Not so fast!
If you read the Fine Print you will need your vaxxipass:
The BRIEF ANSWER is YES!
"As more coronavirus vaccine doses become available in the weeks and months ahead, many business owners face a difficult decision: whether to require employees to be inoculated, and if they decide “yes,” they have to be ready for the possibility that some staffers will refuse. It’s not known how many employers will require staffers to get the vaccine — and many companies likely haven’t made a decision. About two-thirds of Americans say they plan to get vaccinated or have already done so, according to a poll released Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The survey also found that 15% of Americans say they will definitely not get the vaccine and another 17% say they probably will not. Employers can require many staffers to be vaccinated under guidelines from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They can’t require inoculations for employees with medical conditions protected by the Americans with Disability Act or those who object to vaccinations for religious reasons. The ADA covers employers with 15 or more workers, and some state and municipal laws cover smaller businesses. Owners must find what the law calls a reasonable accommodation to allow these staffers to keep working. Employers have been contacting attorneys and human resources consultants and asking, what should we do? A frequently asked question is whether an employer can dismiss a staffer who refuses to be vaccinated and who isn’t protected by law. The short answer is yes. “The employer has the latitude under the EEOC to keep the workplace safe,” says Jerry Maatman, an employment law attorney with Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago, but Maatman cautions that while the EEOC has released guidelines about the vaccine, issues over employers’ rights to dismiss staffers who don’t comply are likely to end up in court....."
Wasn't there once a guy who said "you're fired?"
He won in a landslide and is now lost to history.
"When are we going back to the office? Big employers set timelines but remain cautious; Companies are suggesting a wide range of return dates, mostly from June to September" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, March 14, 2021
After scrambling to shut down their offices last March, many top executives told their staffs that normal commutes would probably resume by sometime in September, if not earlier. But Labor Day 2020 eventually turned into New Year’s Day 2021, as the coronavirus surged and return-to-office timelines kept getting extended.
Some of the area’s biggest companies now have June or July circled on their calendars. Many others are talking about Labor Day again, and many aren’t giving any return dates, no matter how tentative, just yet. They’ve been burned before.
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the timeline for our return to the office is still hazy.
The uncertainty doesn’t just weigh on commuters and employers. It’s vexing everyone from state policy makers to the cobblers, clothiers, and café owners who make downtown office districts hum. Complicating matters: A newfound embrace of remote work will continue in some form once it is deemed safe to head back.
“There will still be an office, but there will also be more flexibility,” said Mohamad Ali, chief executive of the global research firm IDG. “We don’t know what that means yet, but we’re not going to rush to define it. We want to see how the world comes back.”
Mohamad Ali, huh?
Has he been vaccinated like Hagler?
A marvelous career that suffered the ultimate knockout at the hands of the CVD vaxxeen, and at the same time down went Gast, down went Gast, down went Gast!
What I remember most about Hagler was the quote he made regarding the Hearns-Leonard fight where the winner would face him. He said " the loser's the winner, and the winner is doomed," and what is most troubling is the Globe covering up the cause regarding a quintessential Boston hero (not from French Lick, Indiana, for one thing).
Just same old, same old at the old news office, right?
IDG has relocated its headquarters from Framingham to Needham, but most of its 500 local employees still haven’t set foot in it. Ali said he is reopening that office on June 1, but workers can stay home if they want until COVID-19 vaccines are widely deployed.
IDG is on the early side. Talk to the state’s biggest white-collar employers and you’ll get a wide range of return-to-office strategies. None say they are going back before June, even with vaccines rolling out by the tens of thousands and hundreds of public schools expected to fully reopen in the spring.
The online retailer Wayfair has been saying June, assuming it’s safe to return. Other companies — such as Converse, UKG (formerly Kronos), LogMeIn, and PTC — are eyeing a potential return sometime in the summer. The financial firms State Street and Putnam Investments are saying September at the earliest. Then there’s Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts Health Plan: The newly merged health insurers don’t expect to occupy their new headquarters in Canton until sometime in the last three months of the year.
Stay away from Wayfair like the Globe does.
