Quitting a job is expensive even in thick labor markets. Talking about quitting a job is cheap.
Only 65 out of 33,000 healthcare workers (0.19%) in Maine have quit their jobs over a statewide vaccine mandate announced for healthcare workers last month, new employment data reveals https://t.co/ZbaXrZAflR
— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) September 21, 2021
Actual behavior of people who are exposed to a policy is way more predictive of what other groups and cohorts who will be exposed to a policy will do then listening to loudmouths complain on Facebook.
Joe Falco
Listening to the stories on NPR this morning would lead a casual listener to believe the whole health-care system was on the brink of collapse if the vaccine mandate without a test out option for health care workers was implemented.
jonas
To judge by the media coverage here in NY, the health care system throughout the state is set to collapse tomorrow as half the workforce quits en masse over vaccine mandates. Of course a less setting-hair-on-fire response is to look at actual numbers. At least here in my neck of the woods, the local hospital system was already boasting around 80% of its employees as already vaccinated. So they were worried about that remaining 20%. My bet is 90% of that 20% end up getting their first jab and a few dozen end up quitting. But quite frankly did we want a bunch of stubborn toddlers willing to tank their careers in order to avoid taking a perfectly safe vaccine delivering our healthcare anyway? What does that say about their judgment and sense of responsibility?
JKC
We are about to see the results of New York’s vaccine mandate. I for one won’t miss these unvaccinated “professionals” any more than I’d miss a surgeon who refused to wash their hands before a case.
JML
one of the loud anti-vaxxers in my union quit about a week ago, told everyone it was because of the vaccination/testing requirements…but they had lined up another job where they got to work from home full-time. (we’re back in the office essentially 100%) Do I believe them that they left over testing/vaccination requirements? No. No, I do not.
JKC
@jonas: Exactly right. And if they won’t take a vaccine, what other infection control procedures will they ignore?
Paul W.
I hope there is more reporting talking about the reality of “our freedoms” which is really just the gleeful, wanton destruction that these people have wrought on society as long as we continue to have a political space where one side is asking “pretty please” to give 65 and ups dental/vision/hearing and the other is screaming death panels as the states they are governors of have literally already convened death panels.
Barbara
“I have the right to avoid the tiniest possibility of harm or inconvenience even if it threatens the lives of patients and costs my employer hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care and disability costs.” No, my friend, your employer is way, way better off without you.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
One thing we’re experiencing here in Rochester is that the medical systems are being pretty loose with religious opt-outs, so a lot of workers are opting out that way instead of quitting.
Ken
@JKC: “It’s right there in the name: Germ theory is only a theory….”
OzarkHillbilly
At the risk of repeating myself: 98% or more of those people saying they’ll quit, won’t. They have mortgages. They have car loans. They have families. And all the attendant expenses.
Reality wins. Reality always wins.
Kattails
I used to say “talk is cheap— as cheap as air”. Now I could add “unless you’re on a ventilator”. In which case it gets pretty pricey.
jonas
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep, and it’s not like they can just show up at the hospital in the next county over looking for a new position and not have to get vaccinated, either. You’d have to move to Kentucky or something.
Snarki, child of Loki
Remember ‘way back when Limbaugh said he’d moved to Central America (Costa Rica, maybe?) if Obama was elected?
Couldn’t be arsed. But he DID move to Hel, so that’s a plus.
Citizen_X
Hey, sign lady: if I wanted Jesus to cure me, I’d go to a church, not a hospital.
Barbara
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Which requires the hospital to undertake the even more onerous tasks of verifying negative tests on an ongoing basis and requiring a quarantine if the employee comes into contact with a positive person. A religious or medical exemption is not a get out of jail free card, it’s simply a path to an even more complicated safety protocol. This seems to come as a surprise to a lot of the people who get these exemptions.
Leto
@Joe Falco: I’ll relate healthcare workers refusing to be vaxxed the same as any military member who does the same: Fuck’em. They were/are untrustworthy agents who didn’t/don’t believe in the principle of the common good, and who would do more harm than good being associated/employees with their respective organization. Yes it might take some time to find a replacement, but ultimately they’re replaceable.
Audrey
My boss just quit this morning over our mandate. He’s not going to get vaxxed and he also didn’t think he should have to pay for the once a week rapid test that was the alternative procedure. Somehow, I didn’t expect that. I don’t know what you can do with people like that.
