Firing teachers who refuse vaccinations and testing

Recently, it has been brought to my attention how many educators have been quitting or forced out of their jobs due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. We just had a few teachers from the district I grew up in, in front of the Board to decide if they could keep their jobs. While I do know the importance and benefits of the vaccine, I think it is wrong to mandate it. Especially if it is only mandated for certain professionals. As a vaccinated educator myself, I can still understand how some people have beliefs against the vaccine, concerns for their health, doubts of the effectiveness and side effects, etc. Currently the teachers from District 186 are on an unpaid leave until the next board meeting which will decide if they are terminated. The district requires teachers to be fully vaccinated or abide by weekly COVID-19 testing, which I do think is a fair alternative option. 

What I think is absurd is that a district can let something like a vaccine mandate push out veteran teachers when there is already such a large shortage of quality teachers. At the board meeting, people spoke on behalf of the teachers in question and noted that terminating them would be an injustice to the students. I know one of these teachers personally and know they are an outstanding and passionate educator. It is disappointing that these teachers are facing losing their jobs. 

However, I do also understand the district’s standpoint. They are offering an alternative option of weekly testing for those who are unvaccinated. It is the most important to consider the health and safety of the students in this situation and unvaccinated people do put students at a higher risk of contracting COVD-19. It is also important to stand by your word and if they put this policy into place, it is hard to make exceptions for two teachers. The next board meetings are November 1^st and 15^th so I would like to discuss this with the class further once the official decision is made. Link: https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2021/10/19/two-springfield-district-186-teachers-could-eventually-face-termination/8503742002/ 

There are three different questions related to this problem, and our answers to these questions will shape how we respond to this situation.

First, there is the question of the legality of pubic health mandates.  Can the state force people to either get vaccinated or receive weekly testing? The point of contention is whether the teachers are defying an illegal mandate—practicing civil disobedience against an illegal or unjust law, or whether they are defying a legal mandate that is both constitutional and legitimate. 

Second, there is the question of the practical intention.  The vaccination mandate is intended to the reduce the spread of a deadly virus. The alternative requirement, of regular testing, is also supposed to prevent the spread of the disease. There is also the practical consideration about whether it makes any sense, from a public health standpoint where we want policies that prevent the spread of the virus, to only test employees who are unvaccinated. After all, breakthrough cases are common enough, and we know the disease can still be spread by vaccinated persons, so if the policies are ineffective, do the teachers have a right to refuse to comply because the vaccines are ineffective or the testing regime will not actually prevent the spread of COVID in the schools?

Third, there is the question of morality.  A teacher can be dismissed for gross misconduct and immorality.  For example, if a teacher was endangering the lives of students, they might be terminated immediately.  If they were convicted of certain crimes outside of their workplace and working hours (crimes involving harming children, for example), they might also be dismissed. Is a refusal to get vaccinated a sign of a moral perversity in these teachers that makes them unqualified to teach?

A point to consider is the quality of the teachers.  If the teachers were low quality educators, this might influence our thinking.  As it is, these teachers are exceptionally good teachers, and this is a point that many people consider as they are weighing the issue of what should be done.

Another point to consider is whether the policy for disciplining teachers who refuse to comply could be handled in a creative way.  If the vaccine mandate is valid, legal, and constitutional; and if forcing teachers to be vaccinated or tested regularly would dramatically reduce the spread of the virus; and if the teachers are behaving unethically in a way that threatens the lives of their students, then it might be the case that the school district would be justified in terminating the teachers, but that would not mean it was necessarily the best thing to do.  Perhaps such teachers could be given a retainer and dismissed from all duties that required their presence in a school building, but given a guarantee of an opportunity to return to employment once certain public health indicators suggested it was safe again for unvaccinated staff to work with students.  Perhaps they could be assigned as online tutors to students during times that students could not come to school campuses.  

