter of urgency, and that means we should not treat them as failures,” he said. “We have to do different things at the same time and see what works.”
“Once people have the information they need, based on science, it makes one carrot look like putting a cake.”
Rhea Boyd, founder of The Conversation
Rhea Boyd, a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area, says people need more before they can be attracted to stimulants. He introduced Negotiation, in which black and Latino health workers provide reliable information about covid-19 vaccines in their communities.
“The biggest motivation is self-esteem,” Boyd said in an email. “When people have the necessary knowledge, based on science, it makes one ‘carrot’ look like putting a cake.”
What will it look like?
“We will only know enough once everyone has been vaccinated,” he said.
In the meantime, the safety of front-line workers continues to depend on changes in public health perceptions, employer’s policies, and customer perceptions that decide whether or not to follow safety measures.
And while health officials have taken self-defense hospitals to parks, churches, and festivals for seven years to change attitudes, workers are watching what their boss says and does.
“Workers on each line draw on what they have to do from employers,” Ajunwa says. “I think this shows the great influence that fellow employers have in America.”
This story is part of Pandemic Technology Project, sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation.
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