WORKPLACE VACCINATION MANDATES: MORAL DILEMMAS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

This article attempts to provide a normative analysis for decision-making process behind workplace vaccination mandates. To be clear, the paper focuses on employer-based mandates and not situations when public authorities impose some form of compulsory vaccination. The first section of the article presents empirical data about the implementation of workplace vaccination in the case of influenza and COVID-19 and the positive economic effect that vaccination can have on business. The next section argues that employer mandated vaccination puts companies, from an ethical poin of view, in front of a difficult moral dilemma involving the careful balance of both employers’ and employees’ rights and obligations. The most important part of the framework discusses the relevant factors that need to be taken into account before such measures can be adopted in business and the complications involved by religious and philosophical exemptions. The article ends by concluding that, in the absence of any requirement by public authorities, employers should impose vaccination in quite limited context and, as such, measures to promote vaccination in the workplace without compulsion are more appropriate in a majority of situations.