Here's the way it's worded in the CDC document:
Considerations for Restaurants and Bars...The link on "higher risk for severe illness" goes to another document. There we see the reference to old people — "People 65 years and older" — and fat people — "People with severe obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 40 or higher)." There's no reference to race, but health conditions are named: "chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma... serious heart conditions... immunocompromised... diabetes... chronic kidney disease undergoing dialysis... liver disease."
Protections for Employees at Higher Risk for Severe Illness from COVID-19
- Offer options for employees at higher risk for severe illness (including older adults and people of all ages with certain underlying medical conditions) that limits their exposure risk (e.g., modified job responsibilities such as managing inventory rather than working as a cashier, or managing administrative needs through telework).
- Consistent with applicable law, develop policies to protect the privacy of persons at higher risk for severe illness in accordance with applicable privacy and confidentiality laws and regulations.
I'm not offering legal advice, but just asking a question: Can restaurant owners, who are struggling to make their business profitable again, withhold jobs from people who fall in the "higher risk" category? Clearly, we're talking about people who are protected by laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination. Less clearly, we're talking about discriminating against black people. And if you do bring back employees who'd previously worked in the front of the restaurant, interacting with customers, how can you shunt them to the back, away from the tips?
ADDED: Why am I talking about race? "Nationally, the new age-adjusted analysis shows, black people are more than 3.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people, and Latino people are nearly twice as likely to die of the virus as white people, the researchers report" (Yale News).
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:
"You're fat. Go clean the freezer."
"Thank you for caring about me."
Posts
86 comments:
"we're talking about people who are protected by laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination"
Aren't we talking about reasonable accommodations here? Or owners can just offer them their old, risky job, have them refuse, and then be denied unemployment benefits.
"away from the tips"
They're generally shared, no?
laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination.
Welcome! to The END of age discrimination laws!
IF we can (and Do) suspend the US Constitution because of "Public Safety Concerns"... We can SURE AS HELL throw away age discrimination laws
Just like we've ALREADY throw away the 2st amendment
The most obvious way to do this is to let employees request accommodations based on their supposed vulnerability to COVID19, but such vulnerabilities do not necessarily count as disabilities under federal or state laws, so other employees who are refused the same accommodations may be able to maintain lawsuits.
The general idea would also lead to questions about privacy of medical information ("do you have diabetes or a heart condition?"), or subjective assumptions ("you look like you have a BMI of 40 to me", and "you look black enough to me").
You don't have to understand how something works to micromanage it as long as you have the proper credentials.
“Disparate impact.”
Thankfully we only have black, white and Latino people. Otherwise, the analysis might lead to confusion.
What about buses? Who can sit near the driver, and who has to be at the back? For their own safety of course!
"Or owners can just offer them their old, risky job, have them refuse, and then be denied unemployment benefits."
No, owners can't — if they're following the CDC — offer them their old risky jobs. They're supposed to be put in "inventory management" or "telework." But I doubt if there's much work like that. The CDC is essentially saying don't bring those people back.
News flash - Napa Valley restaurants opening for in-person dining today. Napa county has had very low infection rates - restaurants are extremely important source of revenue and employment there. Some common sense finally returning - even in Calif!
"black people are more than 3.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people"
Why make it about race when this is likely due to where people are living (urban vs. rural) rather than pigment?
My theory on why journalists love to inject race? Upset people and make money doing it.
It's time for the CDC to be quiet for a while and stop embarrassing itself.
Less clearly, we're talking about discriminating against black people.
Ah, but if business owners don't discriminate against black people, they'll die in higher numbers, once again proving that Amerikkka is all about keeping the black man down. It's 1619 all over again, maaaaan.
What a conundrum! We need UW Madison to conduct one of those egghead symposiums to figure it all out.
No, in a word. I’ve run restaurants and everyone needs to be able to step in and do any job at any time. Formal dining is different only in the kitchen staff doesn’t cross over to front jobs. But in small especially family run places there’s not many jobs that can be idolatry from patrons and food prep. Won’t work.
Just stop pushing this unscientific and unnecessary socialist distancing. People under 70 in ok health have little to fear and we need to get over this spacial fetish. Science deniers!
Women and minorities hardest hit?
I’m not buying the “blacks are x times more likely to die from C-19” without more information on their health and lifestyles. Correlation does not equal causation. Lots of other factors at play (especially for medical issues). I doubt the higher death rate is because of their race. I suspect other factors, some physical/physiological, some environmental, some lifestyle choices.
