Vaccinate or Terminate – Mandatory Vaccination As Workplace Policy

The discovery, testing and mass deployment of a COVID-19 vaccine are welcome developments in potentially ending the Coronavirus pandemic. A safe and widely available vaccine will also allow employees to return to the physical workplace. The benefits of an inoculated (and presumably safe and healthy) workforce are obvious. Employees immune from COVID-19 will experience fewer absences because they are healthy and so are the people that they care for (or that care for them). Offices and other facilities will avoid pandemic-related closures and disruptions associated with deep cleaning and other infection control measures. Inoculated individuals will be able to travel and participate in service, customer and other people-facing positions without fear of becoming ill or perpetuating an outbreak and making others ill. And while less obvious, incidents of mental health disorders and other very real but debilitating anxiety-related illnesses should wane in the face of actual progress in fighting the pandemic.  If a fully or near fully inoculated workforce could materially reduce and even eliminate the direct threat the pandemic poses to the workplace, it seems natural to implement a mandatory vaccination program as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available – after health care workers, first responders and others at high risk are vaccinated – to ensure employee health and safety.

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CHICAGO POLICE COMPILING DOSSIERS ON PEOPLE WHO SPEAK AT POLICE BOARD MEETINGS

Why would the Chicago Police Department be running background checks on people who sign up to speak at public meetings of the city’s police disciplinary panel?

That is what many people want to know after a public records request conducted by the Chicago Tribune revealed that since January 2018, CPD has collected information on at least 60 people in advance of their speaking at the weekly meetings—a practice that police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed has been going on since at least 2013.

From the Tribune:

“The checks appear to be extensive, with police searching at least one internal department database to determine if speakers have arrest or prison records, warrants outstanding for their arrest, investigative alerts issued for them by the department and even if they’re registered sex offenders or missing persons. Police also searched comments that speakers had previously made on YouTube or on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, among other internet sites, the documents show.

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