Employers are in favor of mandatory vaccinations for workers and unions are retaliating against society

More than 80 percent of the furniture company has already been vaccinated. workers. Most, as the manager says, work in contact. The rest are tested regularly.

“I think people themselves are more interested in those who have more contact work,” says Pijus Makarevičius, founder and CEO of Furniture.

He says there is no need to force employees to get vaccinated, most feel compelled to do so.

“It just came to our knowledge then. I myself was vaccinated and we do not believe in any type of compulsory vaccination or in doing anything by coercion. The only thing we can do is set an example,” said the businessman convinced.

However, the director of the company is confident that the remaining employees will be vaccinated in the near future.

“Some of them start to get vaccinated now that the Christmas season begins, everyone has different motivations, but in general I can say that people get vaccinated voluntarily only at the first opportunity,” he says.

However, this is not the case in all companies in the country. Employers explain that vaccination rates are rewarding not everywhere, but by law, employees are not required to get vaccinated. However, the situation in neighboring Latvia is likely to change, as Latvians will fight radical measures with unvaccinated workers: if they don’t have the vaccine by the fall, they may be out of work.

“The most important specialties would suffer: the teachers, the medical staff, the social workers, as well as the people who work with the services: all the hairdressers, the salesmen. Everyone would suffer from it, ”says Rolandas Žalnierius, president of the Lithuanian community in Latvia.

These eyelids have been opposed by the Latvian government, and some municipalities seek to promote exemplary vaccination.

“If there will be more than 80% of the institutions. People vaccinated, there will be additional funds, that is, additional money,” says the president of the Latvian community in Latvia.

However, even Lithuanian employers would not reject the idea of ​​compulsory vaccination, although they say there is no single opinion among companies.

“I don’t believe in all incentives, extra vacation motivation, lotteries. I do not think it works. I think about 40 percent. they will remain unvaccinated because, in principle, they do not want to be vaccinated. So the question is whether that 40 percent. it will not worsen the situation for us in the fall, ”says Danas Arlauskas, president of the Employers’ Confederation.

Inga Ruginienė, president of the trade union confederation, says that employers are always looking for an easier and cheaper way, which is probably where her speech is coming from.

Employers believe that it is enough to ask the employees themselves to form an opinion. D. Arlauskas says that it was.

“Everyone said that it couldn’t be that someone was sabotaging, and they were unanimous that radical measures were needed and that it was a duty to vaccinate. It could convey the opinions of 40 people in an organization ”, he assures.

I. Ruginienė believes that compulsory vaccination would make society even more opposed, people would be more hostile to vaccines. She is convinced that the same will happen in Latvia.

“Any link gives a negative response from those people who still have doubts, maybe they all get vaccinated, but by doing so, we can divide them into the group they will be in before vaccination,” says an employee spokeswoman.

The Ministry of Health (SAM) says it would not agree to mandatory vaccination, even if it is scaled down. Rather, as the situation worsens, he intends to make mandatory tests of workers in the most risky sectors.

“I am not talking about forced isolation and testing within the scope of current legislation. I think that in case of another variety and the next delta variety, we will have to apply such measures, because we are trying to protect the population that has agreed to be vaccinated”, said Justina Aleksaitė, Advisor to the Minister of Health.

The idea of ​​compulsory vaccination of workers was raised not only in Latvia, but for some time workers in the most risky sectors have also been vaccinated in Estonia.