Cox Communications will require COVID-19 vaccine for some employees as mandates grow
Cox Communications is requiring that employees in certain locations be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18, a company spokesperson confirmed Friday.
The spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question Friday afternoon clarifying whether or not employees will be terminated if they are not fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 at certain locations.
“With the rapid spike in COVID-19 cases across the country, vaccines are an important step to protect the health and safety of our employees, families, customers and communities,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We will continue to follow the guidance of federal, state and local health officials to assess our markets as the situation evolves.”
When asked if Wichita is one of the locations at which employees are required to be vaccinated, the spokesperson said that Cox doesn’t share specifics about its employees. The company has notified all employees in locations that require vaccination.
The requirement has exceptions for workers with approved religious and medical exemptions.
Cox Communications employs around 1,100 people in the region, according to estimates from the Greater Wichita Partnership. It is within the top 20 employers in the Wichita area.
The communications and broadband company joins Wichita’s largest hospital system, Ascension Via Christi, in mandating the vaccines for workers. The hospital system is the fourth largest employer in the Wichita area.
More employers begin to require shot
Cox joins an expanding list of both private and public institutions that are moving to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for workers. That list has grown since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine full approval on Monday. Public health experts had hoped the change would spur more employers to mandate the shot.
Prior to full approval, the Pfizer vaccine was administered in the U.S. under emergency use authorization. The FDA required six months of follow-up data to grant the vaccine full approval. Federal inspectors also visited the plants where the vaccines are manufactured.
New York City will require public school teachers and other staffers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, city officials announced Monday. Chicago’s mayor also announced this week that city workers there must be vaccinated by October. A federal judge ruled last month that Indiana University’s vaccine mandate should stand.
Generally, employment attorneys agree that employers have the legal right to require workers receive vaccination as a condition of employment. The limited exceptions arise under federal employment law and include religious and disability discrimination, which falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA.
A mandate as a condition of employment is similar to asking a job candidate to take a drug test, one employment attorney said previously.
If an employee has concerns about receiving, or not receiving, the COVID-19 vaccine, they should voice those concerns in the right place, often a human resources department.
Unemployment and vaccine mandates
Some employers across the country have terminated employees who refused to be vaccinated by a certain date.
Houston Methodist was known nationally as one of the first health systems to require COVID-19 vaccination. More than 150 health care workers there who did not comply with the mandate either resigned or were fired earlier this year.
The vaccine mandates have raised questions about whether or not workers who are fired or resign because they don’t follow the requirement are eligible for unemployment.
The Kansas Department of Labor has addressed that question by reminding workers that each unemployment claim is unique. The agency says it must review the facts and circumstances around each claim in order to determine what lead to someone’s job loss.
The agency uses state law, regulations and any judicial precedent to decide about someone’s qualification for benefits.
Unemployment regulations vary state to state, but attorneys and labor experts have said workers are generally ineligible for unemployment if they quit or if the employer had cause for termination.
“There is no general purpose, or ‘one size fits all’ answer that can be provided to resolve the question of whether or not an individual who separates from employment due to the individual’s refusal to receive a vaccination will be found to be qualified to obtain unemployment insurance benefits,” the labor department wrote to reporters.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 2:54 PM.
