I never mention my work on my blog. They are different and separate parts of life. They should remain separate. Work should not interfere with the personal. The personal should not interfere with work.
I did not break that rule. My employer did. So I share this with you.
Today I told my supervisor I have not gotten the vaccine and that I will not get the vaccine.
The discussion should never have happened. My employer shouldn’t have been involved in that part of my life. It isn’t their business. Personal medical decisions are between me and God.
Regardless, I did not submit.
The wheels of bureaucracy turn slow but they do turn. Today nothing happened. Tomorrow may be different. I’ve no idea if I’ll have a job by Christmas.
I’m at peace. I acted according to my morals. What better thing can a man do?
You may be in the same situation. If you’re like me, it feels like the media, every bureaucracy, and the whole world is arrayed against you. Maybe they are.
Yet there’s hope. You are not alone. You know what’s right for you.
I walked the path. You’re walking it too… or not. Millions of us are either walking our path or not walking it. Such is life.
Even if you feel all alone, you will know what you did and how it feels. If you made the right decision for yourself you will know. If you failed yourself you will know. In your heart you will always know what you did when a choice was necessary.
Take heart. There are worse fates. We may all be fine. A job is just a job.
I hope everyone does the best they can. Good luck.
Yeah, refusing outright is NOT the best way to do this – as legally it will give them grounds to fire you
instead say
This constitutes an alteration to the terms of my employment and therefore negotiation is required
I will submit to the jab if you can provide
1) evidence that it is both safe and effective, having passed through stage three trials and gained the approval of the FDA , after the appropriate legal commenting period with the FDA
2) tell me where I can get such an approved vaccine administered
3) A signed statement from legal stating that in asserting responsibility for my health in this manner the company is also taking full responsibly for my health in all other matters, and will fully provide me with medical care without co-payment , and will take full responsibly for any injury I may suffer from such a vaccination or other treatments prescribed by the company and will inform me when any other employee is sick with any form of communicable disease, including STDs
4) A signed statement from legal identifying the doctors they have on staff to provide medical advice on my behalf that are license to practice medicine in this location and therefor prescribe a medical course of action
5) A statement from legal asserting that the recognize that any experimental and non FDA approved medication cannot be administered without the legal consent of the recipient
6) A statement from legal asserting that they recognize my legal right to request legal medical and religious exemptions to the administration of any medication
and if you will not provide that – a letter dismissing me from my employment because we could not come to a new arrangement upon renegotiation of employment terms from my employer – clearly stating I am being laid off, and not fired, for a refusal to take a non FDA approved experimental medication
And see how quick they back off.
You have done what you know in your heart is right. Consequences be damned. My respect won’t pay your bills, I know that.
Not that it matters right now, but based on the numbers they are willing to admit to, I’m guessing that in a year we will be seeing numbers of people who are in really bad shape that leaves employers without enough people. The unjabbed will be in demand.
Yeah, predictions, especially about the future, are really difficult.
I will not take the shot and will also have to live with any repercussions. Well done. Be true to yourself.
Good for you! I will never take the jab! Forcing something into my body that I don’t want is rape. I refuse to be raped!!
We also (wife and I) are not participating in the experiment. Despite much pressure from family, friends, and doctors, although we are in the later years of our lives. We decided to think for ourselves, trust our God to take care of us as we are taught to. What’s the worst that can happen to us? Heaven sounds pretty good right now. I stand with you, AC.
I’m self-employed so I don’t have to make that call, but if I weren’t I would hope to have the integrity you displayed. Respect.
100%
You have my support. Hope this doesn’t become a problem for you.
Thanks.
We will see in the next 12 to 18 months how many of these companies are desperate to replace all of the vaccine casualties with those of us who were willing to take a stand and “just say no”. Untrained migrants/illegal aliens won’t have the required skills for a large percentage of the jobs.
Even if they came back to us, hat in hand, would we accept? If so, why?
I wonder how much “skilled” labor is left in the system to bleed out? Management cannot hurl money at an idiot until they make skilled workers out of fools. Nor can every job be so automated that the AI handles it well in substitution of a smart employee. I think those that have the capability to be skilled workers are generally already doing skilled tasks. Cast them from the system and they’re as likely to go Galt as ever return. They may be gone forever. I wonder if this will be to their unexpected joy.
