Google employees not ‘happy’ with company’s Covid-19 vaccine policy – Times of India

Companies across the world have encouraged employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19. While some have made it mandatory to get vaccinated for employees to come back to offices, others have not been so strict about it. According to a report by CNBC, several hundreds of Google employees have urged the company to relook at its vaccine mandate. Google, as per the report, had asked more than 1.5 lakh employees to upload their vaccination status on its internal systems. Google had also said that employees who are working with government contracts must be compulsorily vaccinated. In an email sent in October to all employees, Chris Rackow, Google VP of security had said, “Vaccines are key to our ability to enable a safe return to office for everyone and minimize the spread of Covid-19 in our communities.”
However, about 600 Google employees have circulated a manifesto and called the company’s vaccine policy “flawed”. The manifesto has been written by an unnamed Google employee who said that stopping unvaccinated employees from coming back to office “possibly embarrassingly exposes a private choice as it would be difficult for the Googler not to reveal why they cannot return.”
Further, the manifesto notes that employees will not be comfortable expressing their true sentiments about a company health policy and other, unrelated sensitive topics. “This results in silenced perspective and exacerbates the internal ideological ‘echo chamber’ which folks both inside and outside of Google have observed for years,” the manifesto notes.
The CNBC report also reveals that some employees believe that Google should not be privy to the health and medical history of their employees.
These employees also believe that if the vaccine mandate is accepted then it could lead to further intrusive measures from the company. “It normalises medical intervention compulsion not only for Covid-19 vaccination but for future vaccines and possibly even non-vaccine interventions by extension,” the manifesto notes. Since Google is an industry leader, its mandate could “influence companies around the world to consider these as acceptable tradeoffs,” the employees argue.
Google hasn’t made it compulsory for all its employees to get vaccinated. However, it’s not changing its stance. A spokesperson for Google told CNBC that the company stands behind its policy: “As we’ve stated to all our employees and the author of this document, our vaccination requirements are one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running. We firmly stand behind our vaccination policy.”