Netflix, Facebook and Google to require vaccinations for employees: report
Netflix also says employees who work in close proximity to their stars — known as Zone A — will be required to vaccinate.
Tech giants Netflix, Facebook and Google are requiring all employees who are returning to work in their offices to be fully vaccinated.
TMZ is reporting that Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees saying that full office return to work for the company has been pushed back to Oct. 18, the change due to the current spike in the transmission of the virus’ delta variant.
According to the report, Pichai said any employee returning to the office after Oct. 18 will have to be inoculated.
Facebook also confirmed it will expect in-person employees to get fully vaccinated. However, officials will also allow evaluation on a case-by-case basis for those who object for medical or other reasons.
This week, Netflix also announced that all employees on their in-house production teams who work closely with actors and others who toil in close proximity to their stars — which is known as Zone A — will be required to vaccinate.
The decision makes Netflix the first major studio to require vaccination.
Other employees at the streaming giant have been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, but Netflix CEO Reed Hastings hopes to get his employees back in the office through vaccination goals. He has previously called working from home a “pure negative” for his company.
The move to mandatory vaccination was already underway at San Francisco-based Lyft. The company has also postponed its return-to- office work date to September.
Mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for employees has been enacted in various states and counties since the delta variant caused coronavirus infections to rise, taking the pandemic in the wrong direction.
President Joe Biden is expected to announce that vaccinations will be required by all federal employees and contractors or they will be required to submit to regular testing and mitigation requirements, including mask-wearing.
“We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated, and they’re sowing enormous confusion,” Biden said Tuesday, “and the more we learn about this virus and the delta variation, the more we have to be worried and concerned. And there’s only one thing we know for sure: If those other hundred million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs was the first federal agency to enact a mandatory vaccine policy for its frontline workers, but the entire federal government will likely enact the requirement this week.
According to a report from CNN, the president will not impose the policy on the U.S. military, despite that it is in his authority to do so. Sources say that Biden is working with the Department of Defense to add to vaccination numbers among servicemen and women.
Mandatory vaccination is likely to result in lawsuits, but the U.S. Department of Justice has already shared an 18-page opinion on the matter online. In the report, they determined that federal law doesn’t prohibit public agencies and private businesses from requiring COVID-19 vaccines, even if the vaccines are currently only authorized for emergency use.
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