I notice the dearth of skill when I interact with folks in entry level jobs. When I stop at McDonald’s it feels like the kids (I’m old enough to think of them as kids) are doing all they can do just to make an egg McMuffin without setting the place on fire. It’s not like there’s a lot of unused mental horsepower from which they’ll develop into surgeons. One the one hand, I try to think of them kindly; I was young and inexperienced once. On the other hand I don’t know if I was ever that dense. I learned quickly and “leveled up” fast. I can do any of many job duties but the raw material was at hand even in youth. Often I want to ask “are you high or stupid”? But of course that’s rude so I never truly know. (Secretly I hope the moron who mentally vapor locks trying to make fries is just high… because then there’s the hope they’ll someday sober up and get good at something.)
Also be interesting to see how many of the upper management types become clot shot casualties.
That is of no interest to me.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
It would be smart to update yourself on HIPAA.
I understand your logic but laws are only as good as the society that wrote them. HIPPA may protect my privacy in theory but in reality I may wind up unemployed regardless. We are slow to realize the loss of the rule of law even when it clearly has degraded. Have we not seen the evidence? A “protester” can commit arson while the cops turn a blind eye or the authorities will refuse to prosecute; always for entirely partisan reasons. A designated minority may walk out of a store with a duffel bag full of theft without being prosecuted. Arson and theft are still illegal… but only in theory and not in practice after politics gets a vote. Isn’t everything you see online politically filtered despite laws against slander and such? Heck, marijuana is still federally illegal but it’s obviously not-illegal in practice in places like Colorado. In 2021 the law is not as written on paper anymore.
The hope that HIPPA will save me depends on laws, courts, and judges… who have abdicated their role. The sooner we accept the already obvious fact that the system has decided the law is whatever they want the law to be, the sooner we can get back to being part of reality. It’s unwise to assume the law will protect the innocent when it clearly hasn’t been doing that.
I’ll pay attention to HIPPA but it’s not likely to help in this matter. In fact it could have a specific clause written just to protect me and it would mean almost nothing.
The point is- your employer is bluffing. You can bluff too. You don’t have to actually go to court or have faith that the court will work . Even in this day and age of corruption a court case would be an expensive crap shoot, and your employer knows it. They know that in a sane world they would loose and loose big, and they have little or no faith that the powers that be care anymore about them then they care about you. They are leaning on you because they might get your compliance easier than fighting a protracted court battle with the govt or with you.
The fact is that are there are no OSHA rules yet. No available vaccine has been approved (and even if you could get ‘Comirnaty’ – it hasn’t completed the legally mandated testing and public review period. ) There are firm legal precedents requiring consent for the EUA covered vaccine, as well as religious and medical exemptions for “approved” ones. . If you are working for a govt contractor – then there is some legal pretense to it (executive order) , but ultimately the employer knows they will be responsible, not Joe Biden – if such a case ever comes to court . They also can’t afford all of their employees leaving – disgruntled – with every reason to sell or reveal whatever company secrets and dirty laundry they are aware of.
So make them aware you are negotiating over a fundamental change in the terms of your employment, get the legal department to admit to all of the above in writing demand they take responsibility for any injury as THEY are requiring it – and then- if they refuse make them lay you off ( so you can collect unemployment) . Do not accept being fired and demand a letter to that effect with reasons if they do… and make it plain you intend to file a lawsuit if they attempt it ..
even if you have no intention of ever going to court or any faith that a lawsuit would work – your employer doesn’t need to know that. ( Nuke the moon -https://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm) Get as many number of your co-workers to do the same and the threat to your employer gets even larger. (see Southwest Airlines)
A lot of larger employers have all sorts of complicated processes to fire people as well – as long as you don’t refuse an order and make it easy for them. Just don’t comply: I forgot. I am still working on it. I missed that vaccine appointment because the power was out and I couldn’t open my garage door * Make them document it. Make them review it. Some places require 3 reviews without improvement over 9 months to a year before they can fire you by internal policy. Milk it till they do fire you if if they won’t just lay you off — then at least you leave with unemployment intact… (and can still potentially file a lawsuit if the layoff was unjustified and because of an illegal requirement)
Your employer is doing the bidding of fascists – make them understand they will pay one way or another for doing so.
* this was an actual excuse provided for not showing up at work for a State employee I know of.. it took another 8 months to get rid of him..