Now if you showed me physical/physiological evidence that similarly healthy similarly situated blacks suffer significantly more deaths than other races, then yeah. OK.
Don't restaurants already keep the old, fat, and ugly workers in the kitchen?
The real news would be if there were a virus that made it impossible for the young, thin, and attractive employees to interact with the public.
Hard to see how discriminating against high risk individuals based on medically accepted definitions of high risk, is a bad thing. The factors stay the same no matter what the individuals Race, Gender, or Religion. Namely, age, morbid obesity, diabetes hypertension and asthma/lung disease. It should be noted that obesity diabetes and and hypertension usually all go together.
Of course there's "disparate impact" which lawyers have thought up. But maybe the Congress will actually do something about that. Didn't the SCOTUS rule against that, and Congress and Bush I put it into law?
"Napa Valley restaurants opening for in-person dining today."
Maybe I can get a reservation at the Restaurant at Meadowood or French Laundry, if I act fast.
"You're fat. Go clean the freezer."
"Thank you for caring about me."
Keep in mind this fro NEJM on 5 May:"In sum, to mitigate myths of racial biology, behavioral explanations predicated on racial stereotypes, and territorial stigmatization, Covid-19 disparities should be situated in the context of material resource deprivation caused by low SES, chronic stress brought on by racial discrimination, or place-based risk."
I think folks can self discriminate based on how they assess their risk factors. At my age, I will wear a mask and keep social distance in all public places for some time I suspect.
Probably a more important thing. What if had CV-19, and you get denied work? Would you have to prove you're not an asymptomatic spreader of the disease? instead of typhoid Mary's we might have CV-19 charlies that need to quarantined.
A legal precedent here might be International Union v. Johnson Controls, wherein Johnson Controls, which manufactured lead-acid car batteries, barred fertile women from holding jobs in a battery manufacturing plant that involved exposure to lead on the grounds that they were more susceptible to injury for it.
Johnson Controls' argument was that if it set the lead-exposure limit low enough to protect pregnant women then it could not afford to manufacture the batteries, and if it didn't it would open itself to vast legal liabilities.
The outcome was, battery manufacture moved to Mexico.
So, I'd not be surprised if employers can't do this. Because, the precedence set by disability-rights groups and others has become that if all can't have something then no one should be able to have it. Perhaps that's mean-spirited, but, here we are.
Are restaurant owners legally allowed to ask about health information in the first place? Sounds like an impending damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Most the waiters around here are young thin college age people. I haven't seen older ones since the old coffee shops closed up years ago.
"open for in person dining"
Lucky person.
What if more than one person is hungry?
Can an employer even ask someone if they have diabetes?
" Can restaurant owners, who are struggling to make their business profitable again, withhold jobs from people who fall in the "higher risk" category? "
Umm, you've already accepted broad powers by the government to shut down many lawful business activities, because of an exaggerated fear of the virus. Why not simply accept this?
more likely to die of
Of those hospitalized, those infected, or the general population?
Men are about 50% more likely to die than women (general population).
PS: the new(?) commenting system I saw a half-hour ago is now gone;
- it had "Reply" links below each post,
- the post time was on the same line as the poster's name, rather than at the end of the post,
- "killfile" no longer worked,
- the comment display you got by clicking "XX comments" was the same as the one you got from clicking the post title.
Apart from telework (how much is there in a restaurant), the people cleaning the freezers are going to smoosh into the kitchen or back area with the cooks and waitstaff at some point. Restaurants are pretty intimate workplaces.
"Why make it about race when this is likely due to where people are living (urban vs. rural) rather than pigment?"
I thought it had more to do with obesity and the health conditions of asthma and diabetes, but I don't know. It could also be something genetic. Why do you think you know? It's considered complicated, from the reports I've read. But I would put black people in the category "workers at a higher risk of getting sick." You're suggesting it doesn't matter because the restaurant is in a particular place and the racial difference is just based on the place, so it becomes irrelevant. But you are making a leap.
The Culinary Union Local 226 here in Las Vegas has quite a lot to say about safety once things reopen. It's a very powerful union hereabouts.
There's a great deal of evidence that a large part of the disparity in coronavirus mortality between blacks and whites is due to different levels of Vitamin D. And by a large part I mean probably the most of the difference.
And that means that we could change that stats relatively easily if we put our minds to it.
What puzzles me is why we aren't already doing this. Something isn't making sense. I don't understand the resistance to the idea of looking into Vitamin D and what, really, is motivating that resistance.
