Scrutable

bagpuss wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:44 pm

monkey wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:15 am

bmforre wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 4:25 am

Monkey and sheldrake: There are cases in Norway where old people have been infected by unvaccinated healtworkers resulting in their death, isolated and alone. Tragic.
Reportage covering one particular case in Norwegian that ought to pass machine translation in understandable form:
https://www.nrk.no/norge/pappa-koronasm ... 1.15696385

Bosses of the fatally infection spreading healtworkers firmly claim to have followed the rules in force so see themselves guiltfree while regretting deaths caused by unvaccinated workers.

Relatives have not gone to court yet AFAIK.

Yes, this is why many healthcare providers will make sure their workers a vaccinated for all sorts, even when the law does not require them to, and it is not illegal for them to do so. It saves lives.

A reasonable comparison would be civil engineering companies giving regular compulsory drug tests to their employees. I know of one company in the UK for certain where this happens, or at least did a small number of years ago and probably still does, and given that one does, I wouldn't be surprised if it's fairly standard practice. It saves lives if the people building bridges, tunnels and nuclear waste storage facilities, for example, are not impaired by drugs.

It's also very common in the US. Even B&Q equivalents have signs up saying they drug test applicants and employees.

Theoretically, every Federal employee can be drug tested, but it's rarely carried out in my part of the government. There is a nice sign up saying we can't be forced to take polygraph tests though.

what does this have to do with risk management?

plodder wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:39 pm

what does this have to do with risk management?

Not much at all.

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:19 pm

bagpuss wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:44 pm

A reasonable comparison would be civil engineering companies giving regular compulsory drug tests to their employees. I know of one company in the UK for certain where this happens, or at least did a small number of years ago and probably still does, and given that one does, I wouldn't be surprised if it's fairly standard practice. It saves lives if the people building bridges, tunnels and nuclear waste storage facilities, for example, are not impaired by drugs.

https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-work ... ug-testing

Would you care to explain your point rather than just pasting a link? You complain when others do exactly that.

There are many restrictions on drug testing of employees of a kind that arent being applied to the concept of covid passports.

In the US however, some unions have negotiated complete examptions from vaccine mandates, including healthcare worker unions.

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:20 am

There are many restrictions on drug testing of employees of a kind that arent being applied to the concept of covid passports.

In the US however, some unions have negotiated complete examptions from vaccine mandates, including healthcare worker unions.

OK, please explain which of these are not being applied to the concept of covid passports:

Employers have to have consent if they want to test for drugs. Usually this is when they have a full contractual health and safety policy, which should be in the contract or staff handbook.

This one is probably the biggest problem but may well be covered by a lot of people's contracts, depending on how they're worded, along the lines of the EU working hours directive which might as well not exist if you want a lot of jobs as you basically get the option of signing the contract where you agree to opt out or don't sign the contract and no job. Obviously, Covid won't have been foreseen at the time of most people's contracts being written but they may have catch-all clauses in there, especially in the US if they require or expect people to be fully vaccinated against other diseases.

Employers should:

limit testing to employees that need to be tested
ensure the tests are random
not single out particular employees for testing unless this is justified by the nature of their jobs

These are either irrelevant or just say that everyone should be treated equally and I've not seen anything to suggest that Covid passports are being required of specific individuals and not others, so I think we can ignore this bit.

Workers can’t be made to take a drugs test but if they refuse when the employer has good grounds for testing, they may face disciplinary action.

So you can refuse but if you do, disciplinary action awaits. Which, if you continue to refuse could end in sacking.



But what you fail to mention is that those rules are taken from the UK gov website. I have not seen it anywhere proposed that vaccines will be required to work in the UK, other than the specific exception of care workers. We've been discussing vaccines being required for work in the US and in Italy - perhaps it would be more relevant to compare with drugs testing in those countries? And yes, I mentioned the UK earlier, as that was the limit of my knowledge around drugs testing but dyqik has since confirmed that it's pretty widespread in the US.

I agree they haven't been mandated yet, my concern comes from watching developments in the US and not trusting our govt. on this.

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:30 am

I agree they haven't been mandated yet, my concern comes from watching developments in the US and not trusting our govt. on this.

Honestly, I don't trust our government on anything at all but one thing that I think we can rely on is that they're much more likely to do nothing at all than to go to those lengths. They don't even want vaccine passports for nightclubs so I can't see them bringing them in for (most) people to go to work. After all, that would mean that they'd have to do it for Parliament too and since they're not even wearing masks...

They vacilate on this stuff, and there's plenty of precedent for favoured groups being exempted from generally mandated measures.
Lots of evidence of political leaders removing masks and ignoring social distancing when the official photo calls are done, for example.

bagpuss wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:54 am

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:30 am

I agree they haven't been mandated yet, my concern comes from watching developments in the US and not trusting our govt. on this.

Honestly, I don't trust our government on anything at all but one thing that I think we can rely on is that they're much more likely to do nothing at all than to go to those lengths. They don't even want vaccine passports for nightclubs so I can't see them bringing them in for (most) people to go to work. After all, that would mean that they'd have to do it for Parliament too and since they're not even wearing masks...

Since the government doesn't think lockdown rules apply to them anyway, I don't have any faith that they wouldn't exempt parliament entirely from anything.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 3:00 pm

bagpuss wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:54 am

sheldrake wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 22, 2021 9:30 am

I agree they haven't been mandated yet, my concern comes from watching developments in the US and not trusting our govt. on this.

Honestly, I don't trust our government on anything at all but one thing that I think we can rely on is that they're much more likely to do nothing at all than to go to those lengths. They don't even want vaccine passports for nightclubs so I can't see them bringing them in for (most) people to go to work. After all, that would mean that they'd have to do it for Parliament too and since they're not even wearing masks...

Since the government doesn't think lockdown rules apply to them anyway, I don't have any faith that they wouldn't exempt parliament entirely from anything.

Parliament, various ministerial aides, 'Business directors bringing significant numbers of jobs and investment to the UK', minor members of the Saudi Royal family, Imperial College mathematical biologists who think they're probably fine, people who ministers are having affairs with etc..

eta: just like the old travel rules https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... rder-rules