An unvaccinated employee prepares for work.
Skadden has told its unvaccinated staff that they must take a Covid test before they come back to the office.
The US firm sent an internal memo outlining plans for staff returning to the workplace, stating that those who hadn't been jabbed "will be required to have tested negative for COVID-19 within 48 hours of their arrival to the office."
"We were pleased to see that many of the respondents to the remote work survey have been, or planned to be, vaccinated," said the memo, adding, "if you have not yet been vaccinated, we urge you to do so, in consultation with your doctor."
Skadden also provided rules on office etiquette, stating that staff should refrain from asking their colleagues if they'd been vaccinated, and that masks should be worn in "public and shared spaces". So staff will have to mask-up around the water cooler, assuming the cooler hasn't been binned in fear of it being a germ dispenser.
The memo, which also applies to London, confirmed that jeans will be permitted in the office, which should come as a relief to those staff unaccustomed to wearing anything ironed for the last year.
The firm has targeted 13 September for welcoming staff back, with a wary elbow bump. There will be a transition period, following which the firm will permit its lawyers to work remotely for up to two days a week.
As firms sketch out their re-opening plans, and staff contemplate their return to the office, let RollOnFriday know if your firm is taking a cautious or lax approach.
Comments
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Gagging on a daily basis and scraping the back of your nostrils to own the vaxxers, love it
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Kids going to school have to do a test twice a week without (as yet) an option of being vaccinated - I think they will somehow survive.
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Why can't you ask people if they've been vaccinated? This is practically the first thing people drop into conversation nowadays. Second only to the weather.
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So does this mean that Skadden have breached their own policy by asking employees about their vaccination status as part of the remote working survey? Why should anyone reveal anything about their health status? Is that in Skadden’s employment contracts?
And why just require the unvaccinated staff to take a test? I thought it was well established that vaccinated people can catch and spread the disease too? And unlike unvaccinated people, those who are vaccinated and get Covid can have sneezing as a symptom - a very efficient way of spreading the disease - according to a study:
“Comparing symptoms in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated adults with COVID-19, almost all individual symptoms of COVID-19 disease were less common in the vaccinated population. The exception was sternutation (sneezing), which was reported more commonly in younger adults who contracted infection post-vaccination.”
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Your fault if you work there.
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AJ riding first-class on the Covid Vaccines Are A Bill Gates Conspiracy there...
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Everyone will be walking down wind of the Skadden offices....
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Replying to anonymous @ 16.17. Not sure which part of my comment you thought was inspired by Bill Gates conspiracy theories. Was it the quote from a paper (published two days ago) by academics from Kings College London, MIT, Guy’s & St Thomas’, Harvard Medical School among other reputable institutions which suggests that the Skadden approach ignores the science of covid transmission? Or was it my observation that Skadden appear to have breached its own policy on not asking about vaccination status, and is discriminating between employees based on personal medical decisions, which even Robert Buckland thinks is illegal?
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Glad I moved on when I did
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People need to accept that, if they don't get vaccinated, this will be the way of things for them going forward. People who think this is going away magically in June have another thing coming.
I live in the Middle East, where vaccination rates are high, and you need to show proof of vaccination to enter into various buildings, including government buildings. Going back to the way things were is not going to happen, we just have to live with this...it's the new normal.
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Good.