It's not just that we have a lot of evidence for this already, it's that supposing we didn't have that evidence, it should be quite feasible to construct studies that would prove or disprove the connection and quite obvious that of course we want to do those studies, and do them in fact yesterday.
Beyond that well if the lockdown was a good idea, then of course we should discriminate against older people and against fat people.
But I don't think we should do that. I think we should let people take their chances if they want to. And I think we should give legal protection to employers willing to employ people who are at higher risk of contagious diseases like this. And perhaps even reward employers willing to do that.
The Venn diagram showing people reasonably well suited to front-of-house work and back-of-house work has only a slender overlap. (And that's no diss to one over the other; there are tons of talented people in each.)
As Bob Boyd says, feel free to stop by and micromanage something you have no clue about.
Upon further reading this seems like another “Lawyers’ Full Employment Act.” Since these “considerations” are not supposed to displace any existing laws, regulations, etc., those aggrieved by their implementation will have a cause of action for violation of the existing rules; but where they are not implemented, those aggrieved will sue, saying “you were negligent and discriminated against me by not following the Considerations”, leaving employers to argue “it would have been against the law to implement them (and this is covered by Workers Comp.”)
The NYT insists on using periods within abbreviations, such as C.D.C. Like, G.E., I.B.M., F.B.I., etc. Who does this anymore (besides the "N.Y.T.")?
I am quite sure the ambulance chasing legal profession was right there giving input into the new regulations.
We have a Communist DA in San Francisco. I last saw him on the local news touring Chinatown and threatening people that he was on the alert for "discrimination based on perceived health status". Is this a new civil right? Every health status is perceived by someone or something . . .
Saint Croix asked:
"Why make it about race when this is likely due to where people are living (urban vs. rural) rather than pigment?"
Urban vs rural probably doesn't matter in this way- even in the urban areas, blacks are significantly more likely to die of COVID-19- see the demographic breakdown in NYC, for example.
People are vulnerable to the virus who have underlying health problems. This should be the (only) basis for discrimination. Things like age and race are only roughly correlated to these underlying conditions and are not what should be used as a basis for discrimination about who does what. Otherwise, humans will be accused of discrimination, whereas, at the health-problem level, it's Mother Nature who is doing the discriminating, and there's no one to accuse regarding that.
"But in small especially family run places there’s not many jobs that can be idolatry from patrons"
Don't you just love Autocorrect?
Ann Althouse said...
"Why make it about race when this is likely due to where people are living (urban vs. rural) rather than pigment?"
I thought it had more to do with obesity and the health conditions of asthma and diabetes, but I don't know. It could also be something genetic. Why do you think you know?
BBC America did a story of this discrepancy and finished the report attributing it "to the legacy of slavery". They think they know.
How does a virus recognize a social construct?
"Keep in mind this fro[m] NEJM"
Why? Out of context, it is pseudo-intellectual gibberish. In context, I doubt it is much better.
"Ignore what the data tell you, remember the answer is always 'racism!'"
Bay Area Guy wrote:
"Umm, you've already accepted broad powers by the government to shut down many lawful business activities, because of an exaggerated fear of the virus. Why not simply accept this"
True, there is a mass incoherence here, but I think you know why this won't be accepted- it always nice to be able to sue private businesses, and nearly impossible to sue governments.
Big leap from "offer options" to "withhold jobs".
Even after this crisis is over, I will continue to keep at least six feet away from those people.
Ann Althouse: "Or owners can just offer them their old, risky job, have them refuse, and then be denied unemployment benefits."
No, owners can't — if they're following the CDC — offer them their old risky jobs. They're supposed to be put in "inventory management" or "telework." But I doubt if there's much work like that. The CDC is essentially saying don't bring those people back.
They are recommendations, not regulations, and they are to be "guided by what is feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs of each community."
The CDC is not saying, "If the only choices are the same job or no job, you have to go with no job."
I do think melanin has to do with Vitamin D intake, and Vitamin D deficiency may be a factor in COVID.
"You don't have to understand how something works to micromanage it as long as you have the proper credentials."
This. I live in Sonoma county which saw 3, yes, 3 covid related deaths yet we are still locked down. The state wide asinine rules for reopening will guaran-damn-tee any remaining restaurants trying to reopen will go under as they can't survive with 50% seating. Nice FUCKING job liberals!
Every decision is racist: law school 101 under easiest settlements.
Hey!! Know what is a high risk medical condition?
Not having enough income to buy food, pay your bills and end up living alongside a dumpster at the restaurant you USED to be able to work at.