My understanding of the law is that the vaccine requirements are justified, legal, and constitutional.  The argument that the governor cannot act during a public health emergency to require vaccinations is wrong.  Vaccine mandates for persons in occupations that bring them into regular contact with the public are substantiated by good legal argument and precedent (look up "Mary Mallon”), and anyway, the school board has the power to decide whether to terminate teachers, and if the school board says they will terminate teachers who do not get vaccinated and refuse regular testing, then they can do that.  My understanding of the public health point is that the vaccines will reduce the spreading significantly, and that will protect the health and lives of students and student family members.  The testing regime is indeed not optimally set up.  As people who are vaccinated can contract the virus and briefly spread the disease (not as much as unvaccinated persons, but still, they can spread it), it should be practice to test everyone.  Also, as virus incubates in people so that they only become infectious 3-6 days after exposure, and only show signs of illness 5-10 days after exposure, and only get enough antibody concentrations to test positively 3-5 days after exposure, weekly testing is insufficient to catch asymptomatic persons who are shedding the virus (are infectious). So, while the teachers are wrong to refuse to be tested, they are correct to criticize a system that would only test them (and not vaccinated staff), and only test them once a week (rather than Monday-Wednesday-Friday or perhaps Tuesday-Thursday).  

As to the morality of the teachers, here we have an issue where probability comes into calculation.  A person who drives home from a party while intoxicated, and arrives home safely without harming anyone, is guilty of a rather trivial offense.  Everyone agrees that they ought to be fined, or forced to take classes, or suffer restrictions on their driving privileges, but few people think such persons should spend years in prison.  Yet persons making the same moral choices might get unlucky, and crash into a car or a group of people crossing a street, and cause the deaths of several people.  When that happens, people will be enraged, and demand that the drunk driver who killed people should be charged with reckless homicide or manslaughter, and the punishment should be severe, with several years spent incarcerated.  Yet, in either case, the person making the moral decision to drive home while intoxicated is making the same moral judgment. There was a risk that innocent persons would be killed.  

In another situation, an officer who gives approval for a bombing of a group of people or a home in Afghanistan or Iraq because of information suggesting that Taliban or ISIS leadership is in the group or home probably knows that there is some chance that innocent bystanders will be killed, or that the information was faulty and only innocent people are in the home or in the group.  The decision to allow the bombing might cause deaths of innocents, but the officer hopes it will not, and decides the risks of causing such deaths outweighs the benefits of possibly killing murderous enemy combatants.  

Getting home from a party or achieving a military objective seem to justify, to some people, the risk that they will inflict great harm or death to innocent people.  This is a similar moral situation to a person who refuses to get a vaccine and refuses to get tested.  There is some chance, perhaps poorly understood, that they will pass the disease on to children or colleagues, and those children and colleagues will continue the spread of the disease, and possibly someone down the line will die of COVID-19.  The risk seems remote, and may be it is one of those risks that is fairly trivial, like the risk we will have a traffic accident and harm someone while driving sober; but perhaps it is more like the risk of deciding to drive home from a party while intoxicated. The state certainly has a moral responsibility to outlaw or restrict some of the very risky behaviors, but the state cannot and should not eliminate all risk.  

There is nearly a consensus among well-informed experts about contagion of air-borne viruses, experts on the SARS-CoV-2, on COVID-19, and persons who study vaccinations, that the risk is high enough, and the effectiveness evidence is strong enough, to justify the the state’s actions. The governor and school board is acting within reason to demand state employees who have regular contact with the public, especially indoors, should be vaccinated. Those teachers are wrong.  I note also that they are not union members, yet a union represents them and bargains for their wages and working conditions.  Noting that they are comfortable being freeloaders diminishes my sympathy for them, and raises suspicions that they are unethical persons, no matter how good they in their profession.  I do think the authorities would be wise to not dismiss those excellent teachers, and find some other way to allow them to continue to educate students, but forbidding them from frequenting the schools while they remain unvaccinated and refuse to be regularly tested seems the ethical course of action, since failing to do that would expose children, other teachers, and families to a higher risk of a dangerous disease, and potentially death.  

This ought to be a calm and dispassionate discussion and decision.  The fact that people are feeling so passionately about the issue indicates to me that their identities are on the line.  People construct their sense-of-self, and if they construct this personality around ideals of fair-mindedness, they would not become so enraged at the teachers or at the school board.  Just as a toddler who throws a tantrum at a trivial slight is probably really crying about deeper issues of frustration and desperation, these people attacking the school board (or attacking the teachers) are likely to be manifesting deeper fears and trauma, perhaps hidden from their own self-awareness.  They are upset about some sort of injustice in the world or in their lives, and they fear some attack on their personhood or their dignity, and so they cannot think clearly about the issue, and overwhelming feelings of anger and hostility boil to the surface and they use hate-filled rhetoric to attack the board or the teachers. Social workers need to be better than that, and be aware of their feelings, biases, prejudices, and values, and those hidden aspects of their personalities may shape their opinions on controversial subjects such as this.