All good advice. I’m doing what I can. I’m not going to quit. They’re going to have to fire me. And yeah, there’s a fair chance they’re bluffing. I’m not. We’ll see what happens.
According to this post, it is ADA, not HIPPA, that you should look into: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2021/10/21/hipaa-vs-ada-a-guest-post-by-amie-gibbons/
Thanks. Will read it.
The renegotiation idea works really well in a state that’s not right-to-work where you, or your employer, can be fired for any reason. If you look like the guy who stole your employer’s sweetheart in jr high, you can be fired; no recourse. They don’t need a valid reason.
Having said that, I’m right there with ya, AC. My company is tied to fed contracts and the HR weenies have already set a date for layoffs. I’m out of a job come Dec 8. Don’t care. When they can’t fly anything because 90% of their trained maintenance dept walked (I’ve been in this career since 1978), they can hire a bunch of semi trained noobs right out of wrench school where about all they were taught was pointy end goes forward. Have fun in bankruptcy court….
Fuckabuncha conformity anyway….
Sorry you’re losing a job. But fuck ‘them; it’s only a job after all. They’re going to have a hard time flying planes if they hire mechanics based first on their politics and which shot they’ll take. Planes don’t care the politics of the mechanic if the engine isn’t working.
“If you look like the guy who stole your employer’s sweetheart in jr high, you can be fired; no recourse. They don’t need a valid reason. ” – Yeah, not entirely true. https://www.aegislawfirm.com/blog/2019/july/-lay-off-vs-terminated-vs-at-will-/ There are still laws governing at will firing — and this would be a retaliation firing – for refusing an illegal order from them to take experimental medication. Its no different than if you rejected a sexual advance to keep your job, or refused to get an abortion . They want to stick something in you and you refuse. That is not a lawful cause, and its a polciy violation. . The trick is getting the reason they terminated you well documented. Even in an “at-will” state – the employer is asking for a new terms for your employment.. and you are well with your rights to renegotiate in that circumstance.
Good luck with your employment. I hope that you win this battle: I’m tired of seeing decent, honorable, useful people getting gratuitously stepped on for daring to think they have rights. The Delta pilots may have won their battle – I hope you all win yours. I know too many crucial people that we’ll be unable to do without, who are facing the same tragically unnecessary dominance contest with the arrogant and useless.
As to your point about skilled labor: This has been a perennial rant of mine – The people who run large centralized companies and institutions from a great height, after coasting into their strata from some MBA program or political connection, have this fantasy in their heads that all the dirty contact with reality can be done away with through “automation”, in such a way that they won’t have to actually pay any proles to touch matter out in the real world. This fantasy of theirs couldn’t possibly occur to anyone with experience with actual robots, actual industry, actual getting-anything-to-work in the real world. Even in the best-case scenarios for automating things, assembly lines don’t assemble themselves, don’t debug themselves, don’t tune themselves, don’t maintain themselves. All that requires the attention of skilled humans to make any of that work.
I was helping my parents repair an EDM CNC hole drill the other day (an actual robot, btw): Just taking the panels off (upside down in a tight corner with a tiny screwdriver) is so far beyond any current robots that it’s incredible. Nevermind probing power supplies for bad behavior, reading poorly translated-from-Korean manuals, looking up replacement parts that are actually still made. None of this can be waved away with a magic wand. All of it requires the attention of someone who a) is capable, and b) has a reason to care.
These people who snarl at the “working class” that soon, they’ll all be replaced by Robots! Robots, I tell you! And then you’ll be sorry, you useless eaters!: They want something else to take care of the thinking for them, because they don’t want to do the thinking, or the doing themselves. And they don’t want to pay what it’s worth for other people to do it for them, because what it’s worth challenges what they’re worth in terms of the value of the final product. And so the fantasies about magic robots. In reality, since magic robots don’t exist, these would-be aristocrats always eventually turn to recreating some form of slavery.
I remember some upper managers of a place that I work for paying some absurd amount of money (money that their own engineers could have used to do actual work for them) to the “Machine Intelligence Research Institute”: These guys don’t actually research machine intelligence. They talk a lot about AI, but they haven’t actually tried to build any real AI applications that do something in the real world. They’re basically some sort of management cult around the sci-fi idea of the “Singularity”, selling the dream that someday some generally-intelligent machine will do all the thinking for you, and not bill you for it. SMH.