Starving is a risky medical condition.
At some point, folks are gonna have to return to planet earth and take a more "nuanced" approach to Coronavirus fears -- the similar approach taken, historically, for the past, oh, 70-80 years. Try to keep clean, don't be a slob, stay home from work if you are feeling ill, and don't think about the 5.3 Trillion invisible viruses that are circulating amidst the human population. That's what you immune system is for.
@GK1,
My inlaws live in Sonoma County! Lovely place.
Carry on, Comrades.
Our local bar, which I normally go to 16-20 Sundays a year (NFL package), will be open for 50% capacity, six feet spacing at the bar, masks required for employees, suggested for guests starting this Friday. I will drop in and say Hi to the gang, but my wife (who is on HCQ) will not be joining me. I'm curious to see if the place gets really busy due to pent up demand or largely empty due to Corona fears.
"away from the tips"
They're generally shared, no?
Cashiers and hostesses don't usually get a cut of the tips (at least they didn't back when I had those jobs since they were paid minimum wage). But now I'm trying to remember which sit-down dining places had cashiers. The finer ones don't and the ones that do, I feel as if most of them either had an available server working the register or had someone who was also taking care of carry-out orders running the register for dine-in too.
As far as I know, the only people who get tips are ones that make below minimum wage. Cashiers, hostesses, managers, bookkeepers, any administrative work is paid a set wage. Servers might tip out the bussers, bartenders, or some of the line cooks when they can because it's a good way to make sure your section is clean and your orders come out fast.
modified job responsibilities such as managing inventory rather than working as a cashier, or managing administrative needs through telework
Is managing stock a full-time job in most restaurants? If memory serves (from decades ago), it was part of the manager's job - unload the trucks, put up stock, check stock to make orders. The accounting and paperwork too. In a family-run restaurant, the owner is probably also the manager. Is he/she supposed to give up parts of their job so they can bring back someone who was a server to do it? Margins are too thin already for that kind of thing.
Either the people making the guidelines have never worked in a restaurant (and are oblivious to what's going on with the workers when they dine in one) or they felt they just had to make a list that made it look as if they were doing something even if they knew it was unlikely that many of the things could be implemented in the real world.
"Napa Valley restaurants opening for in-person dining today."
Most counties will begin to gradually open in Oregon soon. But if you live in a county that has not been allowed to open, you are forbidden from driving to an open county to shop or dine in. The counties that will remain closed longer include the three that comprise the Portland metro area. We live in one of those. We will probably bring our own food and do picnics in nearby closed counties to take advantage of the scenery, if it ever stops raining.
Oregon is in the bottom five in terms of infection and deaths (140 so far) and yet has been one of the more repressive states. But we're not so much in the news -- I guess that's because our bad elected officials are not as flamboyantly bad as elsewhere.
We dropped off our mail-in ballots yesterday. As independents we didn't get to vote in the primary but we did get to vote "no" on a metro measure that would raise taxes on "the rich" and businesses so there would be more money to throw at the homeless problem. And to vote for the opponent of an incumbent Democrat county commissioner about whom: "The state ethics commission found that Jim Bernard broke state ethics laws..."
The homelessness measure will pass because only rich people and business will pay and Bernard will be re-elected because Democrat. Sigh.
Even after this crisis is over, I will continue to keep at least six feet away from those people.
According to some early ngram usages, that's what "social distancing" used to mean.
I think they are safe as long as the restaurant doesn't employ any hamsters without masks.
Funny how this only applies to restaurants and bars. The hospitals are not ordered to offer the overweight blacks and latinos schlepping to work on the subway to clean floors and asses a safer position. Nor is the NYC subway system. How about Walmart...
"People Who Are at Higher Risk for Severe Illness" shows the ongoing abuse of the English language at the hands of the gummint. In English, we say "at risk of," "chance of" and "probability of," as in "People Who Are at Higher Risk of Severe Illness."
You should never trust a gummint agency or medical professional who speaks bad English. It's one of the very few cues you will get as to quality of the medical care to expect.
The CDC: stupid government run amuck once again.
If I have diabetes I don’t need to share my medical information with you. So buzz off!
Fat: that you can see but if I WANT to work where I can get tips and I did before can I still do it?
Old person: probably already had a job they could handle and can’t move to the back loading and loading merchandise or food.
And, as a former waitress, who has worked at a restaurant where tips were shared (and didn’t stay long) shared tips suck.
There are always lazy servers that are part of the staff.
