Mandate Mystery: Lawyers say companies thinking about COVID vaccination policies have a lot of factors to consider

Patti Prezioso, Chair of the Sills Cummis Employment and Labor Practice, is quoted in this article about COVID vaccination policies in the workplace.

As seen in this article, “Patti Prezioso, chair of the employment and labor practice at Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., said neither these different components of enacting mandates at companies, nor the blow the Supreme Court struck to the proposed ETS, have stopped employers cold.

“There are many out there still warm to the idea of these mandates as a way to keep customers and employees safe, she said. Some feel strongly enough about the protections offered by the vaccine to start questioning the continued granting of requests for religious exemptions and medical accommodations that must be offered by employers.

“Those requests have to be deemed by the company as reasonable and not carrying the potential of undue hardship for an organization.

“‘But I believe what we’ll see more and more is businesses assessing whether requests for accommodations are legitimate and how accommodating such exceptions work with maintaining the safety of the workforce,” she said. “Businesses may feel it’s a harm to them to allow certain accommodations that could cause regular business interruptions. They might say that, while they value an employee, they can’t grant such exemptions.”

“A lot of that depends on the circumstances of an organization: Can it be run with employees segregated in office spaces or working remotely? Or is it a work situation in which employees are regularly in close contact and risk endlessly circulating virus variants?”