Scout211
My neighbor, a young adult living with her parents, works at a blood processing lab. Her company is on the list of healthcare professions that are required to be vaccinated. She and about 30% of her coworkers (she claimed) in her particular work setting (it’s a very large blood processing lab company) were not vaccinated for . . . reasons. They needed more “information.” Last week, she told me that I would now be happy because she had scheduled her first shot. I was happy, for her and for her family. She told us that the requirements for COVID testing and longer quarantine after exposure was just too much of a “hassle.” (She was out of work last week on a 10-day quarantine for exposure).
In her favor, she told us from the beginning that she would likely get a vaccine if her job “made” her get one. She just had “questions.”
These are the healthcare workers who definitely can be reached with mandates. They talk a big game of resistance and “questions” but will get vaccinated if it’s a job requirement.
ETA: grammar corrections
Barbara
@Leto: Seriously, when an employee refuses to get vaccinated it means that the employer already needs contingency plans in place to account for the near certainty that a significant percentage of those workers will become unavailable either because they have to repeatedly quarantine or they actually get sick. And that’s in addition to the headache of having to show continuous negative tests and enforce enhanced masking requirements.
Barry
@Audrey: “My boss just quit this morning over our mandate. ”
Will he be missed?
Ocotillo
Exemption people should not only need to go through testing regimen but if quarantining is required, no pay while they are sitting at home.
dexwood
@Audrey:
Wave goodbye.
jonas
@JKC: I suspect that the majority of the refuseniks are in the ranks of the lower-paid custodial, clerical and cafeteria staffs, not so much front-line workers. But there are a few crank nurses and MDs out there, to be sure, who really need to seek another line of work if they seriously think they shouldn’t be vaccinated at this point.
OzarkHillbilly
“Bye bye.”
Audrey
@Barry: He will actually be missed. He was a good boss. I completely understand why the company brought in the policy ( I was very happy they did!) and I think he is being unreasonable in not accepting their (to my mind inadequate) work around. I was hoping it would result in him getting his shots however reluctantly. Clearly not.
Wapiti
@Scout211: Some people have a hard time making decisions; I’ve heard it called analysis paralysis. Mandates make the decision less complicated.
Audrey
@dexwood:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I guess so! I’m not sure where he thinks he’s going to go. We have a province wide mandate and I can’t imagine other companies in our industry will be any more accomodating!
JKC
@jonas: My anecdotal research (based on newspaper articles) seems to show a lot of CNA’s with a depressingly significant number of nurses, who should know better. No docs that I’m aware of, although the gods know that there are a few cranks out there.
I’ve been practicing as a PA for 23 years now. I was not expecting this sort of idiocy from colleagues in the 21st century.
Another Scott
@Scout211: Yup, for many people, if there are no consequences for not changing one’s behavior, then there’s no immediate reason to do so. When there are consequences, then people will generally fall in line.
Some of the quitting is performative (I’ll go on OAN and tell my story and get a big GoFundMe!!), but that only works if only a few people do it. Nobody is going to give to the 5M+1st GoFundMe… Some of the quitting is the “last straw” for people close enough to retirement. Some people will quit, see that they’ve made a huge mistake, and try to get the vaccine and get their job (or a similar job) back… :-( But it will all be small numbers.
For context, nearly 4M people a month quit their job in the USA.
There’s going to be some disruption, lots of “Biden’s worst day ever; can he recover?” stories. It was ever thus.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
“You will be fired if you don’t get vaccinated.”
“That’s all the information I needed!”
Barbara
@Audrey: It’s much easier to require vaccines of new hires than existing employees. So your boss will most likely end up getting vaccinated before being hired again by someone else. No doubt this will be the case with most recalcitrant HCWs, unless they are exiting the industry or employment altogether, or find a position as a freelance home care provider (which will have lower pay and no benefits). That’s one reason why a mandate is so effective — it removes the possibility of using vaccine requirements as a basis for deciding among employers.
Barbara
@Ocotillo: My guess is that the same leave rules will be applied to quarantine requirements as personal, vacation and sick leave. You use up your leave and then you don’t get paid. It’s shocking what kind of alternative universe some of these people are living in.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ken:
? True.
gvg
I do not want these crackpots anywhere near a medical facility, not even cafeteria workers or janitors.
I also think stupid thinking is contagious. People hang out with fools and learn to be fools. I learned that long ago by realizing the reason I hated my job and was depressed was because I was sitting around with complainers. Go sit with cheerful people and gradually things aren’t so bad. Repeating bad event stories over and over makes you mind relive it so it’s like it happened 10 times instead of just once…Hang around with people who don’t understand how diseases or vaccinations work and you get more confused and wrong. That is not acceptable for medical care facilities.