The success of the state’s vaccine rollout is a determining factor in these timelines. The availability of in-person school and day-care options will also play a key role, as will the levels of COVID-19 infections. Government contractor MITRE forecasts that Massachusetts might reach “herd immunity” by September, based on the pace of vaccine rollouts. That coincides with a hopeful return to regular schooling for students at every grade level.
The federally funded research company in Bedford is also part of a consortium working on vaccine passport that works as seamlessly as a credit card so no conflict of intere$t there as they help erect the Great Re$et and system of global totalitarian surveillance.
As a result, some business leaders say September is the most commonly mentioned return date right now.
In many cases, a small number of workers have been going in already. Mass General Brigham, for example, has had 200 to 300 employees on any given day at its Assembly Row offices in Somerville. Most of the 4,200 office employees who normally work at that location, which is currently doubling as a vaccination site, will continue to be remote until at least June 30.
Other big companies — such as Fidelity Investments, John Hancock, MassMutual, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts — are leaving return dates open-ended, with the promise that employees will get plenty of notice. “The curve of the pandemic will direct our actions,” Fidelity spokesman Vincent Loporchio said in an e-mail. “We will take our time, emphasizing safety over speed.”
Oddly, Boston-based Fidelity Investments added some 2,000 positions to the company in 2020, growing its global workforce by about 4 percent, to end the year with more than 47,000 employees, as the company reported record revenue and operating income during the COVID-19 pandemic even after waiving nearly $250 million in fees and expenses for its largest money market fund, a sign of how low yields pressured the products in an unprecedented year.
So how were your yields under pressure during this unprecedented year, reader?
For now, Boston’s downtown towers and the sprawling office parks in Woburn and Waltham remain relatively quiet. Tamara Small, chief executive of the real estate trade group NAIOP Massachusetts, said her members have seen a slight uptick in office occupancy rates in Boston, maybe up to 12 percent from 10 percent during the depths of the winter. The suburbs are slightly busier, but not by much.
Small said the work-from-home world is taking its toll on many employers: Checking e-mails is different from strategic thinking, and not enough of the latter is happening while companies are in WFH mode.
At least you HAVE work!
Some polls have tried to forecast a firmer return date for the masses, but no real consensus has emerged. MindEdge, a Waltham education-tech firm, surveyed 830 managers from companies across the country in January. More than 40 percent said they expected office life to return by the end of summer. On the other hand, 16 percent said they don’t expect it until spring 2022 or later.
Not everyone will be going back, even when it’s time to go back.
Dell Technologies, one of the state’s largest tech employers, expects more than 60 percent of its employees to work remotely on any given day — a “hybrid” approach. Some companies, such as LogMeIn and Loomis Sayles, have already decided to significantly pare back their office footprints, and insurer John Hancock told employees Friday that it would close its Westwood and Portsmouth, N.H., outposts and ask the 900 people who used to go to those locations to work remotely or in the Back Bay headquarters, or a mix of the two.
“Employers that find remote work appealing to retain their workforce are going to lean heavily on a hybrid model,” said Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council. “[Meanwhile,] those that favor the significance of culture and the interactions in the office on a regular basis will follow a ‘back to the office’ model.”
Eastern Bank was among the companies that initially informed office workers they should expect to go back after Labor Day — in 2020. As it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, chief executive Bob Rivers decided it didn’t make much sense to set a new date.
Rivers said he’s waiting for a critical mass of vaccinations, and for day-care centers and schools to be fully operational. The earliest he can see back-office and headquarters workers returning is September. (Most of Eastern’s branch and insurance office employees, representing about 40 percent of the bank’s 1,900-person workforce, are continuing to work onsite.)
“There’s no need to force it,” Rivers said. “We’re functioning just fine.”
Even if that’s true for most office employers, many executives feel something important has been lost now that face-to-face meetings have shifted from the conference room to Zoom.
“I miss the chats that you can have outside of a meeting, when you’re walking to a meeting, walking back from a meeting, going up the elevator, walking out the front door,” said Ali, the IDG chief executive. “That whole ‘management by walking around,’ which I do a lot, is hard to do when you’re not in a building together.”
Or in bed with the after effects of killer vaxxeens.
