I hear this a lot among the various chattering “libertarian” online enclaves. Private companies can demand vaccination as a condition of employment because they’re private companies and they can do what they want. That’s the argument in a nutshell.
Here is why that argument makes zero sense.
If private companies can do whatever they want, can they mandate a lingerie-only policy? No shirts allowed? Mandatory heroin injection? Can they demand that sex acts be performed by employees as a condition of continued employment? It’s clear that, just because a company is private, that fact does not give it the right to demand anything it wants. Particularly among the massive, multinational, impersonal, soulless megacorps, who exercise so much market power and can effectively blackmail employees into doing anything in order to keep their job.
And surely no one would consider working at such a place, but the COVID vax mandates are being forced on current employees. That was never in the contract.
No, private employers do not get to make unlimited demands on their employees under threat of unemployment.
One last point: the federal government is forcing or bribing these companies to implement the vax policy. How private are they really if they have such an entangled relationship with the state?
