“No vaccine required” job postings are the latest tactic to attract workers

When Primal Life Organics amended its job postings to include the phrase “* NO VACCINE REQUIRED *”, the company saw a rise in claims from a figure to 30 or 40, said CEO Trina Felber, who founded the Akron, Ohio-based manufacturer of natural skin and dental care products in 2009.

“That’s when we were able to start hiring people,” Felber said, noting that the company hired six new employees after adding “no vaccine required” to its job list.

Felber said she sees an opportunity to attract employees who would fit well with the culture of the company.

“We are trying to promote independence,” she said. “I think as a culture of my company, I don’t want people to be hired by being told what they can and cannot do personally. I believe that the right to choose and the freedom to choose are a basic need that every man has. “

Primal Life’s “no vaccine required” amendment came with a caveat that any company policy related to the virus or vaccine could be changed “if the environment, mandates or existence of the virus [change]. ”

However, some economists and legal experts warn that offering this particular incentive is a huge – and potentially deadly – gamble.

“I suspect these employers are probably facing some hiring issues, and they’re throwing everything to the wall trying to get the workers they need,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “It’s a very short-term bet with long-term consequences.”

However, she noted that out-of-office job postings represent an “incredibly low” percentage of Indeed’s job postings in the United States.

As of Nov. 5, less than 0.01% of job postings and about 0.01% of searches in the United States contained the phrase “no vaccine required” or some of its iterations, according to the most recent data from Indeed. Meanwhile, 2.53% of U.S. job postings on Indeed mentioned the need for a vaccination.

CNN Business research on Tuesday for “no vaccine required” Ads on Indeed’s website returned around 230 results.

However, traditional job boards are not the only avenue for these types of ads. JP Valadez, of NextGen Code Company in Lubbock, Texas, launched the online job site NoVaxMandate.org in August. Since then, the site has had over 2.25 million unique visitors and over 20,000 resumes posted, Valadez said. As of November 12, the site had approximately 500 active registrations.

“We are also seeing a massive business-to-small business migration,” he said in an email to CNN Business. “Many in the healthcare industry are completely abandoning their career path in favor of something completely different. We see nurses and doctors applying to travel agencies, for example. example, and the other day we saw a resume of a NASA data analyst who was willing to work as a plumber or electrician as long as the employer respected their values ​​and bodily autonomy. “

Dozen of the list of companies The “no vaccine required” jobs that were contacted by CNN Business declined interview requests or did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Several, however, shared their point of view.

Philip Dulock, owner of Spanish Oak Assisted Living in Pflugerville, Texas, said he noticed a surge in the number of applications after including the phrase “NO VACCINE REQUIRED” in the title of a job posting for a nursing assistant certified.

It has been a difficult couple of years trying to hire qualified staff, he said. After some of the region’s largest healthcare organizations began implementing immunization mandates, Dulock said he believed the wording might help some people get through the door.

Considering that the majority of staff and all residents are vaccinated, he said he feels the risks are lower.

“As far as I’m concerned, if someone doesn’t want to be vaccinated, it’s their choice,” he said. “We are all protected by the vaccine.”

In Nampa, Idaho, Allegiant Supported Living, which provides personal care services to adults with developmental issues, is fully funded by Medicaid, which means employee salaries are at the mercy of slow-to-adjust reimbursement rates, owner Jenny Fultz told CNN Business.

Knowing that Allegiant is unable to easily raise salaries, Fultz said she tried to pull various levers, such as signup bonuses and a raffle for a trip to Las Vegas. – attracting employees to the detriment of the company’s profitability. In recent weeks, Fultz has added the phrase “no vaccine required” to job postings online at several locations in the region.

“I don’t have the luxury of cutting the employee funnel,” she said. “We are placed in a desperate position for employees to provide essential services.”

If federal vaccine mandates stand up to legal challenges, businesses with more than 100 employees and healthcare organizations could face tough choices, Reiss said.

“For health care: they may, if the courts do not step in, have to choose between accepting Medicare / Medicaid and allowing unvaccinated workers,” she said, adding that these employers could also try to be too generous in allowing exemptions. to any vaccination mandate that may come into effect.

Vaccine mandates are well within the purview of government and the responsibility of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to ensure a safe and healthy workplace for employees, said Stacey Lee, associate professor of law and ethics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore, Maryland. .

“I think Covid is checking these boxes,” she said.

Federal orders from the Biden administration, OSHA, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services help “relieve the employer of having to be the ‘bad guy’,” Lee said.

There are many historical precedents for terms of office, Lee said, noting that the polarization and politicization of the coronavirus has made it difficult to get them in place now.

“What has changed is perhaps a new interpretation of individual freedom, individual freedom and an increasingly divergent view of what medicine or science needs in response to the pandemic,” said she declared.