Come to find out, it won't be like the Old Office ever again, making that piece of drivel even more irrelevant. They have snowshoed to a different channel in the social distancing era.
Nevertheless, the Globe continues with the inside joke and insult by comforting you with the idea of why rewatching your favorite TV show feels so good right now and that by returning to beloved storylines and characters, we come to what experts call a “stable site of self-presence,” which researchers explain as acknowledging our past and current situation and being able to confront what comes next.
That's not why I steer clear of the $port$ and new$ channels these days as well as all the rest save for those bygone reruns: it's to avoid the absolute filth that is troweled out by the bucket load these days be it Hollywood or my pre$$.
In fact, today's water cooler talk is the energetic Grammys that nodded to the real world as host Trevor Noah seemed determined that the novelty of the entire night could be a water cooler moment in itself (I stay as far away from his show as possible):
Megan Thee Stallion performs at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles (Associated Press)
Talk about in-your-face hypocrisy.
No wonder the public is sick of celebrities.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Back to work:
"Life sciences companies face supply constraints as they look to offer vaccination sites for their employees; Despite daunting logistics, many employers are eager to provide shots to workers" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, February 24, 2021
As the Baker administration plans for the next expansion of vaccinations in Massachusetts, a major business sector has been getting ready to help distribute doses to potentially thousands of its employees.
Thanks in part to industry lobbying, life-sciences employees were included in a group of essential workers that are due to be eligible for vaccines in Phase 2 of the rollout. These workers could be eligible for inoculations as soon as March, along with K-12 teachers and employees of other selected workplaces deemed essential, such as day-care centers, restaurants, funeral homes, and utilities.
Many biotechs and medical device manufacturers have been hoping to be among the first employers, outside of hospitals, to provide vaccines to their workers, and some large companies in other sectors want to pursue their own vaccination efforts when the rest of the public becomes eligible in phase 3.
I suspect all their assets will be getting the harmless placebos like most world leaders and global elites. The genocidal poison is for the rest of us.
Getting supplies could be difficult, though. Governor Charlie Baker’s administration sent out a memo Wednesday night asking the business community to hold off on these efforts, saying there aren’t enough supplies right now to support employer-based vaccine programs. It’s a message that’s bound to disappoint many executives.
“Businesses would prefer to have these in-house if they could,” said Brian Johnson, president of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council. “Companies want to get back on their feet. One CEO told me, ‘At least, I know if it’s in their face, that they’ll get their shots.’ ”
You can have mine.
Dozens of life-sciences companies had been contemplating their own vaccine programs or teaming up with others to ensure their workers — many of whom still go to work in person in labs or factories — get vaccinated as quickly as possible.
Why the rush when CVD is dying and 99.97% of people survive what they don't even know they had?
Employer programs are still in the early stages. The logistics can be daunting. To administer shots, the state’s published guidelines require companies to have at least 200 workers — although smaller firms can band together — as well as proper refrigeration equipment and medical personnel.
Then there’s the issue of supply. The state acts as a conduit for vaccines distributed by the federal government and typically was getting nearly 110,000 first doses each week. State officials say this number, now closer to 140,000, meets only about a quarter of the demand.
Kate Reilly, spokeswoman for the state’s COVID-19 response team, said supply limits would complicate employer-organized efforts. The Baker administration hopes to resume discussions about employer-sponsored clinics as the vaccine supply increases.
“Given the continued and significant supply constraint, the Commonwealth continues to work with the business community on potential solutions for their employers,” Reilly said in an e-mail. “At this time, the state is focusing on the efficient, effective and equitable distribution of vaccines through sites that are open to all residents.”
That is literally the definition of fa$ci$m, and when is break time?
Many smaller biotechs are taking what industry consultant Jodie Morrison calls a “parallel track” approach. They’re joining together to plan “pop up” vaccination centers, but also hoping employees can use a mass vaccination site. Morrison leads the COVID-19 CEO Forum, an informal group of about 150 biotechs that share tips for navigating the pandemic. Emerging from those talks: plans for a vaccination hub in Watertown to support about 50 biotechs, assuming supplies are available, using a state-approved independent pharmacy, Morrison said.
No conflict off intere$t or $elf-$erving angle, right?