Scout211
@Wapiti:
Yes. And for some, once their peer group/tribe/cult/gang decides a particular stance on an issue, they have a hard time going against the stance taken by their chosen group. Mandates give them a reason to make a choice not popular with the group-think. They are “forced” to do so by their job.
Obviously, there will be those that quit their jobs rather than change their stance, but it won’t be the majority, IMHO.
Ken
@Steeplejack (phone): I stole the idea from David Anderson’s recent post, “Revealed Preferences — or Talk is Cheap”.
(Also it’s funnier if you imagine “That’s all the information I needed” in the voice of Lou Costello or one of the Stooges.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Audrey: I don’t see what good a once-a-week test does. If you’re exposed the day after your test, you can walk around with COVID for a week.
Ohio Mom
Maybe off-topic…
I don’t have any data but I continue to doubt the labor market is best described as “thick.”
Yes, certain segments are — the low paid service labor market is indeed thick. That’s inconveniencing the people who are in the business of taking advantage of those workers, and they squawk loudly.
But from the angle of job seekers, of all kinds, in all sectors? I’m willing to be corrected but I want to see some hard data.
Are older workers suddenly not experiencing ageism? Are women re-entering the professional job market bring welcomed back with open arms? I’m pretty sure disabled people are still hugely under- and unemployed.
Who is framing this discussion about the unemployed?
P.S. of course I want everyone who can be safely vaccinated to be vaccinated! I’m all for employer mandates.
Just Chuck
What “Janet” is that sign referring to? Janet Yellen the Treasury Secretary? Why would … oh never mind, why am I trying to decode a wingnut sign?
cmorenc
@JKC:
Unfortunately, the % of political nut-case cranks among the M.D. profession is about the same as in the general population, though I suspect the anti-vax % is lower – main difference is they are better able to spout more superficially articulate (but still bullshit) rationales than their less-well educated fellow-RWNJ travelers. See, e.g. Rand Paul.
eclare
@Just Chuck: The governor of Maine is Janet Mills.
Just Chuck
Being a middle-class white straight cis guy, I always figured that if I had to live in a red state, I’d end up with at most the inconvenience of being outraged on other peoples behalf when it came to local politics. I know I enjoy enough privilege to insulate me from damn near everything else. But now? Fuck, I’m glad I live in a mostly-sane state like CO. Operative word being “live”.
WaterGirl
@Audrey: Some people are really surprising me with their vaccine and mask stances.
The super nice fellow who owns the local cleaners came to the counter with no mask – he let me keep all my clothing and all my bedding and basically anything cloth stored at the cleaners for the 5 months of repairs after the tree fell on my house. He charged me $100 total. So very nice.
It just doesn’t track.
WaterGirl
@Audrey:
Say ‘good riddance’?
One of the questions I used to ask during job interviews was “Please tell us about a time when you conformed to a policy with which you didn’t agree?”
Barbara
@WaterGirl: My dry cleaner and her entire family became sick with Covid. Her young son (around 20 years old) nearly died and faces ongoing rehabilitation. She has been sewing masks and giving them away to her customers.
Edmund Dantes
Hoping more cities take up the cops that say they will resign. It should help to clear the ranks of the horrible MAGA type cops that shouldn’t be cops anyways.
Eunicecycle
@cmorenc: I have a cousin who is an MD who didn’t get the vaccine. He also had a disease (I can’t remember what it was) that he needed a bone marrow transplant to save him. He’s also a Trumper. Of all of the cousins he was supposed to be the smartest-probably a genius IQ-but…
Almost Retired
Here’s a new one, at least to me. One of my employment law clients just received a document from an employee entitled “conditional acceptance” of the mandatory vaccine policy. It’s a ridiculous seven page document requesting “proof” of 41 vaccine-related issues.
All you need to know, with respect to the sanity of this document, is that the words “Constitution” and “Nuremberg” appear frequently. It’s signed by the employee “in Sui Juris,” which basically means that the employee is not subject to a conservatorship, ironically enough.
Evidently, the San Francisco Fire Department was flooded with these. This is essentially a document offered by employees who are too stupid to claim a religious exemption.