Student considers housing crisis, immigration, and hunger

Here is another interesting student reaction paper.  You never know where students will go with these informal writing assignments, and there is always something new or innovative in these.

First off I would like to discuss more in-depth the hungry [hunger] issue that we talked about briefly. I was looking on frac.org and found some interesting facts about hungry [hunger] that I would like to share with you. There were 36.2 million people living in households considered to be food insecure in the year 2007. Of these 36.2 million, 23.8 million are adults (10.6 percent of all adults) and 12.4 million are children (16.9 percent of all children). In some developing nations where famine is widespread, hunger manifests itself as severe and very visible clinical malnutrition. In the United States hunger manifests itself, generally, in a less severe form. This is in part because established programs – like the federal nutrition programs – help to provide a safety net for many low-income families. While starvation seldom occurs in this country, children and adults do go hungry and chronic mild under nutrition does occur when financial resources are low. The mental and physical changes that accompany inadequate food intakes can have harmful effects on learning, development, productivity, physical and psychological health, and family life. (FRAC, 2008) 

I really believe that immigration is a major cause of poverty. I know you will have a great deal to argue against what I believe, but when [we] bring the people of foreign countries over we are taking away plenty of jobs for our people that are suffering from poverty. Even if they are taking the low level jobs such as McDonalds and Wal-mart, those are still jobs [now unavailable] for our people. This is just something that I believe will help the ones in poverty. The government needs to make the immigration laws harder and more impossible for them to be citizens of the United States. I do not have anything against the immigrants, but believe we have our own problems and don’t need them coming to make more, such as being here illegally and so on. 

The second issue I would like to discuss is the housing issue that we hit base with this last week. There are not nearly enough places for people to live and the Section 8 housing voucher waiting lists are a mile long. There needs to be more built and more homeless shelters built. I was reading a very interesting article on MSN today [“More families move in together during the housing crisis,” by Stephanie Armour, USA Today, February 3, 2009] . It was about a dad that built a three family house and then lost his job. His family to help him out moved into it. 

“We're still living there now. Times are rough," says Tixe, 26, a publicist. "It's been very beneficial that we're all together. My stepbrother and I have a wonderful relationship now. We eat together for dinner, and I've become closer to my dad, too. This is an important time for family to help, the way the housing market is going. Our story is a testament to how families should come together to help with a mortgage." 

Another direct quote that I liked from this story was 

“The weak economy — which has brought surging foreclosures, sinking property values, vanishing home equity and mounting job losses — is playing a major role in family dynamics, pulling relatives under the same roof to pool their resources and aid relatives who've lost their homes.” 

This is so very true, and many are living paycheck to paycheck who never did before. Many family elders are living with family because they can’t afford their old home anymore. Many say they see a decrease of divorces because of financial reasons, which is very wrong, but what can we do? People are taking out their money from banks left and right. So many are staying in the rentals and afraid to buy homes. This economy is getting scary and something major needs to take place. 

Minimum Wage Policy

This suggestion at the change.gov website inspired a student reaction:

Raise the Minimum Wage to $9.50 an Hour by 2011:
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that people who work full-time should not live in poverty. Even though the minimum wage will rise to $7.25 an hour by 2009, the minimum wage's real purchasing power will still be below what it was in 1968. As president, Obama will further raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing -- things so many people take for granted.

Here is the student's reaction:

I believe that raising the minimum wage is an excellent idea and way overdue. I agree that people working full-time should not have to live in poverty. The current minimum wage is way below the poverty line. In an article in (wps.ablongman.com) the poverty line for a family of four in 2001 was $18,267 a year. Which is $8.75 an hour if working full time? I believe that people want more than just enough to get by on. The American Dream is more than “just enough.” If an individual works in a full time position and still can not afford their basic needs, it leads to hopelessness. In my opinion, individuals who feel hopeless are more likely to give up, live off of the in-kind benefits, resort to illegal activities, or give in to the escape of alcohol and drugs, all of which contribute to poverty.

