It is incredibly sad to see where our country is at this point. America was founded on freedom, but that premise has been eroded away over time in exchange for more safety. Now, the coronavirus has emerged that thrust the world into a “pandemic”, well that is what they tell us at least. The virus has an extremely high rate of recovery but that has not stopped government overlords from swinging their mighty sword to cut off all individual choices.
The Biden administration has pushed for more draconian measures to force people to get vaccinated and have the audacity to call it a choice. How is it a choice when people are having to choose whether to feed their families or lose their jobs?
That is not a choice at all, and in most legal circles that is what one would call corrosion.
Now, one company is taking this corrosion to a whole new level by taking away benefits from those who refuse to be vaccinated.
How is that for freedom?
Kroger will no longer pay for COVID-19 leave for employees who haven’t been vaccinated, and it will charge salaried, non-union workers who haven’t been vaccinated and are on a company health plan $50 a month for not being vaccinated. Also, as mentioned, employees that are not vaccinated against the coronavirus will have benefits taken away from them too.
However, the company said it will keep giving employees $100 to get vaccinated, CNBC said.
Wade Symons, a regulatory resources group leader at the benefits company Mercer, told Reuters that companies have tried other ways to make their employees get vaccinated. But they didn’t get the results they wanted.
“I think employers think that hitting their employees in the pocket is a real motivator for them to get vaccinated,” he said.
There were about 465,000 full- and part-time employees at Kroger as of Jan. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Kroger is one of the largest private employers in the United States.
The new omicron variant could cause more people to go to stores in the next few weeks, say analysts. People will be looking to stock up on things like food and medicine, they say. Kroger wants people to buy only what they need, the company said this month.
The push to get more employees vaccinated comes as President Joe Biden faces problems with his vaccine-or-test mandate for private businesses, which he wants to make sure all employees get.
Symons said that employees who haven’t been vaccinated could cost the company more in health insurance costs.
Listen, people who have the vaccine are just as likely to get the virus and spread it as those who do not have the vaccine. People should not be punished and penalized for choosing what is best for their bodies and their families and that is even more certain with this particular vaccine.
No one knows the long-term side effects it could bring to people or if everyone should be taking it too. There is nothing wrong with people balking and that does not mean that they do not care. They do care and that is why they should not be forced to do anything they feel uncomfortable about and the government has NO right to infringe on that.
What do you think?