With the covidiocy: The leaders of these large organizations are probably testing the idea that the people who actually make their companies work are expendable and interchangeable. Hopefully they learn that the answer is no, dumbass, in a way that doesn’t wreck the world.
Thanks for the good thoughts. I don’t want to lose my job but I did the right thing… I have already won the only battle that matters.
This ^^^. No doubt many people who waited until the last minute to get vaccinated for their employment did so against their better judgement or personal beliefs. The best thing anyone can do, at a minimum, is to live your life in such a way that you are not beholden to any particular employer or industry. If you can live without or with very minimal dependency on modern society all the better. There’s no reason to think they won’t move the line in the sand.
In addition, if it would go to court, there are no shortage of lawyers who would take the case without payment unless they win.
Similar situation here. About 10 days ago, employer told all employees to report their status because mandate is on the way. I told my supervisor I’m not going to let my employer veto a medical decision I already made. Now I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s fed contractor related, so probably just in time for Christmas.
Talk about a productivity killer. “We’re going to fire you soon” is not the best way to get your employees to perform.
Yeah it shot my work morale in the head too. I’m trying my best but I’m only human.
It would seem like the optics of shitcanning a zillion people just in time for Christmas would be something to avoid. But what can I say, 2021 has not been awash in reasoned and patiently timed decisions.
Dam the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Much luck to you.
Happy Halloween to you.
I wish you the best of luck. Stay strong, be true to yourself. This to will pass and you will get through it.
Thanks.
You are going to have lots of company up here in Washington state here very shortly.
https://thepostmillennial.com/inslee-to-mandate-covid-vaccination-for-private-businesses/
I don’t know what I am going to do either but I’m NOT taking their fucking jab.
Yep, that’s the best one can do… make the decision and ride it out. Good luck to us all. Ironically, once I made a choice and stood by it I felt a lot better. The agonizing decision is done. All that happens now is simply playing out subsequent events; for better or worse.
As bad as it feels, many have faced worse. A job is just a job. Money is just money. I’m glad I’ve nothing more than a job on the line. Like I said, others have faced worse.
I’ll have to tell my Hubby he’s in decent company…;)
He’s staring down the same damn thing, after 27 years in his job.
Not sure what we’ll do, but he ain’t getting that shot. His doc has already said “no way” considering his family history. But the douchebags here refuse to recognize medical exemptions without one being experimented on by govt “doctors”.
That’s not happening either.
We’re just gonna have to see what happens.
Yes, we will all just have to see what happens. Good luck to us all!
Thanks for posting this. I am going thru the same situation and just received an email that instead of Dec. 8th they are going to start unpaid leave next week if they don’t accept my religious exemption. I doubt they accept it and am making plans for alternative work. Tired of engineering work anyway.
Damn, that sucks. As you can tell from the comments, it’s a widespread thing. I hope alternative work comes through for you.
Got my notification today from Oracle. (name and shame your companies folks)
Already had my “negotiation” letter ready
Oracle has taken the stance that even employees who come into NO contact with other employees because they work from home have to get the shot. No testing. Claim that OSHA has issued rules.. nope it didn’t. Oracle has govt contracts, but not affecting my division, Either way, Brandon has no authority or police powers that allow such a mandate.
Wife is upset. We may need a divorce. Poor single mom collecting welfare because her a-hole husband won’t go along with an illegal mandate. She has been a good and faithful wife though.. may have to rent the house back to her for the housing stipend…..
In any case, been prepping to go Galt for years now. Guess I was right to do so. Even had a recruiter pretty aggressively trying to set up a meeting for a new job this week. Maybe call him and let him know the score. Maybe I land something new with some employer than can deal with my .. “unique disability.” . Otherwise its chickens and larger livestock and firewood and flipping burgers or whatever other menial job I can get. Larder is stocked, I have a little crypto mining income while it lasts ( HNT) and while I wish I had no debt load, what I do have is reasonable, and I have a bug out I can sell if times get harder.. maybe at stupid inflated prices that pay off the current mortgage and then some. Don’t need a bug out when one plans to die in the next few years in their own driveway defending the last of what they value and “own”…
Who wants to live forever ?
That’s the spirit!