I hope that the minimum wage will indeed be indexed to inflation, and not just be raised to the $9.50 an hour amount and then forgotten for several years or shelved by the next administration.

This reminds me of a couple passages from "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1776). I'll quote them here. First, this:

It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of...

And secondly, and most significantly, there was this:

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. Mr. Cantillon seems, upon this account, to suppose that the lowest species of common laborers must every where earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labor of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one-half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest laborers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man. The labor of an able-bodied slave, the same author adds, is computed to be worth double his maintenance; and that of the meanest laborer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than that of an able-bodied slave. Thus far at least seems certain, that, in order to bring up a family, the labor of the husband and wife together must, even in the lowest species of common labor, be able to earn something more than what is precisely necessary for their own maintenance; but in what proportion, whether in that above mentioned, or in any other, I shall not take upon me to determine.

So, what does it cost to maintain oneself and also bring up a child? In our city in 2009 you would need at least $500 per month for the smallest apartment with utilities. I believe an adult and child could eat well enough on a budget of $200 per month. If we're merely talking about survival, food and shelter are all they would need, but I suppose a bike, enough money for some bus passes and an occasional taxi ride, some money for clothing, and that sort of thing would perhaps create a need for another $200 or so. So, something just under $1,000 per month would be enough for survival. In a typical month a person might work 160 hours. To earn $1,000 per month working full time, they would need to be earning $6.25. In fact, the federal minimum wage is $6.55, but will go up to $7.25 in July. Here in Illinois the state minimum wage went up to $7.75 in July of 2008, and it will go up to $8.00 in July of 2009.

So, it looks to me as if we have minimum wages that are at the level that Cantillon and Smith thought were "natural" and "necessary" for workers.

If you think we ought to be more generous, and mandate a minimum wage that allows a single income-earner to raise a household with one adult and three children out of poverty, then you must consider the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three (which is $18,310), and divide by a reasonable number of hours to expect a person to work in a year of full-time labor (a reasonable 1,850 hours would require a minimum wage of $9.90, and a more toil-and-work-diligently American full-time standard of 2,000 hours per year would require a wage of $9.16).

Are there any studies that indicate that people lose jobs when we set a minimum wage? That is a standard argument against minimum wages. Well, there are some studies that show the opposite influences (raising minimum wages increases employment). Here is a list of ten articles that, judging by the abstracts and other information I could gather, seem to have evidence about minimum wages:

The Effect of Minimum Wage on Youth Employment and Unemployment in Taiwan
Author: Chuang, Yih-chyi
Source: Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics v47, n2 (December 2006): 155-67

Minimum Wages and Poverty with Income-Sharing
Author: Fields, Gary S.; Kanbur, Ravi
Source: Journal of Economic Inequality v5, n2 (August 2007): 135-47

On the Empirics of Minimum Wages and Employment: Evidence for the Austrian Industry
Author: Ragacs, Christian
Source: Applied Economics Letters v15, n1-3 (January-February 2008): 61-64

Do Minimum Wages Have a Negative Impact on Employment in the United States?
Author: Bazen, Stephen
Source: Economie Publique n17 (2005): 41-58

Minimum Wages and Employment
Author: Neumark, David; Wascher, William L.
Source: Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics v3, n1-2 (2007): 1-186

Minimum Wage Effects on Labor Market Outcomes under Search, Matching, and Endogenous Contact Rates
Author: Flinn, Christopher J.
Source: Econometrica v74, n4 (July 2006): 1013-62

Minimum Wages, Inequality and Unemployment
Author: Adam, Antonis; Moutos, Thomas
Source: Economics Letters v92, n2 (August 2006): 170-76

The Minimum Wage Can Harm Workers by Reducing Unemployment
Author: Lee, Dwight R.
Source: Journal of Labor Research v25, n4 (Fall 2004): 657-66

Minimum Wage Policy and Employment Effects: Evidence from Brazil
Author: Lemos, Sara
Source: Economia: Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association v5, n1 (Fall 2004): 219-52

Minimum Wage Impacts on Youth Employment Transitions, 1993-1999
Author: Campolieti, Michele; Fang, Tony; Gunderson, Morley
Source: Canadian Journal of Economics v38, n1 (February 2005): 81-104