The ongoing debate over vaccination status continues to heat up as many sectors of the country are putting on the full-court-press to get people vaccinated. Efforts to get people to get the vaccine have moved from a calculated campaign to controversial coercion. Just ask a Chicago mom who a judge banned from seeing her son unless she gets vaccinated.
Extreme measures, perhaps, but many will argue this type of approach is necessary to help prevent the deaths of millions of Americans from new Covid infections.
While the debate on whether or not the unvaccinated population is putting humans at risk of extinction, one thing is for sure, those who have yet to get vaccinated are complicating an already challenging environment.
One area is the construction industry where companies were hopeful, with the rollout of the vaccines, life would be getting back to normal by the end of the summer.
Laura Guzman, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at XL Construction, told Construction Dive News, the company started reopening in June but news on Covid infections and variants have caused the operations to slow down again.
"As we started to watch the most recent trends, we've had to hit the pause button again," said Guzman.
Guzman says policies including mask mandates, social distancing and limiting in-person attendance of company meetings remain in place.
Many other construction companies are facing the same challenges, stunting production as they contend with continued restrictions, and contractors are dealing with the fact more than 40% of workers are hesitant in getting vaccinated.
As a result, lines are being drawn by vaccinated co-workers and clients demanding contractors have a workforce that has received the vaccine before stepping onto the worksite.
The construction industry, which already has a shortage of skilled workers, is now scrambling to either get workers vaccinated, or fill those positions with machine operators, engineers, foremen, and other important positions with people who have received a shot.
The glaring and obvious question unvaccinated individuals ask of course is, if a person has been vaccinated, why would that individual be concerned about being around someone who has not been vaccinated?
Responses to that question vary, and are ever changing, leaving the ultimate answer to be - it doesn't matter, getting vaccinated is what is expected, so that's what people must do, whether they like it or not.
For those in the construction industry, it is apparent the only way to get the industry back on track is to get more contractors fully vaccinated.
This will lead to the reality already seen in other countries, and that is proof of vaccination status through documentation of some sort.
Some companies have adopted services such as Safe Site Check In, which is a job site screening app that workers have used throughout the pandemic, which can be customized to ask about workers' vaccine status.
This generally gives workers three answer options - yes, no, or choose not to answer. Trends around the world, however, indicate this approach eventually will not suffice and people will be required to have some form of a vaccine passport.
According to Construction Dive, one company, Landmark Builders based out of San Jose, CA, requires all workers to be fully vaccinated however, Landmark CFO Sheri Dizon said, in one case a well-liked supervisor, that wasn't vaccinated, was allowed to stay on a project.
For now, many companies are foregoing the vaccine mandate route, instead choosing a calculated campaign to inform employees. However, with increased pressure to vaccinate the American population, that approach is likely to be replaced by coercion.
Some companies are now charging unvaccinated workers more for health insurance.
Indeed, it's a Brave New World, and you'll probably have to embrace it if you want to get back to work.
In the meantime, remember, ConEquip has parts for all machines, makes and models!
