I relocated to a new state for a job this past December. In March, my workplace closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and I’ve been working from home since. We’re now preparing to go back to work, and my employers are requiring every person coming to the office to sign a daily affidavit affirming that they don’t have any Covid-19 symptoms. Anyone refusing to sign will be barred from the office and forced to use paid time off or potentially lose a day’s wages. Requiring me to sign this statement feels like an invasion of my privacy — they’ve never required anyone to sign such an affidavit during a flu outbreak. Is it ethical for a business to ask employees to sign something like this? I should also note that my state hasn’t met the benchmarks for reopening set by the White House. Is it ethical for my employer to require us to come back to work in the first place? J. T.
In ethics, there are many different notions of privacy. Two are relevant here. First, there’s informational privacy, which concerns what others don’t have a right to know about. In this respect, your (consensual) behavior in the bedroom and in the voting booth are private, though you have a right to reveal them if you choose, at least to people who are willing to listen. Informational privacy can also impose restrictions on you: There are things you ought not to reveal, like personal confidences, professionally privileged communications or state and business secrets. They are not other people’s business, and putting extraordinary circumstances aside, you don’t have the right to make them other people’s business.
Second, there’s an arena that’s private in the sense that authorities — your boss, the government — have no right to decide them for you. The issue here isn’t what others can expect to know but what they can legitimately require you to do. We could call this autonomy privacy: It has to do with what areas of your life should be under your own control. It’s an aspect of liberty.
Does requiring people with the symptoms of a potentially fatal communicable disease to stay away from work violate informational privacy? It does not. For one thing, given the policy, your presence in the office is already an implicit assertion that you are symptom-free. What’s more, the point of the affidavit isn’t to gather information at all; it’s to get you to take your undertaking seriously and, perhaps, to have some legal leverage if you don’t.
Nor does the policy violate a proper understanding of autonomy privacy. You are not entitled to go to work when doing so puts others at significant risk. Indeed, your bosses have not just the right but the duty to demand that you don’t. And they can do what is reasonably required to make sure you comply.
You contrast what’s being asked of you because of the coronavirus with the lack of similar demands in flu season. There are, of course, many pertinent differences. We have vaccines for the influenza strains we face, but we have none for this coronavirus, and many fewer serious illnesses and deaths occur in a typical flu season. Still, one lesson of the current pandemic may be that we should consider having clearer guidelines for employees with flu symptoms and should consider too what hand-hygiene and mask-wearing policies might continue to make sense during the regular flu season. Even when Covid-19 is behind us, we may not want to discard our pandemic practices entirely.
The real trouble with your office’s policy is that it appears to be badly designed to achieve its effect. It can penalize people who responsibly stay home to protect others. A better policy would allow such employees extra paid time off in addition to the regular allocation of vacation days and medical leave. The C.D.C. recommends isolation for those with symptoms, until they’ve had no fever for 24 hours, their symptoms have improved and at least 10 days have elapsed since the symptoms appeared. Effectively punishing compliance with such recommendations by withholding pay gives people a reason to disobey the strictures they’re trying to enforce, and so endanger their colleagues.
As for whether you can rightly be asked to go back to the office, much depends on the details. If your state or municipality hasn’t yet met the benchmarks for reopening, then your employer shouldn’t require you to change course. Even when those benchmarks are met, it’s important that your office requires masks and practices social distancing, encourages regular hand washing, pays to have spaces appropriately cleaned and has thought about making sure that the airflow through the space is managed in a way that minimizes your exposure to droplets and aerosols.
Bear in mind that people infected with the coronavirus appear to be most contagious shortly before the onset of symptoms. (Those who never become symptomatic may also be able to spread infection.) Your company should, accordingly, remind employees that they ought to follow the recommended practices all the time, not just at work. No privacy concerns are raised by an affidavit that requires them to attest to this too.
My friend works at a government agency. A portion of the staff there is required to go out into the field to do their work, which puts them at risk of coronavirus exposure. My friend’s job at the agency can be performed entirely remotely. As the agency plans for reopening, senior management is contemplating a requirement that all employees work at least one day in the office (there will be an exception for those who must care for dependents at home). This requirement, the managers said, would promote equity among agency workers and across departments. If front-line staff are risking exposure to the coronavirus in the field, they say, non-front-line staff should share a similar burden. Is this requirement ethical? Does it matter if the policy is applied to all staff, or only to managers and other senior employees? Are there other ways to address equity issues related to different levels of coronavirus risk among workers at the agency? Name Withheld
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Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
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Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
The rationale you’ve described is profoundly misguided. It’s necessary for the work of the armed forces that certain troops sometimes be put in harm’s way. What would we think of a policy that required all service members to play a version of Russian roulette during wartime, in order to maintain risk equity? Historically speaking, there have been times, in battle, when commanders exposed themselves to risk in order to rally the troops. Doing so had a rational purpose. But exposing every service member to mortal risk out of a desire for fairness would rightly be regarded as bizarre.
Those who must face health risks should, of course, be protected to the greatest extent possible, and they should be honored for their work. There is also a case, in a society like ours, for recognizing their sacrifice with extra pay. But increasing the overall disease burden of the staff honors no one.
I live with my daughter and her two teenage sons. I am very close to the 15-year-old, who confides in me even more than his mother does. The other day he told me that he is given rides to various places by a 16-year-old friend who does not have his parents’ permission to have any friends in his car. He told me this in confidence. I responded that I would not tell his mother but that I felt uncomfortable with that information. If I told her, I can’t imagine he would ever trust me again, but if I don’t tell her, am I being irresponsible? If the unimaginable happened and a car accident ensued, how could I live with myself? Nancy K., Irvine, Calif.
Putting Covid-19 issues aside, your grandson is in danger not because his friend doesn’t have his parents’ permission but because the driver is 16. But your grandson is also abetting his friend in deceiving and disobeying his parents about something serious. I’d tell him that he shouldn’t be accepting these rides and that you’re keeping his confidence on the assumption that he’ll stop.
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