Lyndra Therapeutics chief executive Patricia Hurter said one possible location for such a clinic is the Arsenal complex in Watertown. Hurter remains hopeful that biotech employees can access the vaccine by the end of March. Morrison said she knows of several other biotech clusters that are working with large primary-care providers.
Another option suggested by Frequency Therapeutics chief executive David Lucchino would be for lab landlords to take the lead. His company employs 82 people, but he estimates more than 500 work in biotech in the Woburn building where Frequency is located.
“If we can loosen the burden for the state-run hubs, that’s a win-win for the state,” Morrison said. “We’ve done a good job of getting essential workers back into the labs, utilizing testing on a regular basis. . . . When biotech is open [for vaccinations], we want to make sure our employees can get the vaccine.”
I'm really beginning to hate that term, aren't you?
The life-sciences industry in Massachusetts is huge — at least 80,000 people work in biopharma alone, but there’s still some debate in the industry over which kinds of workers would be eligible in Phase 2, depending on how the state’s definition of “medical supply chain workers” is interpreted.
Life $ciences is a nicer way of saying Big Pharma mon$ters.
David Hamer, professor of global health at Boston University, said he understands the rationale behind including medical suppliers in the second phase. They do, after all, make lifesaving products that hospitals need, but he said they should be able to continue their operations in ways that minimize putting workers at risk of infection.
“I think they could be immunized at the same time as the general public,” Hamer said.
Once Phase 3 arrives, distribution could open up to many more companies. Several traditional big office employers have been preparing to offer vaccines to workers in Phase 3, or at least considering it.
For example, a Fidelity Investments spokesman said executives there want the company to help with vaccine distribution in part by inoculating its employees, and a spokesman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts said the insurer plans to seek state approval to distribute shots to employees at one of its South Shore offices.
Just being a good corporate citizen, right?
Marylou Sudders, Baker’s health and human services secretary, has been meeting with business groups to discuss vaccine rollout logistics. Next up: a virtual visit with the Massachusetts High Technology Council on Thursday.
“There’s a high degree of interest in how a company can set up and get certified to vaccinate their employees,” said Chris Anderson, the tech council’s president.
Universities are also getting in on the act, starting with health care workers. Richard Doherty, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, said more than 20 schools are already vaccinating eligible employees directly, primarily through their health clinics. He noted sanitation and food-service workers are scheduled to become eligible later in Phase 2.
Jim Rooney, chief executive of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, said he doesn’t expect overwhelming demand from member companies, in part because of the complicated protocols and because many workers should be able to get vaccinated from a community site before they need to return to the office.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be a massive addition to the vaccine numbers,” Rooney said of employer-hosted sites, “but it’s an opportunity for the business community to step up.”
Time for him to step down.
"State health secretary explains why employer-hosted vaccine programs are being suspended; Companies had been encouraged by the Baker administration to apply" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, February 25, 2021
The Baker administration had hoped companies could play a key role in inoculating their workers, by establishing employer-hosted vaccination programs. Now, that plan is on hold.
Only several weeks after soliciting help from the business community, the administration is telling companies to suspend their COVID-19 vaccination efforts for now.
On Thursday, Marylou Sudders, Governor Charlie Baker’s health and human services secretary, chalked up the problem to supply issues, during an online discussion hosted by the Massachusetts High Technology Council. The official word came out via a memo from her agency Wednesday night.
Sudders said on Thursday that the administration initially reached out to employers for assistance, “hoping that we would be awash in vaccines.”
These f**king people are absolutely sick and twisted in evil.
That has turned out not to be the case. Demand is outstripping supply in Massachusetts, roughly by a factor of four to one, Sudders said. The Baker administration acts as a conduit for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines distributed by the federal government and typically had been getting about 110,000 first doses each week. That number is now closer to 140,000, but still not nearly enough to meet demand.
“We needed to make some tough decisions,” Sudders said. “Until such time we have a lot more supply coming into the state, [we] can’t open up additional channels at this point.”
Sudders said it’s possible the state would restart its program for employer-hosted vaccination sites as the state moves closer to Phase 3 of the rollout and more supplies become available, most notably through the approval of a Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which could come as soon as this weekend. That third phase, which had been tentatively slated to begin in April, essentially allows the rest of the public to get vaccinated.