It’s like a group project in school-everyone leaves the work up to the smart, hard worker. Everyone gets an “A” but not everyone deserves an “A”.
We ask the hostess before get seated about the tip policy or look at a menu to see if it’s there.
Does this apply to airlines too? Are we going back to the days of slim young flight attendants?
This could be a time to go the European route and do away with tipping. Between coronavirus and the recent increases in minimum wage this really might be the time to do it. Do a good job then keep your job. Don't then don't.
The CDC is essentially saying don't bring those people back.
It sounds to me like 'medical' 'experts' are telling restaurants to ultimately make up busy work for people to do so they can still get paid. You know, like the way government does...
They're not only going to tell you if you can open your business, but how to run your business. And the great thing is, 99% of these government bureaucrats have never run their own business and have zero idea what it takes to employ people where you actually have to make enough money to cover the expenses of running the business including the very payroll that covers pay for your employees. You think sending Bob into a back corner to hide him from a virus so you can schedule an extra body to cover his section is going to work for your labor cost? Let's say you have 4 people this government edict thinks should all be working on the same back corner. So you need to bring in 4 additional people to cover them. Now you're paying 8 people to do the job of 4.
Bureaucrat: "Huh? Labor cost? What's that? We always have our payroll covered. We're your government. By the way, we're raising your taxes because we want a raise."
"Encourage employees who use mass transit to consider using other transportation options (e.g., walking or biking, driving or riding by car- alone or with household members only) if feasible"
I guess that will work for those restaurant employees who are taking mass transit because they are concerned with their carbon footprint. For most people, I think they're taking it because they don't have other good options.
"Actively encourage employees who are sick or have recently had a close contact with a person with COVID-19 to stay home."
What restaurants can afford to keep enough staff to handle these emergency call-ins? And it's not just a matter of affording a large staff - servers are paid below minimum because they get tips. You couldn't keep employees if you have some who are just on stand-by in case someone gets sick. Or you have more than you need coming in "just in case", so they have fewer tables and less tip income.
CDC sounds like more of the government mandated crap what leads to unintended consequences. Non-eviction order leads to squatting in style in the Hamptons.
Of course nobody 'important' is harmed, right?
So far as I can remember, I can't recall any obese, old people working as servers. It's not the kind of job that you stick at past sixty years or over a certain weight.....Darker skinned people have lower levels of Vitamin D. People with lower levels of Vitamin D are more at risk for coronavirus. Not every racial difference is racist.
Micromanagers Wanted
No experience necessary
Will need a high self-regard, preferably baseless.
Good intentions helpful, but not necessary.
Prestigious credentials a plus
Apply to the Center for Economic Activity Control and Prevention
mandrew (i think), said...
don't understand the resistance to the idea of looking into Vitamin D and what, really, is motivating that resistance
Hmmm
Could it be, the same thing that is motivating resistance to
Zinc?
hydroxychloroquine ?
azithromycin?
remdesivir?
ANYTHING that Might be helpful?
Can they refuse to rehire at-risk people (many older) because hiring staff with limitations on what they can do is fiscally STUUUUUPID when your business is struggling?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
A couple weeks back the The Orleans Casino did a few days of free Covid testing. Most random testing here so far. Results got published today:
7778 tests yielded 119 (1.5%) positives. Not sicknesses, not deaths, just positives. Very likely zero deaths, maybe a few got sick. We shut down the whole state for two months, and it's still shut down.
Re Role of Pigmentation.
There is an interesting article by Matt Ridley (the Spectator, May 18) on the role vitamin D deficiency may play in covid19 susceptibility and severity. He notes that dark pigmentation is a causal factor in vitamin deficiency.
" Non-eviction order leads to squatting in style in the Hamptons."
Maybe Joe Badfinger Biden can just move into the White House and squat in the Oval office.
I own 2 restaurants. We have cashiers who make $10 per hour plus tips. They work 6 hour shifts and average $24 to $29 per hour. They were not laid off since we didn’t close because of Covid 19, we switched to takeout only as we were required by the city of Austin to do March 16. I laid off my servers that day. The servers made $2.13 per hour plus tips and averaged $17 to $25 per hour. Those folks would not be happy about no tip system.
Under current labor laws tips can only be shared with a those that have customer contact so FOH folks only, no BOH. I came up with a work around for really large to go orders (we can have orders of several hundred to couple of grand). The manager takes the order and we pay out tips to kitchen every 2 weeks.
