Press "Enter" to skip to content

Minneapolis Fed Requiring Coronavirus Vaccine for Staff by End of August

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari says 82% of his organization’s 1,100+ employees have gotten vaccinated against coronavirus. Now he says that, by the end of August, the other 18% need to get their shots or get out. Kashkari says Fed employees cannot fulfill the central bank’s role as critical infrastructure to our nation’s economy with everyone working 100% remotely:

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we were able to quickly move more than 90 percent of our staff to remote work in order to keep them safe and prevent a COVID-19 outbreak from disrupting our operations. Despite this major, unexpected shift in how we work, we were pleasantly surprised that we were able to meet our basic operating requirements during the past 16 months.

But we also know that we are losing something by being almost fully remote. Our work requires close collaboration among staff. It requires brainstorming to identify and overcome challenges. It requires debate among colleagues, which is built on trust that takes time to develop and must be nurtured. Simply put, while we will enjoy more flexibility in where we work going forward, we are not going to be a fully remote institution. In order to fulfill our public-service mission, we need more face-to-face contact than remote work allows, but there is no way for us to bring a critical mass of our staff back into our facilities and maintain social distancing. Hence, we need our employees to be vaccinated [Neel Kashkari, “Health and Safety First: Why a Vaccine Requirement Makes Sense for the Minneapolis Fed,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2021.07.07].

Bringing everyone back the office safely requires darn near everyone to get their shots:

Even with our current high level of vaccinations, bringing everyone back into the office could put our staff at unnecessary risk. First, unvaccinated employees could infect other unvaccinated employees while at work; outbreaks continue to happen worldwide, largely among those who are unvaccinated. Second, some employees cannot be vaccinated due to health conditions. Those who can receive a vaccine but choose not to put these employees at unnecessary risk. Finally, some vaccinated staff have expressed concern about getting infected by an unvaccinated colleague and then passing it on to a family member who cannot be vaccinated. While there remains a lot that experts don’t know about COVID-19, the science is clear that everyone’s safety is enhanced the closer we can get our vaccination rate to 100 percent [Kashkari, 2021.07.07].

The Minneapolis Fed will allow exceptions from the vaccine requirement for employees with “sincerely held religious beliefs” or medical conditions that preclude vaccination.

2 Comments

  1. Mark Anderson 2021-07-07 16:10

    Well you know of course that a condo fell in Florida and killed a bunch of people. DeSantis stopped the daily covid reporting but in the same time as the condo fall, well over 400 people have died from covid in the state. Any reporting on those deaths? Out of sight, out of the presidential run. The numbers come out every Friday. They don’t report non-Floridian deaths. I guess Republicans want the virus to create a variant that will kill more people so that’s why they won’t get vaccinated. What else can it be?

  2. Anne Beal 2021-07-10 08:50

    One of my sons works for the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington, D.C. and hasn’t been to the office for over a year (hasn’t shaved or gotten a haircut either and is starting to look like Bigfoot or Chewbacca.)
    Nobody there has been in the office and some of them have moved out of the D.C. metro area with no plans to return.
    Work goes on as usual.
    There is no reason any of them cannot continue to work remotely. Forever.
    This is only a problem for the managers who are distressed that the people they supervise might not be adhering to dress codes (they might not be wearing shoes & pants,) or they are eating at their desks, or violating OSHA regulations (electrical cords along the floors, not having smoke detectors in their home offices, pets under their desks et cetera)

    It’s really hard to supervise people remotely.

Comments are closed.