Federal and Labor Attorneys from Puerto Rico talk about how companies in Puerto Rico are requiring employees to be vaccinated. The law may differ from states in the continental US to the island territory. What can you do? What’s legal and what’s not legal? Watch the video for the full details:
Some groups have questioned whether an employer can force them to be vaccinated as a condition for returning to employment in person.
The answer varies, because the rules are different for public employees and private sector workers. The Government of Puerto Rico has powers granted by the Constitution to make decisions in order to safeguard public health, however, in the private sector the lines are not very clear.
“An employer cannot force an employee to be vaccinated, but if he is going to do it, or if a court says that it should be, that right has to give way to other rights that have been approved in the past, such as the right not to meddle with my religious beliefs, with my right to be a conscientious objector or, most importantly, that they do not interfere in my private life or in my privacy ”.
Although the virus is a real threat with proven fatal effects, in Puerto Rico there is no law or jurisprudence that empowers private sector employers to force their employees to be vaccinated.
Federal agencies have intervened in the past to say that in certain places it could be a requirement, but those positions have not materialized in orders or regulations. An example would be in hospitals, which may require the vaccination of their nurses and doctors because the functions of the position they occupy make it essential for them to be vaccinated, because if they do not do it they would be a risk to their health and to the patients.