Life-sciences employees are among the categories of workers who are supposed to have access to the vaccine later in Phase 2, along with workers at K-12 schools, funeral homes, restaurants, and utilities.
A number of biotech companies had been working together to plan vaccination sites for their employees, through a cluster approach. Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, sent a note to members on Thursday expressing frustration with the turn of events, noting that state officials earlier had been encouraging employers or groups of employers that had planned to vaccinate more than 200 workers to apply to the state for approval. She wrote that while the halting of this effort is unfortunate, “we know we are not the only ones impacted as the state is also restricting/eliminating vaccine supply to cities & towns and healthcare providers.”
Brooke Thomson, executive vice president at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said in an e-mail that AIM had known since the beginning that supply would be a major issue. Thomson said AIM members are hoping the supply constraints will ease as more vaccines are approved.
That's the excuse they are giving because workers en masse do not want it.
That hope was echoed by Chris Anderson, the high tech council’s president. He said there’s some disappointment in the business community, because expectations had been raised by the administration about the promise of employer-hosted sites, but he said the J&J vaccine could significantly increase the flow of doses and would be easier to distribute than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, potentially helping employers to host their own vaccination sites.
“That opens up a number of new avenues that the state can rely on, including employers, to help increase the vaccination rate,” Anderson said.
Based in part on the conversation Thursday with Sudders and Chris Teixeira, a data scientist with the local government contractor MITRE, Anderson remains optimistic that Massachusetts can achieve the long-sought goal of “herd immunity” to COVID-19 by Labor Day.
Oh, there they are again!
Btw, we ALREADY HAVE NATURAL HERD IMMUNITY so f**k off!
Lab and factory workers have already been going into work regularly. Anderson said he expects employers to start bringing office workers back to work in large numbers this summer, initially with a hybrid system to limit the number of people in the office on a particular day, before transitioning to a more permanent approach in 2022.
Related:
Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders spoke at the mass vaccination site at the Natick Mall on Wednesday (Matt Stone/Associated Press).
Is that the same woman that made the house call last year?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time for a lunch break:
"Major U.S. companies are lobbying in a scrum for early vaccine; Danger of haves and have-nots looms as states decide how to dole out limited supply" by Christopher Rowland, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Jacob Bogage, Abha Bhattarai and Laura Reiley, Washington Post, Dec. 20, 2020
Companies across America — from Amazon and Uber to railroads and meatpacking plants — are lobbying states and the federal government to prioritize their workers for early immunization against the coronavirus amid limited supplies of the vaccine.
After front-line health-care workers and elderly people in nursing homes and assisted-living centers are immunized, the government within two months or so is expected to begin shipping vaccine to communities across America for those it has designated as essential workers.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory group voted Sunday to recommend that grocery store workers, teachers, day-care staff, adults over 75 and other front-line workers who cannot work remotely should be the next to get the coronavirus vaccine, followed later by another large batch of essential workers and elderly people. Adding to the uncertainty for business leaders is a patchwork process for emergency planning: All 50 states have the power to set their own priorities.
What is clear is that there won’t be enough doses to go around for months. Local officials in each state will have to make tough choices about which essential workers get their shots first.
“It almost feels like a wrestling match out there, where many interests want to make it clear that the people they represent have a lot of essential workers,” said Jonathan Slotkin, chief medical officer of Contigo Health, which leads partnerships between large national employers and hospital systems. Companies are displaying a “voracious appetite” for vaccines for their workforces, he said.....
That's where I pushed away the plate that I had just started and which was given extra helpings by the web version.
I'm full up, but if you want to gorge yourself go here, and the Globe will pay for your lunch if you take the $hot after being tested by the New York Times -- despite employers avoiding the tests over cost according to a survey by Arizona State University and the World Economic Forum, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the prime movers of lockdowns and the Great Re$et per their decade-old playbook!
So cancel the trip to doctor and develop your own cures to disarm the demons and evil celebrities. That is your $afe$t bet and Only Way if you are an immigrants who learned English and had the killer in$tinct needed to succeed in bu$ine$$.