We haven’t opened for dine in yet even though we are allowed. I asked my servers about returning to work May 8, May 22, May 29 or give me date. None of those dates worked to have enough FOH to reopen at even 25% capacity. Those that did respond with timeframe, thought they’d consider mid June or July.
To answer your question, Ann, employers can't force employees to accept "safer" jobs based on age or disability. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made it clear that this would be discriminatory and unlawful. But the CDC guidance says only that restaurants and bars should "offer options" to these individuals. The NYT paraphrase didn't use that language. "Offering options" is fine, assuming the at-risk employees are free to decline the "options" and keep their regular jobs.
Diversity (e.g. racism, sexism), perhaps. Hygienic habits, social liberalism, comorbidities, yes. Wash your hands, avoid black holes (a la HIV), and wear a ask and goggles, and, if you follow the precautionary principle, a full body condom.
@Robin Shea
Thanks. I did not see the room to maneuver in “offer options.” Still, I don’t believe restaurants have enough of these options for the former waitstaff. But maybe people wouldn’t want them anyway.
I think restaurants and the "hospitality" and entertainment industry need to align themselves with how people now want to live now. People now want to go to a restaurant or show or the beach or a park with family and /or a few select friends and sit in a small companionable group some distance from other similar small groups or individuals. All the restaurants on beaches and in cities that depended on a lot of drinking and hook-ups and crowding will go under. All the places known for dirty bathrooms with long lines will go under. Stadiums that had overpriced food and dirty bathrooms with long wait lines and athletes that insulted the crowd during the season and raped women in the off season, as in the NFL - it's over. And the same for concerts with overpriced tickets that depended on jamming people on drugs tightly together for the experience. Over. The same for travel. Where the "travel experience" had become an experience of crowds and lines and obvious money-grabbing by aloof, indifferent vendors, the experience is no longer wanted. Even the schools which are needed - high prices, crowded lecture halls with lecturers who cannot speak English, Kiss Police, Diversity Police, debt, useless diplomas. Avoid all that online. And, the universities are refusing to teach in person and charging the same for online, thus saying that online is just as good.
No one is letting this crisis go to waste.
I'm hearing from a relative in Milwaukee that cases in Milwaukee are going back up to match the highest level ever attained. Anyone have any facts? - I don't see this trend on the DHS website. If the trend is going up (and not just more testing) then the question is - why? What was happening two weeks ago? Lots of rain and clouds? a Lake effect micro-climate renders Milwaukee second most batcavey city in America? The city blacks need vitamin D and the city health officials are sitting around on the dock in their lake country homes with their choice friends and aren't trying to get the word out to the black community?
Bureaucratic regulations always try to make everything work like a multifunction swiss watch and then they wind it up too tight.
Americans know how to deal with this. Forgiveness over permission
I heard a case about a lead-processing firm that excluded women of child-bearing age to avoid issues with poisoning unborn children (much more vulnerable than adults). They can't ask about pregnancy because of privacy, nor can they require tests for same reason. So the policy was put in place to be cautious. Their reward was getting sued for excluding women.
Here it is: United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc.
So a company tried to avoid both lawsuits and health problems ended up getting sued anyway. Seems parallel to what's actually being asked to happen here. ("Hey, Vince! Get your diabetic butt away from the customers, y'hear?" "Dude, you just violated HIPPA.")
The mind of the obtuse bureaucrat at work.
Welcome to the inevitable result of government run amok:
That which is FORBIDDEN is now also MANDATORY!
Are we going back to the days of slim young flight attendants?
Yeah. Dream on.
The best advice is to mostly ignore the CDC advice altogether. For legal CYA, businesses can add a waiver for new hires to sign advising the CDC's recommendations, that the job they've applied for is higher risk for infections, and that they understand the potential risks and waive liability.
Here's the thing - if at risk people genuinely believe the CDC's advice, they won't apply for such jobs in the first place. If such people prefer to work at those jobs, they should not be hindered due to the concerns of some bureaucrat putting hypothetical well-being over the very real concern of earning a living. Those are decisions the individual should be allowed to make.
In practice, what you will probably see is that the at-risk groups gradually disappear from the labor force if the government tries to enforce this scheme, much the same way that fewer and fewer disabled people have jobs in the years since the ADA passed. Most competent small business owners know better than to put in writing an actionable reason for denying somebody employment.
Just close it all down, and the feds can send the former employees $600 a week in perpetuity.
How many restaurants does one country need, after all.
To claim it to be discrimination against blacks, is to be stupid at best if not racist. It exposes the perniciousness of “disparate impact” argued by people with similar brain folds.
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