Mike in NC
@Eunicecycle: Trump claimed to have had some genius of an uncle who taught at MIT. Therefore, the Orange Clown reasoned that he, too, was a genius. That’s science in action, or something.
kindness
I work for Kaiser in N. Cal. In my department of about 25 people (all but 4 of whom have worked at home since 3/20) about a 1/3 of them had refused to get vaccinated. I’ve worked in the hospital the whole time so I’m happy that those who refused to get vaccinated all worked from home. I don’t want their Covid kooties. Anyway management came down about 3 weeks ago and put the hammer down. Every employee, no matter where they work is now required to be vaccinated unless they have a medical reason signed by a doctor. If they haven’t had their first shot by 9/30 they will go on unpaid leave. If they haven’t completed their second shot (J&J excluded) by 10/22 they will go on unpaid leave. The reasons so many of my co-workers gave as to why they weren’t getting the vaccine were all bullshit and they really should have known better than to spend that much time on awful online sites. They are all getting their vaccines. Good. Good for all of us.
Ruckus
@Leto:
Also as you well know they got a lot of vaccines in the military even though you have control over your body, you still have to agree to medical procedures, as long as you are conscious. Of course they didn’t actually ask you in boot camp if you wanted the shots and if you made a scene and refused you were out on your butt and likely with not a good discharge. If you accepted them and now said no, it’s likely your discharge will be worse than general. A lifer with that kind of discharge basically ends up losing most/all benefits earned. At least this is how it used to be. The law may be on your side but the military isn’t necessarily there. I imagine, at least from my experience that if you don’t get the vaccine, you aren’t considered fit for duty and as it’s your decision, not fate, it won’t go well for you. Sort of like quitting your job as a medical person over it.
Ruckus
@dexwood:
With a single finger wave.
As in good riddance.
Tony Gerace
@Joe Falco: Goddamn NPR. Yes, “talk is cheap”. People (regardless of their political orientation) love to bitch and moan; it’s a cost-free way to have fun. But when a person’s livelihood is on the line, the vast majority of the loudmouths will make the decision to not get fired. Every day people do stuff that they don’t want to do in order to keep their jobs. That’s why it’s called “work”, not a hobby. Not many will choose to give up years of experience as a medical worker (or cop, or teacher, or whatever) to work for minimum wage somewhere. That’s why I’m in favor of as many hard vaccine mandates — with the alternative being getting your ass fired — as are possible. The time for playing games with these morons ended four or five months ago.
JKC
@Eunicecycle: One thing I’ve learned over the years is that being an idiot isn’t the impediment to a career in medicine one might wish.
raven
@Ruckus: I like the “if you get a bad sunburn you can get court martialed because your ass is government property”!
sab
@JKC: I
hadhave an md nephew who in early 2020 who told us not to bother with masks because we were all gonna get Covid.He’s a neurologist. His non-md microbiology ph.d wife made him strip in the garage and shower immediately every day when he came home to protect the kids.
Ruckus
@raven:
Yep. Like tear gas day. I’d bet that fewer than 10% didn’t know what was going to happen when you walked into that room and were told to put on a gas mask. It was difficult sure but no seemingly long term effects. And yes they formed us out in lines, front to back, and my line was last out the door. And I was the last person in that line and last out the door. Someone had to be last, who wouldn’t have thought it would be me?
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: I got a very bad sunburn during OCS while volunteering at a Special Olympics swim meet. The following Monday, we did rappelling. I sucked it up – it hurt a lot, and nothing came of it.
NorthLeft12
@JKC: I have always thought that any health care worker who does not believe in vaccinations, is also likely to not understand most of the science behind modern medicine.
By modern medicine I am referring to any knowledge gained since 1905.
We are better off without them.
Leto
@Ruckus: pretty much all this. If you don’t get your vaccines, you’re not considered “deployment ready”, which is pretty much a death sentence to your career. The only people who aren’t “deployment ready” are pregnant women, people on specific time limited waivers (injury, post-op, rehab, etc), and that’s about it. If you can’t deploy you’re useless to the military, and there’s always another able body to take your spot. The old adage of, “Fuck around and find out” always holds true.
@Omnes Omnibus: man, you should see the kids during the summer in San Antonio when we put on our short sleeve dress blues with the flight cap. That phase is at the end of training, so it lasts about a week and a half, but in that time you have a permanent sunburn in the shape of a wedge on your forehead. Never mind that your arms are the colors of ripe tomatoes. At the time it sucked, looking back I can laugh.
lee
@Edmund Dantes:
That is another serious upside to the vaccine mandate (if they actually resign).
Matt McIrvin
@sab: My reasoning about “we’re all gonna get COVID” was that (even aside from healthcare-system considerations) the longer I could put it off, the more likely I could actually get vaccinated. And that turned out to be true.
