It's called "At Will" employment and cooking up excuses keeps them out of any legal trouble.
There is no legal trouble with requiring vaccines. There is potential legal trouble in cooking up excuses and being dishonest.
It's funny how it all comes down to a hit in the wallet, similar to the increased medical costs some companies are doing.
I hope the dubious applications are
Please continue to share ridiculous excuses.
Probably not around here. In this rural corner of a very rural state, there aren't exactly an excess of primary care clinics. It's generally a 4-8 week turnaround time to switch clinics, and some aren't even taking new patients currently.
"At will" employment means there is no legal trouble; you can be fired for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all unless you fall into a protected class. The older employees you are referring to are in a class that is protected against discrimination based on age.
Not very wrong on this. Some folks may decide based on politics alone, some may decide based on personal reasons, some on religious reasons, some on medical reasons, some really drill down on the science (not just what the mainstream media says) and decide.
The sad part is there will be permanent damage done to the school systems in FL and it may take years to recover. They are losing good teachers that they definitely need. My FIL has been a school teacher for many years in FL. He retired several years ago and his principal contacted him last year and begged him to come back. He took a job teaching virtually last school year since they had a large virtual program in the district. This year they decided to cancel the virtual program and only have in person school. He took an in person position at a high school and was hoping for the best. Then delta came and the district did not require masks for students. He resigned after the first few days of school since the majority of students were unmasked and likely unvaccinated too based on stats in the area for that age group. I think he’s probably going to stay retired this time. He knows 3 other teachers from that 1 school who also quit. They were younger than him so didn’t retire but 2 moved to another state to teach and the third took a job outside of education. Even before Covid most of FL was desperate for more good teachers and this poor treatment of teachers certainly won’t help.Good news! Florida takes unprecedented steps to protect its schoolchildren from... oh wait. Instead, state education officials follow through on their promise to withhold money from school districts who attempted to safeguard their children. In spite of a judge’s ruling that banning those safeguards was illegal:
“Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran announced Monday that the state Department of Education has withheld funds from the Alachua and Broward county school districts in amounts equal to school board members’ monthly salaries.”
Florida penalizes Alachua, Broward school districts in mask standoffs
The announcement Monday came after Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper on Friday ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ overstepped his constitutional authority in prohibiting mask mandates.www.tampabay.com
This is 100% true. Many people falsely believe that they have some constitutionally protected right to work where they choose. Any at will employee has the right to quit at any time for any reason or no reason at all and the employer has the same right to fire you for any reason at all unless that reason is discriminatory against a protected class. The unvaccinated are not a protected class. If the company makes it a policy that you have to be vaccinated to work there the only way they will get into “legal trouble” will be if they don’t apply the rule uniformly across all employees. So if they only fire women or the elderly or baptists who aren’t vaccinated then they will be open to a lawsuit. If they fire everyone who isn’t vaccinated there’s no legal issue whatsoever.
Some would probably still sue. But that is inevitable...
There are lawyers out there that will take foolish clients money.
This is generally the case. There can be situations in which companies create employee rights by way of "contract" in the form of an employee handbook that sets out procedures to be followed, but these rarely provide a basis for wrongful termination. Most employers do not fire employees for no reason at all because that would be irrational and a poor way to run a business. But you are absolutely correct that people erroneously believe the law protects them from losing a job in ways that it just simply does not.
Anyone can file a lawsuit for anything they want. Most will be thrown out before ever reaching a trial. There are years and years of employment law that support this. It’s air tight. The lawsuits that get through will be an attempt to claim discrimination based on a protected class and those will almost always fail too. It’s very difficult to win one of those lawsuits when you have a legit claim let alone a trumped up claim (no pun intended
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Your FIL’s story matches what we see here in the ground in central FL as well. Two principals, two program directors and several teachers (edited to add: at my kids’ schools alone) all made the difficult choice to retire because they were at the point where they were past the point of exhaustion and simply had nothing left to give. Florida’s public schools are still full of incredible educators who are giving their all for our kids. It’s a shame that placing hardships on public schools, their teachers and students here at every available opportunity seems to be a way of life for some officials who really should know better.
