Employees should disclose their vaccination status.
(Photo: dpa)
There was no shortage of unreasonable demands on citizens in the corona crisis. For almost an entire school year, children were deprived of their basic right to education – face-to-face lessons did not take place, digital lessons did not work.
With domestic travel bans and night curfews, the state has massively restricted the right to freedom of movement for weeks. In places you weren’t even allowed to sit alone on a park bench and read a book.
Germany is now in the midst of a new wave of corona, which we owe to a large extent to those who refused to vaccinate, and are discussing with great passion whether further legal interference in the fight against corona might not go too far after all: Are employers allowed to inquire about the vaccination status of employees in order to to impose an obligation to test at the workplace on those who have not been vaccinated and who have not recovered?
No, says DGB boss Reiner Hoffmann, for example, because the basic rights of employees should not be disproportionately interfered with.
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On the subject of “disproportionate interference with fundamental rights”, I can think of completely different examples in connection with Corona, see above. An obligation to provide information for non-vaccinated persons does not belong in this category.
Vaccination status does not have to be in the personnel file
In case of doubt, it will certainly be possible to have the vaccination status in the companies ascertained by ombudsmen or independent service providers in such a way that it does not end up in the personnel file or posted on the notice board.
Mind you: It is not about compulsory vaccination in the workplace. It is not about professional disadvantages for those who refuse to be vaccinated. It is only a question of a duty to cooperate for the relatively small group of – for whatever reason – unvaccinated, so that they do not endanger the health of the entire workforce.
Almost every unvaccinated school child has to take such tests several times a week. All with one specific goal: to avoid the far more serious encroachments on fundamental rights that a renewed lockdown would entail.
The conflict over 3G in the workplace has been foreseeable for months. Once again, politicians have failed to create the legal basis for effective protection against infection in good time.
The executive federal government must now quickly make up for this – we cannot wait until the traffic light government is sworn in.
More: Traffic light parties want to introduce the 3G rule at all workplaces