I’m thinking similarly now: the longer I can put it off, the better any available treatments will be in the unlikely case that things really go south. I may even get boosted eventually, perhaps with some more effective vaccine.
Fatuous Stenographer
@Audrey: It’s not easy to accept that people who otherwise seem to be decent can do harmful and callous things to lots of other people, even to their own family and children.
This virus has revealed a fair number of people unexpectedly have a mean and selfish streak in their personalities.
We see them rationalizing it: I have “questions”, I am healthy and take vitamin supplements, I am a good conservative christian, muh feedumb! etc.
To paraphrase Michelle Obama’s observation on the office of the presidency, this virus doesn’t make people what they are, it reveals who they are.
WaterGirl
@Tony Gerace: Yes to all of that.
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. I had a conversation with my boss about a month or two after covid started and the ‘lock down to bend the curve’ thing was the current push.
We thought there was every likelihood it would become endemic and we’d all get it eventually – but the real value was putting that off until there was a vaccine, better treatments or at minimum when hospitals weren’t getting overwhelmed.
Soprano2
The people who are having a hell of a time finding and keeping workers even in higher-paid jobs. I’m sure there are parts of the job market where this isn’t happening, but it’s happening to a lot of people in a lot of places, and it’s not just the lower levels. More and more bigger employers here are raising their minimum starting wage to $15/hr, which is going to force a lot of others to do so, which is all to the good, but the process of doing it hurts a lot of people when it’s not a mandate for everyone. My manager scheduled four interviews last week, and not one of those people showed up for the interview. It’s extremely frustrating – you can’t hire people if they won’t even show up for the interview. It jerks employers around and is not cool.
Robert Sneddon
@MisterForkbeard: Here in the UK, once vaccines were available the health service chiefs decided to go against the manufacturers advice and space out the two-shot vaccines by twelve weeks rather than the recommended three or four week interval. The idea was to get as many people vaccinated with at least one dose as soon as possible to give them some level of protection even if it was less than optimal rather than not vaccinating large numbers of people at all to begin with.
Tens of millions of people vaccinated this way provided the data scientists with solid information on how well or how poorly this protocol worked and the results suggest that the 12-week gap has actually been better at providing solid protection against COVID-19 than the manufacturer-recommended 3 to 4 week gap.
barbequebob
@JKC: As an avowed anti-vaxxer/anti-masker, I refuse to be operated on by a surgeon who does not have a lit cigarette dropping ashes into my body cavity as they operate. //
Hob
Wingnuts love the “everyone is quitting!” stories so much they’ll flat-out make them up even when the facts that contradict them are very easy to find. A misinformation post that made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook recently was saying, in a celebratory tone, that the entire bus-driving staff (all 33!) of an Illinois school district had quit in protest of vaccine mandates. Half a second on Google showed me that those 33 had not quit but staged a coordinated sick day, had not stated any reason at all, and were only one-third of the bus drivers. But of course that’s not as good a story.
Mayhew'sSister
And “dozens” of MA State Troopers have resigned since their mandate was announced.
Good riddance.
Barry
@Audrey:
I’m sorry to hear that.
JoJo
@Almost Retired: That sounds like Sovereign Citizen crap. They love quasi-legal documents with lots of lawyer-like sounding words in them that add up to nothing.
Audrey
@WaterGirl: It is really weird. Both of his adult kids got both of their shots and have been bugging him and their mum about getting theirs, he gets his flu shot, he’s not an anti masker, I just don’t get it.
Audrey
@Fatuous Stenographer: Is that ever true in some really disappointing ways. At least the very few unvaccinated people I know aren’t also trying to pressure other people not to get it. A friend of my brother in law is trying to talk his elderly mother out of getting hers after she finally decided she ought to! That is really hard to fathom!
Almost Retired
@JoJo: You’re probably exactly right — this does carry the rank odor of the sovereign citizen movement.
SWMBO
@JKC: I took my son to the pulmonologist this week. The doc and I were commiserating about medical professionals who are anti vax and pro ivermectin. My sister, who is a cardiac stepdown nurse, is one. He told me that one of the ICU doctors was like that and guess what? Got covid. She treated herself with ivermectin and was off work for over a month. Pulmonologist said ivermectin doesn’t work. I said yes it does but only on my dogs heartworm prevention. On that we both agreed. There is a lot of stupid floating around out there. In some cases, educated stupid but it’s still there…
SWMBO
@Hob: My sister-in-law quit her job at a prison (secretary) because of the vaccine requirement. She got another job at a bank. Wait til she finds out that the bank (which has over 100 employees) will require the vaccine.