Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandates | US politics

Some Republican states are extending unemployment benefits to employees who have been made redundant or terminated because of vaccination mandates.

Four states – Iowa, Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas – have changed their unemployment rules to include people who have been quit or quit their jobs due to their employers’ vaccination policies.

The split is striking, Anne Paxton, lawyer and director of the Washington state unemployment law project, told the Guardian. “It is very difficult to attribute this particular move to more than just political reasons.”

Development is also happening with the advent of the new Omicron variant, raising concerns that the variety may already be found in the United States. If so, there would likely be another surge in infections in America.

There are 30 states with Republican-led lawmakers that could follow suit. “I would be very surprised if it stopped on these four,” said Paxton. Missouri is considering similar laws, while states like Maryland are considering “extenuating factors” regarding unemployment and vaccination regulations.

On the other hand, some democratic states have stated that leaving a job on the basis of mandates will exclude former employees from these benefits unless they have demonstrated exceptions.

“Partisanship remains a sharp dividing line in attitudes toward vaccines,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in October, with 90% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans saying they received at least one dose.

Only 5% of unvaccinated workers said they left their job because of a mandate, and unemployment is falling rapidly across the country.

Unemployment benefits do not match full-time wages, emphasized Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law. But rules like this can be an incentive against vaccination.

“It’s like offering a financial advantage not to vaccinate,” Reiss told the Guardian. “If the person did not get unemployment benefits if they tried to wash their hands at work and got fired because of it, they should be treated the same way.”

Unemployment law in the United States is governed in part by federal law, but states have leeway to set their own requirements or restrictions, Paxton said.

If employees are laid off or quit due to company policy, they are usually not entitled to unemployment benefits unless they have an exception based on reasonable religious or moral objections or for medical reasons.

“The benefits are for people who are unemployed through no fault of their own,” said Paxton. But the interpretation of the error can be different.

And in the past few weeks, these states’ Republican leaders have signed bills protecting immunization mandate benefits, and essentially liberalizing vaccine unemployment regulations in conservative states.

If states want to change the rules on unemployment benefits for those who clash with employers’ policies, they should change the rules for everyone, Reiss said.

“They should pass a broader law that says, ‘Anyone who gets fired for cause gets unemployment benefits anyway.’ And that’s fine. That is a value judgment and states can make it, ”said Reiss. But “being limited to vaccines only sends a message that vaccines aren’t important, and that’s bad news.”

There were already clear differences in party politics in the way the states dealt with unemployment benefits.

“The blue states tend to be more generous in their licensing rules,” said Paxton. “They are usually more useful. And the red states tend to be stingy. “

For example, in Florida, the maximum benefit is $ 275 per week, which is lower than the weekly minimum in Washington.

Many Republican-led states also opted to end federal unemployment benefits earlier this year.

“They did not try to help people who were unemployed in that regard,” said Paxton. “So it’s hard to take this very seriously as a substantial, well-thought-out political move in these four states.” Instead, she said, the decision seems to be less about unemployment policy and more about policy tools “to widen the party divide,” Paxton said.

Nine states have restricted the Biden government’s vaccination mandate for companies with 100+ employees, as well as federal agencies and contractors.

Tennessee and Montana have banned private employers from contracting the vaccines, and seven other states have introduced sweeping restrictions on mandates, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. For example, after Florida curtailed the rules, Disney World stopped vaccinating employees.

When it comes to ending the pandemic, Reiss said, circumventing mandates like these will “make it much more difficult”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/01/republicans-vaccine-mandates-unemployment-benefits